All Together Now: 2/10/08 - 2/15/08

Sail the ship. Chop the tree. Skip the rope. Look at me! All together now...

2/10/08- I made a quick recap on several things at once, like a Pokemon hold-up, and the British crackdown on video games.

2/11/08- I fell for the reigning rumor that Wal-Mart was about to cover up M-rated games. Yeah, I'm pretty ashamed, because I realized it must have been a joke at the time, but couldn't find anyone laughing.

2/12/08- I talked about Hush, the quick downloadable Rwandan genocide game.

2/14/08- I quickly linked to Bruce on Games' editorial on the British gaming crackdown, and gave you all a chance to guess what game my brother was thinking of when he drew a little picture of raccoons with umbrellas in front of an evil house.

All Together Now: 2/3/08 - 2/8/08

2/3/08- Grand Theft Auto is expected to be controversial yet again. (I'll leave some space for you to gasp in disbelief here).

2/4/08- Other countries than the United States have gaming controversies as well. Again, not a real shocker of a headline, but at least this one has some real details.

2/5/08- I began my Off-Topic Tuesdays with a new Google Map to complement the Gaming Around the World post from the fourth.

2/6/08- I examined the new study claiming that men are more likely to become addicted to video games. I had a couple of problems with it that have yet to be resolved.

2/7/08- There is too much orchestral music in big-budget games today, I've decided.

Also, I recapped the remaining presidential candidates' stances on gaming legislation to kick off "Patriatari Thursdays" on the blog. I still haven't decided whether that should be pronounced like "patriotic" or like "patria", the word for home country in several Romance languages. You decide.

All Together Now: 1/26/08 - 2/1/08

1/26/08 - Cooper Lawrence apologizes for her role in the FOX Mass Effect scandal.

1/27/08 - My most popular post by far, a list of the last year and a half's studies on gaming's effect on humans.

1/28/08 - Jack Thompson is revealed to think the Mass Effect scandal is silly and contrived.

1/30/08 - Grand Theft Auto is being blamed again for violence. Hardly news, is it?

1/31/08 - Cooper Lawrence sticks by the University of Maryland study she cited, which is a good idea for her because the study can't be read without paying for it.

All Together Now: 1/22/08 - 1/25/08

I'm going to officially get into the stride of the All Together Now posts right here, right now. They're going to aggregate my news from the previous week, and they'll be posted every Friday, 'cause I've got stuff to do on Fridays. Here you are:


1/23/08 - Webgamania examined V-Tech Rampage and less seriously considered the controversy surrounding Presidential Paintball.

I explained and examined the Sierra Club's 1% "couch potato" tax on televisions and video games.

1/24/08 - The gamer revenge against Cooper Lawrence for her FOX News appearance suddenly struck. I pretended not to condone such behavior, I think.


Yeah, not really so much in two days, but I've got to get into the rhythm. Which reminds me, I've got to find Gitaroo Man at one of these Gamestops...

Sail the ship... chop the tree... skip the rope... look at me!

All Together Now: May 1972 - January 22 2008

All Together Now will be my weekly news reviews at the new site, which will provide links to all the posts I made that week and will sum them up "real purdy-like". This one clearly doesn't have any posts to link to, but I'm going to quickly sum up some recent news that falls under this blog's new purpose.


UNITED KINGDOM (LA (Legal Arcade, not Los Angeles)) - Gordon Brown sorta kinda blames video games for knife violence on the rise in Britain. The press featured screens from violent video games to exaggerate his statements.

Also, Bully becomes an issue in the U.K. all over again with its re-release. Maybe that's because it's actually called Bully now instead of the old British title Canis Canem Edit. The new title got anti-bullying organizations in a large hissy-fit even though the main character of the game isn't really so much of a bully. This brings up what will certainly be an overriding theme of this blog- Old people aren't hip to what's actually in the game. And you shouldn't expect them to be. However, you shouldn't expect them to threaten censoring your medium because they don't understand. Anyway...

BRAZIL (LA (alright, I'll stop that now, I'm not exactly the Associated Press)) - Counter-Strike and Everquest are banned for some reason in the country of soccer and big Jesus statues.

UNITED STATES - Mass Effect gets brought up by a specific conservative pundit, and he mostly recants his position. Then, Fox News brings it all up again and Geoff Keighley fails to defend the game in the couple of seconds of air time he's given. The controversy is the sex scene very late into the game. Because you can choose whether or not you have sex with this very humanoid alien, and whether you're male or female, the press decided that they could call it "interactive sex". It's not, and there's no real nudity, and you have to work for at least ten hours to get to the scene, so it's not exactly as easy as little Jimmy finding internet porn or a magazine, or as rewarding for him.

Well, there's the first round of depressing news about the clash between politics and the gaming world. Real posts to begin likely tomorrow.

Bonus points for whoever figures out what happened in May 1972