EPISODE THREE: "A Kirby Confession"

The OverThinker makes a plea for open-mindedness among hardcore gamers, and comes clean about his onetime rejection of one of gaming's greatest.

EPISODE FOUR: "The End of The World as Wii Know It?"

As the runaway success of The Wii seems poised to kick-off a second Nintendo Age, so-called "hardcore gamers" are predicting a dire outcome from the influx of "casual players." The OverThinker isn't so sure... because he's been here once before.

EPISODE NINE: "Daisy, Daisy"

In which "Mario Kart Wii" gives me an excuse to string together some tangentially-related bits about Nintendo's "other princess," under-appreciated Hedgehog love-interests and Squaresoft's ever-more-"emo" hero characters. Also: Fixing some issues from last time, some elaboration on audio-editing and Italian softcore starlets.



Most of the time I have a cohesive, essay-ready plan for these. Other times... not so much. Enjoy!

EPISODE TEN: "Not A Review Of GTA IV"

In which I most-emphatically DO NOT review one of the biggest titles of 2008.



I went back and forth about putting this one up now, my main concern being that putting up what boils down to a "yeah, but"-ing of one of the four or five biggest post-Playstation franchises isn't going to do much to deter my apparently growing reputation as a cranky nostalgia-gamer - the gaming equivalent of some aging-hippie film professor who STILL won't concede that "Easy Rider" has or ever will be surpassed... BUT it's a relevant entry and (more importantly) was finished and ready to go. I know I've been very blunt about not having a set schedule, but I do start to feel like a slacker if I let too much time go by.

And, of course, the near-garaunteed uptick in traffic that comes from being able to accurately place "GTA" in one's YouTube tags doesn't hurt, either...

EPISODE SEVEN: "The Psychology of Nintendo Fans."

In the world of gaming and game-fandom, there's no insult that gets tossed around the forumscape with more vitriol than "Nintendo Fanboy." The Children of Miyamoto are legendary for the strength of their devotion and infamous for the creepiness of their occasional fanatacism - and both reputations are fairly well deserved. But what exactly makes them tick?

I'm not the first gaming culture-commentator to tackle this one... or the last... or even CLOSE to the best, but we all do our part. Part of what I realized putting this together is that most of us of the age to BE nostalgiac about this are ill-equipped to really get a handle on what it all really means: We're too close to be properly objective no matter how hard we try. EVERYONE knows or at least comprehends that "Nintendo Power" - just to use one example - was market-controlling corporate-propaganda of the first order. Everyone. But it doesn't matter. I remember getting my subscription and first issue as a Christmas present; you'll NEVER fully convince my brain to not hold some measure of fondness for it - any more than you'll convince Brits of certain generations that Golliwog was a cruel racist caricature.



Yeah, so... this one's a little on the sentimental side. More funny-business to come, I promise, but you gotta change it up here and there. I mean, the last installment was like ten solid minutes about BOOBS - I have to find the balance where I can ;)

EPISODE EIGHT: "Mississippi Pwning"

Wherein I go against my better judgement and wade into the continuing firestorm over "Resident Evil 5" as a first-step toward getting to a topic we'll probably need to revisit a few more times: Race and ethnic-portrayals in video games.



Had to go back to the sped-up sound a few times this time around, as I've discovered that YouTube doesn't even let DIRECTOR accounts do over ten minutes anymore. Dammit. Also recording sound in a new way, which I don't have exactly where I want it but it DOES allow me to get the material done and uploaded at a MUCH quicker pace. Those issues aside, I think this one came out decently. It's a tough topic, especially since it's not as easy to find appropriate visual aids as it is for, say, "the Boobs episode."

N'Gai Croal, the Newsweek blogger who took a lot of heat - most of it undeserved - from gamers over his negative critique of the trailer, is for the record one of the best game journalists in the mainstream media. I'm thinking of sending him a link to this, which seems courteous since he gets mentioned so often in it, though part of me is a little nervous as to what a professional thinks of my incoherent run-on sentences. Guess we'll see...

EPISODE SIX: "Pr0N."

Presenting Episode Six; which can be thought of as a sort-of followup to Episode Two. We discuss (well.. I discuss, at least) the somewhat uncomfortable and not-at-all clearcut issue of objectification of women in the video game medium, the likely cultural/societal reasons for it, the ramifications of these design choices on gamers and gamer-culture, possible solutions and any other serious-sounding excuse I can find to run suggestive pictures of the girls from "Dead or Alive." Helloooooo, web traffice ;)



This is the first one of these to hit where I haven't used the sound-speed editing at all, so I hope people aren't too dissapointed to learn how dull my normal speaking voice is.

Overall, I'm happy with how this one turned out considering actually picking a definative point of view was kind of a challenge. On the one hand, as I admit more-or-less upfront in the video-proper.. I not only COMPLETELY understand "why" game designers tend to present their female characters in these ways - I don't see a damn thing wrong with it in the broad sense: You want characters to be appealing, and it doesn't get much more appealing than a sexy, large-breasted girl wearing next to nothing jumping around with ninja skills and yelping in Manga-nese. It's not a new phenomenon, look up a 1940s comic book character called "Phantom Lady" sometime. On the other hand, when you take a step back and look at the medium objectively the fact that characters as ridiculously proportioned/costumed as Mai Shiranui or "Soul Calibur's" Ivy tend to pass entirely without comment (other than "whoa," I mean) well... that says and implies a lot of things about game culture and NONE of it is especially flattering.

So... it's not that I want to see Team Ninja sign all the girls up for reduction-surgery or anything, but we DO probably want to be more aware of how this fits in to the culture, perceptions and all of that. I mean, just keep in mind: The "Tomb Raider" series has NEVER had a single installment that was anything other than average as an overall game, but was SOMEHOW popular and well-known enough to warrant two huge-budget movies starring an Academy Award winner. Lara Croft has TWO movies while Link and Zelda don't have ONE... entirely on the basis of digitally-rendered titties. That's what's known as letting things get out of hand, people.