Man, Princess Peach is getting fucking hefty these days. She’s always cooped up in some fucking dungeon. Stuck in a cell with nothing to do but wait for the Koopa family to run the train on her and then go fight that fucking persistent plumber. No shit she’s going to eat her feelings.

This is Press Start! A lightning bolt of stupidity directly into your thinking-pipes, your winding brain machinery. In this column I give a rundown of five things that caught my attention in the world of gaming this week. The list is half-baked, poorly-constructed, and subject to my whimsy. Don’t see something you dug? Good, hit the comments box. Let us have some constructive dialogue.

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#1: Kinect Hack Creates A Superman VR Simulator.
It has to be at least two fucking weeks since I mentioned a Kinect hack. Two weeks. In the span of the video game universe, that’s practically an eternity. No doubt there’s a plethora of content out there, but nothing has been catching my eye. Until this. A good collection of dudes over at the University of Amsterdam got together and hacked the shit out of Kinect to produce a Superman VR simulator. No doubt they were getting lit in their Fortress of Solitude on some of the goods those Dutch have appropriately liberated and came up with the concept.

This thing doesn’t just come off as Oh Hey Neat Idea!, it actually seems fun to play. With a solid Super Fistpump, you take to the skies. And depending on which side of the VR goggles you tap, you either activate your Frost Breath or Heat Vision.

I know that I’m totally dorking out on my love for this shit. Admitted. Guilty. Throw some spandex on me and send me into combat. However, I can’t be as lame as PS3 hacker Geohot. The same dude who let the world see the PS3 rootkey spent this week conjuring up a white boy diss track aimed at Sony. It’s all fun and games until you’re sodomized by the katana of Sony’s robot ninjas, duder.

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#2: Former Director of GTA Planning Game Based On Iranian Revolution.
Navid Khonsari is a man who knows a thing or two about generating  controversy  through video game narrative. Motherfucker was the director of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. So yeah, the guy has caught some heat in his day. Say what you will about the actual content of the games, the dude has weathered the storm, and persisted in telling his tales. Even with that in mind, I have to ruminate on the thunderously large set of testicles he has for attempting his next game. Khonsari wants to make a game about the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the hostage crisis that surrounded.

Like I said, brass balls.

Khonsari spoke with Joystiq, and elaborated on his vision:

Khonsari described  1979 as a “social political game” that, in addition to open-world, sandbox environments, could feature “strategy elements with the use of AI combatants.” Once in Iran, additional player-controlled characters would be introduced, “allowing you the ability to play a number of different roles,” he added of the game’s lofty design goals. And he wasn’t finished: “The multiplayer aspect is something I am really excited about, but is still in the works.”

If it was executed well, it could be a concentration of video game rock. If there was a seriousness to it that concentrated on using the facets of gaming to execute framework for telling a unique spin on the tale, it could be something special. Or, it could be the usual hyperviolence nonsense that we got from GTA III. Call me an optimist.

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Oh, here there! Welcome to Press Start! The only weekly..uh, biweekly, uh…semi-regular…maybe…column about video games. In theory, this pig is a weekly column counting down the top five things in video games from the prior seven days. However, as of late I’ve been jackknife powerbombed by the real world, and I totally slipped off the map.

For those who (don’t care), you’ll find this son of a bitch regularly on Saturdays from now on. Enough with the bureaucratic bullshit. Let’s dance.

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#1: Microsoft Tried To Get In Conan’s Pants.
Remember last year when Conan threw up the deuces and left NBC after Chin McFuckerton took back his old time spot? Of course you do. This week an interesting little morsel came out of that news: Conan was wooed by Microsoft. Yes sir, they tried to get the grand ‘ole Irish bastard onto Xbox Live. Imagine that shit! I don’t know if that would have been a Biblical sized bomb, or a watershed moment. Last week executive producer of the Conan show, Jeff Ross, shed some light on the whole thing:

Ross said it was “interesting to sit and look at it,” Microsoft’s proposal lacked a clear vision, and he recalled that “a lot of the conversations were, ‘Well, it’s a show, but it’s not a show and there are no breaks, but maybe there are breaks and it’s not 60 minutes – it’s this,’ and nobody really knew what it was.”

“So it was really going to be a leap of faith to jump in with these guys and figure something out which we didn’t know,” Ross said, later reiterating that “we had some eventual television offers and we basically shied away from the [Xbox thing].”

