I don't know if it's the slight Scottish brogue or just that, like most gamers, I'm deeply in love with the song Still Alive, but this video of Scottish Frag Doll Kitt fulfilling a promise to sing a song with Jam Sessions is adorable. More so because she's singing the Portal song.

Kitt's Video Blog Number 2

This post has a spoiler. Thus, we're putting it behind the jump. Here is a picture of a giraffe.

This fat bastard is Ralphie May. I've never heard of him, but I'm assured by my American cohorts that he's a comedian. Here's a clip of Ralphie performing at the Spike VGAs, where he strolls onto the stage, whips the crowd into a frenzy with his poignant, biting remarks on the 360's reliability then strolls off to a thunderous round of applause.

The co-host of G4's X-Play, Morgan Webb, didn't get her television gig because of her good looks. Oh sure, it may have helped her get on camera, but at one point Webb was just a rank and file computer nerd doing research for TechTV. Then, one day, she was given a bit of spit-shine, thrust in front of the camera and television broadcasting history was made. She was then further groomed, given spreads in mens magazines like FHM and Maxim, ultimately giving G4 its most recognizable face.

MTV Multiplayer sat down with Webb, part of its week-long series of interviews with women in gaming, to ask the host of WebbAlert questions about her job, the influx of women in games, and the industry's double standards. First thing you should know about Morgan, she doesn't read her fan mail. She also avoids internet message boards. Why? Probably too many judgments on the sharpness of her knees from sexless trolls, I'm guessing.

Regis with a mullet? Kelly belting out Mississippi Queen? No this isn't the an annual crack-fueled Live With Regis and Kelly Christmas Party, it's the recent appearance of Rock Band on the show. Kelly's got some mean pipes.

In the recent fall update, Microsoft expanded player profiles to include things like where we live. In Japan, if players tried to enter the Japanese kanji for Takeshima ("Bamboo Island"), a group of small islands in the Sea of Japan, the characters were not recognized. Both Japan and Korea claim ownership of the islands: Japan says its part of Shimane Prefecture, while Korea claims its part of North Gyeongsang Province.

The island only has like twenty or so permanent Japanese residents. There are more Korean residents. So maybe Microsoft is just hoping to side-step a very, very controversial issue of which country actually owns the islands by not letting anyone register the Japanese "Takeshima." Well, no. If you typed the Japanese kanji for "Dokdo," the Korean word for the islands, Xbox Live would accept it. That's right, Xbox Live Japan wouldn't accept the Japanese name for this area, but would accept the Korean name for it. And that inadvertently indicates which country Microsoft thinks owns the islands! The internet flipped out with comments over at popular site Nico Video hitting a thousand. Commenters called this "horrible" and "awful." Microsoft has since said it was a mistake in the new update and is correcting the error. The funny part? In the news clip after the jump, the caster continually refers to the Xbox 360 as the "popular" Xbox. "Popular" in America, that is!

By John Gaudiosi

When it comes to Hollywood gamers, sure, Vin Diesel has his own game company, Tigon Studios, but I've never met two more die hard gamers than the stars of NBC's hit action comedy, "Chuck," which also happens to be a show that features a lot of games. It's not a coincidence that Zachary Levi's Chuck and Joshua Gomez's Morgan are gamers in the show. They're the reason Gears of War was featured in the first two episodes and that other games have become a staple of the show.

"We're both HUGE Gears of War fans," said Gomez. "Halo was Halo...it will always be that, but as soon as I played the first Halo is how I feel about Gears. I anticipate the sequel to Gears like I anticipated the sequel to Halo. It's going to be tough to follow up on that. I understand why Halo kind of dipped. I don't know if Halo 2 could have ever lived up to the expectations, because they were so high, and I kind of feel like there's going to be a similar thing with Gears. I've taken a lot of heat from a lot of people because Gears was so hyped and so huge of a game, but to me I thought it lived up to it. And multiplayer-wise, that game is so much more up my alley. I actually prefer the smaller four-on-four combat because then I knew who I was playing with and you could communicate and I thought there was a lot more strategy and things like that to it."

These aren't "new" screens as they look like they're from the same code that made up the game trailer. Rather, they are "fresh" screens that we haven't seen before. We're not just excited about the multi-platform Ghostbusters game, we're also nervous. Very, very nervous. These screens are nice, but please don't make it suck. Please. We're dealing with fragile childhood memories here. Handle with caution.

