I discovered that I’ve encountered many things in my life without knowing their names. When I was in college I dated a cutter. I didn’t know he was a “cutter” -- I just thought he was a slightly freaky young man who hurt himself in an attempt to impress and/or control me. (That was fun.)

Later, I fell into a mailing list that I thought was for Babylon 5 fans -- older and wiser, I now realize that a good many of them were furries, as one of their pastimes was to talk about which characters on B5 would make good animals. I followed along like a foreigner caught in a protest who yells the sounds she hears around her to fit into the crowd, the passion moving me without actually wondering if I’d really like to fuck an anthropomorphic fox who vaguely resembles Marcus Cole.

I wouldn’t, for what it’s worth.

And I heard about alternate reality games (ARGs) way back in the day before they were called that, when the failed EA game Majestic was announced. I thought this were a terrible idea. A game that went into the real world, that called you and emailed you? I was working closely with the Electronic Software Ratings Board at the time to create a privacy policy for the computer gaming company I worked for, and privacy was a huge thing on my mind. Didn’t this just break all those rules?

Yeah, I know. And I thought the iPod was a stupid idea too. I’m willing to admit I’m wrong.

EA screwed up because they required payment for the game, and canceled it for lack of players -- not the huge privacy kerfuffle that I had anticipated, but I suck at predictions. Regardless, online privacy and ARGs was just discussed in the ARG Netcast, an excellent weekly podcast about ARGs featuring some of the big names in ARG creation today.

I am slow to catch on to things like this, I admit. (See above iPod comment.) I finally heard about ARGs in 2007 and became fascinated by the idea. See, an alternate reality game is a game that claims it is not a game, but has a central narrative, often on a website or within a novel, with a paths, or ‘rabbit holes’ that lead elsewhere: other websites, phone numbers to call, even places to visit for messages. Each path will offer more information, a puzzle, or a clue. ARGs can have hundreds of pieces of extra content to discover, and it's as immersive as you can make it. The first successful ARGs were devised as marketing material for existing licenses or products (The Beast was connected to the film AI: Artificial Intelligence), but they've expanded since then.

Some ARGs happen in real time, with a definitive start and end. The Beast was one, running three months and engaging three million people. But as I am a late-comer, I’ve been more interested in the ARGs that connect with books. What I’m finding about novel ARGs is that they allow you to be as lazy as you like. The good ones are solid, stand-alone stories that you can enjoy at a casual level, or you can delve deeper and get intensive with your investigation. My first true ARG that I played was with my six-year-old daughter when we started reading the kids’ books, The 39 Clues. We follow two orphans as they discover they’re part of a very powerful family who are all searching for clues that will lead to great power. We have read two novels, and gone online where we took a quiz to see where in the family we belong (there are four branches of the family, resembling closely the four houses of Hogwarts….) Since then we’ve done research, figured out puzzles and played games to learn more about the secrets of the family, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Now that I’ve exposed my wuss characteristics, that I had to play the kid’s game to get into ARGs, I’m more and more interested. I got the Urban Sleuth app for my new iPod Touch, which is doing big time ARGs for major cities, but also allows for other ARGs to be uploaded and played for those of us in the non-important cities. It also allows for people to create their own city-based games, and I’m hoping to check out the content creator tools.

But my first real "big girl" ARG will be out shortly, and I can't wait. I got a chance to check out an advanced copy of the new ARG, Personal Effects: Dark Art, a novel about an art therapist who works with the criminally insane. The story was strong, creepy, and a decent stand-alone product, but I was curious about the ARG standpoint. I didn't get to see any of the extra content that comes with the retail version of the book, and this content is central to the ARG.

When I visited the science fiction convention Balticon in May, I got to hang out with author J.C. Hutchins and see the final book itself. Personal Effects like most ARGs has clues, numbers and websites in the book, but it stands alone because also comes with a lot of extra content such as ID cards for characters in the book, birth certificates, death certificates, notes, and, since the main character is an art therapist, reproductions of art pieces in the book. The amount of extra content was surprising, and I think putting the rabbit hole in your hands (like a portable hole from D&D) instead of making you search it out on the web will be a stronger pull -- the clues in your hand will likely pique your curiosity and make you seek out more answers.

(When I say "you" I mean "me.")

The book also has another phenomenon: one of the supporting characters is actually a person online, and has been interacting with people since fall '08. She’s a gamer and a blogger, quite active on Twitter. Whether she’s real or not is a matter of contention -- clearly there’s someone charming and whip-smart on the other end, and her game writing is well-informed. And as ARGs have been telling us since their birth: this is not a game.

I'll purposefully leave her name out of it. You can find her if you read the book, and if you're already reading her and you don't know she's fictional, then it really shouldn't matter to you, should it?


Mur Lafferty is an author and podcaster who recently released her first novel, Playing For Keeps. She Speaks Geek every month on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more of Mur's musings.

At the end of this month, I'm going to Detroit for a small ubergeek convention called Penguicon. I'm on eleventy million panels about everything from audiobooks to Star Trek, and I'm also pfacing off against Shawn Powers, the editor of Linux Journal in a very serious, very important battle for the ages featuring Combat on the Atari 2600. To warm up for this epic battle, the convention committee sent us each an Atari Flashback II so that we could enjoy our own training montages. I picked it up from my mailbox earlier this week, gently put it into my trunk, and drove home safely and calmly, respecting all traffic laws and my fellow drivers.

Once in the house, I unleashed my inner 8 year-old and tore the box open with reckless abandon. I grabbed the power supply and jammed it into the wall. I connected it to our television, and dove into Adventure, then Dodge-Em, then Yars' Revenge. I may have thrown some late 70s album rock onto the Sonos, to complete the experience.

"So ... it's great that you're having so much fun," my son said from the other side of the room while I was cheering the successful introduction of my Zorlon Cannon to the Qotile's bitch face, "but I'm working on my senior project here."

I toned down my celebration. "Sorry."

I switched to Asteroids, and after clearing two screens, I swear I could feel the chlorine in my lungs and on my skin from any given day in the summer of 1982.

"Hey, remember when you guys used to play your mom's 2600?" I let one small rock drift across the screen, while I racked up points blasting flying saucers.

He sighed and turned around in his chair. "Sort of. This is a really important project."

"Okay, I'll get out of here, but will you play with me when you're done? I need to, uh, practice."

He cocked one eyebrow. "You need to train? What?"

"For this thing at the end of the month. I'm playing Combat at this convention."

"You are so weird."

"I know. Will you play with me?"

