We will be at Sakuracon this weekend. If you are in the area and you wish you were Japanese, this is the con for you!

Pork came by on Monday to hang out, and being utterly without a DS he's never experienced the high points the system has on offer for wireless gamers. A number of these games only require a single cartridge to play, typically two or four player, but there are games that reach up to eight and, yea, even unto ten. Meteos has fallen out of favor with most people I know, because even though it's a great game you can be tremendously effective just scribbling on the screen. Like the "snaking" scourge of Mario Kart DS, it's the sort of thing that is best resolved by refusing to play with assholes.

Okay so we’ve had about 4,000 downloads of the podcast in just a few hours and I’ve gotten hundreds of mails. It seems like you all agree that we should do more but that they need to be recorded better and distributed like other podcasts through iTunes or released as a torrent. Well we can certainly do all that. Like I said this was really just a test to see if there was any interest.

Sometimes people ask us “how do you guys write the comic?” The answer is that we sit around and look at game news and we talk about it until we start laughing at something. It sounds boring and I think it probably is. That’s why we decided to record the process and let you download it.

And honestly, I can understand why that might be - this press release is a little on the long side.

Have you heard about the Video Game Voters Network?  It is a thing.  We made a comic strip about it. 

Well, loosely about it.  It's mostly about Gabe.

I understand the idea behind it - the network, I mean.  But I don't think there's actually a monolithic "gamer" voting block  that receives their signal from the mothership and then behaves according to some agreed upon protocol.  Even assuming there were, the people who would be most grievously affected by gaming legislation aren't of voting age.  They cannot vote, they are not allowed to, even if you put an adorable stepstool in the booth so they can weach the bawwot.   

I actually believe the site when it says that "fifty percent of Americans play games", or that "seventy four percent of gamers vote."  That is to say, I don't think the use of entertainment software is restricted solely to lunatics - authentic American citizens are daily being engaged by this medium.  And as compelling gaming becomes more portable, more distributed, less onerous, more people will identify themselves with the term.  That's more people, with their own goals, and lives that incorporate the matching of gems or the desecration of tombs, but are not dominated thereby.  

You can't get eight fucking nerds to agree on what kind of pizza will accompany Saturday's dungeon crawl.  And I think it's a fair bet to say that you'll have a hard time marshalling the troops on gaming legislation when your "troops" are this disparate.  Will I have the same ideas about the tongue-in-cheek sexual content of God of War as, say, one of the squad leaders of Christian Gamers Online?  Will I arrive at the same conclusions regarding fines when a store doesn't follow the ESRB guidelines?  Should I?  That seems to be the assertion. 

I think the threat to adult gamers is usually described as a "chilling effect" that will constrict the themes of even mature entertainment,  the self-censorship of games to secure a more desirable (i.e., marketable) rating.  The First Amendment is often hauled out in these instances, as though concessions to the marketplace amount to the tromp of the jackboot, but to the best of my knowledge the "Right To Be Sold In Wal-Mart" is not enumerated in the constitution.

(CW)TB out.

 senators, congressmen: please heed the call

Is available, if you want it.  It's at 1280 wide, but the image is there, against a black background.  I don't doubt that you could shape it to your purpose. 

(CW)TB

A few months ago, we suggested that a revitalized Rare - purged of ancient baggage like Perfect Dark Zero they've had to haul from platform to platform - might train their weaponry on a proper sequel to Killer Instinct.  You might have seen what we got instead.

I should just tell you it's a game where you raise Pinatas.  If you click on the link I just made, you need to understand that the odds of getting a seizure are really very high.   Also, you might turn down your speakers.  I realize this is all stuff I should have told you earlier.  Maybe this link would be better, or at any rate safer:  Gamespot had a chance to check it out already, but the 1up preview talks about things like "chocolate coins" I haven't heard anywhere else. 

The look is pretty irresistible.  From the sounds of it, we're talking about Animal Crossing plus Pokemon, a blend whose addictive potential I'm not willing to dismiss outright.  Moves to personify Pinatas make me uneasy.  It is their destiny to be hung from trees and beaten to death.  And when I swing a broom handle, I can't afford to have some creeping sympathy stay my hand. 

It's not really for us, of course - being launched simultaneously with toys and cartoons, clearly the intent is to snare the young and harness the tremendous brandwidth inherent in the concept.  I feel a pressure in my mind to call this a transparent, despicable, mercenary act, but my own childhood was fabulously enriched by shit like this.  I don't want to make baseless assertions, but the odds are good that - as a person who visits Penny Arcade - you hold Optimus Prime in high regard.  Optimus Prime was not spontaneously generated by the pure wish of a child.   These supposedly "valid" market expressions are differentiated from the grasping, sordid toys of modernity by our vast personal investments.

It's hard to imagine that Yu-Gi-Oh occupies a similar conceptual space as, say, The Thundercats - its lure is so brazen as to be almost pornographic.  It may be that one day a young man will adore a Pinata.  Stranger things have occurred on the planet Earth.     

(CW)TB out.

We couldn't let this slide, I'm afraid. I'm aware that StarForce has supposedly apologized, but that and a cracker will get you a cracker. Already a deeply despised company, one of their employees openly provided links to pirated materials - confirming every suspicion about their debased operation. Of course they made some show of contrition.  

I'm sorry that updates haven't been hitting the site when they should have the last couple times.  The new site generates static pages automatically, so it can look like we're still up even if the tools we use to manage posts and strips aren't available.

The machine just gets pulverized every update.  Minus forum traffic, we can usually expect two million or more pageviews a day.  I would have thought that we had reached some kind of saturation point long ago, but that hasn't been borne out.  Where are these new readers coming from?  Are they Apple enthusiasts, heartened by our move toward fruit?  Are they recently manufactured androids?  Are they phantom pings - the first wave of a Denial of Service phalanx?

Who knows.  Anyway, it shouldn't matter who it is.  Our stuff should be available when you want to read it, and I'm sorry.

(CW)TB   

I have an incredible opportunity to discuss with you!

Saturday was my six year wedding anniversary. We decided to have the grandparents come over and watch Gabe for the weekend while we relaxed at a fancy five star hotel in downtown Seattle. We made sure to find a place with wireless internet and we both took our laptops so we could play WOW all weekend. Normally at home we only play after Gabe goes to sleep so this was going to be a real treat.

The Gambler exeunt.

Enter The Gambler.