The Game Dame™

Archive for May, 2008

Celebrate your Nerdipendence

Posted on May 21st, 2008 in Video Game Music.
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Looking for something to do for this 4th of July weekend that doesn’t involve the lake, rednecks and drunken firecracker fights? Get your butt over to Florida for a Nerd Revolution. On July 4th and 5th, Nerdapalooza Southeast 2008 will take over Orlando‚Äôs Taste Restaurant from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., featuring more than 30 nerdcore musicians hailing from Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States. Presented by Troma Entertainment and A Comic Shop, headliners for Nerdapalooza include nerdcore founder MC Frontalot, Harry and the Potters, YTCracker, Pixelh8, Random, ZeaLouS1 and Select Start.

In addition to a guaranteed rocking weekend, you can feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that all of the proceeds from the event will be donated to the nonprofit organization, Child‚Äôs Play. Created in 2003 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, this Seattle-based nonprofit organization is dedicated to providing children worldwide with toys, books, movies and video games.

‚ÄúWe are committed to helping Child’s Play beat last year’s donations,‚Äù Nerdapalooza Co-founder John T. Carter said.

Nerd culture has become increasingly popular and the cultural awareness of technology increases bit by bit every day. While it was once ‚Äònerdy‚Äô to own a computer, now it is status quo. ‚ÄúWith the boundaries of what is “nerdy” and what is “normal” continually shifting, we are on the bleeding edge of what is a steadily increasing community,‚Äù Carter said.

Examples of this ‚Äòbleed‚Äô can be seen in mainstream culture today. ‚ÄúThe Kanye West and Daft Punk collaboration is a perfect example,‚Äù Carter said. ‚ÄúThe entire music video is a straight-up tribute to the Akira anime,‚Äù Carter said, referencing the popular anime movie.

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Joke of the Day

Posted on May 20th, 2008 in Random.
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Got this joke in my email this morning and had to share…

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Eric, the 11 year old next door, whose bedroom looks like Mission Control and asked him to come over. Eric clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.

As he was walking away, I called after him, ‘So, what was wrong? He replied, “It was an ID ten T error.”

I didn’t want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, “An, ID ten T error? What’s that? In case I need to fix it again.”

Eric grinned…. “Haven’t you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?”

“No,” I replied.

“Write it down,” he said, “and I think you’ll figure it out.”

So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T

I used to like Eric…

[Respek knuckles to Curt - who started my day off right with this one.]

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Piss Off

Posted on May 20th, 2008 in Techie Tidbits.
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John van Terheijden’s TopsPEEd

What the hell is the obsession with pee-powered video games? In 2006, there was On Target by Marcel Neundorfer . Later that same year, we got John van Terheijden’s TopsPEEd (above.) In November of 2007, we heard that Piss-Screen – a game developed to warn players when they were too drunk to drive home – was banned from the GamePower Expo in Gent, Belgium for being “indecent” (how dare our video games tell us to stop drinking!!!) AND NOW I just heard about a brand new creation:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Two Belgian beer fans have launched a video game named ‘Place to Pee’, which allows players to slalom down ski slopes or kill aliens while relieving themselves at urinals.

Werner Dupont, a software developer, and Bart Geraets, an electrical engineer, got the idea while drinking Belgian trappist beers, they told Reuters Television at a local festival on Sunday.

“This thing had to be invented by Belgian people and that’s what we are,” they said.

The ‘Place to Pee’ booth is designed for two users at a time and offers two games — blowing up aliens in outer space or skiing down a virtual slope. Gamers hit their target by aiming at sensors positioned on either side of the urinal.

A specially designed paper cone allows women to play too, the inventors say.

Their ‘Place to Pee’ logo resembles Manneken Pis, the little urinating boy fountain that is among Brussels’ top sightseeing attractions.

(Reporting by Marine Hass and Yvonne Bell; Writing by Julien Ponthus)

Wow. So um… yeah. These guys have really taken the term “Pissing Contest” to the next level. Kudos to Werner and Bart for making it female-friendly. No word on whether they’ll be offering the at-home version of the game. Maybe we’ll start seeing more creative Port-O-Potties at the next convention.

[Thanks to SolarCurve for the tip (ya weird0)]

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Show off Your PS3 Skillz on YouTube

Posted on May 19th, 2008 in Techie Tidbits.
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Mainichi Issho Utilizes the New API

As a video game reviewer, there have been SO MANY TIMES I’ve thought while playing “DANGIT!!! If only I had a video camera set up, this would be HILARIOUS to post on YouTube.” I’ve kicked around the idea of hooking up a video camera to the TV or a computer… or something. But it all boils down to me just being too damn lazy to mess with any of it. Halo 3 is the first game I’ve owned that offers an in-game video capture tool that makes distributing those share-worthy frags with friends (and gameplay analysis) a lot easier. But Halo 3 isn’t the only capture-worthy game and PLAYSTATION has stepped up to help us share the gameplay love.

