Breaking Guitars, Breaking Records
A 14-year-old from Texas broke the world record score for "Through the Fire and Flames," allegedly most difficult song in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Danny plays five instruments in the real world, including guitar, and claims that "Guitar Hero helps" with picking up skills for his real guitar. Now, I thought I'd seen a lot of those plastic instruments break in my household, but the boy's father claims that Danny has broken about 80 guitars with his rigorous and rapid play. Let's hope for dad's sake that the endorsers are helping to fund Danny's practice costs. Check out the astonishing video here...

While this time of year has definitely gotten a lot better as far as offering a steady stream of new games, there are still weeks here and there that are, shall we say, less than inspiring. However, if you're a tween looking for fashion gaming or a teenager who wants to practice driving but can't find an adult to get in the car with you, you're in luck!

After last week's staggering explosion of downloadable releases and announcements, it should come as no surprise that this week's musical offerings are a bit more sedate. But don't think that means there's nothing worth getting excited about, because all the major players have big-name offerings this week.

Another week and another pound lost! This past week was extra enjoyable for me because it was more about playing games than expressly getting in shape. I played through a couple of games with which the main selling point is not fitness, but rather to do something fun that also has the getting-into-shape benefit. The results were not entirely unexpected on my part, but the simple fact is that you can get more and better exercise playing these games than some of the games with “Fit” in the title.

When I read a recent news story about Microsoft's attempts to seduce more women into buying a 360 by throwing what's basically the gaming equivalent of tupperware parties, two thoughts popped into my head. One, console makers still don't seem to know how to connect with non-hardcore gamers. And two, if I were a parent in Yonkers, NY, I'd be more than a little worried that a 40-year-old high school guidance counselor seemed so excited by her students calling her "cool."

Pets are great, but they shed fur all over your couch, scratch and chew your furniture, and make unreasonable demands on your time by needing you to do things like feed them, walk them, and groom them. Not quite up to all that but still fancy the idea in principle? Instead, try playing with a virtual pet that you can pick up and put down whenever you please -- one that doesn’t poop everywhere. Here are ten of the best pet games out there.

Developer Telltale Games is currently offering up a free episode of either Sam & Max or Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People -- two of the company's episodic recurring series of adventure games. All you have to do is sign up for their newsletter between now and February 28, and you'll be credited for a free download from the series of your choice.

This is not a preview for Street Fighter fans. Street Fighter fans (who should not be confused with actual street fighters) can spend hours discussing the nuances of Chun-Li's move set in Street Fighter II, Street Fighter fans will argue passionately about the best and worst games in the series (popularly believed to be Street Fighter III: Third Strike and Street Fighter: The Movie, respectively), and Street Fighter fans will scoff at my level of knowledge of the series, which, while well above what any normal person would consider to be healthy, doesn't hold a candle to the reservoirs of information possessed by the Street Fighter hardcore.

As entertaining as music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are, there's a pretty substantial gap between playing them and, well, actually making music. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the genre. But there's a big difference between tapping along to predetermined songs and getting in there and creating your own songs from scratch.

I love video games and I hate math. With Personal Trainer: Math in hand, I set out to examine Nintendo's recent marriage of the two. I think I expected that my head might explode. On the plus side, my skull is still intact; on the other hand, the game doesn't do any figurative mind blowing either. To expect this much from a math game might be a mistake, but after playing through this title, my brain was feeling the opposite of blown away -- I was bored.