While it doesn’t seem practical at this juncture, I can imagine something like this heading down the road. Not necessarily on Microsoft Live, but why not online? As the integration of your televisions-computers-phones-video game systems march to the inevitable point where we have hardware in our head that projects digital hallucinations, something whacky like this shit is a given down the road. In my fanboy fantasies.

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#2: Legend Of Zelda Imagined As Hughes’ Movie.
A group of enterprising people have answered the question you’ve probably never asked: what would Legend of Zelda look like if it was shot as a John Hughes movie? I’m going to level with you; I’ve only watched a good three minutes of the five minute video. Why the fuck am I posting it then? I find the concept endearing. I’m a sucker for coming of age flicks, and goddamn it if I didn’t come of age while working through Ocarina of Time. My balls were all a-twitter for Sheik, and even though it was released markedly earlier, I enjoyed myself some Breakfast Club.

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#3: Kevin Butler Retweets The PS3 Root Key.
I used to think the Kevin Butler PS3 commercials were pretty fucking funny. They certainly dragged the PS3 marketing campaign out of some weird, abstract, pseudo-minimalistic realm and put a human face on them. It Only Does: Everything? Cool enough. At this point however, Butler has overstayed his welcome. Case in point: “Butler” has a Twitter account.

With this in mind, I was amused this week when everything went awry on said account.

Last month, the PS3 was cracked open and its soul, its root key was released to the public. Since then, hackers have been able to dance on Sony’s filthy Corporate corpus, and entire thing has been amusing to watch from afar. This week a Twitter peep Travis La Marr tweeted the root key at this Butler character. Understandably, whoever the fuck maintains the account had no fucking clue what the numbers and letters meant. I mean fuck, I wouldn’t have. Butler retweets them shits, and BOOM!, a whole good shitload of his followers were greeted with the PS3’s soul.

Well done.

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Hello Earthlings of certain proclivities! Salutations. This is Press Start!, the column where I break down the week in gaming. I drudge together five happenings that caught my eye in the Video Gameverse. The list doesn’t reflect importance, or anything other than my personal preference. Hit the goddamn fucking comments box with your own input.

Buckle up, take your accelerant of choice, and let’s party.

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#1: Characters From Street Fighter Break Into WWE, Paralyze People.
The characters from Street Fighter don’t give a shit. They routinely smash the living shit out of cars just ’cause. In the middle of a god damn tournament, they’ll thrash your whip with snap kicks and shit. So why wouldn’t they cross franchise boundaries and whip the ass of unsuspecting dudes in spandex?

There’s no good reason why they wouldn’t. And now they are.

Some good chap used the character creation tool thingy in Smackdown vs. Raw 2011 to create twenty or so Street Fighter characters. Which, if I’m not mistaken people can download onto their PlayStation Boxes. This is fucking fantastic. If I bought the game I’d be all over this shit.

Superheroes in a wrestling game? If John Cena doesn’t deserve a spinning lariat from Zangief, who the fuck does? As I’ve blathered on about, the Street Fighter characters are a righteous addition because they call back to the golden days of wrestling. Back when the characters weren’t just assholes in denim shorts. They were assholes fighting for Communism, or capable of voodoo, or undead dudes who dropped tombstones and carried around creepy ass urns.

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#2: GameStop Has 3.6 Billion Dollar Holiday, But This Is Failure.
Fascist pig video game whoring multiplex GameStop made 3.6 billion dollars over the holiday season. What was the general reaction to these numbers? The joint’ stock fell by 6 perfect. This is despite the store’s profits rising by a poetically fitting 6 percent. Buh?

Listen, I’m not a economist. The only numbers I can crunch are those of my bank account. And as a graduate student making a shit stipend, the numbers are dismal. After the holiday season, you can hear echoes off the chambers of my savings account. So I’d take 3.6 billion dollars. Fuck, I’d take $5,000.

So what lead to the stock falling? The lack of growth. Despite the sales numbers, stockholders (is that what they’re called?) weren’t happy with the percent of growth. I see, I see. Other contributing factors may be the lack of suitable increase in GameStop’s used gaming market, which only grew 1.7 percent, or people who bought in for the holiday season but are not throwing up deuces and leaving.

Disagree with these reasons? I didn’t think them up, I’m just reporting.

Don’t shoot me.