"Yes." Our roles thoroughly reversed, he returned to his work and I went back to my office.

Awhile later, he called out to me. "Okay, I'm done!"

I stood up carefully, and slowly pushed my chair beneath my desk. I walked carefully through the house and did not scare my dog when I nearly tripped over her near the aquarium in the living room. I did not nearly stub my toe on the dining room table, and I was not out of breath and flush with excitement when I met Nolan in the family room.

We turned on the television, and a few minutes later, we faced off in tank pong with maximum walls. It was a furious battle, ending in a 7-7 tie when my last-second shot found its mark.

"Again," he said.

I suppressed a smile, and bumped the reset button. I quickly built an 8-3 lead, and Nolan never caught up.

"Two out of three?" I asked.

He made a face that was a combination of amusement and determination. "Yes."

He built a 10-2 lead almost instantly. I spent more time spinning around than I did actually driving my tank, though I bounced all over the map.

"I think there's a problem with this game," he said, as the match ended, 11-6. "It's way too easy to just chain your attacks together and completely own the other player."

"I think that's part of it, though," I said, starting a new game. "You've just got to find a way to keep moving and get in that first shot."

He got in the first shot, and the next five shots. I got in a couple shots of my own, but it wasn't enough. I realized, too late, that I was probably struggling because I'd forgotten to make Survivor play the appropriate 80s inspirational rock song in my head.

"You're the undisputed master of Combat," I said. "As your reward, you get to watch me play Adventure."

I flipped switches, and was soon on my way to collect the various items required to complete my quest.

"What's that?"

"Oh, that's my sword," I said, pushing my little box against an arrow-shaped icon.

"What do you use it for?"

"Slaying Dragons!" I said, as I entered a once-simple maze of passages that the passage of time had made as vexing as it was when I was eight.

"You realize you've gone into that dead end five times, right?"

"Quiet you. This is how we did it back in the 80s."

"You ran into the same dead end over and over again?"

"Yes, it was part of Reganomics."

I finally found my way out of the maze, and approached a castle, anxious to impress Nolan by grabbing the chalice within.

That's when the dragon showed up.

"What the hell is that?"

"It's a dragon, of course," I said, holding the joystick out in front of me like I always did, convinced that if I moved it around, it would help me escape faster.

That's when the dragon ate me.

"This is really what you guys did for fun?"

"Well, there was this, and we'd occasionally fend off Indian attacks when we weren't Dinosaurizing our caves, yeah."

He laughed. "What other games are on this?"

I showed him Yars' Revenge. "This was my favorite 2600 game when I was a kid. I liked it even more than [ii]Pitfall!"

He looked at me.

"I liked Pitfall! a lot."

He continued to look at me.

"We all liked Pitfall! a lot."

"So, you're this insect creature called the Yar," I said as the game began, "and this guy here is the Qotile. He destroyed your home planet or something, and you've built this Zorlon cannon to extract your titular revenge."

I flew around the screen, through the neutral zone and chipped away at the Qotile defenses. My Zorlon cannon activated, and I waited to take my shot.

"From time to time, though, the Qotile turns into a Swirl, and shoots itself at you."

That's when the Qotile turned into a Swirl, and I blasted it out of the sky.

"Yes!" I looked at him, so I could bask in his approval.

"That's it?"

"Well, you get to fly around in this cool screen between levels, too," I said, "and the second level has a rotating shield."

He looked at the flashing graphics on the screen and scratched his chin.

"How many people got seizures from this when you played it?"

"I ... do not know."

"I bet you I can destroy it three times without dying," he said.

"Do it." I handed him the joystick.

"So I shoot at this thing that looks like a distress signal?"

"The Qotile," I said. "Yes, you shoot at the Qotile. With your Zorlon Cannon. Because you're exacting --"

"Revenge. I got that."

I watched with more pride than I thought possible (or revealed to my easily embarrassed teenage son), as it took him about two minutes to do exactly what he said he'd do.

"Does this ever get hard?" He asked.

"THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!"

He shook his head and handed the joystick back to me.

"Sorry. Reflex. Um, yeah, it gets challenging later on. The missile thing moves a lot faster, and the Swirls fly out a lot faster and more frequently."

"But it's pretty much the same two levels over and over again."

"The same two awesome levels, yes."

We looked at each other.

"It came with a comic book. Did I tell you about that?"

"You are so weird."

"But I'm also kind of awesome, right?"

We looked at each other.


Wil Wheaton is weird, and he is totally cool with it.

This month's Geek in Review stands entirely on its own, but also goes well (if I do say so myself) with this week's LA Daily -- click HERE to view.

Hey, remember me? My name’s Wil, and I used to write about geek stuff once a week. Well, now I’m doing it once a month. It’s good to be back.

My extremely active imagination was forged in the playground fire of a childhood spent weak and strange. I read books while other kids played football; I played and wrote computer games while other teens went to makeout parties. While I couldn’t get to second base on the kickball field at school or in Justine Baker’s house, by the end of middle school I had taken the One Ring to Mordor, destroyed the Death Star, and designed and populated countless dungeons.

The real world was a pretty miserable place for a kid like me. I did everything I could to find ways to step out of it: one page at a time in a book or one quarter at a time in the arcade, the more immersive the game, the better. I was never a huge fan of Battlezone’s gameplay, but it remains the closest I’ve ever come to actually driving a tank. I always favored the sit-down versions of games like Pole Position, Spy Hunter, and Sinistar. They felt more . . . real . . . than their stand-up brothers, providing a cleaner escape from the kids at Pinball Plus who took pitiless joy in pointing out that my shoes were Traxx from Kmart, not Vans from the mall.

While game designers and arcade owners did all they could with cabinet systems and sound design (I defy anyone to tell me they didn’t want their Slush Puppy “shaken, not stirred” after a particularly rousing round of Spy Hunter, with music blasting behind their heads, their feet jammed down on the gas, and imagined breezes blowing through their feathered hair), it was our imagination that did most of the work of creating the alternate reality, especially on our console systems at home.

The earliest video games didn’t just encourage us to use our imaginations when we played them, they forced us to. Yar’s Revenge, the best-selling original title on the Atari 2600, has simple yet entertaining gameplay, but it was supported by an extraordinarily rich backstory, turning it into one chapter in an epic struggle for cosmic justice. When I was 9, I wasn’t just chipping away at the shield while I readied my Zorlon cannon; I was helping the Yar extract revenge on the Qotile for the destruction of their planet, Razak IV, as illustrated in the comic that came with the game.

