Poo-Poo to The Man To: Luke
From: Owen
Re: Cabin Fever Spent the holiday and weekend with two good friends and their family up in Oregon. They have two daughters, Sophie, who is six, and Lillie, who is two. Sophie regularly writes letters to my cat and straps her baby doll, Emma, into a wobbly seat on the back of her hot pink BMX, before tearing off down the sidewalk like something out of Child Protective Services' worst sweating nightmare. Lillie is addicted to Quaker Instant "Eatmeal" and likes to make up stories on the fly. She told me one on Friday that had kind of a Faulkner-esque stream of consciousness, but it ended with her getting indignant enough to "say poo-poo to the man." Indeed. I think a lot of people join Lillie and Sophie in saying a hearty Poo-Poo to The Man. Some highlights from our abbreviated report:
Street Fighter Sackboy Costumes OTW?
Requiem for a Console
Good Games That'll Work on Your Relatives' Crappy PC
Tale of Tales' 'Graveyard' Postmortem
NBA Teams Scout and Evaluate Talent Using Video Game MORE »

Week in Games: Corn Utopia We have only a few noteworthy drops this week, then the usual never-heard-of-it haul squatting mostly on the Wii and DS shelves. One starts to get the sense that this year's video game harvest has almost fully come in. After the Thanksgiving feast, as the days get progressively shorter, so too does the list of new releases for the coming week. This week's AAA drop is Prince of Persia on the 360 and PS3 for Tuesday, with a version releasing on the DS the same day. Tuesday is also when the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV arrives. Space Invaders Get Even is a novelty title for WiiWare on Monday. Wednesday, you finally get Banjo-Kazooie on XBLA, for 1200 points, a steep discount from 99999 this time last week. This week's count: 10 titles for the DS; eight for the Wii; six for the PC and Mac; four for the PS3, three for the 360 and two for the PS3. Full listing on the jump. MORE »

Sunday Timewaster: Guess All the Consoles Released Believe it or not, 68 consoles/portables have been released in the United States since the Magnavox Odyssey first came out in 1972. This flash game asks you to name as many as you can in 12 minutes. I only got 31 and thought I was doing well. You don't have to guess in order, and correctly spelled answers (or in some cases, their abbreviations) will automatically appear in the list. I'm putting this to you guys not only as a throw-down-the-gauntlet challenge, but also if the quiz creator missed any, or improperly listed one or more, you'll pick it all apart. Because after getting fewer than 50 percent, I need to feel better about myself, and the only way to do that is to question this quiz's credibility. (Kidding.) So you have at least one hint, let's see what you can do with the rest. Can You Name the Video Game Systems (Released in the U.S.)? [Sporcle] MORE »

Street Fighter Sackboy Costumes OTW?
Ripten dug out of a Spanish PlayStation blog that little tidbit above — that Chun-Li, Guile, Zangief and Ryu are inbound for LittleBigPlanet. Rumor has it they're gonna be available for download individually or as a package deal. No date or pricing info yet, but SCEE has asked two other sites to take down the image (might we be the third?) so it sounds pretty legit to me. Clearly, everyone's grasped the huge back-office business case made by something like LittleBigPlanet — publishers of upcoming/just-out hot titles get to flog it with novelty DLC, Sony/download channel owner gets a nice cut of the dough, gamers get silly toys to brag about to their friends. Much better than console themes. Better believe Microsoft is scheming up a response. LittleBigPlanet Street Fighter Sackboys [RipTen, via tip from CrowGoblin] MORE »

Awesome Video Game Tees for the Holidays If you only got $20, or the gamer on your gift list already has everything, or if you want to give a less-than-serious gamer friend something cool without obligating them to 420 hours of Resistance 2, Examiner.com dug up 10 great game-themed T-shirts. For my money the big winnah of all of these is there at left. Two others also come from a Threadless.com BioShock contest. But "Achievement Unlocked: Left the House," I think we all know someone who would rock that proudly and without irony on his or her chest. Then again, if you read my 360 Gift Guide and saw that I recommended Need for Speed: Undercover, you have every right to question my gift suggestions. 10 Best Game Shirts for the Holidays [Denver Video Game Examiner, via GamePolitics] MORE »

Thanksgiving Sunday Rumor Roundup In the interest of getting some news to you in a slow cycle, let's start Sunday with a chatter roundup. Here are three things that enough people are blabbing about in the video game blogosphere that I'm reasonably comfortable passing them along. These are other people's rumors, and other people's sources — I've tried to put a sniff test on 'em. By itself I don't think one makes much of a post, but three are good to chew over with your Reese's Puffs this a.m. Enjoy. MORE »

Requiem for a Console A gamer's fourth Xbox 360 red-ringed, and a veritable who's-who of consoles turned out to pay their respects and show their anguish that so many are dying so young, and so senselessly. Tiggerboy, who keeps a blog on the UK GameSpot, brought in all the hardware dignitaries to bid the 360 goodbye. You can see the 360 packaged in his foam coffin (aka the Peter Moore Catafalque), ready to to be ferried by the Boatman of the Dead Consoles (aka the UPS guy) on his way back to Microsoft, where his remains will become part of the circle of console life. There's a gallery of the proceedings on the jump, including an astonishing, last-minute appearance by a disowned relative that will leave you heaving up great sobs. MORE »

Desert Bus Rides Again, Already Raking in the Dough We've had a little bit of game marathon fatigue up here in the Tower, but Desert Bus for Hope, as something of a granddaddy of all of these — not to mention the absolutely absurd and painful game they chose — gets a pass from me. It began yesterday and, already into its 21st hour as of this posting, Desert Bus for Hope 2: Bus Harder has raised more than $10,000, meaning the drivers are already in for at least four days of torture. Last year's drive raised more than $20,000, so hopes are high this will beat the previous mark. The beneficiary is Child's Play, which buys toys and games for kids in the care of 40 children's hospitals nationwide. MORE »

Good Games That'll Work on Your Relatives' Crappy PC Visiting family for the holidays? You know what an antisocial faux-pas it is to bring along a console, and if you're a PC gamer, hell if you're dragging along that rig. Yet when you get to your destination, either in your parents' basement or your uncle's old room at your grandparents, inevitably there's some underpowered relic PC that still manages to work. Rather than suffer with Minesweeper or Solitaire when you can't sleep on Christmas Eve, GiantRealm put together a handy list of six good PC titles that will work on most any machine still in service today. Some of these are available via digital distribution channels. Others, you might have to do a little advance planning and snake a copy from an Amazon or half.com reseller. Six Titles That'll Work on Nearly Any Machine [GiantRealm] MORE »

NBA Teams Scout and Evaluate Talent Using Video Game Electronic Arts must have been pleased as hell to read, in the Los Angeles Times, that front-office types are using NBA Live 09 to help in making some of their decisions. The NBA says about half of the league's 30 teams employ the video game in making personnel evaluations. MORE »

MyPSN Available in Europe; Trophy Support OTW Later Sony has announced that all accounts in Europe's PlayStation Network have been updated with a package of new features called MyPSN. It sent word over the official PlayStation forums on its European sites yesterday. MORE »

Kotaku Originals: Real Men Blog in Aprons Ah, Thanksgiving week, when America does what it does best — chow down and then go to the mall to spend dough it doesn't have. Yes, Black Friday, another back alley craps game Wall Street can't wait to rob. We still cooked up the USRDA of original reporting, despite the fact this is a shortened week for the U.S. based writers (those un-Americans Bash, Luke and Stuart were still clocking in.) We rounded out our gaming guides, doled out the bargain hunting advice, served up a podcast and cooking show with Crecente, and still had room for the corporate WTFery you see all year — such as Ninty's new/not-new logo and Eidos' Category 5 facepalm over the Wii Tomb Raider bug. I'm your host as usual for the weekend report, but seeing as how I fart giblets every time I shift my weight, I'm going to spend half of it in tryptophan recovery and half of it with you. Good thing we don't blog in Smell-o-Vision. Here's some highlights of the past week, with the full list on the jump. Capcom Cautious On DSi Development
Kotaku Helps You Spend Money on the Right Games
The PC Gift Guide
The iPhone Gaming Gift Guide
The Import Gaming Gift Guide
Eidos Sorry About that Whole Fun-Killing Wii Tomb Raider Glitch
Nintendo: "We've Had A New Logo For Two Years"
Kotaku Video Podcast (Now With Zombies)
What Game Developers Do When Their Games Launch
The Last Remnant Review: Strategically Sound, Technically Flawed MORE »