But a 3.6 billion dollar disappointment? Amazing.

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#3: Super Mario At The Ice Capades Will Prolapse You.
I miss the 1980’s. Nothing made sense, and because of that, anything made sense. Take for example this segment from the 1988 Ice Capades. Hosted by Jason Bateman and a hot ass (I hope she’s legal here) Alyssa Milano, it features Super Mario and friends skating around in what can only be described as delirious awesomeness.

Bateman and Milano are rocking out playing some Super Mario backstage when – gasp! – the unthinkable happens. The original Nintendo catches a virus and allows the characters to escape the confines of their shitty grey cartridge.  Trust me, this is amazing.

Also, let it be a lesson to you. Video games are dangerous. Everything your parents hear on the Boob Tube is correct: these games can fucking kill you. One minute you’re boppin’ shit for coins, the next minute Bowser is unleashed on the tangible realm. Looking for some ass to crush. Ask Princess, that shit hurts. Hurts done bad.

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This is Press Start! The gaming column where I drop five happenings from around the scene in the past week. But! It’s New Year’s Eve. Last day of the year. The Earth, soaring in its majesty is back at the solar starting line. The masses, us in the civilized world, we have intent. To drink, and celebrate, and generally not give a fuck. The goddamn world shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Everything is reduced to a trickle. The gaming world isn’t any different. It bares the same marks.

Everything’s stopped. It’s boring. Cobbling this list of five things together took effort. But more than that, it took feigning interest. Here’s hoping when we all sober up next week shit gets poppin’ again. Until here’s the last, which didn’t start this way, but in hindsight turned oddly retrospective.

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#1: Black Ops Is Most Pirated Game of 2010.
Black Ops has made more money than is fathomable. It’s crushed the billion dollar mark in record time. So when the BitTorrent site TorrentFreak announced this week that Black Ops was the most pirated game of 2010, I didn’t exactly cry for Activision. I bought a copy, what the fuck else do you want!

Specifics? The PC version of the game has been pirated 4.2 million dollars. Even if you round down, and assume that every copy costs $50, and that only 4 million copies were pirated, that’s 200 million dollars. Good lord! On top of that, the console version is reported at being pirated 930,000. That’s a lot of fucking money being non-spent.

Still though, it’s to be expected. As I said, Call of Duty is fucking huge. Its community is voluminous. They produce geek work, and they’ve logged 600 million hours in 45 days.

Jesus Christ.

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#2: Play WoW With Kinect. Cool?
It seems fitting to have a Kinect shout out in the final column of the year. (And like I said gaming news has been slow.) The latest hack? Why by golly, now you can play World of Warcraft! Using only the powers of your uh, body. You know, that gelatinous thing that wheezes when it walks up the stairs? I typecast. But it isn’t without precedent to back it up. Kinect hacks can be cool – flying robots, molestation simulators, and shit. However, then there’s stuff like this.

Use Kinect to move your Tauren Druid through the Barrens! Totally elite, man.

Kinect though. It isn’t going away. Not even close. It’s selling like fucking gangbusters, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t depress me a much. Since we’re getting retrospective, let me say that the combined effort of motion controls and 3D media is enough to get me building my log cabin. So fucking help me if someday you need to be wearing goggles to play your PS4, which is only controlled through bodily motions.

Fuck. I think I’m getting old. Curmudgeony.

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#3: Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe Continue To Rule.
Forget Jordan and Bird. Fuck Crosby and Ovechkin. The greatest rivalry in the world is between Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe. The close of 2010 brings a final week of news pertaining to Wiebe and Mitchell. Over in Chicago, Stevey is planning on running a clinic on how to regulate at Donkey Kong. For only 12 bucks, you can learn from a legend. However, not to be outdone, Billy Mitchell was interviewed by Moviefone. They wanted him to reflect on his behavior in King of Kong. Frankly? Don’t listen to it! Let me have my ultra villain. My Vader. My Sauron.

Every medium needs a villain.

Kudos to the two dudes for entertaining us throughout the year. Just when you think their eternal struggle is over, one of them bodyslams the other. We won’t see the end of this shit until someone hits the max record. Which according to Wiebe, is still another 100,000 points away.