Full Gallery of Screens [Action Trip]

Face it: Japanese Wii owners buy Wii Sports, Wii Fit and maybe Super Mario Galaxy. That's about it, really! So, when a third party company releases something that, well, isn't any of those three, what happens? Not much. That's No More Heroes executive producer and Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada and No More Heroes and Killer 7 creator Goichi Suda hoping to give out toilet paper and hoping to sign copies of NMH. Thing is, after twenty minutes of Suda and Wada standing in front of Akihabara's Sofmap, nobody bought the game. Keep in mind, that not only two well-known game creators were giving out toilet paper, but there was also a woman in a mini-skirt (that, after the jump). Talk about a tough crowd!

Japanese game press like IT Media, GA Graphic and Famitsu were at the bust of an event and didn't have any customers to photograph at the launch. According to Akiba Blog, a staffer from Famitsu publisher Enterbrain apparently went and bought a copy of No More Heroes for Wada and Suda to sign. Regardless of what you think of No More Heroes, stuff like this isn't just sad for Suda and co., but for Wii owners ultimately. No More Heroes isn't your typical Wii game, and it seems to be getting punished for that. Hope it does better in the States — for the Wii's sake.

Hit the jump for the mini-skirt cosplay girl.

This is not a joke. The Hello Kitty Xbox is apparently so rare that it was only thought to be an April Fool's joke. Turns out it's very real. Limited to 500 units, the console was available only to customers who purchased a US $5000 television at one specific retailer in Singapore. The console came with a Crystal colored Xbox controller and a copy of Hello Kitty Mission Rescue. If Hello Kitty is good enough for her own Dreamcast console, guess an Xbox one doesn't seem too far off. Hit the jump for the unboxing!

Johnny Lee's a smart kid. First he shows us how we can use our Wiis to track finger movements ala Minority Report, now he's showing us something even more exciting: how to use the Wii Remote as a whiteboard marker. OK, it doesn't sound that exciting, but free up a few minutes from your busy modern lifestyles to watch this clip and you'll see it actually has some serious potential.
[via Giz]

So, Suda51's No More Heroes doesn't look like it's a breakout Japanese hit. That fact alone has made many people quite blue — glum, even! Reader Frank sends this:

I felt sad that NMH ain't doing good in Japan, I decided to show some love to Suda by asking you to post my Wii which is not finished yet but to show support and respect to Suda for making what I know to be a great game, already pre-ordered it but no keychain or toilet paper Damn It! Well thanks for listening!

It's a Game [PS3 Fanboy]

They are only the tiniest bit touched up. Short answer is yes. Long answer is that there was a little bit of colour-correction done and some minor polish, but nothing major. Still very close to reality and it looks better in motion in my opinion.

In a fitting (almost) ending to my six day cross county road trip to move myself from Atlanta to San Francisco, I landed in glamorous Las Vegas last night just in time for the Spike TV Video Game awards. I wasn't quite sure what to expect having never attended a "major" awards show before, but I sat down fueled by five days on the road and a few drinks with my pad and paper to bring you all the big announcements.

One of the things I found amazingly odd was that the awards themselves really seemed to take a back seat to the musical performances, commercials, myriad non video game related guest stars, and occasional World Premier Trailers for games like Little Big Planet, Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, Borderlands, TNA Wrestling, Prototype and Gran Turismo 5. It was almost like the awards were an afterthought, tacked on to an evening of oohing and ahhing over the next big name to take the stage. But, they did eventually get around to the awards and while there were no huge surprises, in general the winners seemed pretty in line with most people's guesses.

*Caution: Spoilers ahead. If you don't want to know any of the winners until the show airs tonight, read no further!*

If you are reading this grave, you're a huge nerd. Please get a life and a girlfriend.

Our Show-Us-Hell-Win-Hellgate: London contest has drawn to a close. Voting time! We've got TK finalists, and it's up to you, Kotakuland, to vote for the one finalist you like best. Remember, vote for ONE and only ONE. Voting ends Monday, December 10th at 11:59pm. Hit the jump for the finalists!

Recently Common Sense Media, a non-partisan organization "dedicated to improving the media lives of children and families", sent out a questionnaire about kids and the media to the current roster of presidential candidates.

In it they only ask one specific question about video games, the candidates take on legislating violent video games sales. Only Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, Senator Barack Obama, Former Governor Mitt Romney and Governor Bill Richardson answered the questions in time for the deadline. The answers, I believe, give readers a sense on the candidate's take on video games and the first amendment.

