Mogul Maniac was packed with the Joyboard, a joystick platform the player stood on and controlled by shifting bodyweight and staying balanced. These and the many other unusual devices produced for the VCS had varying degrees of usefulness and commercial success, but nevertheless enhanced the distinctiveness of Atari’s system.

Sound familiar …. ?? A board … that the player balances on … like, maybe a Balance Board ?

Everything old is new again (and maybe the Nintendo hardware designers aren’t as creative as a lot of people make out … they just have good memories ….)

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Not coming to Virtual Console anytime soon (or ever).

Via WiiFanboy and TechEBlog.

I ignored most news about Super Mario Galaxy when I was first released (except for the overall ratings), so as to avoid spoiling the surprise elements of the game … well,  this certainly is a surprise … a glitch in an otherwise pretty polished first-party Nintendo game. Don’t see that often.

There’s a video of the glitch here at NintendoWiiFanboy … I’m just hoping this doesn’t happen next time I work my way back though the level and meet Bowser …

A quick search on Flickr for ‘wii’ pulls up lots of smiling faces and flailing arms, reminding me of our last family gathering with the Wii. Here’s a few of my favorites (sorry, can’t embed Flickr photos here .. you’ll have to follow the links):

One happy kid opens the box ..

A kid with Cerebal Palsy plays baseball with his sister (which is impressive, disabled or not … I personally find Wii Sports Baseball is HARD)

… Age is no barrier … now we’ve just gotta get these guys into some ‘hardcore’ games and encourage third-party developers to release some titles to capture the ‘grey dollar’.

I don’t know what game requires a lunge like that …

There’s tons like this, and more at the Wii Motion Flickr pool … dedicated to photos of people having fun with their Wii. It’s like a peek into the living rooms of those lucky few who will unwrap a Wii come Christmas morning.

The “sometimes controversial” Jeff Gerstmann reviews the new Eidos game Kane and Lynch and gives it a mediocre score. Most other reviewers agree with his analysis.

Jeff Gerstmann is fired.

Accusations and speculation fly that Eidos put pressure on Gamespot to fire Gerstmann, since Gamespot also has some advertising deals with Eidos.

It looks like Eidos also might have put some fake or misrepresented review scores on the official Kane and Lynch site.

There are lots of interesting responses to these events, debating the state of ethics in game journalism and the state of game reviews in general.

So far there has been little comment of interest from the parties actually involved, but it will be certainly interesting to see how this all plays out. Gamespot has already lost a huge amount of credibility in my book, but lets see how they do the damage control …

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

(spoiler, he gives up and goes out with a whimper)

The commentary actually sounds like it’s by a real plumber from Brooklyn

“You’re breaking my balls Mario, God damn it !!”

Via The Tanooki (who seems to crumbled under the strain of a good hard Digg‘ing. I’ll cite the original source when I can find out who actually made it …).

And while I’m at it, if you want more Goonies fan-art goodness, check out “Chunk in Charge” at Channel 101. Remember when Chunk said he’d look after Sloth forever … well Chunk and Sloth both grew up, and forever now seems like a much longer time ….

Via WiiLiving.

Via The Bits Bytes Pixels Sprites and The Tanooki.

See more gamer tattoos at The TheBBPS.com Gamer Ink gallery.

“One plus about working with hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy women is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily. Yeah, that’s right, I’m buying Grey Goose in bulk now, and I do not feel the slightest amount of shame. I am awestruck by a particular woman at work; as a matter of fact, she’s inspired me to add a new character to my latest novel. She has the perfect attributes for “Beatrice” (my new character). She has atrocious frown lines that look even worse when mixed with a pompous, pretentious smirk. This person has provided me with the perfect brainwave for my new character; I get so excited when I run across an archetypal sour puss. And it gets even better…I get to see her everyday! My gut tells me that this woman hasn’t been f***ed in years, and is just upset about it.”

Somehow Jessica got found out by her supervisors at Nintendo and was fired. Shame they let her go, it looks like she has a great creative mind and could have been put to use in some game development (like an adult RPG maybe … Oh yeah, I forgot, Nintendo like to make money from adults but they don’t like to do adult games …).

They really should have given her a promotion. I can already see the headlines now reverberating throughout the blogsphere … “Super Smash Bros. Brawl Dojo update – New character Beatrice the archetypal sour puss.“. Or “New Beatrice move : devastates opponents with her pompous pretentious smirk attack.“. Man, I really want to play that character now … if the Super Smash Bros. Brawl developers are reading this, I have two words for you … Easter Egg !!

Via WiiWii and Digg.