Your cable TV just got a little more obsolete
Apple has been adding new TV shows to the iTunes Music Store like crazy these days, and some of the best content has been coming from Comedy Central. TUAW spotted The Showbiz Show, which joins a whole bunch of other stuff like Comedy Central Stand-Up, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, Drawn Together, and a ton of other stuff. The season/monthly passes are a good idea, if you really need to see only one or two shows, because after that, you’re throwing your money away, since cable isn’t that expensive.
There’s some more Disney/ABC content up now too, including long-overdue season passes for Desperate Housewives and Lost.
The greatest or worst video game ever made
I can’t decide if Penn & Teller are avant garde geniuses or just really clueless about how to make a good video game.
At any rate, all six owners of the Sega CD almost found out at some point in the mid-’90s, but unfortunately “Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors” was cancelled sometime between the time the video game magazines got to review it and its release date.
Luckily, now even those of us who have never bought this piece of shit console add-on can get a taste of Penn & Teller’s bizarre near-foray into the world of video games. If you’ve ever wanted to drive a bus across the state of Nevada in real time (with no artistic embellishments added) or shoot a tiger in the face with a nail gun given to you by a carnie, this game is for you.
Check it. And check the gloriously pixelated screenshots.
Via Boing Boing, Daring Fireball and about a billion other sites.
Crap Filter coming at you from NY Comic-Con!
Just a little heads up to our faithful readers that Crap Filter will be reporting from Comic-Con this weekend at the Javits Center in the Big Apple. What info will we uncover? Who will we meet? What free crap will we be guilted into taking? Stay tuned to find the answers to these and other pressing questions, because we’re assuming that inquiring minds probably want to know.
Video game violence isn’t just for kids anymore
For those of you that can’t get enough of the government legislating good parenting, finally there’s some good news.
I was reading today’s “Daily Variety,” and I noticed… oh wait, for those of you who don’t know, that’s the newspaper to all of us soulless Hollywood hacks. Anyway, there was an article about video game violence. It seems that Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are trying to get legislation moving that would make it illegal to sell video games rated M or AO to minors. I knew that M stands for “Mature”, but I had to look up AO to find out what it stood for. You can see for yourself here. I was wrong in my guess of “About Orgasms.”
These days, the violence portrayed in video games has become fairly realistic, at least compared to the good old days. In modern games you can take pleasure in shooting innocent bystanders, watch them writhe in agony, and then finish them off, still finding time to sleep with prostitutes. I guess the lawmakers feel that this is not something kids should be seeing as part of their play time. Continues after the jump »
Touching the Box
Finally, I got to experience the Xbox 360.
Mr. Moneyballs (my personal, internal nickname) went to pick up a cheap television at Circuit City this morning. My apartment is finally being sanctified with digital cable, and my roommates and I felt that there was no better way to enjoy digital cable than having a television on which to watch it.
The cable guy was scheduled to arrive as early as noon, so I forced myself to get up at 9am and trek to the Circuit City in Union Square. I got there at 9:30am, and it hadn’t yet opened. Fast forward 40 minutes, I’m full of coffee and a very disappointing Egg BLT. Au Bon Pain? More like Au Shitty Pain. Oh dip!
A lame NES knockoff? What are the chances?
Vintage Computing has a fairly in-depth thrashing of the Messiah Entertainment Generation NEX console. Turns out it’s a giant piece of crap. It doesn’t work with all of the games on their compatibility list, and the games it does work with have issues. Oh, but it does have 2.4 GHz wireless…for some reason.
I have to say I’m a little bummed on this. It would have been a fun little machine to have, since my NES crapped out on me like 10 years ago. I’ve never been a very big game collector though, and I only had like 12 games, so I wouldn’t have really missed out on much.
My advice? Just get a nice controller and stick to playing emulators on your computer like everyone else.
Update:
I’m a little relieved to see that Jake of 8Bit Joystick offers a more positive review.
I know a lot of gamers were really looking forward to this, so it’s good to see that there’s still hope.
