To the eighty billion people who have asked:

Read a lot of news stories.

...I only just now discovered the existence of my private message email box thing on the site.

So, my lack of response to you all is not in any way a 'dis', as the kids say. I'll try to go through and get back to everybody's questions soon.

Sorry 'bout that.

As I write this, the steady flow of news seems to have been temporarily staunched. My inbox has stopped racking up press release after press release; the stories from our Japanese correspondent have been posted. Nobody's calling me.

This won't last long. So I'll make it quick. I haven't had the time to think about anything for more than a few minutes at a time over the past few weeks. A story comes in, I drop everything to write it. Then I forget about it five minutes later.

The upside to this is that I have thought about a lot of different things. So here's your news analysis and opinion in bite-size chunks. Welcome to my world.

- I would like to point out that it is not some bizarre, out-of-this-world, how-about-that coincidence that the four biggest games of the year have all found their way onto the Internets prior to their retail release. Considering that pirates have mastered the art of ripping and burning PS2 and Xbox games, and that giant files are now easily spread all over within a day or so, what would have been amazing is if they didn't.

At this point, publishers have very little hope of stopping the spread of the games, because there's no specific place where the pirated software is located. At least with Napster or Kazaa, centralized servers list the files. With programs like BitTorrent, the downloads are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It's like trying to stop the common cold from spreading. As soon as you figure out where it came from, it's gone and a whole bunch of other people are spreading it. All they can do now is step up security measures such that no future games get leaked in the first place.

Well. Or they could make their hardware more resistant to piracy. Nobody's going to be downloading Metroid Prime 2 anytime soon, now, are they?

- If allegations of bribery on the part of Jakks Pacific are true, then from what I read in the court filings, the WWE video game license that went to THQ all those years ago could actually have gone to... previous license-holder Acclaim. Well, they're certainly not going to get it now. But Acclaim hangers-on now have another scapegoat, for what it's worth.

- I'm really glad they're making another action adventure based on the Mortal Kombat franchise, because it worked out so well the last two times.

- Damn that Nintendo.

I say this in jest, of course. But damn that Nintendo. After I put down the cash for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes on November 15, then a DS and Mario 64 on the 21st, I'm going to have to buy anywhere between four and five import games. Because the DS hits Japan on December 2 along with the absolutely unskippable Wario Ware DS and the all-too-intriguing Jam With The Band and One-Line Puzzle. Wait for next year? I can't do it! And that's not all--one week later, Yoshi's Universal Gravitation (the Yoshi GBA platformer that uses the motion sensor) hits, and then a week after that it's Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.

Damn that Nintendo. They really should pay my shipping fees.

- This isn't to say that I'm at all upset with the US launch lineup for the Nintendo DS. It's not particularly tuned to my own strange, non-mainstream, Japanophilic tastes, that's true. But it is balanced much better--instead of just featuring Nintendo first-party titles or just Japanese games, the launch market is actually wide open for Western companies like EA and Activision. Say what you want about the games they're preparing, but any system would kill for Madden, Tiger Woods, Spider-Man, and Ridge Racer at launch.

- This has been a very Wario Ware styled piece with all its fast, transition-less cuts. Which is why I'd like to finish by talking about Mawaru Made In Wario, the new GBA entry in the series that uses a motion sensor. You might think you know how awesome it is. But you don't. Mawaru is entertaining to the point of actually distracting you from remembering to play it. There were multiple times when I was laughing so hard at the on-screen antics that I failed to complete even simple tasks.

In any case, Mawaru is no half-assed update. It kicks the ass of the original in graphic quality, creativity of the games, and extra bonus unlockables (especially the latter category).

Nintendo hasn't announced an American date yet. As soon as they do, I'll drop everything to write the story. Then forget about it five minutes later.

This is my second GameSpotting, and it's going to be about the Nintendo DS again. Just a warning. If you want to read about things that are not the DS, I encourage you to check out the entirety of my journal. There's a link somewhere on this page.

I honestly don't want this to be a running theme--I do know about and have opinions aonother things, and I don't want to be "that guy who won't shut up about the DS." But I had a thought the other day about the DS, because somebody was asking--on a notorious video game forum which I will not name--about how many people actually planned to play the DS outside of their homes. I think I answered that I'd mostly play it at home and on airplanes... not so much on the bus to work.

The reason I bring this up is because I actually don't think this is very important, my not really wanting to play the DS in public or to use it to kill time while making use of public transportation. That is, it's not very important to me that the DS is portable. In fact, I don't think it's very important at all that the DS is portable. The portability of the hardware is merely incidental; the way its design worked out it just happens to be portable. The primary reason for being of the DS is not its portability.