In his answer Edwards points to the ESRB as a good example of industry responsibility. Barack seems to be calling for the feds to get involved, if only to once more study the impact of video games on "children's cognitive development." Richardson calls for the parents to be educated about the inappropriate content of "many video games." Citing the need to protect children from a "societal cesspool of filth, pornography, violence, sex and perversion", Romney says that the government needs to "get serious" against retailers that sell adult games to children.

Both Edwards and Barack also sort of talk a bit about gaming when answering a question about managing their childrens' media use. Hit the jump to read their answers to that question and all four candidates full take on video game censorship.

Someone who is more than close enough to know such things has tipped us off over the weekend that, yes, Treyarch are indeed hard at work on Call of Duty 5. And that, yes, the series is heading back to World War II. That's the stuff we'd heard already. What we didn't know is that, according to this tipster, the game's set in the under-utilized Pacific theater, something only one major WWII shooter - the awful Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault - has tried before. While (if true) the move back to well-worn WWII is mostly disappointing, if this game can branch out and explore some of the less "popular" aspects of the conflict (China, Burma, New Guinea), it might not be so bad.
[Image]

We don't normally get obsessed over the wattage of our various consoles, OK, there was that one time, but Aeropause did some updated PS3 wattage tests and found two points worth sharing. First, the PS3's standby mode (aka when it's "off") only takes 1W of electricity. That's not much, and is considered pretty good as some electronics use near their full wattage during standby. But when put into Remote Play standby mode, the power consumption jumps to 24W. While that's still not absurd, it could make the difference of about $10/year on your electrical bill.

The other new finding was that while Folding@Home averages about 215W, ditching the visuals for the screensaver only averages 185. In other words, by ditching Folding's visuals and turning off Remote Play, you could save some quantifiable energy. Just something to keep in mind...

Profiles In Power: The PS3, 360, and Wii. [via ggmania][image]

The reason why we do that, the core reason, is around credit card transaction fees. If we do this in bulk, we don't have to burden the consumer with the transaction fees, or ourselves or publishers. It's about keeping infrastructure costs down and I know sometimes it's frustrating because you end up with odd points, but we don't have any plans to change that.

Video games used to be taken far more seriously than they are now; over here the gaming culture was affected adversely by advancing mobile phone tech., which back in the late '90s and early '00s was years ahead of the West. Suddenly people were playing (not games) with their phones and being more sociable than before, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the human race. However, the Japanese still think of themselves as a kind of gaming mecca because they have a few god-like presences. In reality though, gaming has become less central and more a standard commodity; the Wii and DS have proved this with their huge demographic range. People want to play games, but without the huge investment of time and money games used to take up.

See this picture? Learn it. Live it. Love it. That's how you really hold a drumstick. Or it's one way at least. Sometimes I prefer holding my sticks in the traditional style and pretending that I'm one of those Civil War drummers while rocking out to Maps.

The bottom line is that we're all going to look a bit douchey while playing Rock Band. But some of us can pretend that our alter egos (which only come out at night, btw) are hard rocking maniacs. You see, we only have those Rock Band drums sitting around because they can hold a boatload of coke (which we're out of because we snort it the instant we get it, btw), and they are the next best thing to our motorcycles (currently in the shop, btw) for fornication. Hit the link for three different, fully authorized ways to properly hold sticks.

UPDATE: We're sorry, apparently we linked an idiotic site. Out apologies. Here's another link, per someone who knows what they're talking about. And so you know, our band director is most ashamed.

It looks like Ash may have been right. Stuff magazine is running a rumor item on the possibility of an upcoming Aibo, the robotic dog, working with the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3. The rumor goes that the Sony Aibo PS, as they call it, is being resuscitated by Sony's Playstation division in an attempt to "bolster the PS3's arsenal."

The Aibo PS will appear with its own avatar within Home and react in the real world as he does in the PS3's upcoming interactive environment, according to the article. The rumor article goes on to say that you will be able to download new personalities for the dog from the Playstation Network and that the dog will be fully controllable using a PSP via WiFi. The dog's head camera will send a real world vid feed to the PSP's screen as well. The Dpad will control walking movement and the four main buttons will deal with head movement, which seems odd.

The Stuff folks rate this rumor as having a 53 percent probability. Seems like a cool concept, but I wonder if there's the market for it to hit the real world. Who am I kidding? A remote control dog that can send live video from its head, sign me up for a baker's dozen.

Matt Smith's Facebook [via Gamespot UK, thanks Matthew]