Pop-culture

Adult Swim goes back to the original PlayStation and shows us why there was no sequel to PaRappa the Rapper 2.

New images have emerged from the upcoming videogame adaptation: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Starring Smallville's Kristen Kreuk as Chun-Li, it also features Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, Neal McDonough as M. Bison, Chris Klein as Charlie Nash, Moon Bloodgood as Detective Maya Sunee, Taboo as Vega among many others.

The Legend of Chun-Li is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak for 20th Century Fox and is due in theaters on February 27, 2009.

Pardon the interruption on this non-video game related post, but long-time readers know I’m a pretty big Transformer geek and I thought it would be a crime to not share these insane prices. Transformer fans enjoy.

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Thanksgiving is fast approaching and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is trying to get the word out about the conditions turkeys are born into, raised and slaughtered in just so they can become that delicious dining table center piece on the last Thursday of November.

In typical PETA fashion, it has co-opted something that mainstream society can relate to (Majesco's Cooking Mama) and made sure its version hemorrhages buckets of blood (blood pours from broken eggs!). And it also makes sure to throw as much chilling information and videos into the mix as "bonuses" to further shock you into vegetarianism.

Whether this will persuade meat eaters to change their ways is debatable—I, for one, kept playing trying to better my score—but whatever your view, Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals Unauthorized PETA Edition is an entertaining diversion.

Bill O'Reilly must have had an intern scouring the Internet for news because the Internet-only version of the Heidi Klum Guitar Hero World Tour commercial was the subject of discussion on last week's The O'Reilly Factor.

The twist is that O'Reilly thinks like most red-blooded American (male) gamers, that Heidi Klum in nothing but a T-Shirt and underwear is very appealing.

But in an effort to not come off as sexist or offend his conservative viewers who might have a problem with the video—and his approval of said video—he asks two pundits to chime in. And in another twist, the conservative female pundits see nothing wrong with the commercial for the most part. 

The Wii was seen on HBO's True Blood of all places this past weekend. HBO seems to have just taken that product placement money and didn't think twice. No observation, no explanation during its brief appearance. There wasn't even the cursory, "I play videogames because being a 200-year-old vampire I can no longer play golf or sports during the day." None of that. They just made sure the Wii-mote was in view and dropped the "Wii" name a few times.

According to at least one source, the Nintendo Wii has already surpassed the XBox 360 in worldwide sales, despite the 360's early launch. Not only is the Wii a really fast-selling console, it's the fastest selling console ever.

Books written about videogames are odd prospects. Fiction expanding on published properties has existed for years, but it's been mostly limited to feverish fantasies written by fans in dark corners of the Internet, usually involving bizarre and improbable sexual situations.