[Editor's note: Holy win, Batmeng! Faith made all of the characters from Final Fantasy VI in perler bead form! -- CTZ] 

Finally, after getting side tracked multiple times and selling my own pieces off because I was too lazy to make new ones for customers, I have finally finished my complete set of Final Fantasy VI characters that I started over a year ago. 

Hit the jump to get a full breakdown off all the characters and check out my Etsy store where I have a ton of videogame related perler bead creations on sale. 

Get ready to kill some slime earlier than expected, Dragon Quest fans! 

Square Enix has officially moved the release date the upcoming Dragon Quest title, Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors to February 19, 2008. The game was original slated for release on February 26, 2008, but I guess the people at Square are just as excited as us for the game's release, so they moved it up. Either that or Final Fantasy XIII is costing them so much money that they need to actually sell something to pay the rent next month. I kid, I kid.

I personally loved the last two Dragon Quest titles and can't wait to pick up my copy this month. You know, to help them with gas money.

Guess CHCH TV loves me, because in less than a week since my last appearance they invited me back to appear on another show called Straight Talk with Connie Smith. Straight Talk covers the hot topics in the news and in this show, Connie was diving into the wonderful of the Wii.

Covering the panel of experts this time around was President of Silicon Knights, Dennis Dyack, Endocrinologist, Dr. Mira Luther and myself as the professional videogame blogger. I was there to demonstrate the Wii and show Connie how to play it. I was the official booth babe, I guess.

Hit the jump for the videos.

I've been fortunate enough to find a group of bead sprite fanatics like me in a little place called The Bead-Sprites Forum, and this group has one member whose pieces are making him stand out from the regular crowd

Doctor Octoroc has made some cute mini 3D versions of our favorite Nintendo consoles, as well as a few life size models as well, all using fused beads to craft them. Anyone who has tried to work with fused beads knows that making 3D pieces is hard because either the beads won't fit together in the end, or the darn pieces just break during construction.

Doc has made a life size Game Boy, Wii plus remote, and a GameCube so far. He's also made a mini-NES, SNES, N64 and GameCube. 

Check out the gallery for all the 3D bead Nintendo consoles.

I wish all my "there's nothing good on TV" moments ended with finding a new and amazing TV show to watch, instead of my usual giving up and watching another Simpsons episode that you've seen a hundred times over.

Last night while channel surfing, I decided to turn to a new show called jPod, that is unfortunately only running on the CBC channel in Canada and to my surprise, that show turned out to be the next great thing in gaming related shows.

The Canadian made show is based on the best selling book, jPod by Douglas Coupland and is also produced by Mr. Coupland as well. The show follows the life of Ethan Jarlewski, a game programmer for a company called Neotronic Arts, which resembles -- but in no legal way is -- Electronic Arts, even though both companies are based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

With all the Virtual Console games coming to the Nintendo Wii shop, I was really hoping that this week’s game that time forgot would have been added by now, but I guess the lovely people at Nintendo and Capcom need a little reminder about how cool Little Nemo: Dream Master was and still is.

If you don’t know what game I’m talking about, then you better hit the jump to learn more.

Videogame craft is everywhere nowadays, but up to this moment, I don't think gamers have seen anything like this.

Artist Becky Schaefer has taken Lara Croft out of the jungles and into the world of needle point with her own unique visions. Becky took ordinary needle point kits that featured typical scenes of sunflowers and farmers and, added the sexy tomb raider into the mix.

Lara looks fantastic as she climbs down the side of a sunflower, or stands nude behind a giant flower. I guess this just goes to prove that videogames can be mixed with anything. Next up: videogame fruit sculptures ... perhaps a Yoshi made from watermelons would look cool at the next family dinner.  

[Via Sprite Stitch via Game Girl Advance -- Thanks, Brian!]

Appearing on Attack of the Show via webcam was the coolest moment in this little geek's life, so imagine the uncontrollable happy dance I did when a local Canadian TV station contacted me to appear as an expert (shows what they know) on a segment about videogame addiction. Let's just say that there was a long and merry jig performed after I hung up the phone.

CHCH Hamilton or E! has a small debate show called Live at 5:30pm where two hosts Mark and Donna talk about the latest issues with a few experts on the subject. Friday's show covered the subject of videogame addiction and I was one of three experts asked to appear on the show.

The other two guests were Mark Ouellette, an assistant professor teaching pop culture at McMaster University and Liz Woolley, the founder of Online Gamers Anonymous and mother to a son who committed suicide in front of his computer after a year long struggle with an Everquest addiction.

I really wish the segment had been longer but the show covers a couple of topics at once and they only have half an hour to cover them. It really bothers me that the con side of the conversation got more air time than the two pro sides, especially when I had the academic on my side. I felt like Adam Sessler when he debated Jack Thompson, in that I was cut off before I got a chance to rip the misinformed game-hater a new one. Don't get me wrong... I feel bad that her son took his own life, but blaming his obviously serious problems on a videogame is a cheap way out of blaming yourself or him for what happened.

