Ages ago, I posted about a commercial sony made for the PS2 game Mark of Kri (a game that came and went ages ago). No time to read my original post? I'll summarize in that sony made a commercial that some people found offensive. At the time, I was unable to find videos proving its existence, but recently was able to find it. You can watch it here if interested. Sorry for low res.

Upon re-watching it myself, doesn't hold as much water as a misogynist commercial as I remember, since none of the abuse of the "victims" (or not victims according to them) shows up on screen, it ironically comes off as being less abusive than it is self defensive given the preceding beat down of the padded man, and at least one of them is totally a dude (not to mention another is a granny, might be interesting how this plays into senior abuse). Overall, I think the commercial does an decent job of highlighting the functionality of the multi-combatant system that was signature of Kri without being boring or nerdish, in fact it may even be an interesting study of how to highlight gameplay aspects in gaming commercials. What does the rest of the world think?

So I'm browsing the real news in the world (there is news beyond game news?), and
apparently this guy makes headlines. Apparently, he's a 19 year old college freshman who
just beat out the current three termed, 70 year old dude for mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma
(wherever that is I'm sure none of you care). Kudos to him and all, but in the typical labeling
the media they've decided to headline this "19 year-old gamer becomes mayor of Oklahoma
town" and go on to name him the first ever self proclaimed (as if others should be shameful of
it) gamer to govern a city in America.

While there's nothing bad with this milestone (if you would even call it that) I find it fairly
insignificant. We've had gamers as far up as governors and congressmen, and mayors have
little to no say over any sort of video game legislation, so the actual effect of his time in office
as a gamer does not really matter, it's just a random fact that the media got a kick out of and
decided to use the term gamer since it tends to get a rise of people (gamer? I'm one of
those). Then again, maybe this is a clear sign that we've taken over as the general public.

Always choose Kirby

For those of you disappointed with the ending of HALOween and the ranked zombie matches on live, do not writhe in your pain, for today marks another holiday, the Day of the Dead! Although this will not mark any addition to your live play or what not, I urge you to find a way to celebrate the lives of those who have passed. What will I be doing? I will be celebrating the life of a since passed gaming genre, the adventure game. And what better way to do so than playing the day of the dead based adventure, Grim Fandango.

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the game, it was made by adventure game superstar, Lucas Arts, just at the end of their adventure game stint (and the beginning of their promotion of games based on Episode I to III *shutter). Although it does not follow the traditional feel for an adventure game, it sticks very close to the genre when it comes to its enthralling story line, featuring Manauel Calavera, a gigantic yet literally dead cast, and the amazingly interactive Land of the Dead. If you have any means to, get and play this game. Not only will you being doing yourself a favor by enjoying this great game, you'll also be honoring the life of a great genre that once roamed this earth but now is no longer.

So, thanks to an acceptance letter to a certain school in LA, a super cool sister, a super cool game artist person, and other super cool people and objects, and not thanks to work that is due this week at said school, I was able to go to E for all for part of a day this year. Now that I got that outta the way, I just wanted to put my own experience into words. It did feel a little empty on the expo floor, and there wasn't anything that hadn't already been seen at one or two other shows before this, so I played my rock bands, got my swags (mostly non-game related stuff oddly), and got a picture with chobot, and by then there was only bout an hour left to go. So I decided that with said remaining hour I'd bite the bullet and wait in the long line to play Smash brothers since I hadn't tried it out yet. In the end I waited about 35 minutes to play it, I played it, was kinda pissed at using the wiimote controller to play it, but liked the gameplay and got a odd yet cool looking nintendo shirt, and then hung out with dtoid people afterward. But most of that is beside the point.

While waiting in said line, I met up with this kid who lined up behind me. I'd say given his size, voice pitch, and empathy for pokemon, he was probably about 12 years old. Normally I set aside the scaring away of little children for other events, he seemed quite friendly and entusiastic about smash so I asked him how many times he had been through to play the game. He said he this will have been his seventh time through, and that in his past play throughs, he had won half of his first round plays, and out of those three, had won the "championship round" once out of that. He then went on to show me that he was wearing three of the cool yet odd nintendo shirts, each over the other, and then noted that his parents had the other three.

Finally, he went on and embelished me with a story of how he was from Canada and that he saw E for all was being held in Los Angeles and how disappointed he was that he wasn't going to be able to go to it, but then how his family decided that they'd make the plane trip down to L.A. just this last Thursday and how excited he was about coming down here. And trust me, given how much he'd cheer when someone who chose pikachu to play as, or when the guy using yoshi got the powerball thingy (which acording to him yoshis is by far the best), this kid was not disappointed at the number of people or developers that showed up at E for all. It was when I realized this that perhaps, E for all isn't really meant for gamers on the hardcore spectrum. Rather, it really is E for all: for the non-gamer who hasn't been able to try out a wii and just wanted to try out wii sports, or the rhythm game player who hasn't had the chance to check out rock band, or like this kid who got his chance at a life time to go to a video game expo and play the shit outta a game he was really psyched about. If that's what its all about, then I'm glad E for all happened. Even if it wasn't necessarily everything I expected, doesn't mean it wasn't what I felt when I was in disneyland at a kid...pure exileration and a endless desire to wait in line to go again.

Cause I Do. It takes place in a women's defense class, where the ladies in the class are kicking the shit out of a guy in a padded suit until they floor him. The camera pans out as the man stands back up, and at that moment, he stands with his back to the camera when suddenly a playstation X, O, and triangle. For those of you not familiar with the game, the revolutionary thing about it was supposedly, you were able to take on multiple enemies in hand to hand combat by mashing their corresponding button. This is the moment when it goes to game fotage of the game's protagonist kicking ass, and then after that, it returns to the defense class, where the women are all lying beaten on the floor while the padded man remains standing, triumphant.

Now, I personally did not get around to playing this game, but I ask if anyone remembers it cause I saw it, thought it was funny, but it was too early to be featured on the internetz and I can't find it anywhere now. Also, I ran into a couple of stories where people analyze this comercial as a classic example of how brutality against women is featured in advertising today. I throught that might be an interesting topic of discusion, given this is a video game commercial with some heat on it. Thanks in advance if anyone is able to point out where I can get a hold of this video.