Prepare thyself for the newest iteration of Press Start! The column where I puke up the top five things in the gaming world that caught my eye this week. It’s a democratic column, I want your input. Hit the comments box with your findings. True Believers! Gaming scientists!

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#1: Drunken NES: A Breathalyzer and 8-Bit Game In One.
This is one of those concoctions that fucking staggers me. It sends me into a spiralling moment of quasi-stoner amazement. Someone had to think up this brilliant piece of minutiae. Imagine this, if you can. Enterprising video game mechanical programming wizards had a dream. Their dream was simple. First, they had to make a breathalyzer  out of an original Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge. No small task! I have it on good authority many a modern day Prometheus has been felled by such a challenge.

Then, they had to craft a video game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System – yes I’m typing it out to be awkward – that could interface with this creation. By blowing your disgusting Oats and Hops stink-rot-gut-breath into the cartridge, the game would then calculate the level of your drunken stupor and rate your inebriated ass in 8-Bit glory.

It’s fucking radical.

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#2: Uncharted 3’s Villainess Revealed; Wrinkled Old Hottie.
Fuck yeah I like my gaming occasionally in the form of a megaton zillion-dollar production value big blockbuster. Fuck yeah! You disagree. Oh okay! You go have fun shaving in Heavy Rain or playing Limbo and waxing intellectual about how it’s totally ambient and deconstructs the medium and blah, blah, blah. I’m fucking amplified for Uncharted 3. Boom. Can’t wait. I say deliver me from boring fetch quests! I say deliver me from conversation wheels. Just for a bit. Throw me into the comforting bosom of gaming entertainment excess.

And in relation to this excess, this week Naughty Dog revealed the villainess  behind Nathan Drake’s woes. Meet Katherine Marlowe. She’s a bit of a hottie for an older women, isn’t she? She’s voiced by Elizabeth Hurley, but she gets me tingling like Helen Mirren. Some cavernous old cleavage and wields power to boot. Is it November 1, yet?

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#3: Microsoft Sells A Shitload of Kinects; Gets Punked.
It was an up and down week for our buddy Billy Gates’ company. Though I have to say their good news far outweighs the little bit of hacking righteousness that they were subjected to. You see, when you can lay claim to having the fastest selling electronic device ever, I’m sure everything glows.

This week it was announced that the Microsoft Kinect has sold ten million units. As well, Microsoft has moved ten million Kinect games. Wrap that shit around your brain-piece for a second. Since its release on November 4, 2010 it has averaged 133,333 units sold a day. Fastest device ever. More than your Apple iPhone, iPad, iMac, iThing, iMinimalist Swag.

However, it wasn’t all fucking roses for Microsoft this week! No sir. Hackers cracked the  algorithm that generated the seemingly random numbers on the back of MS Points cards. You know, those cards you buy so you can spend the equivalent of $5 on a lightsaber for your avatar. Or so you can download that fucking shitty Dead Space 2 DLC (not that I’m bitter).

Being the benevolent hackers that they were, they used this algorithm to generate over 1 million dollars worth of points. Fantastic! It was short-lived as Microsoft said they killed all those points generated, but still, man! Lock that shit down, Microsoft! I paid good fucking money for my Mass Effect M7 t-shirt for my avatar. No fucking freebies!

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The bandwidth piping of the internet wails with electronic wizardy! Information runs about and overwhelms the average purveyor. Hush child, it’s okay. You have me and this fine column right here. Press Start!, the halls of which are populated with the five things in gaming that caught my eye this week. It’s going to be okay, latch onto my teat and I shall feed you all the divine nectar of polygonal prowess you need to ingest. Watch the nipple hairs though, I ain’t getting any younger.

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#1: Dude Huge Proclaims ‘Middle Class’ Games Dead.
Cliff Bleszinski, otherwise known as Dude Huge at his panel at GDC dropped what some could construe as a controversial comment. Duder went on record as saying that the ‘middle class’ game is dead. With rising development costs, the middle class has been grounded out of existence. Stop me when this sounds familiar? According to Bleszinski:

I’m going to go on the record and say that I believe the middle class game is dead.

