I was not aware that such a man as Reggie Fils-Amie existed before last year's E3. We attended the Nintendo briefing for Retailers by mistake, which for a person on the enthusiast side of things was extremely odd - there's probably an entire article just in that. But central to the presentation was this man, a person I had never seen before, broad of shoulder and intimidating, describing the Nintendo DS as a dangerous, unstoppable machine, like a self-ambulating bear trap that craves the human leg.

We prefer to think of each other as being outside gender altogether, and we go through terrible contortions to avoid even the possibility we may actually come into contact. To put it clearly, there is nothing in his pants I want to know about.

The basic outline of the three day event is up on the site, still a few slots being filled but that is the basic rundown.

Hell yes.

Tycho mentioned that I had the answer to the different clone voices in Republic Commando and that's true. I've seen a few people give the developers a hard time about this and it's not really fair. Please excuse me while I get really fucking geeky.

You might remember that Electronic Arts decided to dip their toe into Xbox Live right about the time Microsoft divested itself of their Sports developers, events which I'm assured have nothing to do with one another but form irresistible symmetries in the mind. I had assumed that these teams were just taken out behind the office and shot, as is customary in the industry - their contributions buried forever - but recently it's become clear that isn't exactly true. Take-Two grabbed the best sports games ever made by those teams, Top Spin and Links, and I've heard rumblings that these games are far from gone. The rest of the spoils, the major sports franchises I mean, those all went over to Ubisoft from the sounds of it. When I heard that they were making a golf game, originally I thought it might have been the new Links possibly acquired in that earlier deal - but now we both know that's not the case. It does mean that next generation platforms will have fully three golf experiences to choose from, which is good news for people interested in a genuine simulation. Hopefully there is room somewhere in the market for a game where people play something that resembles the sport in question.

Just saw this over at EA - the good one, I mean - and it's completely fascinating to me.

I came into the office today and I asked Tycho why the new comic strip wasn’t up. See the way it works is we write the comic the day before it needs to go up. Then I draw it and I give to him to upload. This is the way we’ve been doing it for seven years. So anyway I come into today and I ask why the comic isn’t up and he tells me it must be some kind of server issue because he uploaded it on time. We have our share of server problems so this story was perfectly believable. I looked back over at his computer though and saw that he was on the update page and was only just now adding the new comic. The point of this story is that he is a liar.

I've been playing games with Gabriel for, oh, I'm going to say eleven years now - and not until Devil May Cry 3 have I seen him raise the controller back and hurl it across the room. It is because of this that I offer an olive branch to our ideological opponents who claim that videogames are instruments of unalloyed evil. I am willing to allow that gamers are more prone to violence so long as we agree that this violence is largely directed against peripherals.

I picked up Republic Commando for the Xbox yesterday. It is totally fucking awesome. The multiplayer feels tacked on but I don't really care. The single player game is the best Star Wars experience I've had since the first KOTOR.

Ripped From The Headlines is now complete. Now that the first quarter rush is upon us, those would-have-been-holiday titles are wailing and beating on the window to be let in. We shall indulge them.

My God these new screens from the upcoming EQ2 adventure pack are terrible. I mean, take a look at this one.

Page four of our eight page Brothers in Arms comic book is up. This is actually my favorite page. The game actually drops this week if you’re interested.

Courtroom drama begins to simmer in today's episode of Ripped From The Headlines.

Just a quick note that we did pick up Tekken 5 today and it’s hot. It really feels like a return to the good old days of Tekken, before the weird shit they tried to pull with 4. It also looks incredible. I had seen Virtua Fighter 4 on the PS2 so I thought I sort of knew what the machine was capable of. The graphics here are way above what I thought the PS2 could handle. We’re gonna spend some more time with it, but my initial impressions are that it’s the best Tekken game to date.

Hey, so we know who all is going to be playing at PAX this year: