Those courageous gonzo-reporter-cum-revolutionaries at UK:R posted some tragic, horrible news today. The next Ninja Gaiden title is bound for the Playstation. You know Team Ninja, though. They like to have their names in everybody’s good books. …except Nintendo’s, of course. The games are M-rated.

UPDATE: Some out-checking of GT videos reveals that Sigma appears to be just an embellished port for the PS3, and Itagaki is still at home on the 360. Panic level low.

Gamesindustry has word from Activision that the Guitar Hero franchise is coming to the three-six in 2007.

My Crime Space is a blog that reports all kinds of crimes that are committed with the aid of websites like Myspace and CraigsList. They’ve got a crack-squad of reporters who snoop around and publish cached versions of convicted web-criminals’ Myspace pages and Xangas. Most of the articles follow the same formula, with the only changes being the names, ages and states. While Myspace has taken some measures to protect its (mostly underage) userbase, the state of child safety on myspace is still pitiful at best. I don’t have any ideas though, it’s next to impossible to police millions of profiles, each with thousands of comments and dozens of pictures. Now that I’ve said that, they are policing it a bit. This includes highschool liaison officers crawling students’ profiles without their knowledge, and in some cases even busting them for things they mentioned online. Schools are punishing kids for things they do outside of school time and off school property, that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish though. I can’t help but chuckle at the comment on this article about girls 16-19 posting naked photos of themselves online, and the liaison officer who discovered them; “How do you get that job?”.

Game experience may change during online play. It always does! I had a little chuckle reading this article at Kotaku that confirms the inevitable (sooner than anyone though possible).

When I first got my 360, I emailed Microsoft with a few random questions I had about upcomin features:

[...]My third question goes back to the custom gamer pictures, will there be an option to make it so you can’t ever see people’s custom pictures? I’m asking on behalf of concerned parents who don’t want their children seeing obscene images (made with the camera, or uploaded if uploading becomes possible.)

Thanks! I’m really enjoying my xbox 360 experience so far!

…and the response I recieved:

Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience. It sounds like this has been a very frustrating experience for you. After careful review of your issue, we have determined that it is best that you call the Xbox Customer Support number for better assistance; United States and Canada : 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) International direct dial to US : 1- 425-635-7180.

For further assistance, please don’t hesitate to write back or call Xbox Phone Support. We are open everyday from 9am to 12mn Central Time.

and my favorite part:

Sincerely,
Joe
Xbox Customer Care Team

This brickshelf gallery shows one guy’s homemade LEGO Technic weapons. I remember making some elastic-band powered killing machines with Technic, but I quickly discovered K’Nex did a much better job because the sliding bits work much better for the bolt action etc.

See also his bitchin’ Uzi

mc chris – dungeon master of ceremonies

When I got my copy, it was #13 and climbing. Now the number NINE album on the iTunes HipHop charts, mc chris and DJ John’s fourth album (“If five songs is an album…”) is lifting up skirts, tearing houses down and smacking babies on an mp3 player near you. Ever a dude who likes to dish perks to his fanbase, the mc had posted preview versions of a few of the songs on his official forums and myspace. The “work-in-progress” songs that were posted prior to the album’s release did well to whet our appetites, and included different loops and lyrics than the versions that appear on the album: “ftw” was originally posted on myspace with a backtrack comprised of Gary Glitter and Ray Romano samples and later released over the Halo 2 theme (“mc stands for master chief!”), while the pre-release “omc” used Ratatat’s “Seventeen Years” as the instrumental.

The songs themselves are fantastic, catchy as hell and ideal to play loud if you’re brave enough to publicly listen to music with a voice like mc’s. The abundance of actual singing (as opposed to “rapping”), and guitar on the album struck me at first as a bit of a departure for mc chris until I got to thinking that mc and DJ John have histories and influences very deeply rooted in pop-punk. Given their histories with pop punk bands like the Lee Majors and Attention Deficit, this new style seems natural, and works very well. With the vocal hooks usually left to the likes of Hallie Bullit, fans of mc’s other albums may find the singing a bit weird. Perhaps a bit MC Lars-ish? The singing grows on you, fast. Just like Boysdontcry on ENC, and this time it doesn’t feel as if they used the vocoders as a crutch, or as an insecure rapper’s attempt to obfuscate his crazy high voice. DMOC sounds rad, and you’ll sing along as soon as you’ve heard it enough times to learn all the lyrics.

The anthematic “FTW” is track one, released with a beat that’s heavily inspired by the original, but without the Ray Romano samples.

“Pw/om” was originally released on OnRyeLtd. and was generally not well-received by fans on the message board. The new version features (compare them?), but lacks the mom’s speech about how she got set on fire, and has to wear wigs.

The album features 10 songs, and mc’s trademark skits make a triumphant return. Three skits that serve as a sort of an mc chris self-parody seriously had me losing it with laughter. I still chuckle every time I hear the Hammer skit on Knowing, and I was praying for skits every time I listened to one of his bootleg live sets.

I’m such a fanboy of mc chris that it wouldn’t make sense for me to give it a score out of ten. Go buy it and listen to it a million thousand times.

Every day is mc christmas, now can I get a witness?

You can grab the whole Miike “Ryu Ga Gotoku” video from the Yakuza website now. GT has a video review of it posted if you’re one of those PS2 people, and Twitch has word of a 2007 feature film planned.