The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

UPDATE: Tatio, the owners of the Space Invaders IP has issued an official response....a pretty pissed off response, actually. Check it out here.

So what's going on this week in video game news? Well, the Leipzig Games Convention is going down in Germany and at the show, digital artist Douglas Edric Stanley has produced an installation to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Space Invaders. So what did he do? He had the alien spaceships attack the Twin Towers. Yup. Offensive to me? Yes, but not because of the 9/11 reference but rather that something as simple as placing an 8-bit picture of the towers behind the classic video game that is Space Invaders is being considered art. You can read the different reactions people had, including family members of people who died in the attacks over at Fox, AFP, UPI & the original source at Kotaku. I gotta go now: I'm going to superimpose an image of Mother Teresa's face over Tera Patrick's head on her newest video and submit it to the Rouge. So what do you guys think: Was it offensive to you? Is it being blow (sorry, poor word choice) out of proportion? Or should we find this guy and go America all over his ass?

So the weekend has come and gone and sprinkled throughout, once again, were films. But besides that, I actually got a chance to exit my cave of solitude and gained some street cred this past Sat. night as I prowled the street called Shaw. Who knew that Fig Garden had some shit going on there not old people related? That's how out of it I am, I guess. Sure, I felt the urge to smash everyone in sight (yes, even the hot chicks) as it was if I had just teleported into an episode of The Hills but what are you gonna do, just not my scene. I'll leave the "human interaction" stuff to the professionals around the Fresno blogosphere. But back to the other nerd events of the weekend:

• As I sit here typing this lamenting the fact that this is the first Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) that I won't be attending in the past 6 years, Joystiq will be having live updates from the floor show all week, including the press conferences which will be occurring today and tomorrow. But you don't want to support those Hollywood blogs, swing by local blog The Married Gamers as they will also be having constant E3 updates. We'll post some of the major announcements here, too. Fingers crossed for streaming movies over Xbox Live for Netflix subscribers....

• It seems Marvel Studios have decided to do the right thing and give Jon Favreau what he deserved as Deadline Hollywood is reporting that he's coming back to helm Iron Man 2 after some initial cold shoulderin'. Now, let's see if we can get some better action set pieces together in time for the scheduled ridiculous 2010 release date, okay Jon?

• So this week is the week: The Dark Knight is finally coming out and the hype is off the scale. Tickets are being sold at an insane rate so if your planning on seeing the film this weekend, I suggest you buy your tickets soon. I've got mine....for a 6am IMAX showing Friday morning. Yup, 6am. Add that time to the planned screening at midnight and 3am and it's gonna be a very Batman Friday this Friday (poor theater workers). So who's up for the 6am screening?

• Ever play Clastlevania back in the days? Well the video game has a script by film virtuoso Paul W.S. Anderson and guess what? It sucks! The best part? Instead of the trademark whip, Belmont gets a sword. Ugh...read the script review over at CC2K here and see for yourself. Isn't it bad enough you bagged Mila Jovovich now you have to continue destroying everything else? Damn yooz, Anderson!

Sony Europe has always put out some very weird & controversial ads and that might be because of how lax Europeans are when it comes down to nudity and language. So this ad shouldn't come as a surprise but as always, here in the good ol' U.S. of A....we're just not used to it quite yet (well, at least most of us, as it may seem). So if your interested in seeing what a man would look like if he had a thumb instead of a penis, go for it and head on over to Joystiq here to see the full ad, which was created by Sony Europe's ad agency TBWA\Wien. Beware....this is the most NSFW EVAR! Even though, technically, it's not a cock you'll see, it's very easy to mistake the image as something offensive if your prude of a co-worker sees you eyeing the image. Enjoy!....or not.

Word comes from Variety (via Joystiq) that the oft rumored Bioshock movie is finally moving ahead and with a big name in the likes of Gore Verbinski (Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Ring) at the helm. According the the article, Verbinski is aiming for an R-rating on the film. Guess we'll be witnessing some little girl harvestin' going on the big screen when this film is finally released. You guys have any suggestions for casting?

Joystiq posted this video in which Obama discusses the release of GTA and how it affects the children of today. As they mentioned in the post, it's interesting because I have never heard him talk about his stance on video game violence and this revelation only increased my respect for the man: parents need to monitor what the kids are playing. Yup, that simple. So you guys agree? And yeah, he just said "goo-gobs"....awesome!

According to a poll taken by parent-oriented site What They Play, 27% of parents claimed that two men kissing was bad while 26% listed a graphically severed head as most harmful. Yup, I think Joystiq said it best in their headline: Welcome To America! Really, seeing dude kiss another dude is worse than seeing that same dude get his head cut off? Maybe if it was a gay guy getting his head cut off, then would that be okay? Fucken people.....at least it's good to see that use of the F-word finished last. Not that I use that word very often or anything. Anyways, I began to wonder, what would our readers think about this. I mean, I'm sure we have some parents among our readers but in polling everyone instead of just parents, what is worse in our video games? And hence, our new poll was born. Swing by over there to the right and let us know how you would answer to this poll. This story comes via Joystiq.com.