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Beginning February 10, a newly colored Nintendo DS (Lite) will go on sale. Creatively called "Cobalt/Black," the new scheme is a combination of cobalt and black. The brief press release stretches a little far to say it's "like a black t-shirt with a splash of color," but it does look kinda nice.

Believe it or not, this is the seventh color iteration the DS Lite has seen, after Polar White, Coral Pink, Onyx, Crimson/Black, and a limited-edition Gold/Metallic Rose version.

Nintendo sure knows where the money is: colors. Nearly ten years after the original GameBoy had launched and was technically inferior to more recent products like Sega's Game Gear, they launched their "Play It Loud" campaign with the technically identical GameBoys now coming in a handful of '90s-appropriate neon colors, and they sold millions.

Since then, they've tended to release their portables in a small number of colors at first then slowly trickle out new colors one by one.  I suppose they did that for the GameCube, too. "Limited Edition" Platinum, huh?

Remember the first GameBoy Advance? One of the launch colors was called Glacier, which implies blue, but it looked purple. That was fun, carrying around a purple portable with no backlight. The GameBoy Color was purple, too.

What was I talking about? Oh right, a blue and black DS Lite. There's another picture after the jump.

Continue reading...

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Is our children learning? I think the answer is no.

Like most people with even a fraction of an education, I enjoyed the level in Call of Duty 4 taking place in post-meltdown Chernobyl because of the accurate and realistic portrayal of the barren, radioactive landscape.

Chernobyl is a city in Russia where a nuclear power plant exploded in 1986. It was one of the largest disasters of the modern era. Hundreds of square miles are still radioactive over 20 years later, thousands of people died from the radioactivity from the waste seeping from the nuclear reactor. It's estimated that over 500,000 people have been seriously affected. Mutations, radiation poisoning, deformed offspring.

I didn't know that anybody didn't know that. Even if you don't know about it because of its significance in human tragedy or engineering failure, you know about it because everybody else knows about it. Almost everybody.

Recently, someone posted some photos from Chernobyl to compare them to Call of Duty 4 screenshots. Then, as is the most proper thing to do, someone put the photos on YouTube with a Linkin Park song over it to post it in this nextgenboards thread. The reactions, and the replies, have destroyed a special part of the inside of my brain.

People have no idea what Chernobyl is.

Here's one early reply:


Alright, that doesn't count as a logical sentiment or thought, so maybe it's just "first post" syndrome. Lets keep reading...


Awesome. The only connection to one of man's greatest disasters is that it would remind you of a video game level.


Yes. I too would go there to be like Dam. Though, I don't think the worst part is that it's radioactive; I think that's the only part.

The next reply:


Don't let your heads explode just yet, he is quickly educated:


*boom*

I love to think that video games are helping to educate our youngsters, (everything I know about guns I learned from gaming...) but this is taking it a little far. It's Chernobyl for crying out loud. What are our public schools doing? Do people know that the events surrounding previous Call of Duty games (World War II) actually happened, too? Perhaps The Daily Show would have to do a bit about Chernobyl before today's youth would become aware of it.

Granted, this might not represent an accurate sample of our population, but not a single person in that forum seemed to have any idea that Chernobyl is a real place with a real meltdown. I think perhaps a few hours every day browsing Wikipedia articles should be mandatory.

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The linked article preports to detail the 18 best video game endings of all time. Personally, I think the list contains way too many fighting games and there is a serious lack of Metal Gear, but tastes are tastes. Without spoiling the sense of tension as the list drags on and your favorite game hasn't appeared yet, the first on the list is God of War:

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Here's a little something for your nostalgic side. Ken Kutaragi, former Sony CEO and "father" of the PlayStation, is being honored by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kutaragi made quite the name for himself with the launch of the original PlayStation in 1994, followed by the PlayStation 2, which has sold more than 120 million units worldwide, in 1999. He retired in June after the launch of the PlayStation 3, most likely due to the public's initial negative response to the unit.

Said Joseph Olin, AIAS president, "Ken Kutaragi's passion, innovative thinking and business savvy sparked a monumental movement that was unstoppable. If it wasn't for Ken and his concept of the original PlayStation, there wouldn't be the billion dollar industry there is today. His contributions have clearly set new standards for developers, publishers, and consumers worldwide."

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The history of video games and the industry thereof is very interesting and conveniently very short. It's sad, though, how few people are familiar with it. People know about the Atari and Pong and all that, but after that exists some kind of inky mystery period until the NES came around and "generations" became so easy to measure.

Those people should be pleased to know that the Discovery Channel is beginning a five-part look at the video game legacy starting tonight at 8pm called Rise of the Video Game.

Sometimes "mainstream" coverage of video game history can be pretty shaky (anyone who went to the "Game On" video game exhibit at the science museum in Chicago might understand), but from the episode guide it looks like the series will be going into great detail. Set your TiVo/Generic DVRs!

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