VNES: An NES emulator accessible through your browser. (You have been warned. Even worse, they have the Adventure Island games.)

Iain Banks missed a deadline and it was all because of Sid Meier: “It’s all because I became a serial addict of the computer game ‘Civilisation’ [sic]. I played it for three months and then realised I hadn’t done any work. In the end, I had to delete all the saved files and smash the CD. It is very unprofessional of me. I had to ask for an extension for the first time, which made me feel just like I was a student again.”

Hopefully, someone who cares will keep Will Wright’s games out of his hands. I had to smash my Sims CDs about three years ago to get things done.

Telegraph: “Except it’s not quite so simple. Caroline Pelletier, a project manager at London University’s Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, says: ‘The Sims inspires quite a patronising attitude – that it’s OK for girls to play with computers so long as it’s in a domestic space, controlling characters in a maternal way, caring for them and attending to their needs.’ Yet when Pelletier’s team observed girl players, they discovered a different reality. ‘Girls usually use The Sims to explore subversive behaviour. They get rich and try out a wealthy lifestyle, then see who can lose the most money. They drown their babies and call in social services – they deliberately play against the game’s conventions.'” (via Rebecca’s Pocket)

Slate: “What happened to these pioneers? Garriott never produced another breakthrough like Ultima; he now works for online multiplayer giant NCsoft. Meier has spent most of the last decade updating his previous hits at a company owned by Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive. Id Software has clung to its independence but produced nothing further in the way of milestone games. Perhaps the lone indie superstar to retain his auteur status is Will Wright, who now has his own ‘studio’ within Electronic Arts. Wright takes years to cook up his always-innovative games. In 2000, he released The Sims, which transported players into the first of many ‘digital dollhouses’ and became the best-selling computer game of all time. Wright’s next game, Spore, aims to simulate the evolution of life from microorganism to space-faring civilization. It will probably be the only innovative title EA releases next year.”

Duke Nukem Forever will be released. They’ve been saying that since 1997.

The Bob Ross Video Game

Zelda Turns 20. (via Scott)

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ — While our colleagues at Popcap have announced that their video game products can, to paraphrase their words, keep you casual, we here at Valve Software wish to weigh in on the dramatic sociological effects that our titles, Day of Defeat: Source and Counterstrike: Source, are having upon the online population at large. As everyone in the gaming industry knows, empirical evidence, meaning data that is not accepted in a scientific environment, is the lifeblood of marketing spin. It’s the Flying Spaghetti Monster that floats any multimillion dollar industry. Or to put it another way, sixty thousand coders can’t be wrong.

Some reactionaries may decry the levels of violence within our respective games, the frightening accuracy of the preteens who snipe you as you spawn, and the enduring popularity of the Axis team which permits everyone from a forty-two year old shut-in to an adolescent pariah to get in touch with their inner Adolf. Let us not place blame for these realities. This is only the natural extension of a certain Freudian term representing a base psychological component that we will not name — for it will unfurl a certain competitor we are hoping you will ignore. In fact, forget we said that. The important thing to know here is that the mutliplayer first-person shooter environment is inhabited for the most part by thugs, potential ROTC recruits, and other everyday people with a penchant for vicarious violence.

Let’s pay attention to the national homicide rate. Since our Half-Life technology was unleashed in the mid-1990s, the homicide rate has steadily dropped. Have you ever wondered just why this is?

“I think it’s perfectly obvious,” says Dr. Calvert Defraudio, a New York-based psychologist and motivational speaker who can often be found on UHF stations at 3 AM. “Great products are helping to keep violent criminals in the house, lonely and trigger-happy. The potential pathological killer is kept at bay by violently murdering some random 14 year old in a first-person shooter environment.”

Take the case of Jimmy Studebaker (we use a psuedonym to respect his privacy). Studebaker was a ninth grader overly fond of dissecting frogs and very adept with the mitre saw in metal shop. “Had I not found friends who I could repeatedly kill in Counterstrike: Source, it’s likely I would have gone a little crazy.”

And parents, we all know that it’s a five minute fox trot from “going a little crazy” to pulling a Columbine at your neighborhood ! Had not Studebaker found the solace of blowing his fellow peers to smithereens, who is to say what he would have become? A pickpocket? The leader of a Branch Davidian splinter group?

Instead, Studebaker is an antisocial student earning a C average. Every now and then, he gets tied up and thrown into a dumpster by malicious seniors. But this hasn’t stopped him from perfecting his assault rifle skills just after loading up Steam. The important thing is that Studebaker is in his element while experiencing Valve’s products. And it’s all thanks to Valve that he’s off the streets!

So remember folks, the next time you , think about Jimmy Studebaker, the kid who transferred his rage to his mouse and keyboard.

Valve Software. Keeping hoodlums off the streets, one delinquent at a time.

Disturbing video of a 9 year old kid shouting at his mother because she won’t get him his chocolate milk. All of this as he’s blowing up enemies while playing Halo 2. (via MeFi)

Anyone could become this guy.