Three years ago I sat down and wrote a Christmas song dedicated to the entire Dtoid community which I entitled “The 12 Days of Destructoid Christmas”. It's a spin of the famous Christmas song we have all heard many times before, but my version has a Destructoid inspired spin to it.

Next, I got the crazy idea to actually record myself singing this song. I’m not sure what I was thinking, because I do not have the best singing voice. Well afterwards I took the song and turned it into a music video and presented it to the entire community.

Ttwo years ago I made a few slight changes to the song and posted it again for all to see. Well it's once again Christmas Day, so I’ve decided to bring it back one more time to share with all of you once again. Since a lot of you weren’t around the last three years, this will be your first time hearing and seeing it. I really hope you all enjoy it. I put a lot of love into this song to give back to a community which I enjoy so much being a part of.

MERRY CHRISTMAS DESTRUCTOID!

***The contest signups close today at 12pm EST***

This year I’ve decided to resurrect the Unofficial Destructoid March Madness Tournament Bracket Competition that I originally started two years ago. Last time I threw this together at the last moment, and it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked. Well this year I’ve taken some additional time to plan the competition, and it should run a lot better. Also, I do have an official prize this year for the lucky person who wins.

Now some of you might be asking while I’m throwing a basketball contest on a video game website. While I know we all love video games, this is an opportunity for those of us who love college basketball to share another passion with members of this great community. It’s also an opportunity for people who aren’t big basketball or sports fans, to maybe become fans.

How do you Sign Up?
I have set up a Dtoid group on the Yahoo Sports tournament bracket site. Click this link to sign up for the tournament and create and submit your own personal bracket. You’ll need to sign up for a Yahoo account if you don’t already have one, so make sure you do that first. I don’t think it should ask you for a password to enter the Destructoid group, but if it does, the password is dtoid. Please note that the last time to sign up will be 12pm EST on Thursday.

Everyone is welcome to enter. Only 1 will win.

Scoring System
You earn points by picking the winners of each matchup. The farther into the tournament you get, the more points you get. You also get bonus points for picking lower-seeded teams correctly. If you correctly choose a lower-seeded team, you will earn a bonus of the difference between the seeds. For example, if you choose a 10th seeded team over a 6th seeded team, you’ll earn 4 bonus points. See the chart below for the regular number of points you get for picking the correct team.

Round 1 - 4 point for a correct pick
Round 2 - 4 point for a correct pick
Round 3 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 4 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 5 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 6 - 16 points for a correct pick

Bonus Points - Correctly choosing lower-seeded teams will earn you bonus points equal to the difference between the seeds.

The person who has the most points in the end wins

What do you win?
This year the winner’s prize will be a blu-ray copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Please note that I can only ship to people in the continental United States, so please do not enter the competition if you live out of the country.



So please feel free to join and compete. Everyone is welcome. If anyone has any problems signing up, or any questions let me know. Please note that the last time you can sign up is 12pm EST on Thursday (that's TODAY!!!)

This year I’ve decided to resurrect the Unofficial Destructoid March Madness Tournament Bracket Competition that I originally started two years ago. Last time I threw this together at the last moment, and it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked. Well this year I’ve taken some additional time to plan the competition, and it should run a lot better. Also, I do have an official prize this year for the lucky person who wins.

Now some of you might be asking while I’m throwing a basketball contest on a video game website. While I know we all love video games, this is an opportunity for those of us who love college basketball to share another passion with members of this great community. It’s also an opportunity for people who aren’t big basketball or sports fans, to maybe become fans.

How do you Sign Up?
I have set up a Dtoid group on the Yahoo Sports tournament bracket site. Click this link to sign up for the tournament and create and submit your own personal bracket. You’ll need to sign up for a Yahoo account if you don’t already have one, so make sure you do that first. I don’t think it should ask you for a password to enter the Destructoid group, but if it does, the password is dtoid. Please note that the last time to sign up will be 12pm EST on Thursday.