When I was 10 or 11, I arranged a TV tray, a dining room chair, and a worn blanket to make a small tent in front of our 24-inch TV set. I carefully moved our Atari 400 onto the tray and plugged Star Raiders into the cartridge slot. I flipped the power on, picked up the joystick, and booted up my imagination as I sat in the command chair of my very own space ship. For the next hour, I was a member of the Atarian Starship Fleet. I was all that stood between the Zylon Empire and the destruction of humanity. Through my cockpit’s viewscreen (developed at great expense by the RCA corporation back on Earth) I blasted Zylon starships and Zylon basestars, and I would have defeated them all, if my meddling mother hadn’t made me stop and eat dinner!

Over the years, I built bigger and better immersive environments for myself, using transistor radios and walkie-talkies to complete a cockpit with a Vectrex as the main viewer. I made maps of whatever jungle I explored as Pitfall Harry and hung them on my bedroom walls. I created star charts and galactic maps for everything from Asteroids to Cosmic Ark. When I copied game programs out of Antic magazine, I dimmed the lights and did it in the dark, because that seemed like something real hackers would do. (This probably explains a rash of headaches suffered by real hackers throughout the ’80s and ’90s.)

In 1984, after cutting my teeth on the Atari 400 and TI-99/4A, I got my first Macintosh computer. While it had word processing and drawing ability like nothing I’d seen up to that point in my life, it didn’t have any real games, and its programming environment was confounding to the point of uselessness. There wasn’t enough combined imagination in the world to make MacVegas fun, especially when my friends with Commodores and PCs could show off a game like King’s Quest. I was despondent.

My disappointment softened when I discovered Macventure games by ICOM Simulations: DeJa Vu in 1985, Uninvited in 1986, and Shadowgate in 1987. While these games weren’t as technologically advanced or immersive as some in the arcades, they gave me access to worlds that were richer than the ones I’d visited before. They felt less linear, less finite, and engaged my imagination in ways I hadn’t felt since I built my first Atarian Starship in our living room so many years before. And when I finished them, I got a diploma that I could print out – slowly – on my dot-matrix Imagewriter.

As I grew older and came of age in the ’80s, I looked to gaming more for stimulation and entertainment than for escape. I was still attracted to immersive environments, though, and loved games like Defender of the Crown and NeTrek. Around 1988 or 1989, an unlikely game captured my imagination and transported me to another world like nothing had before. Maybe it’s because I was such a huge geek, maybe it’s because I’d been reading Choose Your Own Adventure books since I was in fourth grade, or maybe it’s because I was working on Star Trek every day and my imagination was constantly in an excited state, but Infocom’s The Lurking Horror completely pulled me into its virtual world. It was just green text on a black background, and there wasn’t even any sound, but I was Flynn to its MCP. I spent hours – okay, days – exploring G.U.E. Tech and the nightmares therein. My imagination took the words and created something scary and real. I had finally found the totally immersive game I’d been looking for my entire life in my fragile eggshell mind, where I got to control everything from the sound of a floor waxer to the darkness of the steam tunnels. After I finished it, I played every interactive fiction title I could get my hands on, from Zork to Leather Goddesses of Phobos to Planetfall to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (I think I’ll get over Macho Grande before I get over my inability to capture the babelfish without using Invisiclues™.)

My kids live in a very different world than I did. Their immersive, narrative gaming experiences are the space shuttle to my paper airplane. Several months ago, I showed my 17-year-old stepson some of the classic Infocom games that I loved when I was his age. After growing up in a world where our Xbox 360 is more powerful than every console I owned in my entire childhood, combined and squared, he could appreciate the historical significance but was otherwise unimpressed. (“This is what gaming was for you? That’s weird.”) I was a little saddened, but it quickly passed. After all, when I was his age, I could only dream of one day putting myself into a living, breathing world like Liberty City. It’s a consequence of progress, I guess, and I’m sure that one day he’ll show my incredulous grandchildren these games he used to play that were confined to a television set. (“You had to use an external console, not a chipslot? That’s weird.”)

As I wrote this column, I got a jones to hop in a bathysphere and spend some time back in Rapture. I already finished Bioshock once, but it wasn’t the plasmids or the music or the visual design that pulled me back; it was the story. It was a desire to experience Andrew Ryan’s world once again, to find every single diary and explore every single room, to feel like I was back under the sea in that incredible place.

I played for several hours one day, discovering some new areas and reliving some half-remembered favorites. I eventually found myself under Sander Cohen’s spotlight, pulled away only when my wife asked me – for what was apparently the third or fourth time – to come to dinner. I saved the game and shut down the console. After we ate, I grabbed my controller, and prepared to go back to Fort Frolic.

What I found was worse than a room filled with Splicers: the dreaded Red Ring of Death. To anyone who doubts the narrative power of modern video games, I submit myself: I felt like I was in the middle of a book, only to have it ripped from my hands and thrown into a fire. I felt like I was watching a movie, only to have the film catch and burn through somewhere in the fourth reel. It was fabula interrupta.

Waiting for my 360 to get back from the gaming doctor and restore my access to Rapture and points beyond isn’t as bad as one might think, though. I still have all my books and movies and hobby games and other nerdly escape routes. And, I confess, I keep a Z Machine interpreter on my Mac, so I’m never too far away from an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

Wil Wheaton imagines there’s no heaven.

The old-school gaming art show bursting with brilliant works inspired by games from the '80s and '90s returns. Starting today and running until May 12th, classic console connoisseurs can head out to sunny Los Angeles and take a nostalgic journey through a gallery populated with both eerie and charming renditions of their beloved 8-bit heroes.

"Hip" and "With it" attendees are advised to quickly snatch up that surprisingly affordable stencil of Duke the Daring brandishing his Glandhammer to Princess Peach. Please do be wary of new parents raised on classic games looking to decorate their newborns bedrooms with stylized relics of their past. They'll be the ones with expanding midsections wedged into designer jeans a few sizes too small.

If you’re like me (a huge geek) then you’ve wanted to be a dragonrider for as long as you can remember. Well, it looks like you’re finally going to get your chance—but only if you own a PS3. I don’t, yet, (still waiting for the price to come down—a lot) but if there was one game that could convince me to buy a PS3, Lair would be it.

Check out IGN's interview with Julian Eggebrecht, president of Factor 5, the company developing Lair. Some highlights:

On using PS3 as the platform,

On using dragons,

On controlling your dragon,

On jumping off your dragon and, well...

Check out the trailer yourself.

Overall, this game looks totally badass. Lair takes off this spring.