Games maybe the stuff of peoples' addictions sometimes, but they are never the cause. If you know anyone who is so badly addicted to videogames or anything else that they have reverted from their family, friends and general life, please get them help before its too late. Addictions are always a serious sign of something really wrong with a person's state of mind.

[Writer's note: Sorry about the watermark. My brother-in-law ripped, edited and uploaded the video for me and the program he had to edit was a trial version. I can't complain cause my computer couldn't even process the 10 minute video. I suck.]

The holidays are finally over, and a few Dtoid community members have some cool swag coming in the mail because they were smart enough to get drunk on egg nog, put on some ugly pants and take a picture during those festive days.

Turkey and booze make us do the strangest things sometimes, and now four Dtoiders will have ever-lasting proof of it. I asked the Dtoid community members to send me pictures of them in ugly pants, and I got some pictures of some ugly pants.

The pants weren't Vanilla Ice ugly or McHammer ugly, but still ugly enough to impress me and that's what counts.

Hit the jump for a list of the winners 

Anyway, Rob Balder has created a cute parody of the Portal end song, which features another famous end boss. The song, "Still Annoyed" features Bowser of Super Mario Bros. fame singing his own version of an appropriate end song. Rob felt that GlaDOS shouldn't be the only end boss to get his own song, so he made one up for Bowser.

Click the play button in the box after the jump to hear this cute parody.

Thanks Reaper for the tip!

Whether its a bunch of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons players or a bunch of extreme Guild War MMORPG players, role-players are generally just nuts. Have you seen the costumes people wear at Blizzcon? I mean talk about "mom's basement" scary.

So no one should ever release them on a Christmas Nativity scene, unless they want some scary cosplay to happen.  Matt Burnett and Ben Levin from For Tax Reasons knew this already, and created a role-playing themed cartoon for the holiday season that spells out the disaster that is public theater and LARP players.

Watch "IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR" on the video screen above, and look for the Final Fantasy and Army of Darkness references.

So, yesterday Rock Band was finally released in Canada, due to the fact Electronic Arts and Harmonix had to push our release date back twice. [Editor's note: Harmonix has insisted that initial announced North American date didn't apply to Canada to begin with.] They didn't have enough units to cover even the U.S. launch, so they pushed our launch date back in hopes they could handle the U.S. demand at first.

And hey, that's fine ... we're used to getting screwed. *cough* Xbox Live Marketplace *cough*

But yesterday when I unloaded those puppies from our truck at work (Toys 'R' Us), I was greeted by only eight copies of the game; four kits for the Xbox 360, and four kits for the PlayStation 3. We didn't even know if we were getting any units to begin with, but receiving just 8 was disappointing.

Apparently my work wasn't the only store to have problems. EB Games stores expected shipments to arrive on Thursday but didn't even know how many they were going to receive, Best Buy and Future Shop stores were telling customers that the game was due out on December 28th and one local St. Catharines store, Entertainment Overload was forced to buy units from the United States just to get some in stock for the Canadian release date.

One store in Calgary called Play Me was trying to sell 50 early copies of Rock Band that they had purchased in the United States for $800 buck a pop. They recently lowered the price to $500 when the game wasn't flying off the shelves. 

Retailers are blaming EA for the lack of units and the lack of knowledge about the game's pricing and release date. I'm just annoyed that I couldn't buy one. 

Thanks Scotty G for reminding me to post about this and to Jim Squires from BBPS.com for the local info.

[Via Game|Life and Monster and Critics] 

Destructoid has some cool swag to make you smarter and all you have to do is dress badly to get it.

EA's newest family trivia game, Smarty Pants for the Nintendo Wii has just launched into stores and Destructoid wants to get a few copies into the hands of some lucky Dtoid readers, along with some extra swag. Just our way of bringing families closer together ... with trivia games for your family to fight over this holiday season. Sweet, huh?

First Prize: copy of Smarty Pants for the Nintendo Wii, Smarty Pants Hoodie and T-shirt

Second to fourth prizes: copy of Smarty Pants for the Nintendo Wii and a Smarty Pants T-shirt

Smarty Pants has 20,000 questions under 8 different categories including games, which are tailored to fit each player's age. You can play by yourself, play against other players or work together to answer the questions in record time.

So, how do you score one of these sweet prize packs? Well, we want you to snap a picture of yourselves in the weirdest or ugliest pants you can find. I'm talking the stuff only your half-blind grandfather would wear as extra pants when his depends fail.

Post the picture in the cblogs under the title, "Ugliest Smarty Pants Contest" and we'll announce the winners on January 2nd, 2008. Entries can be posted up to January 1st at midnight EST.

[Writer's note: My dog is in the picture, because he wouldn't move. Little rug with eyes tries to steal all my gaming stuff.]  

Finally, here's yet another reason to own a Playstation 3.

SquareEnix is giving Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children a shiny new coat of paint for its Blu-ray debut in 2008. There's no exact date for the release, but let's hope for an early spring release. There's also no word if there will be extra content for the new release, but I think Cloud in high definition is enough for me to buy a Blu-ray player.

Ummm ... SquareEnix, this Blu-ray version of the movie is nice and all, but where's our sequel game for Final Fantasy VII? Impress me with that next, please.