Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. King of Fighters XII, yeah that’s still coming out. I’m having a hard time caring without Mai :hint hint: See the episode below to catch the trailer. Explosive Remember last week when I told you all about that Giant Bomb achievements feature? Seems I’m not doing that well. I’ve only got ‘A’s in Mass Effect, Castle Crashers, and Lost Odyssey and a good chunk of my rare achievements are World of Warcraft achievements available only to those who were playing the game way back in the day. That being said, I do have a lot of Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect rare achievements and I think I’m going to ignore the DoA 4 rare since it’s probably the anti-achievement I got for losing tons of matches. ...

From Tim Rogers’ article on Japanese music and Sambo Master (so good, but long!): I told Sanyon, “Art is poison. The ‘art’ of the past – the words of the past set down for future generations to remember – was it not made or chosen with the best judgment, can only hinder the freedom of the future.” “That’s a very Western philosophy.” “No. It’s The Tale of Genji. Murasaki Shikibu. The world’s first novel. From your country – 998 AD.” ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. The Rays finally managed to hit the .500 mark two days ago only to lose last night against the Athletics in a heartbreaking game that remained scoreless until the 11th. You can’t really say that the Rays have been on a tear, but they have won six of their last ten, which should continue to edge them upward in win percentage if they can continue. Two more games against the Athletics will be followed by three against the Marlins in their interleague series and we’ll see how that turns out. The Rays are three games back from the Yankees and that needs to change. Unfortunately, the Yanks are playing the Orioles, so unless the Rays start capitalizing on the fact that they’re playing a weak team in the Athletics, things are going to just get uglier for them. They’re both good teams, but I think the Rays tended to edge out the Fish last year. Interleague games: the only time I root against the Tampa Bay Rays ...

Ok, ok, so it’s not Monday and I’m going to post an embedded video. Relax, breathe deep, it’s ok. Meet the Spy

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. The Gregory Brothers are at it again with another edition of Auto-Tune the News. It’s not as catchy as the previous ones, but it’s plenty long and still pretty funny. I’m consistently impressed by how good Katie Couric sounds auto-tuned. The foreign leaders part was pretty funny too.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. If you’ve never actually visited Giant Bomb then you probably don’t know that it’s the greatest user-populated video game database on the internet and a pretty darn cool concept. The gist is this: you get all the editorial content that you’d expect from a video games site, only now you get to also create a super-detailed wiki, of sorts, where you can associate games with abstract concepts like " Full Body Awareness" in Left 4 Dead, meaning that when you look down (you’re already in the first person perspective) you don’t just see floor, you see your feet, or objects like crates or, well, you get the idea. ...

SPOILERS! Wow, what a crazy season it’s been! The finale went and blew away everything we’d all been expecting. Who could have guessed that the final episode would be Jacob-centric? What the heck happened? Where is this going next year? It’s the home stretch for Lost. Sixteen episodes left and you can bet that Abrams, Cuse, and Lindelof know that there’s no more space for filler. It’s balls-to-the-wall time. I have to admit that I didn’t guess that Locke was the body in the crate, but I knew it was someone. What I did know was that Locke was somehow being manipulated by Jacob’s nemesis (hereafter known as Esau, cause, why not?) because, as a bunch of characters have stated, dead is dead, even though it really isn’t. What does it mean that Ben killed Jacob? What will happen to the island now? ...

It’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up. What a real bummer… The biggest news since last week, if you hadn’t heard already, was the drug test that Manny Ramirez managed to fail. This is now the biggest baseball star to fail a drug test and win himself a 50-game suspension along with a black mark on his hall of fame chances. It goes like this: Manny Ramirez saw some physician in Florida who gave him a banned substance according to MLB rules. The substance, whose name I don’t totally remember and am too depressed to look up, is a female fertility drug that is also used to mask drops in testosterone following a steroid treatment cycle. Seems pretty clear cut. ...

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter. IGN is at it again with some “first-pass” localizations of A-list Japanese video games. This time: Final Fantasy XIII. The first one I posted is significantly funnier than the second, but they’re both pretty funny. More Final Fantasy XIII News & Previews Final Fantasy XIII at IGN.com

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. If you’re trying to find the common thread that weaves all of these games together, don’t keep racking your brain, I’m just covering a ton of different stories and experiences. Tangled Up in Blue Street Fighter IV created within me something of a fighting game…well I hesitate to call it a renaissance, cause there was never a naissance, so to speak, but, should naissance actually be French for birth, it did birth in me the fighting spirit. I haven’t played the game in a while, mostly because I’m trying to save the world and attend high school (Persona 4) at the same time, but I figure I’ll get back to it soon, especially with that new tournament mode in. ...