What Sells First? To: Luke
From: Owen So as I mentioned elsewhere, week 2 of (full-time) unemployment saw the fire sale of games. I actually managed to get rid of Star Wars: Republic Commando and Call of Juarez, for God's sake. Pricing everything to move helps, but now I'm down to three, and I'm not sure paying someone to take these would get them off my shelf. Plus, they're listed for $13 combined, which is about $15 more than their net worth. Let's take a look at the leavings: MORE »

Week in Games: Turkey Week Thanksgiving in the United States keeps this a somewhat quiet span, although we'll see Chrono Trigger for the DS as the big-name drop for the week. And that's about it, kids, although the original Banjo-Kazooie is available on XBLA for Turkey Eve. I'm new at this, so, I didn't know that there were North American releases usually scheduled for Thanksgiving Day itself. Unless Canadians are nuts to grab Bolt and Imagine Gymnast. Then again, the Detroit Lions do play football and sell tickets to that game on Thanksgiving, so Americans have a tradition of eschewing turkey and family for bland entertainment. Then again again, Detroit does border Ontario. The roundup this week: 14 titles on the DS, 13 for the Wii, nine for the PC, four on the 360, three on the PS3 and two for the PSP. Full roundup on the jump. MORE »

You There. I Say, My Good Man, Please Moderate My LBP Level Into Oblivion LittleBigPlanet level-makers have certainly gotten a ton of my sympathy over the past week or so. But one thing you can't do is create levels that blatantly infringe IP, so, whomever built the Duck Hunt LBP level, or the homages to all three Back to the Future films, nice knowin' ya. Impressive, clever, but ultimately, gone. I do have to say, the Duck Hunt level's rendering, right down to the Asshole Dog holding up the kills, really touts the creativity of LBP's devoted users and the game's ability to unleash it. But again, moderators have no compunctions about deep-sixing this kind of stuff. Video of all the levels in question on the jump. MORE »

In-Game Browser Offers 25 Percent More Avoidance of Real World Got an email this week from the CEO of Genesis Interactive, which runs GotGame, a social portal for gamers. Asserting that "PC gamers spend a quarter of their time in game waiting for either teammates to log in or games to load," they've developed a browser — called Rogue — that allows you to look at porn surf the web, without leaving your game and potentially missing out on the action. MORE »

I Didn't Know Left 4 Dead was an RPG
It isn't, but this guy definitely role-plays the zombie-movie staple character of Terrified Whiner Sacrifice. Warning, this guy is loud and at times profane. Sounds like he's partly laughing at the end, but he completely freaks when the horde first moves in, and by the time the lobber (I guess that's what hit him) covers him in pus, he drops into full-terrified shriek mode. "Why did you let this happen to me?!?! You left me out there to die!!!" Update: Reader Atmosphere found a longer edit with a funnier ending. "Y'all used me like a pipe bomb!" Left 4 Dead Plan Gone Wrong [YouTube] MORE »

U.S. Army Investing $50 Million in Video Games The U.S. Army has created a video game training unit that will begin operation in 2010, and has funding for it set aside to the tune of $50 million, reports Stars and Stripes. This isn't for recruiting or marketing, but the training of its soldiers in virtual environments. "The Army takes this seriously," said Lt. Col. Gary Stephens, of the Project Executive Office — Simulation Training and Instrumentation, which will supervise this unit. "We own gaming for the Army — from requirements through procurement." While the Army will not compete with video game development per se, nor is it producing commercially available products, it will still be interacting with the civilian games industry. The Army will be closely monitoring trends that may be able to help its video game training unit. It also has an undisclosed budget to purchase or have developed a state-of-the-art successor to its "DARWARS Ambush" trainer (pictured), basically an FPS with 20th-century technology limitations. MORE »