Everyone is welcome to enter. Only 1 will win.

Scoring System
You earn points by picking the winners of each matchup. The farther into the tournament you get, the more points you get. You also get bonus points for picking lower-seeded teams correctly. If you correctly choose a lower-seeded team, you will earn a bonus of the difference between the seeds. For example, if you choose a 10th seeded team over a 6th seeded team, you’ll earn 4 bonus points. See the chart below for the regular number of points you get for picking the correct team.

Round 1 - 4 point for a correct pick
Round 2 - 4 point for a correct pick
Round 3 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 4 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 5 - 8 points for a correct pick
Round 6 - 16 points for a correct pick

Bonus Points - Correctly choosing lower-seeded teams will earn you bonus points equal to the difference between the seeds.

The person who has the most points in the end wins

What do you win?
This year the winner’s prize will be a blu-ray copy of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Please note that I can only ship to people in the continental United States, so please do not enter the competition if you live out of the country.



So please feel free to join and compete. Everyone is welcome. If anyone has any problems signing up, or any questions let me know. Please note that the last time you can sign up is 12pm EST on Thursday.

Two years ago I sat down and wrote a Christmas song dedicated to the entire Dtoid community which I entitled “The 12 Days of Destructoid Christmas”. It's a spin of the famous Christmas song we have all heard many times before, but my version has a Destructoid inspired spin to it.

Next, I got the crazy idea to actually record myself singing this song. I’m not sure what I was thinking, because I do not have the best singing voice. Well afterwards I took the song and turned it into a music video and presented it to the entire community.

Last year I made a few slight changes to the song and posted it again for all to see. Well it's once again Christmas Day, so I’ve decided to bring it back one more time to share with all of you once again. Since a lot of you weren’t around the last two years, this will be your first time hearing and seeing it. I really hope you all enjoy it. I put a lot of love into this song to give back to a community which I enjoy so much being a part of.

MERRY CHRISTMAS DESTRUCTOID!

So … I have really BIG news I wanted to share with everyone here in the Dtoid community. I took that next big step in my life this past weekend and asked my girlfriend Nicki to marry me. Unfortunately she was crying too many happy tears to answer me when I asked the first time, but after asking again she said “YES”, which means I am now officially engaged. You can just think of her as the future Mrs. SilverDragon. :-P

If you’ve been readying my community blog, or any of my weekend recaps, over the past 2+ years, I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about Nicki. We’ve been dating for close to three years now, and I have to admit that video games have actually played a pretty important role in our relationship. When I first met her, probably 7 or 8 years ago, I attempted to impress her with my awesome Super Mario Bros. skills by playing the game while she was studying with my roommate for a test. Unfortunately that didn’t work, and it would be a while before I could actually convince her to go on a real date with me.

When we finally did go on our first date, we ended the night by going back to her place and playing Mario Kart: Double Dash on the Gamecube. I bet her that I could beat her, and if I did I would get a kiss. Well she actually kicked my ass, but somehow I ended up getting my kiss anyways: our first kiss. I had to admit that I was pretty impressed to find out on that first date that she had played and beat quite a few video games. She wasn’t obsessed with the hobby like I was, but she enjoyed them enough to understand why I played them so often.



Well it’s been many years since Nicki and I first started dating, and we’ve had a lot of good times together. There have been some bad times as well, but we’ve always worked through those as a couple and come out stronger because of it. I now know without a shadow of any doubt that she is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. That might sound a little sappy, but I don’t care, because love makes the most manly men sappy, including me.

Unfortunately, I do have some bad news. As I’m sure many of you know, getting engaged is not exactly cheap. Because I did it so close to PAX, I’ve had to cancel all of my PAX plans and cannot afford to go this year to meet you all. I really wish I could, as I was really looking forward to seeing and partying with everyone, but it’s just not going to be possible. I’m really sorry guys. Please don’t hold it against me! I hope you all have fun though, and hopefully we can meet at PAX 2011.