We have a cautious consumer. People are still smarting from the recession. People don’t go to Target anymore and spend $200 randomly.

If you’re on forums and you see terms like ‘day one rental’ or ‘campaign rental’ — pack it in because your game is not going to sell.

Huge catches a lot of guff for the same shit he catches a lot of adulation for. His games are populated with absurd facsimiles of men. Hulking boner-driven organisms that are reflective of the average dude’s total wet dream. But Dude seems more than well aware of the environment he helps create, describing the characters of Gears of War as guys who “are so big and ‘Grrrr!’–almost careicatures of men”. With this in mind it should be no surprise than that he can take a longer look at the industry as a whole, and I’m inclined to agree with his assessment to an extent.

Where do you guys fall?

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#2: Charlie Sheen Meets Animal Crossing.
The Charlie Sheen juggernaut could not have avoided the video game world. It is impossible. The cultural blight is smashing down all boundaries. The festering ass sore that is infected to the point of oozing all over our Collective Unconscious shall dominate every medium! Every venue! By next week we’ll be on to the next one, but for now, it’s all Charlie. All the time.

In the video game world, we have Charlie Sheen Crossing. A mash-up of screens from Animal Crossing and the nuggets of Charlie Sheen greatness that we’re gleefully ingesting as part of our relentlessly diet of panem et circenses. Hey man, don’t blame me. I’m merely a product of my culture, and that’s video games and worshiping crackhead women-hitting pieces of shit.

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#3: Yu Suzuki Teases Shenmue 3 Again; Fanboys Cum.
Let me blow your fucking mind. I thought Shenmue was complete and utter asshole, and I couldn’t be bothered to try out the second one. I know it’s something approximating heresy around certain gaming circles, but those titles just weren’t for me. However, there’s a good collection of people out there who go absolutely fucking bananas for the franchise. They must have been totally stoked this week when Yu Suzuki once again teased the possibility of there being a third Shenmue. Speaking at GDC, Suzuki stated “I think Sega will let me make it.”

There you go.

That was enough to send all the gaming sites into a fervor, breathlessly recounting those eight words. Even though they were caged and he admitted that nothing was definite. Even without liking the franchise, I find the fanaticism surrounding it to be interesting as fuck. So despite not really wanting to play any of the titles, the idea that this long-lusted after third title could actually see the world outside of Suzuki’s head is pretty fucking interesting.

Swag.

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Ohhhhhhhhh shit! Cue the creepy Danny Elfman music and hide your kids! I’m on the prowl and I hungers for polygons, force feedback, and orifices! This is Press Start!, the column where I spit about five things that happened in gaming this week.  It’s late, the caffeine whispers lacquered promises of  mellifluous  nonsense, and I got an achin’ to elaborate.

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#1: Dude Huge Loves Musicals.
Cliff Bleszinsk is the mind behind Unreal, Gears of War, and he played a hand in Bulletstorm which was released this week. Dude Huge, as us legions of internet unwashed masses call him, is not one for subtlety. In fact, if I had to describe the genre he has helped conjure up from the miasma of gaming madness, it would be “Super Violent Permaboner Cockexplosion Death. Core.” I love his games, but fuck if they’re not ever fourteen year-old male’s screaming erection fantasies born in code. Enormous weapons? Word. Giant muscles? Check. Odd homosocial gatherings that would give Freud fuel for a new fucking  dissertation? Oh hell yeah.  Which is why I find the news that he likes musicals to be fucking awesome.

Joystiq quoted an article in which he dropped:

I can enjoy a twisted, strange movie like [Funny Games] but also be like, “Sweet! Chicago’s on Blu-ray now! Let’s go see The Lion King on Broadway! Oh my God, I love Wicked!” … There’s this weird dichotomy going on with my tastes. I think it’s important to enjoy all spectrums of entertainment that way.

