When it rains Nintendo Wii 2 rumors, it fucking pours. After yesterday’s news that the console is going to be revealed at or before E3, today we get a new crop of rumors. Most interesting is that the controller is going to up the ante in douchebag gimmicky nonsense.

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Welcome to Press Start! The column where I jot down five things that caught my eye in the world of gaming this week. Poor edited!, check. Zero revisions!, check. Cobbled together on a couple of wings, a prayer, and ridiculous amounts of caffeine in the early hours of the morning.

I encourage all dorks and dinks and nerds and nincompoopto contribute what they dug this week.

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#1:  Grand Theft Auto Gives You Extra Points For Killing Kids!
Oh fuck son! I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto wrong for nearly ten fucking years. Longer than that if you take into account the first two top-down games. Yeah! Yeah, yeah! All these years I’ve been playing and I’ve never been aware that you get more points for killing children and old fuckers.

This nonsense stems out of a tragedy that went down last Thursday in Brazil. Wellington Menezes de Oliveira “opened up fire at a school in Rio de Janeiro killing 12 pupils and injuring 13 others, aged between 12- and 14-years-old.” Not cool, at all.

Quite obviously.

Unfortunately spinsters vomit up bullshit, seizing any opportunity to massage their own importance glands through hyperbole and sensationalism. Two days later in O Globo, one of the biggest newspapers in Brazil, ran an article which didn’t have time for things like fact checking. It claimed that Oliveira played games like Counterstrike and Grand Theft Auto where “you score more points for killing women, children and old people.”

News to me! Fucking news to me.

Remember kids, no tragedy is ever so saddening you can’t use it to churn up slop, or pen the same old tired media nonsense.

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#2) Creator of the Video Game Cartridge Passes Away.
Jerry Lawson. His name was Jerry Lawson! Lawson was the creator of the video game cartridge, and this week the good sir went and tripped the light fantastic. It never even occurred to my dumb ass that the cartridge was something forged by man. I always fancied it some sort of platonic ideal, derived from the Other Realm, where unicorns and Justice can cavort about together.

No sir, we made it. Well, Lawson and his group of pioneers over at Fairchild Semiconductor. With that cartridge, he no doubt helped craft the childhood of many a million of dorks. Like you and me. Sitting here, in this gaming column, communicating via news born out of an industry of cartridges.

More than just what they housed, the physical cartridge was a staple of my childhood. Good god damn how many times did I go blue in my face blowing in them. Stacking those sons a bitches up. Flipping them to friends at lunch.

The cartridge. Staple of a childhood baked in dorkey, roasted in the fires of nerdiness.

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#3) Sony and Geohot Settle Out of Court.
It’s finally fucking over. Geohot, the dorkiest wanna-be hard ass in the gaming community settled with Sony out of court this week. You may remember Geohot as the dude who outed the PlayStation 3’s root key. Then he wrote an awful rap telling Sony to come and get him. They obliged, sending their lawyers, Death Stars, and various underlings after his ass.

At that point, he may have fled to South America, or gone there for Spring Break. Depending on whose story you believe.

All of that is over now, as the Totally Believing In Something Kid no longer wants to deal with a court battle with An Enormous Corporation State. Go figure! How quickly one’s ideology wilts in the face of a armada of litigation or whatever other more appropriate legal word I should be using.

Well, that’s that.

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Firing off with the hotness! Multiple websites are blowing up today with the same rumor: the successor to Nintendo’s Wii will be revealed at or before E3. E-gads! Get it? Fuck me!

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What’s up, fuckers! Dial up your compete level to ten and let’s get ready to fucking rock! Slap that pink polo on, scream at the stars, and as your hazy vision returns, let’s dance. This is Press Start! The column where we spank and jack and spit and vomit up five things in gaming that caught our eyes this week. I’ll show you mine, you show me yours.

Excelsior.

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#1: BioWare Developer Caught Reviewing Their Own Game.
This is a story stuffed to the brimming gullet with win. A BioWare developer was caught reviewing their own game, Dragon Age 2, on Metacritic. Already that’s pretty ballsy, since you know  he had to know he would get busted. Nothing is sacred anymore, no one can hide. The sleuths of the internet illuminate anything. So Chris Hoban, posting as Avanost, reviewed his own game. But it gets better. Homeboy went out of his way to give Dragon Age 2 a 10/10, and said anything “negative you’ll see about this game is an overreaction of personal preference.”

Well done, Hoban.

