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8-Bit Link Is A Real Treat
We've see a lot of gaming cakes, but here are some gaming cupcakes! Little Gia is a new Zelda fan, apparently having reached a gaming epiphany with Twilight Princess. She wanted a Link cake fro her birthday, so instead of going the traditional route, mom, dad, grandma and her "crazy gaming uncles" came up with this 8-bit Link made from 143 delicious cupcakes. At 36" by 44", this might be the biggest game related dessert treat we've seen.Lucky. My birthday is tomorrow and I'm not even getting the $10 Little Mermaid cake I wanted ("Oh you're a 26 year old man now. You don't need a Little Mermaid birthday cake").
Seriously though, I've always envied those that don't get the impersonal treatment on their birthday. Most of us are lucky to get an in-date cake from Wal-Mart that has our name spelled correctly.
Guitar Heros 80s Edition Coming
Gaming Target reports that the latest issue of EGM has a look at Guitar Hero: 1980s Edition. I'll give you a second to stop squealing. It's OK, I did that too. The game is already in production and due out this spring, according to the article. No word on whether it will be hitting the Xbox 360 version as a download pack, but why wouldn't it?"I know the main part of the song is made with a synth, but I want to play The Final Countdown!"
I'd buy the entire package all over again for that.
The Epic Tale of SNES Discoloration
Vintage Computing's Benj Edwards is a man possessed. Possessed with understanding (and solving) the problem of Super Nintendo plastic discoloration, his investigation of the burning question "Was my Super Nintendo always this yellow-ish?" has yielded interesting results. I know my original SNES is looking pretty jaundiced these days, but I'm not that concerned about it.Fascinating. I've always wondered why this always happens to everyone else's system while mine still looks fine (some of my games on the other hand, not so much).
We're Sending Two to the Tokyo Game Show
What. A. Contest. You want to go to Japan? With a friend? And not *just* Japan, but the Tokyo Game Show. Here's the deal: Today, we're kicking off a contest that will run through the end of March. We're going to run three (count 'em) trivia questions over this period in the form of sponsored polls. Today's is brought to you by Old Spice thank-you-very-much.Using the latest IE, I think my entry went through.
I know the answer. Hell, I was consistently one of the top ranked Jet Grind Radio players in the country. That has to count for something, right? Right?
Vista Leaves Carmack Cold
This week's quote-machine John Carmack has already voiced his opinion on the PS3 and Nintendo. And he doesn't stop there. Oh, no, in that long Game Informer sitdown, Carmack dishes up his feelings on Microsoft's Vista, saying: Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista..."true as that may come, this guy's a fucking bias piece of trash. Let him sit with his piece'a'shit xbox360, obviously he doesn't need anything else besides'it."
I feel dumber for even knowing I willingly came to a place where I had to read that.
Anyway, Carmack's comments are dead-on. If more developers followed suit, we'd just maybe see Microsoft actually have to think and give everyone a few appealing reasons to upgrade rather than needlessly forcing us to (take a lesson from Sony and Blu-ray). Outspoken comments like that are good for everyone.
Screw Playing, Let's Watch Final Fantasy XII
Whew! With all that unnecessary game play outta the way, we can stare glass-eyed and slack-jaw at the pretty Final Fantasy pictures. Site Video Games Heaven posted all of FF XII's cutscenes, 36 in total. The quality is slightly better than YouTube, so grab that bowl of popcorn and enjoy."We didn't miss anything. The prerenders were great to look at, but FFXII's story was abysmal.
That's about how I feel as well. FFXII was the first Final Fantasy in a long time that's better to play than to watch (which I guess is somewhat of a backhanded compliment). The character designs were spectacular, the voice acting was great and it all showed a great deal of promise. Unfortunately it all fell flat. It's a shame too, because as stated before, Balthier is just too cool.
ASUS XG Station Laptop Graphics Dock
While I love me some laptop computers, I've generally avoided them after my first purchase several years ago left me with a machine not graphically powerful enough to run the games I wanted to play. Unless you purchase a high-end gaming laptop you'll get stuck with a low-end graphics chip that generally isn't very upgradeable, if at all. ASUS is looking to end all of that with the XG Station, the world's first external graphics card docking station for laptops.Awesome news. Now I'll never have to hear my girlfriend say "let me face the wall so I can get a better framerate while healing", ever again.
Dell Unveils New XPS Gaming Desktop
Dell just announced their latest gaming desktop, the XPS 710 H2C Edition Gaming Desktop. The computer comes in a black chassis and includes some fancy new two-stage cooling system as well as an Intel quad-core overclocked processor. Dell's H2C cooling system is a custom two-stage process. First, a liquid-to-air heat exchanger that works like a car's radiator removes most of the heat from the processor.I'm not sure what it looks like most: stage gear, an electric heater or a dialysis system for Cylons. Who could put that monstrosity on their desk and get away with it?
GameStop Burning the Midnight Crusade
In one short week millions of World of Warcraft players will take their first trembling steps into The Burning Crusade, and GameStop stores across the country will be opening at midnight on Monday the 15th in honor of the forthcoming expansion."I think that the only people still playing WoW are the hardcore role-players"
Trust me, there are very few of those playing WoW. Maybe in the sense of acting out elf-on-elf fantasies in Goldshire, but genuine roleplayers in that game are few and far in-between.
The Great Xbox 360 Crap-Out Poll
With my Xbox 360 on the fritz, other commenters wrote in and said they had similar problems. We're a year into the console's life, haven't done a poll in a while and I need some hardly hard numbers. Consider this a quick and unscientific head count. Brian Ashcraft Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.I think the poll's crapped out on me as well.
Anyway, yes. Mine died around 7 or 8 months into owning it and I sold it for parts. This was before Microsoft began fixing them for free, literally only a couple of days. Funny how I parted with mine because the customer service rep absolutely would not budge with the fees and the next week they're sending checks to everyone.
That said, I have no plans to buy another at the moment (although I do greatly miss Geometry Wars).