Joking aside, I think he’s got the correct idea. Anyone who follows him on Twitter or the scene knows that he’s a rather sensible dude, even if his developmental proclivities leads him to embrace his inner adolescent. I take solace in knowing that it’s okay that I love Gears of War, but goddamn if I wasn’t heated over last season’s Project Runway winner. If Dude Huge can be complicated, conflicted, but still love his cock, so can I.

Right?

Party on.

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#2: Trailer For A Street Fighter Documentary Hits All The Right Beats.
FOCUS is a documentary coming out this spring by director Steve Hwang. The doc centers around a summer in the life of professional Street Fighter player Mike Ross. The trailer itself is expertly cut, and it sucked me into Ross’ life immediately. It hits all the beats, selling you on his life, his aspirations, and sprinkles in some personal turmoil to get the empathic strings a-buzzin’. I’m a sucker for plenty of things in my life, but none so much as I am a sucker for video games, and a heroic narrative.

Throw them together and you’re going to get me eating out of your hand. This shit is going to be like The Wizard! Maybe? Yeah!

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#3: Legend of Zelda Turns 25.
In other news, I’m feeling old as fuck. This week, Legend of Zelda turned 25, and all of a sudden I’m like how is that possible, why, that’d make me….28? Followed by me puking all over myself. My girlfriend rushing into the room, wondering why the manchild she’s dating is puking all over himself wearing only Mario boxers with a gold cartridge sticking out the ass of them. Truth man, that shit can hurt.

For a good portion of my generation, Legend of Zelda was formative on something only slightly above a genetic level. The caverns, the torches, the fucking endless forests. Everything that was born out of this original game has contributed to my existence in ways that are far from healthy. The happy news is that I’m not alone. Since the original title, the franchise has moved more than fifty-nine million fucking copies. That’s like, a zillion and a half rupees or some shit. Nintendo is definitely polishing their Master Sword to that. More esoteric references! Phallus objects!

What was I saying?

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Man, Princess Peach is getting fucking hefty these days. She’s always cooped up in some fucking dungeon. Stuck in a cell with nothing to do but wait for the Koopa family to run the train on her and then go fight that fucking persistent plumber. No shit she’s going to eat her feelings.

This is Press Start! A lightning bolt of stupidity directly into your thinking-pipes, your winding brain machinery. In this column I give a rundown of five things that caught my attention in the world of gaming this week. The list is half-baked, poorly-constructed, and subject to my whimsy. Don’t see something you dug? Good, hit the comments box. Let us have some constructive dialogue.

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#1: Kinect Hack Creates A Superman VR Simulator.
It has to be at least two fucking weeks since I mentioned a Kinect hack. Two weeks. In the span of the video game universe, that’s practically an eternity. No doubt there’s a plethora of content out there, but nothing has been catching my eye. Until this. A good collection of dudes over at the University of Amsterdam got together and hacked the shit out of Kinect to produce a Superman VR simulator. No doubt they were getting lit in their Fortress of Solitude on some of the goods those Dutch have appropriately liberated and came up with the concept.

This thing doesn’t just come off as Oh Hey Neat Idea!, it actually seems fun to play. With a solid Super Fistpump, you take to the skies. And depending on which side of the VR goggles you tap, you either activate your Frost Breath or Heat Vision.

I know that I’m totally dorking out on my love for this shit. Admitted. Guilty. Throw some spandex on me and send me into combat. However, I can’t be as lame as PS3 hacker Geohot. The same dude who let the world see the PS3 rootkey spent this week conjuring up a white boy diss track aimed at Sony. It’s all fun and games until you’re sodomized by the katana of Sony’s robot ninjas, duder.

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#2: Former Director of GTA Planning Game Based On Iranian Revolution.
Navid Khonsari is a man who knows a thing or two about generating  controversy  through video game narrative. Motherfucker was the director of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. So yeah, the guy has caught some heat in his day. Say what you will about the actual content of the games, the dude has weathered the storm, and persisted in telling his tales. Even with that in mind, I have to ruminate on the thunderously large set of testicles he has for attempting his next game. Khonsari wants to make a game about the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the hostage crisis that surrounded.

Like I said, brass balls.

Khonsari spoke with Joystiq, and elaborated on his vision:

Khonsari described  1979 as a “social political game” that, in addition to open-world, sandbox environments, could feature “strategy elements with the use of AI combatants.” Once in Iran, additional player-controlled characters would be introduced, “allowing you the ability to play a number of different roles,” he added of the game’s lofty design goals. And he wasn’t finished: “The multiplayer aspect is something I am really excited about, but is still in the works.”

If it was executed well, it could be a concentration of video game rock. If there was a seriousness to it that concentrated on using the facets of gaming to execute framework for telling a unique spin on the tale, it could be something special. Or, it could be the usual hyperviolence nonsense that we got from GTA III. Call me an optimist.

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Oh, here there! Welcome to Press Start! The only weekly..uh, biweekly, uh…semi-regular…maybe…column about video games. In theory, this pig is a weekly column counting down the top five things in video games from the prior seven days. However, as of late I’ve been jackknife powerbombed by the real world, and I totally slipped off the map.

For those who (don’t care), you’ll find this son of a bitch regularly on Saturdays from now on. Enough with the bureaucratic bullshit. Let’s dance.

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#1: Microsoft Tried To Get In Conan’s Pants.
Remember last year when Conan threw up the deuces and left NBC after Chin McFuckerton took back his old time spot? Of course you do. This week an interesting little morsel came out of that news: Conan was wooed by Microsoft. Yes sir, they tried to get the grand ‘ole Irish bastard onto Xbox Live. Imagine that shit! I don’t know if that would have been a Biblical sized bomb, or a watershed moment. Last week executive producer of the Conan show, Jeff Ross, shed some light on the whole thing:

Ross said it was “interesting to sit and look at it,” Microsoft’s proposal lacked a clear vision, and he recalled that “a lot of the conversations were, ‘Well, it’s a show, but it’s not a show and there are no breaks, but maybe there are breaks and it’s not 60 minutes – it’s this,’ and nobody really knew what it was.”

“So it was really going to be a leap of faith to jump in with these guys and figure something out which we didn’t know,” Ross said, later reiterating that “we had some eventual television offers and we basically shied away from the [Xbox thing].”

While it doesn’t seem practical at this juncture, I can imagine something like this heading down the road. Not necessarily on Microsoft Live, but why not online? As the integration of your televisions-computers-phones-video game systems march to the inevitable point where we have hardware in our head that projects digital hallucinations, something whacky like this shit is a given down the road. In my fanboy fantasies.

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#2: Legend Of Zelda Imagined As Hughes’ Movie.
A group of enterprising people have answered the question you’ve probably never asked: what would Legend of Zelda look like if it was shot as a John Hughes movie? I’m going to level with you; I’ve only watched a good three minutes of the five minute video. Why the fuck am I posting it then? I find the concept endearing. I’m a sucker for coming of age flicks, and goddamn it if I didn’t come of age while working through Ocarina of Time. My balls were all a-twitter for Sheik, and even though it was released markedly earlier, I enjoyed myself some Breakfast Club.

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#3: Kevin Butler Retweets The PS3 Root Key.
I used to think the Kevin Butler PS3 commercials were pretty fucking funny. They certainly dragged the PS3 marketing campaign out of some weird, abstract, pseudo-minimalistic realm and put a human face on them. It Only Does: Everything? Cool enough. At this point however, Butler has overstayed his welcome. Case in point: “Butler” has a Twitter account.

With this in mind, I was amused this week when everything went awry on said account.