Electronic Arts, not to be confused with a publisher with humility or regret, backed up their boy. A rep told Kotaku that of course “the people who make the game vote for their own game.  That’s how it works in the Oscars, that’s how it works in the Grammy’s and why I’m betting that Barack Obama voted for himself in the last election.”

Of course.

Doi!

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#2: Judge Lets Activision Sue the Fuck Out Of Electronic Arts.
The NFL and the NFLPA aren’t the only two Rich As Hell Greedy Douche Titans slugging it out currently. For those of us of the nerd proclivities, we can watch as Electronic Arts and Activision deliver bodyslams, jackknife powerbombs, and stunning reversals to one another in the courtroom.

You see, back last year Activision canned Jason West and Vince Zampella. These two duders were the sultans of the Modern Warfare franchise, having founded Infinity Ward. In other words, they governed the flagship iteration of the biggest fucking franchise in measured existence. The reasons why they were fired is dependent on who you ask. But this much is certain, since their firing, Activision has sued Electronic Arts, West, and Zampella in some bananas $400 million interference suit. I can barely speak English, can hardly write in anything, and definitely cannot comprehend legalese, so the finer details are lost on me.

I can tell you that this week, a “California Superior Court judge has given the go ahead to an Activision lawsuit brought against EA over the publisher’s hiring of Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.” Activision thinks that EA totally snagged their girlfriend in West and Zampella, and the lot of them intentionally botched MW2 DLC and some other ridiculous shit.

It’s entertaining to see these two monolithic entities pulling one another’s hair and shit.

Also In The Gaming Courtroom: Sony gets access to GeoHot’s PayPal account.

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#3: Super Mario Bros. Goes First Person.
First Person Mario is an animation dreamed up by Brandon Laatsch. The gorgeous early Spring breeze you may have felt on the Northeastern seaboard this afternoon was actually the thunderous thousands of geeks smacking their goo bits to the concept. It’s pretty fucking awesome. Laatsch has Mario running around the classic board, while achievements hit up the interface like a mix between Call of Duty and Bulletstorm.

Someone use their Gaming Geek Wizardy powers to make this come to life. I know you have it in you.

Also In Mario’s World: Mario goes indie flick at SXSW.

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Apparently at SXSW and other film festivals they have a bunch of “bumper” films. Minifilms that precede the screenings. Didn’t know that. Now I do. One of them showing at SXSW is “Mario” by Joe Nicolosi. Nicolosi works in a shitload of outstanding references in the framework of a trailer for an indie film version of Mario. Go ahead and watch it, you’re going to love it.

You dirty little slut.

Hit the jump for the video.

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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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I keep forgetting that Skyward Sword exists. Amidst all the gritty, HGH-fueled bullshittery that I’m currently anticipating, it lurks in the background. A new trailer from GDC 11 has dropped, and I’ve consequently remembered how excited I am for this installment. Nothing like a  magical romp through a familiar but modified universe to keep it nostalgic stylee. Despite all the Zelda games feeling somewhat derivative of one another, the gameplay is so finely honed, and the formula so delicious, I’ll happily slurp this shit up.

Hit the jump for the video.

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Remember a couple of years ago when Rémi Gaillard was the New Black? His whacky videos, especially the ones featuring real life Mario Kart were totally Oh Em Gee? Well, Gaillard is back with some more Mario Kart insanity. That’s about it. All you need to know.

Hit the jump for the video.

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I can’t tell if I think this is awesome, or horribly creepy. A little bit of both. I’ve been saying for a while now that church has gotten pretty fucking stale. If people want to bring some new souls to fucking salvation, they have to up their fucking game. Bishop Paul Ojeda has done just that. At the Austin Power House Church’s Wii Love Jesus event, he brought the righteous Nintendo thunder. Preaching in front of a backdrop replete with Super Mario imagery and Wiimotes, the zaniness doesn’t stop there. No sir. We also got “a guy running around dressed as Mario, kids doing trust falls and lots of fake Wii Remotes.”

Nothing says roping them in young and brainwashing them like using some classic kid-friendly imagery. Back in my day they just used closed doors, allures of candy, and the phrase “It’s going to tickle.”

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It’s easy to make geeks splooge. Just throw some Super Mario Bros. sounds into something seemingly ill-fitting, and we’re already at half-mast. Take for example Marshawn Lynch’s ridiculous run against the Saints on Saturday. It was already amazing. But throw some Mario sound effects as a soundtrack? Stop, boner time!

Hit the jump for the video.

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