So now it’s time to plan a wedding. Somehow I have to convince Nicki to let me put Sonic and Mario on the wedding cake. Not sure how that’s going to go over with her, but we’ll see. Wish me luck ….
Thanks for listening guys. I’m really happy to be able to share this news with you all!

So maybe going to E3 isn’t a “lifelong” dream for me, since E3 has only been around for 15 years and I’m 30 years old, but it’s damn close enough. You need to understand that as far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to go to E3 and be one of the first people to play the tons of games that are revealed there. I’ve always yearned to sit in the actual Nintendo press conference as Miyamoto announces a new Zelda or Mario game; to cheer and scream with the rest of the crowd as if our wildest dreams had just come true.

Ok, maybe I’ve gotten off to a quick start here. Have I mentioned I’m going to E3 in two weeks? Maybe I didn’t, but the title of my blog kind of says it all don’t you think. Yes, after 2 long years of blogging on the Dtoid community Cblogs, and a full year of being a staff writer at [url=http://gamerlimit.com/ ]Gamer Limit[/url], I’ve finally been given the opportunity to go to E3 as a member of the video game press. To say I’m excited is an understatement. I mean essentially my two favorite weeks of the entire year are the week of E3 and the first week of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

For 15 years I’ve sat hunched over my computer for the entire week of E3, absorbing every piece of video game knowledge coming out of the show that I can. I’ve gawked at all the incredible videos, giggled at the awesome developer interviews, and practically leaped out of my seat every time a new game was announced. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be able to go, especially when they decided in 2006 to downsize the convention. For a long time after that, people thought the show was doomed to become a ghost town, causing my hopes of ever going to be dashed forever.

Luckily, the ESA saw the error of their ways, and E3 has begun to return to its former glory. Luckily for me, this has happened right around the time I got hired on at Gamer Limit to be a staff writer. I always thought it would be incredible to write for a game website, but I never thought it would happen. I even came to Destructoid and started writing Cblogs just so someone might notice me and want to hire me, but it never happened. I eventually gave up and lost hope that it would ever happen, until one day I was approached by a fellow Dtoid community member who offered me the job at Gamer Limit. Now, because of Dtoid, and because of Gamer Limit, I’m finally getting the chance to go to E3 to fulfill this lifelong dream of mine.



So far it appears that I’ll definitely be going to the Nintendo Press Conference, and maybe the Sony Press Conference as well. Unfortunately though, I still don’t know if I’ll be able to attend the Microsoft one. I’ve also been invited to see a couple exclusive game reveals, many of which I can’t talk about now. Besides that, I’ll be in charge of playing and previewing the following list of games, which includes:

Force Unleashed 2
Gears of War 3
Dead Space 2
Rock Band 3
Star Wars: The Old Republic
God of War: Ghost of Sparta

I’ll of course try and play as many games as possible, but I really don’t have a clue how many I’ll actually be able to play.

While I’m there I also hope to hit up a couple parties, the most important one being the Destructoid Party. This will be my first chance to finally meet the Dtoid staff, and hopefully many of the community members here who I’ve always wanted to meet. I don’t know when it is, or if it’s really happening for that matter, but it better be. Maybe I’ll finally get to meet Chad and give him a hug.

So yeah, can you guys tell I’m excited? I’ve been telling all my friends that I’m going, but none of them play games and they all think I’m a major dork for going to a video game convention. They simply don’t understand, which sucks. I was hoping that by telling you guys at least I would be telling people who understand why I’m excited.

So anyways, if anyone cares, I’ll be posting lots of stuff on [url=http://gamerlimit.com/ ]Gamer Limit[/url] during E3, and my twitter feed will be going crazy with show updates. If you’re interested, check it out. If anyone has any special requests for things I should do, games I should play, or people I should talk to, let me know.