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Mother Says Baby Game for the DS Will Start a Living Room Jihad

There was a time when our ancestors avoided the jaws of the sabretooth tiger and other threats by invoking the help of mysterious nature-gods. These rituals were based around fear and superstition, and the results were dictated by coincidences and circumstance.

Today, we are guided by intellect instead of fear—oh wait, no we're not. We're still scared of the uncertain. How can we not be, when wild-eyed foreigners somehow slip their pro-Islamic propaganda into Nintendo DS games about washing babies.

Rachel Jones from Indiana claims that the copy of Baby Pals she bought for her daughter has a baby who coos, “Islam is the light.” Incidentally, Jones is the same unfun mother who started a crusade last October over a Fisher-Price doll that reportedly said the same thing.

Jones says she feels bad for being forced to constantly take these Jihad-instigating toys away from her children. I think Jesus is smiling on her, though. Out of everything he preached about love, acceptance, and avoiding hypocrisy, he was most adamant that parents should do away with nonsense-babbling toys.

There's a news report after the jump. The anchors look horrified over the whole business.

Posted Jan 28 2009, 10:51 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo ds, media, stupid, nadia oxford, facepalm, islam, baby pals, mom

Boulevard of Broken Screens

When the Wii first hit the market, Nintendo boasted that it'd produced the most affordable console of the current generation. That wasn't taking into account the hundreds of thousands of dollars shelled out by the Einsteins who got caught up in the passion of Wii Sports and put their remotes through the screen like ivory bullets.

Towards the end of 2006, YouTube was flooded with people who had ruined their televisions in this manner (I do admire that the victims had the good humour to upload their disasters so at the very least the world could get a laugh at the expense of their plasma television). Rubber remote jackets and a worldwide wrist strap awareness campaign has since made gamers more wary of the Wii remote's power, and they respect it.

Alas, recent video footage shows that one European gentleman slept through Wii Education 101. He is happily playing Wii Bowling one minute and then crying for his mother in the next. Don't let this be you. Respect the Remote.

The video is stuck on auto-play, so it's after the jump.

Posted Dec 16 2008, 06:03 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo wii, stupid, nadia oxford, broken television, wii remote

Quality? Not For You, America

Yesterday, i gave pure evil the benefit of the doubt and claimed that Sonic Unleashed might not be completely disappointing. Soon after making that post, I found out some disturbing news: we (meaning all of you proud, patriotic Americans out there) are getting an inferior version of a game that promises to at least be better than airborne, infectious cancer. According to Wired's Game|Life:

Sega has announced that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Sonic Unleashed in Japan -- where it's known as Sonic World Adventure -- are getting pushed back from their original December 18 release date to the nebulous "spring 2009."

The move doesn't affect the Wii version -- still set for December 18 -- and the only reasons stated for the delay are to "further enhance the content" and "improve the quality" of the title.

The North American Xbox 360 version of Unleashed is set to come out November 24, and Sega's US site for the game has no mention of any delays.

The transparency of quotes like "further enhance the content" and "improve the quality" are pretty astounding. Where was Sega's PR department, whose job is to turn blunt statements like these into easy-to-swallow lies? You know, stuff like "Our computers ran out of blue" and "We need to stock up on more RAMs." Right now, Sega's statements are implicitly stating that there will be a lack of both content and quality in the American version of Unleashed, and that ain't good. It's not uncommon to see a refined edition of a game come out later in Japan and never make it to the States--like Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System--but this is just some straight-up Sega dumbness.

Sega, we all want to like Sonic again. Why won't you let us?

Posted Nov 11 2008, 09:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: sega, sonic the hedgehog, sonic unleashed, stupid, bob mackey, delays

Warning: Pictoimage Isn't Really A Game

Yesterday, my general boredom led me to the Wii's space-gobbling Nintendo channel, in the hopes that something could eat away minutes of my precious free time. I was luck enough to stumble across a DS demo for Sega's PictoImage, which amazingly transforms your DS into a virtual piece of paper! Here's the trailer:

Yep, PictoImage is the same gimmicky crap that made everyone think the DS was a bad idea back in 2004. Thank god we can experience those same feelings in 2008, what with Ping Pals being a forgotten tragedy nearly four years after the system's launch.

Posted Aug 28 2008, 05:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with no comments

Filed under: sega, ds, stupid, bob mackey, pictoimage

The Contrarion: Games Critics Awards are a Pointless Waste of Time

Each year, journalists form 36 media outlets aggregate their views on E3's best games -- "games that will shape the future of interactive entertainment".

What a stupid, worthless accolade. The journalists are basically judging on trailers and brief "hands-on" time. Why would any self-respecting journalist bother participating in such a masturbatory contest? Cripe, Kotaku managed to squeeze five posts out of it. Spore has secured a place for the last three years. Past winners include classics like Def Jam: Fight for New York, Majestic, Oni, Um Jammer Lammy, and Sentinel Returns. Real paradigm shifters, those. Shaping the future of online entertainment.

The full breakdown....AFTER THE JUMP!!!1

Posted Aug 06 2008, 12:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with 4 comment(s)

Filed under: kotaku, fallout 3, cole stryker, spore, game critics awards, stupid

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.