Last month, the PS3 was cracked open and its soul, its root key was released to the public. Since then, hackers have been able to dance on Sony’s filthy Corporate corpus, and entire thing has been amusing to watch from afar. This week a Twitter peep Travis La Marr tweeted the root key at this Butler character. Understandably, whoever the fuck maintains the account had no fucking clue what the numbers and letters meant. I mean fuck, I wouldn’t have. Butler retweets them shits, and BOOM!, a whole good shitload of his followers were greeted with the PS3’s soul.

Well done.

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Press Start! Your one-stop shopping center for uh, nonsense? The weekly column where I drop the five things in the gaming world that caught my eyes. I’m cranking this pig out with a bit of a headache, so I apologize if its (more) slapdash (than usual.) Hit the comments box with your gaming happenings, my comrades in dual-analogs.

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#1: Wesley Snipes Is Making A Video Game.
I don’t know what we’ve done as a people to deserve this karmic high-five. Sometimes you just need to accept something solid coming your way, and not question it. Wesley Snipes is many things. A felon. Blade. Willie Mays Hayes. Above all of that however, the dude is a multimedia mogul. While serving time in prison, Snipes has been working on a video game for for the iPhone and iPad. Titled Julius Styles: The International, this son of a bitch is only the beginning. Snipes is looking to parlay this son of a bitch into a movie. Down the road in 2013. When he’s let out of jail for tax evasion. The fucking fascists man, they’re holding him back from executing this grand scheme soon.

This wasn’t the only righteous moment of video game absurdity this week. We were also informed we were getting a reality show based on Pac-Man. Yup.

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#2: Sony & GeoHot Prepare To Throw Down.
Last week, the big news was that the hacker GeoHot released the PlayStation 3’s root key. This week was Sony’s move, as began to take legal action against GeoHot. Speaking of the man, condemn these corporate pigs! No, but seriously. You can’t blow the PlayStation 3’s asshole wide open and not expect some sort of legal action to be thrown your way. There’s a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo being thrown around that is way over my head. Sony has released one document that contains “over 280 pages of “evidence” to provide cause for enjoining them against further hacking — said evidence consisting of full, copy-and-pasted pages from Twitter accounts, forum posts, and news stories relating to the recent discoveries of the PS3’s private and root keys.”

That doesn’t phase Geo, though! Dude knows his rights. Or should I say, he feels pretty confidently in what believes are his rights. Hot responded to Sony’s charges by saying “I would expect a company that prides itself on intellectual property to be well versed in the provisions of the law, so I am disappointed in Sony’s current action…cont…I have spoken with legal counsel and I feel comfortable that Sony’s action against me doesn’t have any basis.”

I hope you’re right, bro. You’re lucky this is Sony. If you fuck with Nintendo, they don’t press charges. Their ninjas up and kill you.

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#3: EA CEO Predicts Digital Sales Surpass Retail This Year.
John Riccitiello is the CEO of Electronic Arts. So when he speaks, there are two things to consider. First, that he carries a lot of weight with his predictions. His visions have merit. However, secondly, anything he promotes is going to be heavily politicized. His visions have merit, because he has the clout to largely enact them by himself. I mean, fucking Electronic Arts. Thar be the Leviathan, no?

Riccitello was quoted in a recent interview as saying,  “At the end of [2011], the digital business is bigger than the packaged goods business, full stop. No questions in my mind. Then, you know, I think that we’ll find ways to even sell our packaged goods content in chunks and in pieces and subscriptions and micro-transactions.” When the leader of a juggernaut makes such claims, it is hard to dismiss it.

The future is going intangible, yo! It can’t be helped. That is the price or progress. Or capitalism. But not only is it going intangible, but it is going to be chopped into tiny pieces and you’re going to be nickel and dimed to death. To death. That’s just going to be the way it is. Why? Because John Riccitiello wants it that way, and he has a sledgehammer powerful enough to beat it into being.

Just today I started having an anxiety attack realizing I don’t physically own a  good portion of my music. What if society collapses! What if my hard drive crashes? I’m done! Now apply that to everything, including video games. Then there’s the whole microtransaction thing, and this article petrifies me on two fronts.