Yes, Sony is actually offering something pretty cool for PS3 owners through their recently announced partnership with YouTube. Here’s the scoop from the YouTube blog:

We are happy to announce that PLAYSTATION¬Æ3 has integrated the YouTube APIs to allow game developers to create games that enable direct upload of in-game video captures to YouTube. This YouTube upload functionality can be incorporated not only into new PS3 game titles, but also existing PS3 titles that have the ability to receive network updates. Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has added YouTube functionality to Mainichi Issho, a popular game with PS3 users in Japan. Gamers will now be able to upload their in-game video captures to YouTube. We’re excited at the opportunity this presents and look forward to more and more games to be enhanced with YouTube.

Neat.

So right now, the YouTube API is only enabled with Mainichi Issho – a free Japanese PlayStation Network download. No word on what games will be next, just that the newer releases will have the feature. I’m wondering if Sony has plans to incorporate even more customization with the video uploads. Maybe adding some sort of basic console-based video editor that allows you to record voiceover or add music or edit several clips together? Now THAT would be sweet.

[Super PowerUp to Daniel for the tip!]

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LEGO Indiana Jones

Posted on May 16th, 2008 in Pre/Reviews, Videos.
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[youtube lQRVBdAwE8Y]

I just found out about this game. Usually, I knock developers for coming out with movie-related games RIGHT AT the movie release date (usually because the games are half-assed mashups of the developers’ previous titles). But not the LEGO series. The LEGO Star Wars games are some of my favorite games eva. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this game is 360 bound. Right now, the demo is only available through Games for Windows and they only talk about the PC version on the official site. But I’d be up for renting this one if they expanded to other platforms. If you’ve got a PC, check out the demo and let me know what you think. I’m curious if it stands up against the LEGO Star Wars series.

Download the Demo Here

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Vlad and Niko on SNL

Posted on May 14th, 2008 in Videos.
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Awesome.

[youtube abSgaDOv_u4]

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Need a Friday bump? Get free tunez!!

Posted on May 9th, 2008 in Video Game Music.
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So it’s Friday… and you’re sitting in your cubicle staring at the clock or your MySpace page or the ceiling… pretty much anything other than the work your supposed to be doing. You know what you need? Video game inspired music. Yep. Here Comes a New Challenger from GameMusic4All is going to get you through to the weekend. Here’s the scoop:

Here Comes a New Challenger is an album looking to create bridges and close gaps between the many varied but all incredibly talented areas of Video Game Inspired Music. From nerdcore, to chiptune, to VG rock, and even folk, rap, and remixing. Every song on this album combines two or more musicians, some of which never even heard of one another before this album. All these artists are influenced by many different things, but all come together for their love of video games. On this compilation we show that video game inspired music is diverse, strong, and of course, musically entertaining.

You can download the album for free here, but if you’ve got a few bucks, show some love by donating some cash to the cause. The download gets you 22 (!!!) AWESOME songs, album art and lyrics. I’m so excited to listen to this and find all these artists I’d never heard before. Favorite track? F-Bombs and 1-Ups FTW.

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Spamalot and GTAIV Multiplayer

Posted on May 8th, 2008 in Pre/Reviews.
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Man… I’ve been crazy busy and haven’t posted doodly squat/checked my blog comments this week. So when I logged in today, I had like 72,000 spam comments (ok maybe 17). WTF is it with these spammers anyway? And when did they get a conscience? At the top of about 5 of the comments, I saw some variation of this message:

I deeply apologize for this spam.
But here you REALLY can buy the lowest price (insert drug name here)!!!
I liked the service as well.

WTF?! You deeply apologize for this spam? Then fuck off, dude! Don’t post it! I moderate all my comments before they get posted on my site unless you have an account set up – so the only person these spammers are reaching is ME. I don’t want tramadol! I don’t need a penis enlargement! I have no desire to see old grannies doing nasty things.

What I DO want is to talk about how FRIKKIN AWESOME GTAIV multiplayer is. I finally had a chance to play with some friends over the weekend (not just some random emeffers) and dude… it was incredible. I have NEVER laughed so hard while playing a video game in my frikkin life. We had a scooter race. We raced boats. We rescued a boss together and tried to blow up a boat. Best time? Cops and Robbers multiplayer. You can set up the game however you want… 6 robbers/1 cop… 3 robbers/3 cops… whatever. The objective for the robbers is to escape and the cops are trying to stop you. OMG. SO. MUCH. FUN. The first round, I was one of 3 robbers… and all 3 of us looked like we were 87 years old. We were laughing so hard it was difficult to play. We called ourselves the “Old Man Brigade” and stole a mini van to get away. We joked about everything from being late for the Early Bird Special at Luby’s to breaking hips… my face started hurting from smiling. I think I even snorted a few times. I can’t wait to play again! There are TONS of multiplayer games to start and within each type of game are even more options. There really is something for everyone. I <3 GTAIV.