The friendly local game, comic or music shop is an endangered species. Here's why we should work hard to save them.

I walked up to the register and set down Top Ten Volume 2, Transmetropolitan Volume 3, and Lost Girls. The familiar smell created by tens of thousands of pages hung in the air, and the tinny sound of an anime soundtrack played out of a single speaker on a 13-inch television at the end of the counter.

"How are you today, Wil?" The owner of my Friendly Local Comic Shop asked me.

"I'm doing great," I said. "Can you believe that these books are a business expense?"

"How'd you manage that?"

"I'm write a weekly column about geek things, and I'm working on a story about Alan Moore." I said. "It started out as something I thought I could do in a week; that was two months and about three hundred dollars ago."

"How's it going?" He said, as he wrote down the titles I'd purchased.

"I'm not sure," I said, "because I haven't written a single word of it, yet.

"The whole thing started out as a column about movies that were adapted from comic books. I wanted to do a few that were good, and a few that totally sucked. The good ones began and ended with Sin City, and the bad ones were too numerous to count."

"What about the original Batman?" He said.

"It's close, but what the hell is Alfred thinking, just bringing Vicki Vale into the Batcave without talking to Bruce Wayne about it? It's like he says, 'You know, Master Bruce, I've thought about it, and it's time you reveal your secret identity to this newspaper reporter. I'll leave you two alone to talk.'"

"Good point," he said.

"It tends to piss off fanboys when I say that," I said. "Anyway, there are lots of Alan Moore titles which have just been butchered—"

"Like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," we said together.

"V for Vendetta was fine on its own," I said, "but as an adaptation it sort of changes the fundamental message of the book . . ."

"What about Spiderman?" One of the other guys behind the counter said.

"It's deeply flawed," I said, "but I really liked a lot of it. The whole beginning, where Peter Parker is discovering his powers was awesome, but after that it sort of went off the rails."

A guy in line behind me spoke up. "Totally agree with you, dude."

Uh-oh. I had an audience. I couldn't help myself: "We could relate to it, right? It was so cool to watch this guy who's such a nerd finally get all that stuff that we all want to have ourselves, you know? Standing up to the bully, getting the girl . . . uh, being Spiderman . . . I wanted to see more of that stuff, and less of 'you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us' and 'I'm Mary Jane, and I'm a bitch, but Peter Parker still loves me for some reason.'"

"Oh!" the owner said. "I have a book you're going to love."

He walked into the back of the shop, and returned with a DC graphic novel.

"This is Kinetic," he said. "It's about this kid who's really sickly and weak and nerdy, and how he discovers these powers that he has. If you liked the beginning of Spiderman, I think you'll really like this."

I opened it up and thumbed through it. The artwork and coloring were beautiful, what I imagine Black Hole would look like if it were color and more mainstream.

"That looks cool," I said. I wondered if I could justify adding another book to my list, which was already more than I intended to spend (Damn you, Warren Ellis.)

"You can have that," he said.

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah. Check it out. I want to hear what you think of it next time you come in."

"Thanks, man!" I said. I paid him, happily walked to my car, and sang along with They Might Be Giants as I drove home.

Contrast this with an experience I had at a local chain bookstore over the weekend:

It was noisy and crowded, typical for the mall on a Saturday afternoon. My wife walked deep into the store to pick up whatever book she wanted, and I went over to the graphic novel aisle, just past the Sci-Fi section.

The aisle was just as crowded as the rest of the store, and a couple of teens sat on the floor looking through Manga books.

I tried to find Transmetropolitan Volume 3, but the shelves were messy and disorganized. I couldn't find it, but I did see The Best American Comics (2006), which I pulled off the shelf and flipped through. I'd heard about it a few weeks ago, and thought it may be worth purchasing.

While I flipped through (initially unimpressed, but intrigued nonetheless) a store manager appeared at the end of the aisle.

"Okay, all of you guys have to get out of here," he said.

I looked up. Some of the kids there joined me.

"You heard me," he said, sharply, "this isn't some place for you to sit down and read. If you want to buy something, take it to the register."

Okay, that's fair enough. It's not a library, and it's not a daycare center . . . but did he have to be such a jerk about it? Most of the kids were standing, and looked like they were trying to decide which book they wanted to buy. The three kids who were on the floor stood up and left. A teenage couple, who were standing next to me trying to decide between a couple books disgustedly shoved them all back onto the shelf, and walked away. The guy half of the couple muttered "Dick" as he passed me.

I wasn't sitting down, and I was legitimately browsing, so I stayed there and continued to flip through the book.

"Excuse me?" The manager said to me. "Are you going to buy that?"

I slowly closed the book, and placed it back on the shelf. I turned to face him.

"No." I said. "No, I am not."

I walked out of the store and waited for my wife.

I don't know how much money the store lost as a result of that manager's behavior, but I was fairly certain that it lost a few customers and did nothing to foster a good reputation among the teenagers in our community.

In an increasingly globalized world where vertically-integrated multi-national companies storm into communities, reduce our choices and homogenize our shopping experience, the Friendly Local Shop is an endangered species, and it's not just comic and book shops that are at risk.

The Friendly Local Game Shop
When I was a teenager and discovered that board games could be more challenging and complex than Monopoly, I also discovered my Friendly Local Game Shop. It was called The Last Grenadier, and it was in a pedestrian mall in Burbank (The Grenadier was right next door to the bike shop in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, for those of you who enjoy visuals which feature an 80s icon, Danny Elfman, and San Fernando Road.)

I went in there at least once a week, and it didn't take long for me to establish a personal relationship with the owners. They'd introduce me to new games, hold games for me that they knew I'd like (I got Hacker this way, because I was such a nerd for Illuminati) and occasionally let me take games home to demo with my friends. They cared about me as a customer. Because they took the time to get to know me personally, I was loyal, and often drove there instead of to a shop in the mall where I could get things for less.

They moved to a new location, on Hollywood Way, and I moved to a new house, in Pasadena. I grew up, and started a family, but I can still go back there and it's like no time has passed at all.

The Friendly Local Music Shop.
These are falling away faster than you can say Wal*Mart, and of all the Friendly Locals, they are the ones I miss the most. The days of spending over an hour walking aisles, buying CDs just because they looked cool and talking with other customers and hardcore music geeks who excitedly shove headphones on you so you can hear Mingus at Antibes, are essentially over as we buy more of our music online, or big box retailers move into communities and undercut indie stores and force them out of business.