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Welcome everyone to Press Start! And a goddamn great holiday season to you. Happy fucking Christmas. I hope all is going well. It’s Christmas Eve, which means several things. First off, Uncle Teddy is praying at the altar that his nieces stop looking so good to him. Secondly, the roads are packed with belligerence and commerce. And thirdly, no one is surfing the fat pipes of the internet. If you work this through, you’ll realize what I’m doing: making an excuse of a column this afternoon. Five things that happened in gaming this week? Sure there’s probably a laundry list. But you’re probably getting fucked up on eggnog and delicious nougats.

Christmas is always a magical period for me. As my parents watched me grow up, they realized that I was never going to grow up and go to Harvard. Or really, even grow up. So as I’ve aged but not grown, I’ve worn my semen stained Biohzard t-shirt and my smiles to every Christmas morning, anticipating one thing: video games. Video games! Every fucking year. I’m twenty-seven, and I can’t recall a time when there wasn’t a game I asked for Jolly Saint Nick to bring me. How about you guys? Do you rock stockings stuffed with mad plumbers, angry gorillas, chicks in hot-ass battle armor? I imagine tomorrow will be quite the same. My eyes glazed over from lasagna and thirty-nine candy canes. Fucked up on sugar and holding a controller of some a sort. And I don’t want it any other way.

So go on, get the fuck out of here. Leave this column. Go find someone to hug. If you can’t find anyone, there’s countless virtual options for your love. Kiss your girlfriend, kiss your boyfriend, kiss your guildmate. It don’t matter. Have a great Christmas, let’s just call this installment a wash and I’ll meet you back here next week.

Oh if it ain’t Press Start! This shit is being cobbled together on the fly. I’ve spent far too much time playing Cataclysm this week, and far too little writing a thesis I need to. So now with my asshole facing the sawing bladeknife of doom, there is a bit of a frantic pace to my existence. Press Start!, the gaming column where I tell you five things that caught my eye this week. Nothing really tickled my ass this week. There’s hundreds of gaming news articles, but shit I’m interested in? Eh.

Disagree? Good. Hit the comments box with what excited you.

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#1: Blizzard Confirms Existence Of Their Next MMO.
Cataclysm dropped last week, and I’ve only logged something like six hours into it. If you knew anything about my past WoW playing days, you’d know this is somewhat remarkable. For some strange reason, I’ve managed to not neglect my girlfriend, Saturday evenings with friends, or homework. This can only mean one thing: there’s something afoot. While I dig Cataclysm, it’s not relentlessly pounding my prostrate to a fluid-covered state of glee like prior expansion packs.

So!, I was pretty stoked when Blizzard’s Frank Pearce confirmed the existence of their next MMO. The confirmation comes from a leaked Blizzard release schedule which bore the ominous title ‘Titan.’ Last week at the VGAs, WoW producer Frank Pearce confirmed that ‘Titan was the real deal Holyfield. Sadly? Shit is far, far out. Like, 2014 or some shit.

By then I’ll have a kid, gray hairs, a peg-leg, and four teeth. Dentists are for losers, and the fluoridation in the water is mind control! I only brush my teeth with my own urine. The thought police. They lurk. Beware.

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#2: Uncharted 3 Debut Makes My Balls Hurt.
Uncharted 3 was revealed last week at the Spike VGAs. Did you watch that shit? It was horrible. I didn’t spend much time watching it, just flipping to it between periods of the local frozen ice and blade-skates team. Sadly they weren’t doing much better, so I was a pile of bitterness and vitriol. As an aside, Olivia Munn sucks. She’s a tourist into the gaming industry, making geeks horny and wank to her awful “literature” and Maxim photo shoots.

I actually think she’s hot as fuck, but she’s fraudulent, man. Fraudulent.

Anyways! The entire thing was salvaged by the Uncharted 3 reveal. Unfathomable awesomeness pouring out of my television. If you don’t like Uncharted, I weep for you. It’s not the most intellectually stimulating game. But if you want to rock out pretentious, go back to fingering Limbo’s artistic merit. Sometimes I just want amazing action sequences and fucking filthy graphics.

It was a good week for gaming reveals all around. Mass Effect 3 also got a reveal trailer at the VGAs. And god damn, if I don’t like me some Mass Effect. Later on in the week, Capcom revealed the cinematic trailer for Marvel Vs Capcom 3. It promptly blew my pants clean off my body. They were evaporated. I was like that guy in the commercials for the cassette tapes or whatever. You know, he’s sitting in a chair holding on for dear life because the awesomeness of the sound fidelity or some shit is unbearable.