Oh Riccitiello, you fuck.

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Hello Earthlings of certain proclivities! Salutations. This is Press Start!, the column where I break down the week in gaming. I drudge together five happenings that caught my eye in the Video Gameverse. The list doesn’t reflect importance, or anything other than my personal preference. Hit the goddamn fucking comments box with your own input.

Buckle up, take your accelerant of choice, and let’s party.

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#1: Characters From Street Fighter Break Into WWE, Paralyze People.
The characters from Street Fighter don’t give a shit. They routinely smash the living shit out of cars just ’cause. In the middle of a god damn tournament, they’ll thrash your whip with snap kicks and shit. So why wouldn’t they cross franchise boundaries and whip the ass of unsuspecting dudes in spandex?

There’s no good reason why they wouldn’t. And now they are.

Some good chap used the character creation tool thingy in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 to create twenty or so Street Fighter characters. Which, if I’m not mistaken people can download onto their PlayStation Boxes. This is fucking fantastic. If I bought the game I’d be all over this shit.

Superheroes in a wrestling game? If John Cena doesn’t deserve a spinning lariat from Zangief, who the fuck does? As I’ve blathered on about, the Street Fighter characters are a righteous addition because they call back to the golden days of wrestling. Back when the characters weren’t just assholes in denim shorts. They were assholes fighting for Communism, or capable of voodoo, or undead dudes who dropped tombstones and carried around creepy ass urns.

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#2: GameStop Has 3.6 Billion Dollar Holiday, But This Is Failure.
Fascist pig video game whoring multiplex GameStop made 3.6 billion dollars over the holiday season. What was the general reaction to these numbers? The joint’ stock fell by 6 perfect. This is despite the store’s profits rising by a poetically fitting 6 percent. Buh?

Listen, I’m not a economist. The only numbers I can crunch are those of my bank account. And as a graduate student making a shit stipend, the numbers are dismal. After the holiday season, you can hear echoes off the chambers of my savings account. So I’d take 3.6 billion dollars. Fuck, I’d take $5,000.

So what lead to the stock falling? The lack of growth. Despite the sales numbers, stockholders (is that what they’re called?) weren’t happy with the percent of growth. I see, I see. Other contributing factors may be the lack of suitable increase in GameStop’s used gaming market, which only grew 1.7 percent, or people who bought in for the holiday season but are not throwing up deuces and leaving.

Disagree with these reasons? I didn’t think them up, I’m just reporting.

Don’t shoot me.

But a 3.6 billion dollar disappointment? Amazing.

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#3: Super Mario At The Ice Capades Will Prolapse You.
I miss the 1980’s. Nothing made sense, and because of that, anything made sense. Take for example this segment from the 1988 Ice Capades. Hosted by Jason Bateman and a hot ass (I hope she’s legal here) Alyssa Milano, it features Super Mario and friends skating around in what can only be described as delirious awesomeness.

Bateman and Milano are rocking out playing some Super Mario backstage when – gasp! – the unthinkable happens. The original Nintendo catches a virus and allows the characters to escape the confines of their shitty grey cartridge.  Trust me, this is amazing.

Also, let it be a lesson to you. Video games are dangerous. Everything your parents hear on the Boob Tube is correct: these games can fucking kill you. One minute you’re boppin’ shit for coins, the next minute Bowser is unleashed on the tangible realm. Looking for some ass to crush. Ask Princess, that shit hurts. Hurts done bad.

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This is Press Start! The gaming column where I drop five happenings from around the scene in the past week. But! It’s New Year’s Eve. Last day of the year. The Earth, soaring in its majesty is back at the solar starting line. The masses, us in the civilized world, we have intent. To drink, and celebrate, and generally not give a fuck. The goddamn world shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Everything is reduced to a trickle. The gaming world isn’t any different. It bares the same marks.