This stands in stark contrast to pretty much every other handheld system ever produced. The Game Boy's entire reason for being was to be the first portable, programmable system. The Atari Lynx was to be the system that brought color graphics to the portable realm, the Game Gear was a Master-System-but-portable, the Turbo Express was a Turbo-Grafx-but-portable. The Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket were attempts to compete with the aging Game Boy that might have worked if not for Pokemon. The PSP is a PS2-but-portable. Or it's a Lynx-but-way-better. Sony hasn't decided yet, but they'll let you know.

What all of these machines share in common is that if they were not portable they would be unremarkable.

But the DS--Nintendo's own indecision about whether it's a hardcore gamer's delight or the device that will bring gaming to the masses notwithstanding--if the DS was not portable, if it were a home system with all of its included features, it might be a strange beast but it could not be called unremarkable. The DS' design grew from the questions "what if we built games around a touch screen" and "what if we had a consumer game product that used two screens"? The bizarre love child of Punch-Out and an ATM.

It doesn't matter where you play the DS. It's not just supposed to be a time killer on the bus, no more than a book, though perfectly portable (much more so than the DS, even) is "supposed" to be read on the go. You're not somehow wasting the potential of a book, or the DS, by enjoying it in a chair at home.

I talked this over with a friend, and we could only find two examples of hardware that fell into this category of portable systems that had some other raison d'etre aside from mere portability. Unfortunately for my argument they are the Virtual Boy and the N-Gage. The Virtual Boy was, somehow, portable in that it could run on batteries and be taken along on trips. But its primary function was to play games using a 3D display. The N-Gage merged a cell phone with (bad) games. Even if the Virtual Boy were not portable, were battery power not an option, it would have been a unique system. And the N-Gage... well, it's still a great idea in theory, isn't it?

In any case: it is certainly advantageous for Nintendo if people think of the Nintendo DS as "the next Game Boy," because of the sales and word-of-mouth hype that will most assuredly spring from that image. And if you look at how Nintendo is promoting the system in the US--trumpeting its wireless multiplayer and the graphically hot Metroid Prime demo--it's clear that to an extent, Nintendo wants American gamers to buy into that image.

But that's not all the DS offers. Remove the portability from the PSP--mount it on the wall of your house--and it immediately becomes far less appealing. Almost useless, in fact. But anchor the DS to a stationary spot in your home and it is still just as compelling a gameplay option.

As a gamer, that's why I'm genuinely excited about the DS. And if you agree or disagree, there's a comments link also somewhere on this page, isn't there?

It finally happened today. Amazon recommended to me that I buy my own book.

I don't think I'm going to, but now that they mention it, I think I should recommend to you that you should buy it. Heck, if you're reading this journal, you're definitely the target audience.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0744004241/qid=1096416561/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-6298047-2569649?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Attached to Midway's press release for Shadow Hearts Covenant were the following two quotes.

• "A gothic saga that rivals the best that Final Fantasy has to offer" - PSM
• "...production values rivaling the mighty Square Enix."- PSE2

It's like the old advertising joke.... Cadillac: The Rolls Royce Of Cars

File this in the "Things I Did Instead Of Working Today" category.

With today's announcement that Paramount Pictures has optioned the film rights to Fear & Respect, a game coming out over a year from now that Midway just announced yesterday, the expected "synergy" between Midway (73.6% of which is owned by Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone) and Paramount (part of Viacom) is coming in full force. This news comes not a month after the companies announced that a Paramount picture will be produced based on, of all things, the upcoming remake of Area 51 (the game stars Marilyn Manson and David Duchovny).

Well, I'm not going to stand in the way of Progress. But as a gamer I must say that I'd feel a little better about this sort of incestalicious behaviour if we were getting some DIFFERENT Midway titles on the big screen. Let's imagine:

JOUST. Jennifer Garner stars as the first woman to ever enter the rough and dangerous male-dominated sport of chicken jousting. Though teased and sexually harrassed by the men in the locker room, who believe that the noble sport of chicken fighting should remain "untainted", she eventually gains their respect when she uses her estrogen power to rescue the team captain, played by Edward Norton, from the lava. Violence, sex scene (no chickens).

GAUNTLET. Lord of the Rings showed us that medieval fantasy can clean up at the box office, so what better game to bring to the silver screen? Starring Viggo Mortensen as Thor the Warrior, Gwyneth Paltrow as Thyra the Valkyrie, and Ian McKellan as Merlin the Wizard, Gauntlet promises lots of heart-pounding sword-slashing sequences... but clearly, the best part is the comic relief when Billy Barty, playing Quester the lovable, irritable Elf, sits down for dinner, raises his goblet high, and screams "ELF NEEDS FOOD BADLY!"

