Community Check In: Gotta Catch 'Em All

Bulletin

The GameSpot Community has been bounding with a plethora of activities, live events, contests, community gaming events and more! First up some of our crew headed out to Hawaii to get ready for Sunday's Pokemon World Championships 2012 live stream. Watch our live coverage on GameSpot or Twitch as we highlight the best players of both the video games and trading card game. Who knows maybe we;'ll have some schwag to give away from the event! The live stream starts Sunday August 12th, 10am - 5pm HST / 1pm - 8pm PST.

Next up, Chalk Talk, last week's assignment users wrote editorials about what developers and publishers they were willing to forgive and for the first time in a long time members were featured on the front page of GameSpot! And if that wasn’t cool enough, a new GameSpot User Rewards Challenge will be starting this week. In addition to the automatic profile points you get by simply being a user on the site you’ll also have the chance to earn bonus points by completing activities. We've also been cleaning up some nasty bugs around the site so you'll want to read the latest known bugs report for further details.

Making Mischief

Not everything on the internet needs to be serious about gaming, take some of these hilarious comics and videos for example. I mean who doesn’t want Bacon Wizard Time? We’re also sharing some amazing Dorkly comics, including Everything you ever wanted to know about "whoo-hoo" and The Great Deku Dad. But if silly cartoon humor isn’t quite your thing than this guy playing the Super Mario theme backwards might be impressive. Also, if you want to see the future by John Carmack, this video shows off his futurist VR Headset.

Free to Play

If you've been wanting to attend MLG for quite some time, pre-order Hitman: Absolution to gain free access to their Sniper Challenge game--now available on PC through Steam. Practice your sniping and win a chance to go to MLG's Dallas Tournament courtesy of GameSpot / In addition to our current beta key giveaway for Free Play Friday we thought we would take a moment to give a shout out to a little indie game called Freedom Planet they currently have a browser demo available on their site. For those of you who are Sonic fans you will likely be giddy at the clear homage to the spiky blue fellow. Also for this week only you can get Skylanders: Cloud Patrol free on iOS devices, One of Swords has the full details.

Geeky Gimmies

As always the internet is a cornucopia of gaming swag delights, this week in addition to all of the nifty Team Fortress stuff seen in Synthia’s blog, there were also Sriracha Rooster Sauce Lollipops to enjoy thanks to the good people at thinkgeek. But if you’re looking for something a little classier to add to your video game swag collection you could try this 300$ limited edition 25th anniversary Street Fighter chess set.

Will Play for Food

For many GameSpotters the idea of getting to work in an industry surrounded by the great minds that create something as powerful as games is a dream come true. Well for those of you who are interested we are here to inform you that both “Perfect World" and “Riot" are currently hiring for various positions, go make your dream a reality!

Bonus Item

For those of you who have not yet seen this fantastic Legend of Zelda parody and are in any way a "fan" of the games. Stop whatever you're doing and watch NOW!