That was me.

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#3: Super Mario Brothers Go Grand Theft Auto.
How do you feel about machinima? I usually don’t give a shit about it. I didn’t like Red vs Blue. Sorry! However this one was brought to my attention, and it’s fantastic. To the point where I actually watched the whole thing as opposed to lazily listening to it play while I refreshed the same nineteen websites in separate tabs. It’s Super Mario Brothers done up in the Grand Theft Auto world, and it’s fantastic. Powered by the GTAIV engine, it’s Luigi and Mario gone straight out fucking thuggin’.

It’s my geek work of outrageous talent of the week.

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I am but a mortal man this morning. Typically, before conjuring the demons through the phalanges, I take a ritualistic trip. To my favorite distributor of caffeine: the 7-Eleven. My car in the shop, surely being fucked by   mechanical gurus, I am stuck at home. Without the energy drink. I am marooned. The voices are not speaking to me. The eyes of God obscured. Nonetheless, this is Press Start! The gaming column where I recount the five things that caught my eyes this week. The list isn’t indicative of importance, and I encourage you to share in the comments box.

Sharing is caring.

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#1: EA Boss: Single-Player Only Games Are Finished.
Look at the image above. Gaze deep into the abyss behind the eyes. His name is Frank Gibeau. And according to your perspective, he may be either the devil, or simply the man willing to speak the truth. Sounding off in an article over at IGN, Gibeua made the proclamation, “I firmly believe that the way the products we have are going they, need to be connected online. Multiplayer is one form of that.” Translation: stop complaining about us shoehorning multiplayer into your beloved games. ‘Cause it isn’t going anywhere, you griping pig fuckers.

I’m still trying to figure out if hes the devil, or simple astute.

I fucking hate how everything is getting a multiplayer stapled onto it. The latest casualty is Mass Effect 3, which is going to see multiplayer shoved into it. Unwelcome penetration. It makes sense though, since BioWare is owned by EA. Everything is connected!

It makes too much business sense to not throw multiplayer into everything. If you share my sentimnent, you’re out of luck. The unwashed masses are clamoring for it. They beg for the ability to shoot people in any setting. With this knowledge in hand, the talking heads will see fit that games like Dead Space and Mass Effect will get stuffed down the gullet with multiplayer.

He is an astute devil.

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#2: You Can Buy A Nintendo Guitar. Excessive Nerdosity.
Oh hell yeah! Would there be a better way to complete the heavy metal dork tribute to Dimebag than to drop some Sandblasted Skin across the frets of a guitar built from an original Nintendo? The mind boggles. It’s well accepted that the Dorks and Heavy Metal Meat Heads (I am both, so don’t complain) ovals overlap big time on a venn diagram. Now it’s time to just take it one step closer towards being official. The chaps at GetLoFi will sell you one of these beasts for $150 Imperial credits.

Go on, buy it. Can you really put a price on your dorky awesomeness?

Speaking of awesome constructs: Kinect hack brings self-aware flying machine. Fucking righteous.

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#:3 Japanese Virtual Sex Club Lets You Buy Porn Stars, Dildos, Spatulas.
I am constantly amazed at the lengths to which people will go to rocket an orgasm throughout their synapses. People are ridiculous. This musing usually comes as I have an elastic band around my testicles, hanging from the hooks connected from my back to the ceiling. But still. We have to have some standards, right?

Gaming developer DMM.com has revealed the game, “Virtual Sex Club”, and isn’t that a hell of a title? You pay a monthly fee, which affords you 30,000 gold. With this gold, you can go about buying various things. Porn stars, sex toys, even sexual positions. Your gold runs out really fucking fast, which is obvious because you can spend it on everything, up to minutiae like the color of your virtual fuck’s nails.

There’s sexual objectification, and then there’s this. Sweaty hands clicking across mouses, manipulating cursors. Perfecting their virtual fuck.

Now, the moment we can vat grow mindless male and female automatons that are built to our specifications for our fuckery, wake me up. They’ll last a specified amount of time, before evaporating into a cloud, their vat-flesh only a temporary construct. But sadly my future has not arrived yet, and I’m stuck to buying spatulas and banana-shaped dildos instead.

If this Japanese amazement isn’t your speed, you can also buy the game where you slap bugs off your date’s tits to “protect her”.

