Pong Toss is a new party game for WiiWare. The goal is to throw a ping pong ball into one of ten plastic cubs on the opposite side of a table, the first player to toss his ping pong ball . This game is probably better known as beer pong but it’s a kids game so it’s just called Pong Toss

You can play with up to four players and there is also a Tournament mode so you can see who is the better pong tosser.

Ft. Worth Star Telegram sports columnist David Thomas had an interesting piece Wednesday (January 21, 2009) about playing video games with his son. Thomas admits he hasn’t picked up a game in years and his son, well, he had a son’s natural desire to whoop on his old man at something.

Thomas thought they would play a golf game but found out he wasn’t going to get through the character creation in less a half hour (games didn’t have character creation the last time Thomas played, obviously). When you think about it, we have a lot of gaming conventions that would be alien to even the most hardcore gamer from 25-30 years ago…

Recently, in an interview Yahoo! Games, film director and part of the development team for Boom Blox Steven Spielberg let the public know about the different problems he’s had with game cinematics.

In the interview he made it brutally obvious that he has been a long-time gamer bring up some of his past with gaming going all the way back to Pong. One of the ways he brought it up was toward the end of the interview where he is quoted as saying, “I thought Pong was the Woodstock of videogaming.” Being that it was one of the first big games of its time, that analogy is pretty accurate.

Spielberg also noted the failing of game cinematics and brought up that a lot of cut scenes try to tell a story. However, due to the obvious switch between gameplay and cut scenes, some gamers take a…

Believe it or not, I’m glad when I don’t have to call out Wired for being a gamer hater. I know the mag truly likes gamers but they just cannot seem to get it 100% right, at least when it comes to the print version.

In the latest issue of Wired (November 2008), there are several pages that give some favorable nods to stuff gamers dig. Although more game-friendly coverage than normal, there’s still one page that’s a bit questionable.

There’s a page on the Webkinz phenomena (p. 038), a page highlighting a few casual creations by Jason Kapalka (p. 094), an opinion piece by Steven Levy regarding the Wii, Guitar Hero and the iPhone (p. 114), a questionable comparison of game systems (p. 164) and a trio of decent manual cover scans.

For more on each, click through and check out the scans in the photo gallery…

In the October 15, 2008, issue of Wine Spectator magazine (p. 44), contributor Matt Kramer wrote an opinion piece tiled “Why Wine isn’t art – and why that matters.”

Inspired by a party argument where someone suggests that wine is art, Kramer argues that “fine wine is, at best, a high craft” and that, to call it art is “self-aggrandizing.” He suggests that by getting people to accept that wine is art, winemakers’ “salaries will rise, and producers, for their part, will start pricing wine as ‘art.’” Instead, wine is simply an “amplification” and “refinement” of the existing attributes of the grape that happens to include the grape’s upbringing (“all the forces that create ta particularity of the site”). Lafite Rothschild, for example, is not created, but the result of craftily refining grapes grown in a specific area in a specific way.

Using wine-lover Kamer’s argument, videogames are then a creation from a blank slate, which makes any game art. Even if you have a…

The marching band for the University of California at Berkley had a special presentation planned for the November 3, 2007, football game. During the halftime show of the California Golden Bears vs Washington State Cougars game, the marching band put on a tribute to video games. Thanks to diligent fans, the entire six and a more »