You’re probably wondering why you’re seeing the Playboy logo on a gamer website.  Well, I thought it was fitting considering gamer culture has infiltrated Playboy Magazine.

In the November ‘08 issue there is a half-page article on Fable II.  A full page ad for Fallout 3.  And an interview with a woman who’s interests include NES, Star Trek, and Dungeons and Dragons.

Okay, I could probably let that all slide, but then I saw that in the main pictorials in the center of the magazine had a gorgeous young woman next to a rock band guitar and a rock band microphone positioned *ahem* in a suggestive position.

So, in case you guys didn’t know, this is a big deal.  Gamer culture is spreading.  Latest conquest: Hotties in Playboy.  Sounds like Hef knows his target market audience.

Many thanks to P4KO for letting us use his new cover song “Theme of World Warriors” on our site (just click play on the player in the upper right).  P4KO is a musician from San Luis Potosí, Mexico.  His main focus is electronic music.

The guitars for Theme of World Warriors are superb.  We hope he does more covers of video game theme songs!

If you’d like to hear more, check out his site on MySpace.  You can hear his other songs, as well as download the Theme of World Warriors as an mp3.

I got Soul Calibur IV, and have been playing it pretty consistently for a few weeks now.  I know I’m behind the curve because it’s been out for months now, but what the hell.

I like the character customization, they took a page from Virtua Fighter 5 it looks like.  Honestly I think that’s a must have feature at this point.  It even has a color picking tool so you can change all the base colors.

The game play is good.  There don’t seem to be a ton of combos.  There’s a little pause between moves a lot, so you get a chance to get some licks in on your opponent and vice-versa.  It’s a well balanced game.

The only issues that I have with it are this.  There are two levels of difficulty, normal and hard.  I found normal to be too easy and hard to be too hard.  I wasn’t able to get that “this porridge is just right” feeling out of it.  I just leave it on normal mode and waste all of my opponents.  That gets old pretty quick.

Internet play on Xbox Live was flawless.  I played a few matches and found that opponents were evenly matched.  It was definitely fun.  I’d recommend this game to anyone.

I called up Microsoft, and they were very cool about the whole ring of death situation.  They said the warranty is for a year, but they’ve extended it to 3 years for the ring of death issue.

They shipped me a box to send it to them.  You should have seen the broken 360, it looked like it had been through a war zone.  Black marks on it and no faceplate.  A sad state of affairs.

I received what looked like a brand new 360.  It may be refurbished I’m not sure.  It works better than the old one!  I swear even the graphics look more vibrant!  Maybe it’s because I haven’t played it in forever.

Sadly, my xbox 360 has been affected by the orange light of death. Even with an Intercooler on the back with several extra fans my xbox managed to overheat and die. I’m sure that I have a Best Buy warranty somewhere, but until I find that and get it repaired I won’t be playing any xbox 360 games. That’s ok because I have a PS3, which is better made by the way. Too it doesn’t have as many games as the 360.

I’d say my favorite fighting game is still Marvel vs. Capcom. I didn’t like the second one so much, but the first one is awesome. Word to the wise: don’t drop a bunch of cash on Marvel vs. Capcom 2 by buying it on eBay *cough stinks cough*. But, the original still rules and deserves mention.

I play it on my arcade machine. I built it on Mame and the PC2JAMMA project. It runs ArcadeOS, which you can get at the PC2JAMMA site. The benefits of doing it that way are that I get to use an actual arcade monitor, and wire directly into the JAMMA harness of the machine. The disadvantage is that you have to use DOS, gah! I’m not sure I’d do it that way if I had to again. But I sure as hell like the monitor better than what was available at the time. It looks more authentic. And big!

This is an old photo of my machine, which I’m currently trying to dig out of our garage. The screen is a little blurry because the image is in motion. Once I get that thing out of the back of the garage I’m going to do some more work on it and take some more pictures. Big plans I have, yes.

Since then, I’ve redone the CPO (control panel overlay) and the bezel and marquee. The bezel is the piece that surrounds the screen, and the marquee is the graphic at the top of the machine. I did some custom graphics for it. It’s now the “Champion Edition” arcade machine.

Here’s a look at the new CPO:

If you want, you can get the side art and marquee from http://www.mamemarquees.com/ and make your own. Here’s the sideart and the marquee.

There has been quite a bit of buzz concerning the upcoming release of Street Fighter IV. Here are some things that we know right now:

1. It’s going to be a 3D rendered game, with a two-dimensional plane of movement. I’m quite sure that they did this because they want to easily incorporate the old Shoryukens, Vipers, and Sonic Booms. Imagine trying to unleash distance energy attacks while your opponent is running all around in a 3D plane of movement.
2. The original SF2 World Warrior cast will be included. That means Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim, Blanka, Guile, Chun-Li, E-Honda, and Zangief will be in the game. Sagat and Balrog are going to be in the game as well.
3. Two new characters, Abel and Crimson Viper will be included. We have no idea how many other new characters will be in it. We can only hope that they will include Sheng Long.
4. The release date for the game is 06/15/2008. So it looks like it’s going to be a summer title.
5. Many of the levels that you will fight in will be based loosely on levels from SF2. When I say levels I mean “scenery”. Here are a few that are mentioned: North America: Drive-In at Night, South Asia: Beautiful Bay, and South America: Inland Jungle. You can see many of these in varying degrees of clarity at 1up.com.

That is all that we know so far! If you have anything to add to this please comment on this article and tell us about it. Give us a URL to look at and confirm as well if you can.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Virtua Fighter 5 for Xbox 360, Sega’s new masterpiece. Let me tell you I am impressed. This game won best fighter at E3 this year, but I’d like to contest that this is actually the best fighting game of all time. At least in this millennium.

Okay, I’m sure you’re thinking. This is a just a Sega flog, or that I’m just crazy. Well, let me assure you that I am crazy. But that’s besides the point. Virtua Fighter 5 brings out the best of what playing in an arcade used to be about. Finding like minded fellows in a comfortable setting and thoroughly beating them senseless.

There is an arcade mode, sure. But where this game shines is in Quest mode, where you pit yourself against players of similar rank. You can choose which “Virtual” arcade that you want to go to and that determines the type of people that you’re going to run into.

The fun thing about that is that Quest mode is also the place where you win prize money and special items to upgrade and customize your character. Adding an element of RPG to it as well, (no you don’t have to fight any dragons that I’m aware of.)

All in all it’s a great game and I thoroughly recommend buying it with the lunch money that you’ve been saving up. Take all of your copies of DOA and trade them in for 75 cents apiece, because that’s what they’re going to be worth compared to this gem of a game.

Street Fighter IV has been announced! To say that it has been long awaited would be an understatement. The last incarnation of Street Fighter happened ten years ago. Basically all we can see so far is a video of Ryu and Ken fighting it out. But, even a teaser is welcomed at this point. I was wondering why Capcom makes crappy games like Lost Planet and Dead Rising when they have solid franchise titles like Street Fighter that have been in limbo for ages.