XENOPHOBE. Edward Norton, John Leguizamo, and the guy who played Winston Zeddmore in Ghostbusters star in this space action buddy film. The last survivors on an abandoned space station infested with all sorts of alien life forms, they must run around aimlessly, not really knowing what they are doing, for five minutes until they are all dead.

720°. That one kid from Hanson, pretty much any of them, makes his film debut as a 14-year-old skateboarder with no respect for rules, the principal, his parents--nothing! He wears his baseball cap sideways and his bluejeans are far too large for his body frame. He "shreds" on his "deck" a lot via wide shots of stunt double. Also starring Morgan Freeman as the principal who teaches the boy how to respect people who are different from him.

MARBLE MADNESS. Featuring Hayden Christensen as a young man who competes in the high-risk, fast-paced future sport of "ball busting". "Ball riders", as they are known on the streets, get into giant spheroid vehicles and carom down artificial mountains, racing each other to the death. Also starring Mekhi Phifer as the black marble and Susan Sarandon as a puddle of acid.

This is my first entry in my journal, and my first GameSpotting column. We'll call it my rookie card, if you will. Years from now, perhaps children will sing songs about this day.

I started at GameSpot News on Monday. I knew my first week of work wouldn't be a slow one - in the runup to the Tokyo Game Show, I expected a slew of stories that needed to be rushed live. What I didn't expect at all, what in fact very few people even knew was coming, was Nintendo's announcement late Monday night. After many, many false alarms, we finally had the price and launch date for the DS, and lots of other details.

Tuesday morning was completely insane, as you might well imagine. Phone calls, the frantic clicking of keyboards, shouting across the cubicles. Oh, and then our Japanese correspondent sent in piles of breaking Tokyo Game Show stories, including details of Sony's press conference and PSP announcements. Only later on did I get to think about the way it all went down.

Stories about the surprise Nintendo announcement called the timing of the conference, just before Sony was about to announce details of the PSP, "suspicious." That's the safe way of saying it. I'd call it a straight shot across the bow; a kidney punch from behind. If the E3 press conference was the emergence of the new, aggressive Nintendo, this was the first strike.

Instantly, I was comparing it to the best tricks Sony ever pulled. Undercutting Sega Saturn's price by a hundred dollars at E3. Sending Crash Bandicoot out in front of Nintendo headquarters to film a smart-assed head-on commercial. But this time it's being done to Sony, not by them. Anyone who thinks the new attitude professed at the E3 press conference is just smoke and mirrors should look to the Monday announcements. Yeah, they mean business.

Sony's statements that day were, as usual, ultimately dismissive of the DS. Their view, at least the view that they present to the world, is that the PSP is not in competition with the DS or the Game Boy Advance. Now, I'm not saying that one portable system has to die at the hand of the other or anything. It is possible that both systems could be successful. But even if it's not a battle for market share, it's a battle for image.

In this industry there are very few tight races. Whoever wins, wins big. It's a snowball effect. Whoever starts to take off first will, all other things being equal, pull far ahead of the pack. No matter if the systems have roughly equal lists of pros and cons, one of them will end up being perceived as the 'winner' of the handheld wars. Nintendo wants to make the DS that system.

And one big step they've taken in hopes of doing just that is to shake up Sony's press conference. You've got to wonder if Sony was ready to announce price and launch info for the PSP at that conference, but pulled it after they realized that anything they announced was instantly going to be compared to Nintendo. In any case, Sony doesn't want the PSP compared to the DS, hence their public reticence to go after Nintendo's system.

Meanwhile, Nintendo relishes in comparisons. Reggie had some harsh words about the PSP at the teleconference. It's actually Sony who currently has zero percent market share in the handheld realm. They're the actual underdog. But Nintendo realizes how little that matters in this topsy-turvy industry, when empires can crumble in a year and tiny startups become billion-dollar market leaders in a decade.

Sony, of course, is going after Nintendo's market. They're just not saying that out loud. For all of their talk about the two products being non-comparable, you can bet that if the PSP gains market share over the DS, Sony's next set of PowerPoint slides will unabashedly trumpet the victory. Sony already took one market from Nintendo. Now it's going after another. Nintendo's defense? A strong offense.

Who knows who will win. One thing, for sure, is clear - this isn't your father's Nintendo. The old Nintendo would have moved at its own pace. The new Nintendo just cut in line in front of Sony in a big way. If this kind of surprise is indicative of what we'll see out of Nintendo in the future - like at the Revolution debut at E3 - then prepare for war.

___

By the way, you know what the best thing about this new GameSpotting system is? If you totally disagree with me - and I bet lots of you do! - you can click on the link below and have me fired. Ha ha! Just kidding. I mean add a comment.