Once again, ThinkGeek has convinced me that I MUST HAVE something that I don’t really need. I have four coffee mugs on my desk right now. But, now that I think about it, they are all dirty. And if I buy one of these, not only do I not have to clean them, I get to show off my nerdocity with every sip of my peppermint tea. SOLD.

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This was supposed to be the ad aired during the Super Bowl, but CBS wasn’t too keen on the “Go to Hell” tagline. The commercial will still air with a revised tagline: “Hell Awaits.” Ahh, stupid censorship. I wonder why CBS had such an issue with the original. I mean, COME ON. The whole game is about hell. And going there. And they’re ok with advertising the game but not that tagline? LAME! If I’d been on the EA team, “We’re Already There.” definitely would’ve been on my list of new tagline suggestions.

What replacement tagline would you have suggested?

[SOURCE: THRfeed.com]

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Sick of playing the same Rock Band songs? Thanks to the folks at WaveGroup, you’ll soon have access to some fresh tracks. This week, they announced licensing agreements with major recording artists including renowned guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. Also in the works:

Widespread Panic
Gov’t Mule
Reverend Horton Heat
Stroke 9
Slightly Stoopid
Galactic
Rebelution
Bif Naked
Assembly of Dust
Nick Gallant
Kid Beyond
RX Bandits
Jet Black Kiss
Doug Doppler
Austin Willacy
The Humans
Rain Dogs

Will Littlejohn, President/CEO of WaveGroup commented, “We’re honored to be working with such amazing musicians, and bringing their music to RBN. Our job is to make the music look and feel authentic in the Rock Band™ environment. As musicians ourselves, we go to great lengths to make the experience of playing these songs fun and engaging.”

There’s no official release date for the new tracks, but Scott Dugdale, a composer at WaveGroup, said in an email that it was going to be “very, very soon.” The tracks will sell for $1.99 each (159 MSP) and can be purchased individually.

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I will never fully understand the fascination people have with Jersey Shore, but if creative spoofs like this one can come out of it, I suppose it can’t be 100% bad. The spoof is from NY based sketch comedy group Dr. Coolsex which is actively working on Mario Kart: The Movie.

(Thanks for the link, Mike. Here’s an invincibility star for you: ☆)

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Oliver emailed me Sunday afternoon with a link to this video. I had no idea what to expect but was immediately thrilled that he’d finally provided me with a nerd-approved way to justify enjoying a Lady Gaga song.

I first heard about Superpowerless back in March when Oliver won the MTV Fast Track contest and was flown to London to work with Luc Janin, who previously directed promos for Stereophonics, The Fratellis, Boy Kill Boy and Lethal Bizzle, on the video for “Wasted My Time.”

Based in Leeds, England, the live band now includes Oliver Hindle (the curly haired dude/lead), Steve Brunton (the dude in the beard), Tom Hunter, Jaylyn Coffin (who directed the Poker Face video) and Stevey Gilkes.

The first time I played the Superpowerless Lady Gaga cover, I laughed my ass off, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some deeper meaning to the video. Did the bearded man represent the dark side of Oliver’s personality? Did the lightsaber battle represent a daily struggle? I asked Oliver. Turns out, the only big message they wanted to convey was how much fun it can be when you’re part of Superpowerless, “The beard was a spur of the moment thing,” he said. “We decided to shoot a video… went in to town… had no plans at all and just went shopping to see what we could find that would make an entertaining video… Found the lightsabers and the beard and the rest is history! [laughs]”

The entire video was shot in one day in Leeds. Some scenes didn’t make it to the final cut, like the one where Oliver and Steve managed to lightsaber their way into the cinema and in front of the screen where they battled for an epic 10 seconds before getting kicked out. Sadly, the footage was too dark to make it to the video, so you’ll just have to use your imagination to picture the audience’s reaction to that one.

It seems that, above all, Superpowerless just wants to have fun. Last time I chatted with Oliver, he was in the process of setting it up a PlayStation dance mat to trigger samples from a laptop and he’s getting closer to the finished product, “Tom Hunter took apart a Guitar Hero controller and a really expensive Japanese guitar and then put all of the guitar hero controls in to the real guitar,” Oliver said, “One of his friends has it at the moment to cover it in LED’s which will interact with which buttons are pressed and the music that it makes! Tom’s also got a mohawk which the LED guy has created a headband for which lets Tom fill his mohawk with LEDs which change color along with the guitar…. pretty mental stuff!” Sweeet. I’ve always got mad respect for creatives who come up with fun ideas and actually have enough focus and dedication to make them happen.