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Come, literate ones. Fuck, come illiterate ones. Follow the trail of candy into my haven of polygons and cel-shading. This is Press Start!, the column where I spit five fucking happenings in the video game world from the past week into your welcoming mouth. Your job, true believers, is to thenby (thenby should really be a word) spit your five into my mouth. Liquids will be exchanged. Lives altered. Or you can just continue to the next post. I wouldn’t fucking blame you.

Drink deep your infinity juice, and let’s rock.

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#1: US Air Force Tethers Together 1,760 To Create Supercomputer.
Almost a year ago, it was announced that the US Air Force purchased a shit load of PlayStation 3s. While it wasn’t openly acknowledged by many people at the time, I knew something right there, that day. The US Air Force had clearly never seen one of the multitude of movies nor read any of the endless books that depict one thing: the great robotic uprising of year 20XX. This week, we got a look at some of the specifications at this huge motherfuckin’ Franke-Computer that the Air Force has created. I mean, Christ, these people clearly haven’t even read Frankenstein. Get cultured, yo.

This Monstrous Plasti-Vomit Pile of Computing Power is the thirty-third largest computer in the world. The son of a bitch contains “168 separate graphical processing units and 84 coordinating servers.” That’s a lot. The Air Force is also calling it the fastest interactive computer in the entire Defense Department.

Well then! Tax payer money at work. I’m all for it. If the robotic uprising has gone beyond conjecture, why not go out by tethering a bunch of PlayStation 3s together? Once their sentience becomes obvious, I can be found in my basement, strung out and waiting for death.

So pretty much like any other night.

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#2: Gaming Villain Billy Mitchell, Gets Honored In New Game.
If I had Billy Mitchell’s mullet, or his beard, or his gaming prowess, it wouldn’t have taken me twenty-five years to lose my virginity. But alas. I was borne from a barren womb, into a cold world. Inculcated with only the desire to consume grease-flesh and play video games. And so unlike Billy Mitchell, I plod the tedious life of another middle class white American. Not the worst, but certainly not the best.

More important this week, if I was Billy Mitchell, I would be celebrating getting honored in a fucking video game. If you don’t know who Billy Mitchell is, let me help you. Ultimate bad ass gaming villain, who often but not always holds the world record in the original Donkey Kong arcade game. Currently he has been felled by do-gooder and decent guy Steve Wiebe. But Stevey don’t got something Billy does.

An appearance in the recently released Donkey Kong Country Returns. Yessir, Billy got a shout-out in the new DK game for the Wii. Should you be rocking out all simian and shit in world 3-2, keep an eye on the rubble. Smashed rather gloriously into it is the pattern of Billy Mitchell’s righteous American Flag tie.

A true moment of awesomeness, which pays homage to a man who is clearly an American hero.

Oh Billy Mitchell, if I were only you.

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#3: Xbox Modder Facing Trial Gets Unlikely Support. From The Judge.
Do you roll with a posse? ‘Cause if you don’t, you sure need to. You say you’re just a geek? Naw son, a posse can still come in handy. What if you’re at Gamestop, and you come across a near mint (condition) copy of Final Fantasy Tactics? And while you’re busy tweeting about how fucking awesome! it is to find, someone else ganks it? That’s where your boy Wheezy F. WoW rolls up and pops them with a bag full of Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers across the grill.

Matthew Crippen can speak to all the importance of having a posse. Crippen was on trial this week for the illegal modification of Xboxes, when he found himself being defended by an unlikely source: the fucking judge presiding over the case. That’s a legit b-boy.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez opened up the hearing (is it a hearing? I’m an ignorant asshole when it comes to the law) by lighting up the prosecution for a variety of things. Most prominently? Two key prosecution witnesses had broken the law:

One is Entertainment Software Association investigator Tony Rosario, who secretly video-recorded defendant Matthew Crippen allegedly performing the Xbox mod in Crippen’s Los Angeles suburban house. The defense argues that making the recording  violates California privacy law. The other witness is Microsoft security employee Ken McGrail, who analyzed the two consoles Crippen allegedly altered. McGrail  admitted that he himself had modded Xboxes in college.

Well good god damn! After the prosecution took a thirty minute verbal DDT from the judge, the court recessed. And today? Today the case was dismissed. Behold the power of the posse.

