Mashing buttons since 1984
It’s hard to believe, but yesterday marked another glorious year of video game blogging around these parts. Believe it or not, but buttonmashing.com is four years old. We’re creeping ever so closely to the half-decade mark. That’s insane to think about.
I think I’ll get myself a Gamefly subscription to celebrate.
Check it out. (via Kottke)
That is some cool stuff.
Yesterday I received a smoker from my family, and we spent the evening playing Boom Blox. I “cured” the smoker late last night, and then got up at 6AM this morning to fire it up. Five hours later, it’s amazing what hickory will do to country style ribs. (I’d have some pics, but, alas, it was like vultures circling overhead.)
If this was my last meal, I would die a very happy man.
I love my kids.
Pony up? Did any other fathers out there score some sweetness?
If you’ve been gaming as long as I have (nerd!) then you’ve been disappointed more than once by video game advertisements. Super ripped mega-heroes with babe-a-licious damsels in distress draped over your shoulder, fighting off hordes of demon spawn from the fiery pits of hell itself. This game is going to be awesome. Not so fast, my friend.
Here are 50 advertisements that may have gotten your hopes up, only to dash them against the brutal reality coral reef of 8-bit graphics.
Not sure if this is old or not, but it’s new to me. If you use Google Reader (presumably, you’re reading this right now from GR) there’s a nice little easter egg hidden in the keyboard shortcuts of Google Reader, aka the Konami Code.
You know the drill: U, U, D, D, L, R, L, R, B, A. Voila!
(from googlediscovery.com)
[Yes, I’m bored]… as usual:
Liberty City Police Face Allegations Of Incompetence, Brutality. A little taste:
“I was shot 14 times on my way to work today, including twice by police,” said one Algonquin-area resident. “That is unacceptable.”
Muchos LOLs.
If you missed it last night, here’s a link to the HD version of the latest episode of Gametrailers TV, which has the world premier of the newest trailer for Resident Evil 5, aka the Buttonmasher’s most anticipated game EVER. You can jump right to the trailer
If you’d just like to see the RE5 trailer (in SD, for the moment) you can see that here.
Along with that, I grabbed a handful of screenshots from the trailer and threw them up on Flickr. You can see the whole set here.
Right now, RE5 looks like a high-res version of RE4. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, as RE4 is superb. I just hoped to see something more. And not just a new femme fatale.
“GamOvr is a collaborative effort to share video game pictures we find interesting.”
A lot of cool pix up there, including one of my favorite animated gifs of all time:
Why the Military Needs the Gaming Industry
An interesting Popular Mechanics article about gaming (and gaming interfaces in particular) and how the military is using gaming technology.
“What an interesting evolution, I thought. For years, video games had been appropriating the controls of airplane yolks (Atari 2600 joystick) and guns (the famous “Duck Hunt” pistol)—interfaces common to military equipment—and now the military is using equipment that evolved in the gaming industry.”
Not sure about comparing the NES Zapper to the real thing, but whatever. The Super Scope, though…
“By now, the dual analog thumbsticks on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 controllers have turned the standard logic of the first-person shooter (FPS) into muscle memory for most red-blooded young American men”
and
“Some might say that all those teenagers “wasting time” on Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 are actually the warfighters of tomorrow, training themselves at zero cost to the U.S. taxpayer. In fact, when offered the choice between the traditional airplane controls and gamepad controls, many younger soldiers pick the thumbsticks that are familiar to them.”
Ender’s Game, anyone?
As always, read the whole thing.
I started playing Oblivion a few months ago but then got distracted by shinier games, so I never made it very far. Certainly not far enough to try any of the expansions. But this story, Why I Love Thedret The Exaggerator, cracked me up. It’s worth the read, whether you’ve played Oblivion or not.
(via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)