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When first asked to write for videolamer, Jay asked for a short biography in the form of 10 games. You can see the gang’s choices over here. The games I chose to represent me aren’t necessarily my favourite games, games I have completed, games I recommend you need to play or necessarily even good games. They are the games that I have a special association with and games that take me back to a certain time or place. Much like a certain film or a song, games can tug at the memory and take you back to times past. This is my life in games in roughly chronological order.

Snoopy Tennis.
I’m not talking about the horrible Game Boy Color game, I’m all about the Game and Watch version. →  Densha de Read! Shinkansen

Many of the great leaders throughout history were also great warriors. They lead armies, knocked over walls, flags were heavily involved. Playing Civilization IV, this is self evident from the available commanders – Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Gilgamesh. I considered what would happen if you added the greatest warriors in the world today – the stars of Street Fighter – into the Civilization mix. Why, you’d have the greatest gaming crossover of all time, is what you’d get.

Civilization IV: Champion Edition

Ryu – Japan
Charismatic
Philosophical

Sure, he can afford shoes, but he walks barefoot for comfort. Ryu is a good leader to pick for a beginner, with his balanced mix of traits, starting techs and unique units he gives you a solid base to work from. →  READ3R

Fighting games are, sadly, one of the few areas of gaming where I can still get worked up into a fanboy.  Shameful, I know, but every gamer has their flaws.  My problem is that I am a hopeless, shameful SNK fan.  I buy their games when they treat the fanbase like crap.  I buy the games that are crap.  And every time I see gamers tear them a new one for a legitimate grievance, I can’t get myself to join in.

At the same time, I have never understood the appeal of the suite of fighters made by Arc System Works.  I can tell you about some of the many things the studio does incredibly well, perhaps better than anyone else.  →  Read Dead Redemption

When Activision announced GH:WT would have authoring tools when Rock Band 2 would not, many reviewers and other industry sounding boards thought this was a critical error on the part of Harmonix. My reaction was “so what” – most gamers are idiots. Therefore I was uninterested in downloading their at best mediocre, but more likely putrid attempts to create music. Three hundred real songs (for Rock Band 2, which continues to focus on professional DLC) and 5,000 removed user made remixes of Zelda and Mario music (for GH:WT) later, it appears I was correct. Authoring tools for the common man are useless, particularly when the item authored is as complex as a four instrument track song.

Harmonix announced earlier this week they would be going in a different direction. →  If you die in the article, you die in real life.

Is anyone else totally addicted to taking snapshots and spending hours on the diorama mode on Super Smash Brothers Brawl? YES! You too! Great. Here are some of my creations for people to use to add some spice to their fan fictions. I’ve given some title and synopsis hints but feel free to use your own okay? And don’t say I don’t ever give you anything, you disgusting fanfiction people.

Suggested Title: Excite Bike Mountain (yaoi)
Synopsis: Purple Excite Bike Man and Red Excite Bike Man are the best of friends. After Excite Bike School they ride their Excite bikes to all kinds of different places and have adventures. Anal adventures. Find out where Purple Excite Bike Man wants to park his Exciting Bike in Red Excite Bike Man. →  Shadow of the Article

Sometime soon, not today, maybe not even this year, but before the end of the world Richie and I are going to liveblog playing the ultimate Pokemon drinking game. Drinking? Pokemon? Game? I hear no-one say. Yes that’s right. Oh you want to play too? Here are the rules:

1) Equitment
You have to pronounce equipment as equitment and skeleton as skellington and vehicle as vericle. It’s all part of playing the drinking game. Anyway, to fully enjoy the Pokemon Drinking Game you need the following:

* Every single episode of Pokemon the animated series, including the films and the Pikachu films (You can illegally download all of these from the internet. I strongly advocate that you do because when 4Kids or Nintendo or whoever finally decide to release all of them in your region there will be 2.5 episodes per DVD and it’ll cost £15 each, and even then they’ll release only half of them). →  Read Danger!

As I sat staring at an enormous horde of Mongol marauders storming across the bridge, I felt a certain pride at the waiting ranks of Byzantine heavy infantry that stood on the other side. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always felt a certain affinity for those crazy Byzantines. Positioned at the crossroads of two continents, bordered by distinctly unfriendly Islamic and Catholic nations on either side, one of the greatest cities on earth as their capital. In both of the Medieval: Total War titles, the Byzantine Empire is one of the toughest factions to succeed with, surrounded by enemies and few potential allies, and that’s before the Golden Hordes turn up sometime along the way with their endless armies of terrifying heavy cavalry and horse archers. →  Show me the reading!

Your favorite band wants to know who you think should compose their next album. No, that’s too obvious, try this. Your favorite author wants to know who you think should write his next book.

Reggie has asked Kotaku readers who Nintendo should collaborate with next, implying the Metroid Team Ninja project won’t be the last time Nintendo brings in outside help. The problem with calling in third parties is apparently not obvious to everyone, as fans filled forums with names like Blizzard, Team Ico, Square, Treasure and so on.

Mario games aren’t great because of the Mushroom Kingdom and Zelda games aren’t great because of Hyrule. All the themes, plots, artwork and music may add to these series but they are not fundamentally what they are about. →  Reading more, assemble!

Ah, creativity. Useless, overrated creativity.

Once, back in the past, a man had an original idea and he took it and he made a form of mass media out of it and people loved it. They loved it so much that they decided he shouldn’t work on finding something new to give them, he should instead work on more of what they loved.

And thus we were given The Odyssey. And The Odyssey was just as successful and lucrative as the first. This opened the eyes of the creative people, who would often struggle for long periods of time trying to make something new. Creative people did not have to be creative all the time. They just had to be creative once and willing to cash in on that one flash of brilliance as much as humanly possible! →  Read more? No, I’ll read it all.

This past Sunday was spent almost entirely playing Symphony of the Night on my PSP.  It is rare these days for a game to grip me so much that I not only desire to spend my gaming time with it, but put aside other duties in order to make more gaming time.  Symphony was one of those experiences, and while I cannot afford to have them all of the time, it is nice to know they still exist.

That being said, I was surprised to see myself become so engaged with the game. On one hand, this statement is silly.   SOTN is one of the few modern classics where the gaming community’s opinion hasn’t greatly diminished after years of constant play and retrospective.  →  OutRun 2006: Post to Post