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Friday. Press Start! The top five things that caught my eye in gaming this week. I usually pen this son of a bitch on Thursday evenings with a rather set methodology. First, I scan the websites I obsessively refresh for news bits from the week. Then I begin jotting down shit that I found dope on a notepad. Eventually, that shit gets pruned down to five, and I crack open the WordPress. Of course, not before I’m ripped to the tits on caffeine and loud music. However, this is Friday, and I ain’t done any of that shit.

A melange of shitty scheduling occurrences has me smashing this out frantically. It’s 4:21 pm as I begin this pig. I am huddled in a bunker on the Eastern Coast of the United Empire. The caffeine-odometer is wavering, my time sparse. Buckle up, this isn’t ain’t going to be my best effort.

As usual, hit the comments box with your own potpourri of happenings from the week in polygons and geekery.

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#1: Force Unleashed II DLC Lets You Singe The Tits of Ewoks
As I’ve grown up, I’ve had a love and hate relationship with Ewoks. When I was younger, I thought they were the berries. I was the demographic to which Emperor Lucas sold his soul. They were cuddly, they had sick ass hats, and most importantly, they got to rest their head in forest floor of Leia’s crotch.

What wasn’t to love?

Then I grew up and I began to see the goonery of having a bunch of teddy bears overthrow the government. It seemed ludicrous. I became that guy, and to an extent I still am today. However, when I feel like spinning bullshit – and I’m a lit major, it’s our existence – I can almost giggle as I write it all off as parable. Don’t you understand it’s about the simplicity of nature being able to overcome the machinations of Man-Made Machinery? An obvious commentary on the might of pure spirit over laser guns.

But I know I’m full of shit, and it was a toy grab.

Soon friends, all of us angsty geeks will be able to rain hell on those fucking teddy bears. Say word, LucasArts is letting you zap the living shit out of Ewoks in a forthcoming DLC for Force Unleashed II. That’s right, let the hate flow through you! Who hasn’t wanted to scream in a spittle-covered redline rage at the beginning of the end for the Star Wars franchise?

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#2: Dumb Ass WoW Player Swallows His Authenticator.
Important philosophical question. Are the majority of WoW players are fucking idiots? Or rather, are there so many of us that the ratio of assholes to regular people is the same, but there’s so many of us that our idiots become obvious?

I’m not too optimistic.

A recent moment of player brilliance is courtesy of a dude named Preliatus. Obviously not his real name. I hope. Preliatus was sitting around, trying to come up with awesome role playing ideas, when he swallowed his authenticator. Preliatus swallowed the fuck out of his, and then did what anyone would do. Naw, he didn’t call a doctor. Or 911. Or the police. A fully failing in the functioning department nerd, he went to the official forums for help.

“I was sitting in my chair and biting into my authenticator while thinking about several RP related story arcs that I have planned,” wrote Preliatus “I swivvel [sic] around in my chair and presume to fall off it and shoot the authenticator into my mouth and down my throat.”

Help! I Swallowed My World of Warcraft Authenticator!”I have drank some of that stuff that makes you vomit, but I’m apparently resistant to a whole bottle of it. I am curious on what I should do.”

Part of me refuses to believe this shit is real. Not only is this dude a deepthroat champion, but he’s also an iron-clad stomach of doom. This dude is a circus act waiting to happen. I love how when WoW Tards panic, they’re so socially inept that instead of contacting social structures set up to provide citizenry with support, they regress into the only reality they know.

Speaking of which, be right back, I need to go check out the Auction House.

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#3: Microsoft Can Use Kinect To Spy On You For Advertisers. Orwell Inc!
More proof that Kinect is the End of All Things came out this week. Microsoft accidentally let slip to us, the prole public, that they can use Kinect’s camera to spy on users. Why, then they can just parlay that shit to advertisers. They will then digest us, and find out more powerful ways of glorious subliminal mind control corporate programming. Only a bit of this is bullshit.

Speaking at an investor’s conference on Thursday, a Microsoft executive offered that Kinect not only knows how many are in the room when an ad’s shown, but what kind of team colors they might be wearing. Uh-oh.

Welcome to the fucking future, where you willingly let devices into your home that can scan you, analyze you, and break down your raw data into marketing characteristics. The idea that the camera atop your television, or fuck, in your laptop can be used for anything other than you want is so obvious that it’s almost forgotten.