There was a store in Montrose, very close to where I grew up in La Crescenta, that we just called "the record store." We called it that for so long, I have no idea what its real name was, but it was a very cool place, like the fictional store in Empire Records, or an Amoeba Music that was small enough for the employees to know you if you shopped there frequently. It was in this store in the early 90s that the owner (an aging rocker guy who looked like Gene Simmons without makeup and with just a hint of Alice Cooper) said to me, "Hey, Wil, I have a record you're going to love."

"Oh yeah?" I said, "What is it?"

"You like Enigma, right?"

Who didn't like Enigma? (And if you were in your late teens or early 20s when MCMXC a.D. came out, who didn't imagine what it would be like to do it with the unattainable object of your affection in a candle-lit room while that record played?)

"Yeah," I said, "Enigma's pretty cool."

"This is an album that's just as groundbreaking."

He handed me Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman. I bought it, and it took all of thirty seconds of Dark & Long for me to put it on heavy rotation just about everywhere I went in my life. While I may have come across that album on my own, it's unlikely that I would have actually picked it up, or even listened to it. It brought me a lot of joy when I lived in Nice the following year on location for a movie, and now whenever I hear Mmm Skyscraper I Love You I get a sense memory of standing in my kitchen, looking across the rooftops of nearby buildings at the Mediterranean Sea each morning as I made my breakfast. And Dirty Epic is about this girl who—okay. I have to stop. I'm married, now.

Save the Friendly Locals!
Of course, you don't need a Friendly Local for any of these things. If you're lucky, you have friends who can introduce you to new games and artists, but as you get older and all of your time has more demands placed upon it, the chances for any of you to stumble upon something new to share with each other diminish (I speak from experience) and having a good relationship with a Friendly Local Shop owner can be the difference between discovering something that enriches your life, and just another night in front of the television.

In addition to the obvious benefits of keeping money and jobs in our local communities, it's in our best interests to support our Friendly Locals. For example:

While you may be able to save a few bucks on a CD at Target, if you have a Friendly Local Music Shop and go there instead, the owner may see you picking up Interpol, and suggest Joy Division. They may see you picking up The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and throw themselves between you and the register, just to save you from yourself.

While you may be able to get 10% off if you use your preferred customer card at the bookstore in the mall, is cranky manager guy going to take the time to talk with you, and suggest a graphic novel you may have missed, like Kinetic?

While you may be able to save a few bucks on the latest d20 source book in that same bookstore (if they stock it, that is) don't count on stumbling across any new games, like the boxed version of Kill Doctor Lucky, or High School Drama. And I can guarantee you that the bookstore in the mall won't stay open late because the owner really wants to do a Shadowrun one-off, and will provide pizza and Mountain Dew for any players who show up this Friday at 7.

The Friendly Local Game, Comic, and Music shops are almost always owned and staffed by people who are as passionate about the products they sell as their customers are who buy them[1], but passion isn't enough to keep a business open and flourishing, especially in today's world. Some of these shops—especially the game shops—are load bearing pillars in their community's particular subcultures, and if we geeks don't support them, who will?

If you have one in your community, think about heading out to one the next time you have some disposable income. You may just create a valuable relationship with someone just as geeky as you are, but more importantly, you'll ensure that the next generation of geeks has the same opportunity.

[1] Obvious exception made for annoying Comic Book Guys, who are not without their own unique charm.

Wil Wheaton used to buy records at Licorice Pizza and Aaron's Records, back before you were born.

2005's Guitar Hero was a sleeper hit for the PS2, allowing geeks everywhere to pick up a guitar and enjoy the beautiful delusion that they could rock out with their cocks out, just like all those guys in high school who could play just enough to impress the coveted hot-but-stupid girl at the make out party. Oh, you think you're so cool, Brandon, with your little intro to Stairway to Heaven, but I'd like to see you do Bark at the Moon on expert! Yeah! That's what I thought, sukka!

In fact, so many doodz were in ur house, rockin ur azz, a search of "Guitar Hero" on YouTube brings up 134000 videos like this and this which simultaneously make my point and reinforce the ban on video cameras in my home.

Guitar Hero rocked the world of just about everyone who picked up a controller, struck the legs-apart rock pose, and transformed their living room into the stage at the Fillmore. Could Red Octane and Harmonix do it again? Would the set list be as diverse and satisfying as Guitar Hero's? How could they improve upon a nearly-perfect game? And would it be so goddamn hard to make sure that I don't have to come out of a fucking uptempo record, and do a goddamn death dedication about a fucking dog dying?!

Yes, yes, yes, and no. They didn't just equal the fun of Guitar Hero, they blew it away with a sequel that takes everything we loved about the first game, makes it better, and adds a little Trogdor, because everything is better with burnination.

Guitar Hero II
Rated T for Teen
PS2

The developers had a lot to live up to this time around, but instead of simply adding new songs and sprucing up the existing venues, Guitar Hero II adds new characters, an entirely new career mode that actually takes you on tour, some mechanical improvements, and a setlist that has something for everyone. Let's take a look at the changes together, shall we?

Graphics: The characters you knew from Guitar Hero are back, including Johnny Napalm, Pandora, Axel Steel, and Judy Nails (is it wrong that I'm kind of hot for a video game character?) There are also some new characters, including trashy rock chick Casey Lynch, Gwar-inspired Lars Umlaut, and rockabilly tough guy Eddie Knox. You can also buy new costumes for many of the characters, as well as new Gibson guitars and skins.

You made a name for yourself at clubs around Boston in Guitar Hero, but you'll play in some new venues this time around, beginning at the Nilbog high school battle of the bands, before working your way across the country, to such rock hotspots as Providence, Rhode Island, and Okaland, California. Along the way, you'll play the Vans Warped Tour, and end up all the way across the Atlantic. The venues are vastly improved for Guitar Hero II, with lighting effects that respond to the music you're playing, and enthusiastic crowds that demand encores.

Yeah, the encores are insanely cool. When you complete the required number of songs to advance to a new venue, you'll be given an opportunity to play an encore. If you accept it (why anyone would refuse is beyond me, but at least the choice is there) the crowd will cheer, the venue will change in some entertaining way that's relevant to the song you're playing, and you'll get to rock one last time before heading backstage to violate some groupies. And look, I know it's just a game, but when the lights dim, the lighters come out, and the crowd chants "Freebird!" it's hard to not turn to an imaginary bass player and say, "Dude, I think they need one more; do you have it in you?"