You can expect to see more videos from Superpowerless over the next few months. In fact, here’s one that just went live yesterday for one of Oliver’s original songs “Press Start and Jump Around.” Shot by band member Tom Hunter, this is the result of a drunken promise and a £0 budget. “It was filmed entirely in a tiny shed, with us wearing suits in the space of 3 hours. We decided it’d be funny to shoot a video in a shed the night before while drunk and then he couldn’t back out of it so we made him do it the day after. [laughs]“The “Press Start and Jump Around” video features Oliver Hindle, Steve Brunton, Jaylyn Coffin and Tom Hunter (who also directed.)

If you’d like to get your hands on some Superpowerless tracks, you can download them for free from his page on TheSixtyOne.com. If you’re ready make your own Game Boy-fueled adventure-core music, Oliver uses a program called Little Sound DJ for the Game Boy and digital synths to create those retro, video-gamey sounds.

Download Superpowerless songs for FREE»

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MTV Fast Track Winner Superpowerless»

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Remember back in 2006 when the Nintendo Wii came out and everyone was all excited about it? From house parties to nursing homes, folks were peeing themselves with excitement as they anxiously waited their turn to create their Mii or pwn their friends at Wii Sports. It was an amazing phenomenon.

But within a year, our love affair ended.

We realized that flinging around remotes like a bunch of psychos having seizures while staring at simple graphics that never moved quite the way we wanted them to wasn’t really all that fun after all.

My Wii gathered dust and got moved to the bottom shelf. I stopped inviting people over to play. And I waited for something good to come out. And waited. And W-A-I-T-E-D.

Then the New Super Mario Bros. came along.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Mario. Out of all the video games I played growing up, the Mario series was the only one to which I had any major attachment. I remember staying friends with a girl who was racist against Mexicans (which a quarter of me happens to be) just so I could go over to her house and play the original Super Mario Bros. I remember giving my brother the second player controller, playing a single player game and telling him he was in charge of the jumping just so I didn’t have to really share. I remember sneaking into my best friend’s den and playing Super Mario Bros. 3 in the dark with the sound muted about an hour after her parents had seen us in bed pretending to be asleep. Those were the good ole days. The days of great games filled with challenging patterns and side-scrolling action. And they made quite an impact on me. Hell, I even have a Mario MacSlap on my laptop and a question mark box sticker on my phone.

I got the game for Christmas and, during my holiday, I played through the entire thing. If I were forced to summarize my review of this game in five words, I’d say, “Dayum. That shit was tight.” But I’m not, so I’ll keep going.

You may think you could play this with the GameCube controller, but you’d be wrong. This game utilizes the motion sensors, so there’s a whole lotta shakin’ going on. The intro screen tells you to hold the Wii remote sideways to play, but that wasn’t as comfortable for me as using the nunchuck and remote combo so I laughed in its face and did it MY way. That’s right. I’m a rebel. No one can tell me how to hold my remote. NO ONE!

I’m not going to go into a ton of detail about the gameplay because, well, it’s a Super Mario Bros. game. And if you don’t know how those work by now then there is something seriously wrong with you and you should probably just kill yourself.*

The New Super Mario Bros. sticks to the same story line and side-scrolling game play we’re used to but with a few new goodies including:

New Power-Ups
There are several additions to the traditional ones like the Ice Flower that lets you freeze enemies and the Mini Mushroom that makes Mario teeniny so he can get into little pipes and run on water. One thing I really liked about this game was that if you have an Ice Flower or Fire Flower and are hit by an enemy, you don’t lose the perk AND shrink. You just lose the perk.

Multiplayer Cooperative Gameplay
You can play simultaneously with up to four other people as long as you’ve got enough remotes. Online multiplayer is, surprisingly, not an option. I tried playing with one other person and I kind of hated it. You can super jump if you land on another player’s head which seems great until you accidentally super jump yourself into an enemy and die one too many times.

Coin Battle Mode
This is a multiplayer scramble to collect the most coins. I didn’t check this option out, but I got a little taste of it during the end credits. I think this was the first video game I’ve ever played that had interactive end credits. You could jump around and collect coins by busting apart the titles and names. So if you can’t finish the game, but want to act like you did, you can just talk to people about how cool that part was.

Super Guide
If you die eight times in a row (and you will while simultaneously inventing new curse phrase combos such as “MOTHERFUCK YOU!” or “GODDAMNIT TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET!” – a couple of my involuntary profanity explosions) you have the option to turn it over to Luigi who will show you the safe way through the course. You can watch and learn or you can be lame and take over as soon as he gets through the part where you keep dying. Once Luigi finishes the course, you can play it through yourself or skip it completely.

One thing that drove me insane about the Super Guide is that, whether you activate it or not, after eight deaths, it appears as a big green question mark box and has an annoying doorbell sound that won’t stop until you can move far enough away from it to push it out of the screen. And it will be there every time you die and start over whether you’ve activated it before or not. It’s also annoying if you’ve made it to the halfway mark with no problem, but can’t seem to get through the second half because the Super Guide always starts at the beginning of the level.