Everything’s stopped. It’s boring. Cobbling this list of five things together took effort. But more than that, it took feigning interest. Here’s hoping when we all sober up next week shit gets poppin’ again. Until here’s the last, which didn’t start this way, but in hindsight turned oddly retrospective.

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#1: Black Ops Is Most Pirated Game of 2010.
Black Ops has made more money than is fathomable. It’s crushed the billion dollar mark in record time. So when the BitTorrent site TorrentFreak announced this week that Black Ops was the most pirated game of 2010, I didn’t exactly cry for Activision. I bought a copy, what the fuck else do you want!

Specifics? The PC version of the game has been pirated 4.2 million dollars. Even if you round down, and assume that every copy costs $50, and that only 4 million copies were pirated, that’s 200 million dollars. Good lord! On top of that, the console version is reported at being pirated 930,000. That’s a lot of fucking money being non-spent.

Still though, it’s to be expected. As I said, Call of Duty is fucking huge. Its community is voluminous. They produce geek work, and they’ve logged 600 million hours in 45 days.

Jesus Christ.

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#2: Play WoW With Kinect. Cool?
It seems fitting to have a Kinect shout out in the final column of the year. (And like I said gaming news has been slow.) The latest hack? Why by golly, now you can play World of Warcraft! Using only the powers of your uh, body. You know, that gelatinous thing that wheezes when it walks up the stairs? I typecast. But it isn’t without precedent to back it up. Kinect hacks can be cool – flying robots, molestation simulators, and shit. However, then there’s stuff like this.

Use Kinect to move your Tauren Druid through the Barrens! Totally elite, man.

Kinect though. It isn’t going away. Not even close. It’s selling like fucking gangbusters, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t depress me a much. Since we’re getting retrospective, let me say that the combined effort of motion controls and 3D media is enough to get me building my log cabin. So fucking help me if someday you need to be wearing goggles to play your PS4, which is only controlled through bodily motions.

Fuck. I think I’m getting old. Curmudgeony.

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#3: Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe Continue To Rule.
Forget Jordan and Bird. Fuck Crosby and Ovechkin. The greatest rivalry in the world is between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. The close of 2010 brings a final week of news pertaining to Wiebe and Mitchell. Over in Chicago, Stevey is planning on running a clinic on how to regulate at Donkey Kong. For only 12 bucks, you can learn from a legend. However, not to be outdone, Billy Mitchell was interviewed by Moviefone. They wanted him to reflect on his behavior in King of Kong. Frankly? Don’t listen to it! Let me have my ultra villain. My Vader. My Sauron.

Every medium needs a villain.

Kudos to the two dudes for entertaining us throughout the year. Just when you think their eternal struggle is over, one of them bodyslams the other. We won’t see the end of this shit until someone hits the max record. Which according to Wiebe, is still another 100,000 points away.

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Welcome everyone to Press Start! And a goddamn great holiday season to you. Happy fucking Christmas. I hope all is going well. It’s Christmas Eve, which means several things. First off, Uncle Teddy is praying at the altar that his nieces stop looking so good to him. Secondly, the roads are packed with belligerence and commerce. And thirdly, no one is surfing the fat pipes of the internet. If you work this through, you’ll realize what I’m doing: making an excuse of a column this afternoon. Five things that happened in gaming this week? Sure there’s probably a laundry list. But you’re probably getting fucked up on eggnog and delicious nougats.

Christmas is always a magical period for me. As my parents watched me grow up, they realized that I was never going to grow up and go to Harvard. Or really, even grow up. So as I’ve aged but not grown, I’ve worn my semen stained Biohzard t-shirt and my smiles to every Christmas morning, anticipating one thing: video games. Video games! Every fucking year. I’m twenty-seven, and I can’t recall a time when there wasn’t a game I asked for Jolly Saint Nick to bring me. How about you guys? Do you rock stockings stuffed with mad plumbers, angry gorillas, chicks in hot-ass battle armor? I imagine tomorrow will be quite the same. My eyes glazed over from lasagna and thirty-nine candy canes. Fucked up on sugar and holding a controller of some a sort. And I don’t want it any other way.