Songs: The characters and venues are cool, and the graphics are nice, but we're not here to look at pretty things. We are here to rock, and the setlist in Guitar Hero II is as diverse and as fun to play as it was last time around. There are classic rock anthems like The Allman Brothers Band's Jessica, hard rock favorites like Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name of, and, yes, Freebird. But what really excited me was the inclusion of master tracks from Primus and Jane's Addiction. Apparently, those guys were Guitar Hero fans, and gave permission to use the actual recordings of John the Fisherman and Stop in Guitar Hero II, so when you're jamming along in the game, you're actually playing with Les Claypool or Dave Navarro. You should totally tape yourself playing and send it in as an audition. Next stop, Lollapalooza, baby!

The 24 bonus tracks are significantly better than the ones in Guitar Hero, and are worth your hard-earned cash this time (after you upgrade Judy Nails' costume, of course. Rrawr.) I really liked Jordan from Buckethead, Soy Bomb from Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer-Incentives, and Trogdor by Strongbad. Yes, that Trogdor and that Strongbad.

Mechanics: In Guitar Hero, the mechanics of playing hammer ons and pull offs was pretty confusing, and could be difficult, and frustrating. It's been changed for Guitar Hero II, and I think it's the game's single biggest improvement. You no longer need to hold down the lower note to successfully do a pull off, which is slightly less realistic, but a welcome change that improves the overall playing experience. They've also given you a little more time to hit the notes, making it much more forgiving, and easier to play those fret-burning solos on Hard and Expert. Man, I wish they'd retroactively apply this to Cowboys from Hell.

Play Modes:The multi-player modes give the game hours of additional gameplay long after you've beaten career mode, and make this a perfect party game. The face-off challenge from Guitar Hero returns, and lets players choose different difficulty levels this time. There is also a new pro-faceoff mode that lets both players play the entire song on the same difficulty to see who is the true Guitar Hero.

However, it's all about the brand new co-op play, where one player takes lead guitar, and the other takes bass or rhythm, depending on the song. Working together to make Kansas' Carry On Wayward Son or Rush's YYZ come to life (well, a reasonable facsimile of life, anyway,) is tremendously satisfying. You really feel like you've just played the real song for a real audience, and it's really fun. Really really. If you find yourself throwing the goat and spontaneously high-fiving your buddies when you complete a song, don't feel embarrassed; it just means you did it right. On the other hand, if you five-star Madhouse and decide to drive straight to Guitar Center to do it for real, it may be time to put the controller down and check back in with real life. (Though I hear they're having a sale on Boss effects and Takamine pedals in a few days, because it's a totally insane weekend blowout! that won't be repeated again until, uh, next weekend.)

Guitar Hero II also adds a practice mode, which allows you to pick out and work on one or more sections of a song that are kicking your ass. You can modify the speed that the notes come down at you, too, so you can practice some of the difficult fingering in songs like Psychobilly Freakout (oh, my arms ache just typing that title) and here's a nifty little bit of lateral thinking: if there's a solo you just love (I am crazy about the solo at the end of Can't You Hear Me Knockin') you can head to practice mode, pick it out, and serenade a lucky guy or girl with your crazy mad musical skills. Next stop: the pants party.

The Bottom Line: Guitar Hero II is more challenging than Guitar Hero, but not so difficult that experienced players can't three-star their way through Hard or five-star Medium on the first or second try. Expert, though, is insane, and it will make you cry. Before attempting Miserlou on Expert, I suggest working out your forearms, and doing some cardio warm-ups, as well. If you can get Dick Dale on the phone, you should probably go ahead and do that, too (and tell him I'm a big fan. KTHX.)

Like Aliens to Alien, or Debbie Does Dallas 2 to Debbie Does Dallas, they've built upon the existing foundation and turned in a nearly-perfect sequel to something that was already great. It is a fantastic improvement upon an already fantastic game, and my only complaint is the same one I had last time: I want more songs, and I want them now. And where are those pictures I ordered? Can someone get Bob on the phone?

Final Grade: A

Wil Wheaton really wanted to give Guitar Hero II an A+, but he grades on a curve, and wanted to leave something for Guitar Hero III to aspire to.

In last year's Destroy All Humans! Pandemic Studios put players into a satirical and sardonic look at 1950s America during the height of the Cold War. It was one of my favorite games of 2005, and when I found out there was a sequel in the works for this year, I nearly shot my disintegrator ray right in my pants.

I picked up the game the day it came out, but didn't have much time to play it until last week, when I decided to make the supreme sacrifice that SG readers have come to expect from me, and spent four straight days doing nothing but, well, Destroying All Humans, to find out if the game is worth a pile of your "earth money."

Warning: There will be spoilers in here, but none of them should rise to the level of "Darth Vader is Luke's Father" or "Trinity and Neo Get Killed" or "Snape Kills Dumbledore."

...What?

Moving on.

Destroy All Humans! 2: Make War, Not Love
Rated T for Teen
PS2, Xbox
Destroy All Humans! 2 picks up a decade after Destroy All Humans! ended. Cryptosporidium-137 is gone, but his clone, Cryptosporidium-138 is alive and well, masquerading as the president of the United States, and wreaking havoc from within (Hrm. Maybe Dick Cheney is an alien. I'll have to look into that. It would explain a few things.) Everything is going beautifully, until the KGB shoots Cryto's mothership out of the sky and kills his commander, Orthopox-13 (who then spends the rest of the game as a floating holographic head.) The destruction of the mother ship, and Crypto's search for revenge is what we writers call the "inciting incident" or the "hook" to get the story moving, and get moving it does.

You'll begin in Bay City, which is suspiciously similar to San Francisco and swarming with those damn Hippies, before moving on to Albion, which is suspiciously similar to London, and also swarming with Hippies. From there, the story takes you to Takoshima (want to guess what that's suspiciously similar to and swarming with?) and points...beyond, as new and unexpected enemies arrive and give Crypto plenty of opportunities to make war, not love.

What's New
Just like its predecessor, DAH!2 is a sandbox game, and the designers have created even bigger environments and added even more side missions for players to explore, including a really funny continuing story where Crypto gets humans to join the Cult of Arkvoodle, the ancient Furon Lord of the Sacred Crotch (seriously.)

There are new weapons for Crypto to carry around (my personal favorite is called the Gastro Gun, mostly for its humor, rather than its ability to destroy all humans) as well as new weapons for his saucer (my personal favorite being the Anti-gravity Field, entirely for its ability to destroy all humans.) You have new mental abilities to play around with, but to unlock and upgrade them, you'll have to abduct various humans and mash them together in the saucer's gene blender (this is a lot more fun than it sounds.) Finally, the holobob from DAH! has been replaced with the Bodysnatch ability, where you'll physically take over an unsuspecting human to activate various side missions, and avoid raising the always-annoying alert level.