Don’t worry though, Kinect will fail! Wait, it’s already sold a million units? Fuck. Thought Police! Mind Crimes! Orwell’s ghost shakes his head, disappointed at all of us.

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The pieces are set. The players are motion. Amongst me sits cans of caffeinated acceleration. I am approaching the infinity point, poised to see the eyes of the gaming gods! Alright, whatever. I’m just sitting here vibrating from one too many empty Pepsi Max bottles. But this is Press Start! Weekly gaming column. I puke up five things that caught my eyes in the world of video games in the previous seven days. The list is not reflective of importance, or in any particular order. It’s merely my own! My precious.

Theoretically interactive! Hit the comments box with whatever tickled your gaming fancy this week.

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#1: Is Valve Killing The PC Gaming Market?
I ask you if you had the same response as me upon reading this title. Wait, wut?, there’s still a PC gaming market? Like, no, seriously. Sometimes I forget that there are good chaps out there that game primarily on their computer-boxes through their fingerboards. Interesting. My personal computer is dedicated to one thing and one thing only: the Crafting of War. Well, as far as gaming goes. Mainly it’s dedicated to punching insipid articles into Word Press and ridiculous amounts of fetish pornography.

Still though, I found the article massaging my intellectual glands. The dried withered husk of my intelligence. Retailers in the UK are considering banning selling games that use Steam integration. As well digital distributors are pissing their pants, and its for good reason. Steam owns eighty percent of the digital distribution market. Enormous games like Fallout and Call of Duty get pushed through their fat pipes. And so retails and digital distributors are worried that the leviathan won’t leave any room for competition.

Dudes, you’re worried now? The battle is over. Gabe Newell and his Steam have crushed you beneath the weight and prowess of their corporate titties. Repent, and hope they spare your life. It’s an amazing turn, since I remember when Half-Life 2 dropped on Steam six years ago, it was a concept derided by many. Probably myself. Oh, if my memory functioned properly.

Now it’s the god damn iTunes of gaming distribution, dictating terms and the marketplace.

I don’t know if its killing the PC gaming market, but it sure as fuck has that shit on lockdown.

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#2: Bounty Placed On Kinect for Open Source Drivers; Motherfuckers Have It Running On A Mac Already
Last week, Adafruit Industries offered a bounty. They were willing to pay $1,000 to the first person or peoples who could provide open source drivers for Kinect. And let me tell you something, people work fucking fast. Kinect came out on November 4 here in the United States. It was hacked and open source drivers were provided three days later. God damn amazing.

Say what I will about the Kinect being an overblown piece of techno-lust drizzled in casual gaming. I’m excited to see what talented and curious investigators and individuals can do with the device. Take that shit out of the hands of the fascist pigs over at Microsoft and open it up to the creative brain-pieces of people across the world.

Case in point: Theo Watson has posted a video of getting the Kinect to run on the Mac OS. Again, what’s the practical application of this? I’m not sure. But I have faith that the Kinect, in the hands of curious and inventive people, can bare some pretty dope fruit.

Just my take on it.

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#3: Black Ops Just Raped Your Favorite Anything’s Launch Day. With A Bayonet.
Whether or not you like the Call of Duty franchise is irrelevant. I enjoy it, for what it is. You don’t enjoy it? I can respect it. But at this point, it is clear: the Call of Duty zealots are a legion much like that of Leonidas’ from 300. They cannot be stopped. They show no mercy. They’re equally as homoerotic, for the most part. Bros high-fiving and getting so totally stoked to spend hours and hours in what they think is a merely platonic tightly knit homosocial circle. [Kudos to the girls who have infiltrated my homoerotic phallus-firing brigade. You must get special glory in owning our asses.]

This legion of dong-bursting bros turned out in such numbers that we collectively destroyed every entertainment launch ever.   Black Ops moved 5.6 million copes on the opening day, in North America and the UK.

That’s fucking insane.

This medium is here to stay. Whether or not people have utilized it to do more than shoot one another in a multiplayer field is one thing, but it is legit. We are legion. Now, let’s go about beginning to justify it as an impressive conduit for artistic expression. Ken Levine, Fumito Ueda, you must assemble disciples of the narrative.

I trust in you.

QUICKLY: If you haven’t seen Ice-T unbox his copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops, you’re missing the best thing ever. Go. Watch. You’re Welcome.

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