Hints in Peach Castle
You can spend the big coins you collect to watch hint videos in Peach Castle to find out how to get 1-ups and other goodies.

Overall, I don’t really have anything bad to say about this game. There were times I was literally kicking and screaming and would have to walk away and breathe for a minute, but as Marquis de Sade once said, “It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.” The game delivered exactly what I was hoping it would: a fresh coat of pixels on one of my favorite game series of all time. It helped me remember what hooked me into gaming to begin with: the comfort of challenging patterns. Don’t get me wrong. I love a nice FPS with good AI, but above all I love being able to memorize exactly where something is going to be and the best way to annihilate it. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So dust off your Wii, replace those remote batteries and add the New Super Mario Bros. to your game collection. It comes in a fancy red case that screams “MARIO NUMBA ONE!”

* Unless you were kidnapped at birth and held in a cave until just now when you escaped, discovered the internet and found this article – in which case you should probably just ask someone where you can go to catch up on the last 25 years of gaming. I’m sure they’ll hook you up given your circumstances.

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Yesterday, I reported that David Scherer broke the Guinness World Record for longest time spent playing a video game. He started playing GTA IV at noon on Sunday at Retro Classic Arcade in Clarksville, TN and finally put down the controller 55 hours and 30 minutes later. That’s 15 hours, 10 minutes longer than the previous record holder Chirantan Patnaik.

Scherer isn’t a slacker who has nothing better to do than game, either. He’s an honors student at Austin Peay State University who wanted to break this record to draw attention to his fundraiser for the Swimming Eagles team where he’s the assistant coach. According to WKRN.com, Scherer accomplished his goal sans caffeine. He ate healthy foods and drank juices to make it through the marathon. His next goals are to go to law school and join the military.

You can donate to the Swimming Eagles through PayPal via this email address: swimmingeaglesteam@gmail.com.

Watch the interview on WKRN.com»

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NewsChannel 5 reports that Scherer has been continuously playing Grand Theft Auto since Sunday afternoon, and has no intentions of stopping any time soon. This gaming marathon goes beyond winning a title. Scherer is trying to raise money to build his swim team an indoor pool facility.

The Swimming Eagles (Scherer’s team) Website»

Donate to Scherer here» (Click Events > GTAIV)

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Matthew C. Applegate, known as Pixelh8 when he’s rocking the chip tunes, just released his third studio album, “And The Revolution.”

Somehow between performing, teaching people how to use his new “SUPER CHIP TUNE SAMBA BAND” app, winning art contests and giving various lectures, Matthew still found enough energy to create a brand new 11-track album.

“And the Revolution” still contains the head-nodding, leg-bouncing sounds we’re used to from “Videogames Ruined My Life” and “The Boy With A Digital Heart,” but there’s also a calm composure in this track list. Whether it’s the haunting orchestral echoes in “You Were Born To Save The World” or a fast-paced dance-worthy track like “IED”, sounds are less about competing with one another and more about coexisting and evolving. This makes sense considering “And The Revolution” was initially intended as a collaborative piece.

“Some of the songs weren’t written from my perspective,” Matthew explains, “The album was meant to feature several special guests, but schedules kinda got in the way, which was fair enough. It just meant I had to revolutionise it.”

In “Out On The Floor”, for instance, Pixelh8 knew he needed vocals, but didn’t have anyone to do it. “I can’t sing a note to save my life,” he laughed, “and I wasn’t about to go all T-Pain, so I vocoded it.” The result? A funkified robot dance party that wins my vote for favorite album track. And even though “Out On The Floor” dabbles in the pop/dance arena, you can rest assured that Pixelh8 will always bend the circuits just enough to add his signature spin. “I purposely did it at 119bpm. Most dance tracks are at 120bpm and I wanted it to be slightly off.”

Those who enjoy the slightly off can purchase “And The Revolution” via iTunes and keep up with the latest Pixelh8 news on his site: www.pixelh8.co.uk

RELATED ARTICLES:
New Pixelh8 Album: The Boy With The Digital Heart»
Interview with Pixelh8 – Chiptune Guru»

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Until I can get some breathing room, posts are going to be few and far between. And while I have fought hard against Twitter-ers for awhile griping that it’s a lazy form of journalism that takes no thought, I have started a Twitter account and will try to post links to cool things I find that I don’t have time to write about. I shudder to think about this becoming my new MO. I’d rather shut things down altogether than replace actual writing with 140 character vomits. Alas, it’s the only thing I have time for right now, but I promise, I’ll be back in action as soon as possible.

Here’s my Twitter account» I know it’s ugly. Didn’t have time to jack with it and I figured everyone uses aggregators anyway. UPDATE 12/01: My Twitter page is no longer ugly. Thanks, Mike. <3

XOXO,
The Game Dame

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