Though the missions aren't particularly complex or overly-challenging for experienced gamers, players who complained about how quick and easy it was to finish Destroy All Humans! should be pleased with the length of the sequel. All the side missions, the size of the play areas, and the addition of multi-player games (like tennis, using PK to launch humans over a fence at each other) give you plenty of stuff to do. They've also added the ability to call your saucer to the various landing zones, so you don't have to waste a lot of time running from one side of the map to another and back.

Destroy All Humans! 2 never takes itself seriously, contains all the satirical humor that made its predecessor so much fun to play, and takes it even further this time around. The relationship between Crypto and Pox is hilarious, and the thoughts and dialogue of the NPCs does for the free love of 1969 what Destroy All Humans! did for the repression and Cold War hysteria of 1959.

Crypto is a more fully-developed character in the sequel, (just how much depends on dialogue choices the player makes during conversations with supporting characters, and I encourage you to explore them all) so he's more than a just a cool-looking model with a Jack Nicholson-eqsue voice that seemed a little arbitrary last time. He frequently breaks the fourth wall to make comments on elements of the game, too. At one point, he complains to Pox, "The game's called Destroy All Humans, not Keep Kids Off Drugs!", he rants about all the crates that are scattered all over one of the levels, and during one particularly long-winded exchange with a character says, "You know the player's in the kitchen making nachos by this point, right?"

Good for Geeks Because: You're playing an alien and you can destroy buildings with your flying saucer. If that's not enough to get your slide rule, uh, sliding, there are enough pop culture references to get their own VH-1 special, and many of them are really geeky (Rocky Horror, Red vs. Blue, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.) With a little bit of work, you could even turn it into a drinking game. But remember, geeks: if you're drinking alone, you're not partying. You're an alcoholic.

Bottom Line: It's really fun, it's really clever, and the story is well designed. It does what a good sequel should do, and takes all the things that made Destroy All Humans fun, and builds a great game upon that foundation. It's not quite San Andreas to Destroy All Humans!'s Vice City, but it's still a hell of a game. If you missed out on the Wii, didn't feel like dodging bullets in a PS3 riot, or have a hatred of Microsoft irrational enough to keep you from buying a 360, have no fear. Destroy All Humans! 2 is available for those quaint and obsolete PS2s you have propping open a door right now, and for that Xbox gathering dust in the closet that you swore you were going to mod into a media center. It's a perfect game for the special geek in your life (and let's be honest with ourselves, people: for most geeks, the special geek in their life is them. And there's nothing wrong with that.)

Grade: A-

Wil Wheaton is totally going to mod that Xbox into a media center.

Those of you who can't wait until next month to play Guitar Hero 2 can get a taste of the game's new songs and co-op mode by picking up the current issue of the Official Playstation Magazine. The included PS2 game disc has a GH2 demo, featuring four songs:

• Shout at the Devil
• You Really Got Me
• Strutter
• YYZ

You will need two guitar controllers to access the co-op mode, but there is a single player version available, too. You can play lead guitar on all the songs, and in co-op mode, you can play bass on all the songs except Strutter, where you can play rhythm. Easy to Expert levels are available.

I played it last night with my kids (who are much better at it than I am, making me feel old and lame) and it's as insanely fun as I'd hoped.

Guitar Hero 2 comes out on November 7th for PS2.

When I was fourteen, my friend Darin called me up and said, "Hey, a bunch of guys are coming over to play games. Do you want to come?"

"Games?" I said, putting down my comic book, "like Monopoly?" I snorted the geek snort. "Huh huh huh no. Games are lame."

Darin, who is two years older than me and about a lifetime wiser, patiently said, "no, not like Monopoly. We're playing games that are, well, different than that. They're kind of geeky. Have you ever heard of Illuminati, or Diplomacy?"

I told him that I hadn't, but I was intrigued, so I accepted his invitation and was introduced to a whole new world, where Steve Jackson, and Games Workshop reigned supreme.

It was also the day I officially became a complete and total geek.

This week's Geek in Review looks at a few geeky games with a horror theme, that are great anytime, but perfect for playing around Halloween.

Zombies!!!

Zombies!!! from Twilight Creations pays homage to the great zombie films of George A. Romero, when the undead slowly and relentlessly shambled toward our heroes, who came up with clever and increasingly gory ways to defeat them. Who knew that there were so many different ways to whack a guy on the head?

Zombies!!! takes place in a small town, which the players build from a deck of map tiles as the game develops. Most of the tiles contain streets and intersections, but some tiles contain locations, like the sporting goods store, the gas station, the hospital, or the special helipad where players ultimately want to go to win the game.

Players can win the game by making it to the helipad, or by wasting twenty-five zombies. Both of these objectives sound far, far easier than they actually are. The zombies are everywhere, and until players pick up some weapons, like a molotov cocktail from the gas station or a chainsaw from the lawn and garden center, they are very hard to beat. Just like the movies, it's not that they're tough, but that there are so damn many of them. Also, the other players can screw with you by playing cards that paralyze you with fear, double the amount of zombies in a building, or mysteriously bring all the zombies you just killed back to life.

Zombies!!! comes with plastic figures to represent the players and the zombie horde. The players are all little shotgun-holding guys who would be sort of macho and threatening if they weren't so brightly colored and adorable with their little guns and their tough guy face. You're so tough! Yes you are! You're going to go and blast all those zombies, aren't you? Aren't you?! Who wants a biscuit? Who wants a biscuit?

Erm. Sorry.

There are also a hundred plastic zombie figures, each with one arm reaching out in the universal zombie gesture for "braaaaaiinnnssss." They're be really scary if they weren't so damn cool. (Note: you'll want to take some of these zombies and attach them to your monitor or desk, because they look neat. Don't do this, because you'll eventually run out of zombies for your game. Yes, you will use all 100 zombies in a five player game.)

You will die in this game, probably multiple times, which gets kind of annoying, and is one of the game's weaker aspects. When you die, you go back to the center of town where you started, and you lose half of the zombies you killed.

The game's biggest drawback is how long it takes to play, and the absence of any real strategic challenge. It takes between two and three slow-moving hours to complete a game, and you really need to get lucky with the dice rolls to have any chance of winning. However, with some appropriate music and its inspiration playing on a nearby television, Zombies!!! is an entertaining addition to any geek's game day.

