As I hit the 29 years of age mark, little has changed. I still find my email inbox filled with advertisements for increasing my sex drive (when what I really needed was the opposite), I still have little time to play and to talk about games (barring my articles on Smash!), I still can’t spend time with my friends (who seem as distant and busy as me). 5 minute breaks to catalogue curiosities, at least, fares better (then again this is only the second weekend I get around to doing this so you know it’s bound to fail sooner or later). Here we go:

• 15 colour pixel love – Colossal Katamari.
• Divi-dead, a Japanese visual novel that sees a university student confront horror and sexual themes (something we can all relate to in our univ days, surely), released way back in 1998, just got ported to… The internet. A group of dedicated fans created a Flash version of the game for online play and it even allows you to save your progress. Go, eroge, go!
• Christopher Walken interprets Lady GaGa’s “Pokerface”. There’s a remix in the making, I’m sure.
• My review of Bullfrog’s Syndicate for Sega’s 16-bit wonder has gone live at Sega-16.com. Another case of “could have been”, unfortunately.
• Yes, I’ll have some 1980′s portuguese pop, thankyouverymuch.
• Natalie Portman rocks. So says THE LORD OF TERROR.
• Nintendo SIXTY FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUR!
• 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time. Actually, some of those trends still apply in contemporary advertisement, which is still creepy.
• The Puppet Show. Children as dolls. A disturbing reminder.
• Hiro is my hero.
• After Randy Pitchford’s verbal rubble, comes a storm from three of the major digital videogame distributors. Direct2Drive, GamersGate and Impulse all say “nay” to online distribution of Modern Warfare 2 because, and I quote, “Valve’s Steamworks is a Trojan” and they refuse to sell future games until Valve decouples games from their marketplace elements. Translation: everyone wants a slice of MW2, which is reasonable. Nobody wants to sell a game that requires an authentication system that comes from its direct competitors, which is fair. That someone forgot to tell D2D that they still have in their catalogue games that require Steam integration, is laughable. That only now they have decided to “challenege the monopoly”, precisely a few days away from one of the year’s most eagerly awaited titles to be released, comes of as strikingly hypocritical. I’m betting we’re going to read more about this in the next days.
• Splendid as always, Simon Parkin talks about Germany’s stance on violent games.
• The always excellent Tim Rogers asks if videogames can be our friends. The result is an always excellent (and lenghtly) reply. Bonus points for one of the scariest black and white movies ever.

El fin.