Pop-culture

The year was 1999. A plucky young lad fresh out of the 8th grade, I had just finished reading Timothy Zahn's fantastic Thrawn trilogy a year earlier, which began my immersion into the Star Wars expanded universe. There's a lot of good stuff to be found in said universe-the aforementioned Zahn books, the Rogue Squadron series, the Crimson Empire comics and so forth. So you can imagine my anticipation of The Phantom Menace, the long awaited beginning of the prequel trilogy.

It's funny what was once considered portable.

My little brother and I got a Sega Game Gear for Christmas in 1991. At the time, we thought it was the coolest thing ever, despite only having the pack-in game Columns at first. It was the promise of the Game Gear that excited us so much. Sure, our friends with Game Boys had all kinds of great games to choose from, but soon we'd be able to play Sonic the Hedgehog in full color ... in the dark!

So it comes to this. The engineer, my favorite Team Fortress 2 class, the one in which I saw a need for some additional items before the medic update even came out, the one that I have almost 130 hours of playtime with, will be the last to get an update. I'm not mad. Really....I'm not.

I've always felt that Perfect Dark was superior to the original Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007 in just about every way. However, a recent poll from this site concluded that most of our readers favor the James Bond-inspired shooter over its spiritual successor. I fully acknowledge that GoldenEye was a landmark title in several ways, mainly in breaking the Doom mold of "just kill everything on the map" and beginning the trend of more tactical shooters we see today, such as Half-Life 2. However, Perfect Dark built on those early achievements in such a fashion as to eclipse its ancestor in more ways than one.

Not to sound like a tool, but this was just a brilliant idea. Yesterday (Thursday, July 23rd), Nintendo promoted the launch of Wii Sports Resort by turning Military Island in Times Square into a mini-Wulu Island. Granted, it could have been better had it taken place on a larger piece of real estate, but short of cordoning off Central Park or Coney Island, this is not too shabby.

Despite the close quarters, it looked like a cool event, I'm sorry I missed it.

Can't get enough of seeing your favorite video game vixens (and Link) in risque pictorials? Well, how about a burlesque show? The show was put on by the Devil's Playground burlesque group for a Video Game Girls event in Los Angeles. The dancers here aren't female gamers, but for the most part they did a job on the costumes and the seductive dancing.

Yeah, it's old, but I thought it was cute seeing someone using an classic toy like Legos to recreate a classic videogame like Donkey Kong.

I can't help but think that given time this could really become a good late night program. Can you picture Leno, Letterman or even Conan attempting something like this?

Looking for a gift for that gamer you love or just want to have something game-related to give that special someone? Then here is a collection of potential gift ideas.

Sadly, this compilation was posted far too late for Valentine's Day. So unless your lady has a birthday or anniversary coming up, you'll need to bookmark this story for next year. Ladies shopping for guys need not worry; we appreciate NES controller underwear at any time of the year.

Production Weekly is reporting that the newest Resident Evil film, titled Resident Evil: Afterlife is set to begin shooting this September 28th in Toronto. No real details have emerged yet (although the film is currently slated for a September 17th, 2010 release date). We do know this much—the newest outing will take place in Tokyo. I figure it's safe to assume that Milla Jovovich will return, but that's not official at this point.