Backbreaker talk will have to wait

I am under the 6/1 embargo -- sorry guys, the BB talk will have to wait until after the release date. I was specifically asked not to talk about it.

Been playing it a lot though and have a whole lotta stuff to talk about in a few days.

The Blog Lives: Backbreaker In hand

You know, between daily duties at Gameshark, podcasting, twittering and facebooking ye old Nut/Weasel blog has taken a downtime break of late.

Well, with the release of Backbreaker that should change at least temporarily.

505 Games sent my copy today -- so let's see how this puppy plays...

Jumping the Shark #15: Retro Gaming

On this week's Jumping the Shark we get into retro gaming with Tom Ohle, the North America VP of Marketing and PR for Good Old Games (GOG.com). As much as I like it when we just have our regular crew, there's no denying our shows are always better when we have a guest and Tom was a great one.

This week there's much more Mass Effect 2 discussion (with quite the debate on the game's sexual content), I get schooled in Batman Arkham Asylum combat mechanics, and Tom reveals his not-so-secret love affair with FIFA 10.

The meat of the show, however, is the retro gaming discussion as we talk about the merits of playing games older than Danielle (not really) and how GOG fits into the equation. I downloaded Heroes of Might and Magic 3 off the service last week and even on the 64-bit version of Windows 7, it ran without a hitch. Great stuff. At some point I have to get on there and purchase Sanitarium, which is supposed to be a fantastic game. I purchased it off a bargain rack years ago and it wouldn't run on my system, so if GOG has a magic touch that gets it going they'll have earned my money for it.

Also of note, Tom does the PR for The Witcher, so we got into The Witcher 2. It was nice to, for once, talk about a game's lack of presence on consoles instead of vice-versa. Yay PC!

Mourning a Legend: Ernie Harwell

I’ve no idea how much national play this story is getting (surely there must be some), but if you have a Tiger fan friend on Facebook or on Twitter you know that Ernie Harwell (92), the Hall-of-Fame broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers for the better part of 40 years, passed away yesterday from bile duct cancer. It’s amazing how much the man meant to the countless numbers of us that grew up with him. I’m not going to write much about it, rather I’ll just pass on some links I’ve collected this morning.

Information on ceremonies and other links: The Detroit Tigers Weblog

Tigers broadcast team Dan Dickerson and Jim Price announce Ernie’s passing, also courtesy of The Detroit Tigers Weblog.

Beck’s Blog, Tigers beat reporter for MLB.com.

Detroit News column from Tom Gage and Lynn Henning.

Detroit Free Press column from Mitch Albom. (Albom can be a tool sometimes, but this is the sort of thing he excels at.)

Al Beaton reflects at The Wayne Fontes Experience.

If you don’t know much about Ernie, this quote (shamelessly lifted from the Bless You Boys blog) about sums up the graciousness of the man:

"I'm not leaving, folks. I'll still be with you, living my life in Michigan, my home state, surrounded by family and friends. And rather than goodbye, please allow me to say thank you. Thank you for letting me become part of your family. Thank you for taking me with you to that cottage up north, to the beach, the picnic, your work place, or your backyard. Thank you for sneaking your transistor radio under the pillow as you grew up loving the Tigers. I might have been a small part of your life. But you have been a very large part of mine."

-- Harwell's final broadcast, 2002, quoted by Tom Gage, Detroit News

For multiple generations of young Tiger fans, Ernie was the voice of summer and he always will be.

World Cup 2010 360 Review

I likes this one.

Jumping the Shark #14

It’s up. This week we dove head first into the whole Ebert-Can Games Be Art? thing. Although I did push for us to go with this topic, it was one I was nervous about treading on because there are two big groups of people in this debate: Those who get pissy at anyone who has a different opinion than they do and people who think the debate is stupid and pointless and not worth talking about. Also, I’m likely to say something stupid. Fortunately, that last point is hardly a rare occurrence for me and I’ve reached a certain comfort level with knowing that at some point(s) during editing the show I’m going to cringe and bang my head on the desk over something I said. Such is the price of being a star.

Fortunately, I think the show came out pretty good this week. Not as good as last week’s show on Metacritic, which I think was in the top three shows we’ve done so far, but #14 was not the disaster I feared it might be. Danielle, in particular, I thought really carried the show and the topic, so if for no other reason, tune in to listen to her sound smarter than the rest of us combined.