Spooks

Spooks, from Steve Jackson Games, is a beautifully illustrated card game where players try to outrun their friends -- and the spooks -- in a haunted house. If Zombies!!! moves at the speed of Night of the Living Dead, Spooks moves at the speed of 28 Days Later; an average game can be finished in less than ten minutes.

It's a trick-taking game, where players try to outrun various creepy spooks by playing the cards out of their hand. There is a strategic element, which will make a certain brand of geek very happy, but isn't necessary to enjoy the game, which becomes insanely fun when the alternate rules are applied. This is also a game that is very family and kid friendly, so all you geeks out there who have little geeklings of your own may want to pick this up.

Give Me The Brain!

Give Me The Brain!, designed by James Earnest and released by Cheapass games, is a card game that isn't exactly horror-themed, but does have zombies in it. Who work in a fast food restaurant. Seriously.

The players are the zombies, who are just trying to finish their shift so they can go do . . . uh . . . whatever zombies do when they're not working in a fast food restaurant, I guess.

Players draw cards which represent one or two-handed jobs they must complete so they can empty their hand and win the game. Some of these jobs can't be finished unless the player has The Brain, which is represented by a d6 (get a pink one if you can, for, uh, realism) and each task has a different difficulty level reflected by the number you must roll better than on the d6 to complete it. The players in the game have ample opportunity to screw with each other by playing cards that force them to give up the brain, miss a turn, draw cards, or trade cards with other players. There is even a card that specifically exists to prevent its victim from winning.

An average game takes about twenty minutes to play, and because it only takes about ten minutes to learn, this is a great game to use if you're hoping to introduce non-geeks to the world of geeky games.

There are many other geeky horror-themed games that I haven't mentioned, the most obvious being the Vampire and Werewolf LARP[1] games, as well as hard to find classics like TSR's Vampyre and Steve Jackson's Undead. Board Game Geek has a fantastic and nearly definitive geeklist of games for those of you who are interested in exploring this genre further, but be warned: these are gateway games. If you find yourself carrying a d20 in your pocket, "just in case" and frequently trying to Sense Motive or Charm Person, you may want to seek professional help.

[1] I have nothing against you LARPers. Just keep your damn cloaks and combat boots off my lawn, and we're cool.

Wil Wheaton is an actor, writer, and life-long geek. He lives in Los
Angeles with his wife, kids, and a bag of polyhedral dice, in a house
built out of Magic cards.

We obviously didn't come to see this shitty movie

Gears of War, easily the most anticipated Xbox360 game this side of Halo 3 was shown to lucky gamers last week at “The Match Made in Hell”, a four-city Gears preview held after a showing of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Beginning”. The preview and game play are drawing almost unanimously rave reviews from the fanboy faithful in attendance. No, not fainting or a riot, but pretty damn close.



Gears of War is first person shooter with heavy horror and team game play elements. The game’s lush graphics and the recent announcement that it would support multiplayer game play brought Gears of War's anticipation level to a fever pitch.

The game means much more to Microsoft’s Xbox360 platform than your average holiday season title. When the Xbox360 launched in November of last year, it drew criticism for not being a large enough step graphically from the original Xbox to warrant the “Next Generation” moniker. By default, Gears has inherited the responsibility of being the first “true” Xbox360 next generation title, the first to really use the 360’s full processing horsepower. With November’s release of Nintendo’s groundbreaking Wii console, and Sony’s controversy-plagued PS3, the need for the 360 to shine has never been more vital for Microsoft.

Will Gears cement the 360’s strong lead on competitors Sony and Nintendo in the current phase of the console wars, or will it end up being just another FPS death orgy? We’ll know soon enough; Gears of War goes on sale November 7th.

here's a look:

Next-Gen has prematurely released a list of the top 100 PC games of the 21st century based entirely on the number of units sold. A quick perusal of the list reveals dozens of games you've never heard of and will most likely never play on account of them being diabolically terrible, whilst the rest are games you most likely own and have shunned your family in favor of.

Starting out atop the list one will quickly find this little gem.

Surely the humans buying this discounted "Entertainment" software out of Wal-Mart discount bins across America are a financial force to be reckoned with. Though it should be unbelievably inspiring to any would-be game developers out there to know that a slot machine game featuring a character your grandmother found hilarious can generate millions in revenue.

According to 1UP, EGM got an inside look at Guitar Hero 2, and reveals the following set list, which should elicit various forms of ZOMG!!11! from Guitar Hero geeks -- myself included -- everywhere.

Guitar Hero 2 will include all the features of Guitar Hero, but will add a co-op mode, where players can jam together choosing rhythm, lead, or bass guitar. The game advertises over 55 songs, and it's unclear whether these 22 songs are the entire set list of popular recordings, with the remainder being unlockable indie artists, or if there will be more tunes the young people will enjoy when the game is released in Rocktober.

On a personal note (yeah, because this entire story isn't one huge personal note, already) I am thrilled that one of my hoped-for songs, Miserlou, is included.

. . . ZOMG!!111!1eleventy!

Thank you for your indulgence.

XBox Live subscribers, get ready to party like it's 1989!

Microsoft will start with Frogger, and offer a new classic game each week for the next five weeks. There are currently 20 titles available to XBox Live subscribers, and Microsoft says they hope to have a total of 50 available by next year.

Despite the fact that it has mainly been a dust collector of late, I knew that building my PC box was a good idea. Today I got proof: GameSpot's PC Gaming forum has an epic list of potential heavy hitter exclusives scheduled for 2007 release.

My personal choices include:

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars -- Welcome back, my old RTS friend.

Wil Wright's SPORE -- Is anyone not excited about this ground breaking game?

Warhammer Online: While I'm loyal to the Warcraft franchise, I can't help
but be totally into playing this. And please, no Warcraft copied Warhammer lore. I've already heard enough.

Crysis: Fuck yeah! Do I even need to explain?

Stalker: I'm so completely curious.

Alan Wake: The scenery alone is worth checking out.

But that's just me. There are plenty more to choose from, and you can check out the rest of the coming year's releases here.

The Motorola Q phone, which is sold to Verizon customers, does a whole slew of cool things, like access TV shows via slingbox, tune-in to XM, and provide access to the Internet and IM networks. It looks like Q owners will also be able to play classic NES games via an emulator, according to a video posted at MobileMag.

There's a video of the alleged game playing at YouTube. It could be a hoax, but if it is, someone sure went to a lot of trouble to fake it.

And if you'd like to go the other way, boingboing links instructions on converting a classic NES controller into a cell phone.