No blogging today. The brain barks at my behavior, asking for a moment to cool down. Overheated, it begs for me to relent. I typically scream nay!, and flood the bloodstream yet again with caffeine. Shotgunning Diet Mountain Dews and ripping off psalms to those who aren’t there and certainly aren’t listening.

I shut it down for a day, having ceded the majority of my stem-power to classroom observation, driving to a failing program through the local public library, and eating a calzone. I’m not saying I don’t regret it, but I certainly didn’t miss mashing keys for a lovely twelve hours.

See you all tomorrow, you’re all unapologetically beautiful.

Sammy Hagar isn’t just the genius behind Van Hagar and Mas Tequila. No sir. He’s also the man who has been abducted by aliens multiple times, having his ass downloaded or uploaded or…something. He’s not really sure. But it’s led to some rockin’ jams.

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Sorry about the delay, folks. Meditate to this and embrace your inner Luddite.

What’s up, fuckers! Dial up your compete level to ten and let’s get ready to fucking rock! Slap that pink polo on, scream at the stars, and as your hazy vision returns, let’s dance. This is Press Start! The column where we spank and jack and spit and vomit up five things in gaming that caught our eyes this week. I’ll show you mine, you show me yours.

Excelsior.

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#1: BioWare Developer Caught Reviewing Their Own Game.
This is a story stuffed to the brimming gullet with win. A BioWare developer was caught reviewing their own game, Dragon Age 2, on Metacritic. Already that’s pretty ballsy, since you know  he had to know he would get busted. Nothing is sacred anymore, no one can hide. The sleuths of the internet illuminate anything. So Chris Hoban, posting as Avanost, reviewed his own game. But it gets better. Homeboy went out of his way to give Dragon Age 2 a 10/10, and said anything “negative you’ll see about this game is an overreaction of personal preference.”

Well done, Hoban.

Electronic Arts, not to be confused with a publisher with humility or regret, backed up their boy. A rep told Kotaku that of course “the people who make the game vote for their own game.  That’s how it works in the Oscars, that’s how it works in the Grammy’s and why I’m betting that Barack Obama voted for himself in the last election.”

Of course.

Doi!

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#2: Judge Lets Activision Sue the Fuck Out Of Electronic Arts.
The NFL and the NFLPA aren’t the only two Rich As Hell Greedy Douche Titans slugging it out currently. For those of us of the nerd proclivities, we can watch as Electronic Arts and Activision deliver bodyslams, jackknife powerbombs, and stunning reversals to one another in the courtroom.

You see, back last year Activision canned Jason West and Vince Zampella. These two duders were the sultans of the Modern Warfare franchise, having founded Infinity Ward. In other words, they governed the flagship iteration of the biggest fucking franchise in measured existence. The reasons why they were fired is dependent on who you ask. But this much is certain, since their firing, Activision has sued Electronic Arts, West, and Zampella in some bananas $400 million interference suit. I can barely speak English, can hardly write in anything, and definitely cannot comprehend legalese, so the finer details are lost on me.

I can tell you that this week, a “California Superior Court judge has given the go ahead to an Activision lawsuit brought against EA over the publisher’s hiring of Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.” Activision thinks that EA totally snagged their girlfriend in West and Zampella, and the lot of them intentionally botched MW2 DLC and some other ridiculous shit.

It’s entertaining to see these two monolithic entities pulling one another’s hair and shit.

Also In The Gaming Courtroom: Sony gets access to GeoHot’s PayPal account.

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#3: Super Mario Bros. Goes First Person.
First Person Mario is an animation dreamed up by Brandon Laatsch. The gorgeous early Spring breeze you may have felt on the Northeastern seaboard this afternoon was actually the thunderous thousands of geeks smacking their goo bits to the concept. It’s pretty fucking awesome. Laatsch has Mario running around the classic board, while achievements hit up the interface like a mix between Call of Duty and Bulletstorm.

Someone use their Gaming Geek Wizardy powers to make this come to life. I know you have it in you.

Also In Mario’s World: Mario goes indie flick at SXSW.

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[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a few fellow graduate students waiting for a class to begin. They were all talking about what their final thesis was going to be on, when I decided to spurt nerd juice all over the crowd. “I want to work with comic books for mine”, I said. I wasn’t stunting, it’s my geeky aspiration.  An unimpressive woman with no chin turned and smiled at me. “Oh, you mean graphic novels.” The smile lingered. In my mind, fantasies of spin-kicks and flawless victories danced about. Her chin shattered into a thousand pixels of hate, her smile evaporated and an announcer bellowed “KO!”

I returned the smile and informed her no, I very much meant comic books. No need to dress it up in the high-brow artsy-fartsy name.

When she assailed the cred of my favorite medium, the first thing I wanted to do was pull out the typical parry. Watchmen. It’s at the tip of every fanboy’s tongue when the medium of comic books comes under assault. If it isn’t the first thing, it’s surely the second. Watchmen, Watchmen, Watchmen. Considered one of the greatest novels of all time. Deconstructs the superhero. Blah, blah, blah. Commentary on the conflict of ideologies in the Cold War. Blah blah. Watchmen, Watchmen, Watchmen.

But I didn’t say anything, I was tired of using that usual comic book as a defense. It was then that I realized: we need to come up with new stalwarts. New examples. We need to put Watchmen down.

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Because it’s Friday and I can do whatever I want. And because Ray Winstone is the shit.

The Garbage Pail Kids are a bunch of non-union scabs.

Performed by the Monster Squad and written/produced by DICK RUDOLPH. Seriously, everything from the late ’80s to mid ’90s was a rap.

The future is happening all around us, and we have no fucking idea! Take Berlin. Apparently in Berlin, they’ve eschewed print advertisements in subway stations for projectors to display their ads. In response, a group of Berlin street artists build giant kaleidoscopes to place over said projectors. Take the power back! Or at least the uh, sanctity (?) of subway walls. The minds behind the gag explain:

A couple of months ago, ad-projectors appeared in a Berlin subway station, throwing moving images all over the station walls and lifting visual aggressiveness to a new level. Since the images were projected, we could get between projector and projection to fight this new quality of exaggerated advertisement with its own weapons. Minimalinvasive adbusting devices made of mirrors, magnets and quite some ducktape.

It’s pretty bad ass.

Hit the jump to see them pull it off.

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John Carpenter’s scored most of his own films. He’s a talented dude like that. But when it comes to singing in a music video for one of his films, he should just chill. Regardless, Big Trouble in Little China fucking rules.