Video games may teach players many useful things, including better hand-eye coordination and how to save the world with just one clip, but they also teach plenty of useless things. Sure, how to manage your own NFL franchise is pretty useless, but there’s even more useless trivia being inflicted upon gamers ever day. For this reason, gamers owe it to themselves to be aware of this misinformation.

Barrels contain valuables
There are only two kinds of barrels in this world that contain valuables. One is a whiskey or wine barrel, and the other is the candy barrel by the cash register at some old-time candy shop. Otherwise, barrels are where people store things they can’t possibly imagine touching themselves. Yes, oil is quite valuable, but no one wants to burst open a barrel of the black goo to get at it. Plus, there’s always the risk that toxic waste might be stored inside. Such realities should be portrayed in games more often. (more…)

Posted by Justin | 8 Comments »

Phil Harrison is no Peter Moore. He’s the quiet type who prefers to stay behind the scenes rather than show off his GTA 4 tattoo to thousands of attendees at gaming expos. Although, lately he’s been at the top of gaming news as the man who left Sony for the sinking ship known as Atari and left behind the platform he helped to succeed.

Though no specific reasons behind his departure have been indicated Harrison was very vocal at GDC recently publicly criticizing Sony Japan for not taking advantage of the booming casual games market. “It’s a very interesting and frustrating thing for me to experience because I have been banging the drum about social gaming for a long time, with SingStar, EyeToy and Buzz,” stated Harrison. “And our Japanese colleagues said that there is no such thing as social gaming in Japan — people do not play games on the same sofa together in each other’s homes. It will never happen. And then out comes the Wii.” (more…)

Posted by Dennis | No Comments »

Media Create, a site that reports sales figures in Japan, has announced that Super Smash Brothers: Brawl has sold 819,647 copies from the week of January 28-February 3rd. This is pretty remarkable considering the game wasn’t even on shelves the first few days of that week, since the retail date was January 31st. In related news, during the same time period Wii console sales also rose in Japan. I wonder why.

As we all know, this game is going to be Nintendo’s best selling game of the year by far. I’m also willing to bet it will be it’s highest rated game. The hype for this game had been building for years and, while Japanese gamers get to enjoy the game, Americans will have to wait patiently until March 9th. If you’re in Europe, well, let’s just say you have a long wait ahead of you as no date is planned for release yet.

Posted by Steve | No Comments »