Are you ready to rock? … well you can’t.

Way to go EA / MTV. Way to f up the launch of what should have been your biggest title this Christmas season. Rock Band launched today, or so gamers were told. In reality it seems like there were only a handful of units shipped to retailers with little or no warning about the shortage. The only press release I’ve seen even hinting at production shortages was unearthed yesterday, in which the EA spokesman said that there might be a little supply crunch … until MARCH OF 2008!

Best Buy held midnight launch parties at about two dozen locations across the US and reports are coming in that a large majority of those stores got shipped a paltry number (one store in Kentucky received two PS3 bundles, and that’s it) or no games at all. That means people waited all night to get a rain check for a game with no future restock date. Websites for retailers GameStop, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and Walmart have removed the bundle package listing completely. →  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Read

Like, totally super cool shopping recommendations

It’s becoming somewhat of a rarity to find a video game store that actually knows what they’re doing. Most of the time, you go into a store and get hounded to death by a caveman who just got hired off the streets. And no, they’re not even the cool Geico cavemen, either. Other times, a store has a complete lack of selection, believing Madden is the only game ever made, and proudly advertising their ignorance.

With two new consoles being released this year, videolamer is here to survey the battle field by detailing many stores that sell video games. We’ll break them up into categories of stores, and work from there.

Specialty Retailers
These are your EB Games, GameStop’s, GameCrazy’s, and what have you. These stores are the absolute best for selection. They always have what’s new, be it obscure RPG’s or the latest GTA-spinoff. They also have a wide selection of used games, nearly tripling the amount of games for the consumer. →  All happy games are alike; each unhappy game is unhappy in its own way.

Weekly News We Care About Wrap Up – 9.29.06

Opera free on Wii until June ‘07
Though I have absolutely no proof to support this fear, I’m worried that browsing the web on the Wii will require a subscription. Imagine some horrendous system that costs something small like 2 Nintendollars or whatever every time you open the browser. That would seriously limit the time I’d be able to spend on the couch watching pornography with my parents.

I don’t remember playing as an aging guy with a mighty war flute.

Microsoft makes up for broken consoles
Wow, good for them. Does the tracking chip they implant in the machine come free of charge?

The old RPGs are coming
At least in Japan. I may have to play Final Fantasy 6 again, but that’s ok since it’s the pinnacle of the series (Cloud is teh suxx0rs). It’s a shame they didn’t give it the Final Fantasy 3 treatment, though that could be because they plan on remaking 6 for the PS3. →  Post of Tsushima

Circuit City’s newest scam

Circuit City is known for being a shitty store with shitty customer support and shitty business practices. I have had problems there myself, so from experience I can agree on all counts about the store’s shittiness. Their newest shitty deal is that for only $28.99, they will make your Xbox 360 backwards compatible.

Wow, what a steal! Those who think the role of the market is to screw ignorant people out of money any way possible have been defending Circuit City on the interwebs. How they find time to argue between scamming the elderly and emailing people about millions of dollars in African bank accounts is anyone’s guess.

At first inspection, the “deal” almost sounds legitimate for people who can’t connect to Xbox Live to download the backwards compatability updates for free. Only Microsoft is selling a disc with the update on it for substantially less. An account from a forum user put the price at about $2. Microsoft left off the price, but you can see the info on how to use the disc here. →  Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about huffing paint.