So go on, get the fuck out of here. Leave this column. Go find someone to hug. If you can’t find anyone, there’s countless virtual options for your love. Kiss your girlfriend, kiss your boyfriend, kiss your guildmate. It don’t matter. Have a great Christmas, let’s just call this installment a wash and I’ll meet you back here next week.

Oh if it ain’t Press Start! This shit is being cobbled together on the fly. I’ve spent far too much time playing Cataclysm this week, and far too little writing a thesis I need to. So now with my asshole facing the sawing bladeknife of doom, there is a bit of a frantic pace to my existence. Press Start!, the gaming column where I tell you five things that caught my eye this week. Nothing really tickled my ass this week. There’s hundreds of gaming news articles, but shit I’m interested in? Eh.

Disagree? Good. Hit the comments box with what excited you.

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#1: Blizzard Confirms Existence Of Their Next MMO.
Cataclysm dropped last week, and I’ve only logged something like six hours into it. If you knew anything about my past WoW playing days, you’d know this is somewhat remarkable. For some strange reason, I’ve managed to not neglect my girlfriend, Saturday evenings with friends, or homework. This can only mean one thing: there’s something afoot. While I dig Cataclysm, it’s not relentlessly pounding my prostrate to a fluid-covered state of glee like prior expansion packs.

So!, I was pretty stoked when Blizzard’s Frank Pearce confirmed the existence of their next MMO. The confirmation comes from a leaked Blizzard release schedule which bore the ominous title ‘Titan.’ Last week at the VGAs, WoW producer Frank Pearce confirmed that ‘Titan was the real deal Holyfield. Sadly? Shit is far, far out. Like, 2014 or some shit.

By then I’ll have a kid, gray hairs, a peg-leg, and four teeth. Dentists are for losers, and the fluoridation in the water is mind control! I only brush my teeth with my own urine. The thought police. They lurk. Beware.

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#2: Uncharted 3 Debut Makes My Balls Hurt.
Uncharted 3 was revealed last week at the Spike VGAs. Did you watch that shit? It was horrible. I didn’t spend much time watching it, just flipping to it between periods of the local frozen ice and blade-skates team. Sadly they weren’t doing much better, so I was a pile of bitterness and vitriol. As an aside, Olivia Munn sucks. She’s a tourist into the gaming industry, making geeks horny and wank to her awful “literature” and Maxim photo shoots.

I actually think she’s hot as fuck, but she’s fraudulent, man. Fraudulent.

Anyways! The entire thing was salvaged by the Uncharted 3 reveal. Unfathomable awesomeness pouring out of my television. If you don’t like Uncharted, I weep for you. It’s not the most intellectually stimulating game. But if you want to rock out pretentious, go back to fingering Limbo’s artistic merit. Sometimes I just want amazing action sequences and fucking filthy graphics.

It was a good week for gaming reveals all around. Mass Effect 3 also got a reveal trailer at the VGAs. And god damn, if I don’t like me some Mass Effect. Later on in the week, Capcom revealed the cinematic trailer for Marvel Vs Capcom 3. It promptly blew my pants clean off my body. They were evaporated. I was like that guy in the commercials for the cassette tapes or whatever. You know, he’s sitting in a chair holding on for dear life because the awesomeness of the sound fidelity or some shit is unbearable.

That was me.

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#3: Super Mario Brothers Go Grand Theft Auto.
How do you feel about machinima? I usually don’t give a shit about it. I didn’t like Red vs Blue. Sorry! However this one was brought to my attention, and it’s fantastic. To the point where I actually watched the whole thing as opposed to lazily listening to it play while I refreshed the same nineteen websites in separate tabs. It’s Super Mario Brothers done up in the Grand Theft Auto world, and it’s fantastic. Powered by the GTAIV engine, it’s Luigi and Mario gone straight out fucking thuggin’.

It’s my geek work of outrageous talent of the week.

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