video games

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• Three winners will be selected in a random drawing, one for each platform (Xbox 360, Nintendo DS Lite or Nintendo Wii).
• One winner will receive a copy of The Simpsons Game for Xbox 360 (valued at $59.99), one winner will receive a copy of The Simpsons Game for Nintendo DS (valued at $29.99) and one winner will receive a copy of The Simpsons Game for Nintendo Wii (valued at $49.99).
  

Back in January, I mentioned that actor/writer Adam De La Pena (I'm with Busey, Crank Yankers, Minoriteam) was creating an animated series for G4 called Code Monkeys. Well, the series will debut July 11, and based on the seconds-long promos I've been seeing, it looks pretty cool.

The series is animated in the 8-bit style of retro video games, with blocky backgrounds and characters who move as if being controlled by some unseen entity with a magical joystick. The main characters, Dave and Jerry, are game coders who occupy this bizarre pixel-y world.

I love the idea, but I also played a lot of video games in the '80s and '90s, so I'm excited to see how many of the show's inside jokes I'll comprehend. My only worry is that the series might be too much of a "niche show," much like Minoriteam was, and it won't attract a wide audience.

Note: the theme song is "Code Monkey" by Jonathan Coulton (used with permission). Thanks to our own Annie Wu for telling me 'bout that.

What happens when you cross an old fashioned video game with the latest news headlines about politics, business and war? You get Newsbreaker, from MSNBC.

Basically it's like that game where you have to keep a ball in play with a paddle and hit colored bricks up above, something you probably played in the 80s. And yes, the name of that game has completely slipped my mind because, well, I'm old enough to remember playing the game in the 80s. Brick-something? I'm sure you folks will help me in the comments.

But you don't just hit the colored bricks, you also have to try to collect "news headlines." I'm not exactly sure why, but it's a pretty good way to waste an hour or so this afternoon at work.

[via Lost Remote]

Hey gang, here's what happening in the world of cartoons:

A new Simpsons game, possibly created to coincide with the movie, has been showing up on some retailer's list as "The Simpsons Game." Electronic Arts is publishing the game, which will be available for pretty much all the major platforms, including Wii.

Ubisoft, the French video game maker behind such titles as Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six has plans to spend $400 million to extend its production facilities and begin making CGI movies. The company also hopes this will lead to the development of CGI television series in the future.

Does anyone out there remember Starcade? I sure don't. However, I've been getting up to speed by watching full episodes of the '80s game show. Starcade pitted two contestants together to answer trivia questions about video games and then play different arcade games for points. If you were a child of the '80s as I am, it's cool to remember all the games you used to play. They even have an episode that features Dragon's Lair, which I remember as being the most frustrating arcade game I ever played.

Reruns of the series popped up on G4 from 2002 - 2004, and according to both IMDb and Wikipedia, the second unaired pilot of Starcade was hosted by Alex Trebek. I assume he was taken off the show for asking contestants questions about both Kierkegaard and Frogger.

The episodes are worth checking out not just for the cool retro look, but also for the great "prizes," such as the portable record player pictured on the right.

Like Saturday Supercade followed Atari in the '80s, Captain N: The Game Master followed the success of Nintendo in the '90s. Not unlike The Last Starfighter, in which a young man's video game skills are utilized to defeat an evil alien army, Kevin's talent for defeating various Nintendo games results in his being turned into a cartoon a la Kid Video and sucked into a strange land inhabited by a menagerie of product placements.

I was a Nintendo geek, so I remember watching this growing up, though not much of it has stayed with me. Watching some clips on YouTube, it's easier to see now that the show was essentially a half hour commercial like pretty much any other series based on a toy or game. There were some interesting touches, such as the use of video game sound effects. Ultimately, though, it's a half hour of bad dialogue and bad animation. Perhaps it would have some nostalgic value to folks my age, but it's mostly a relic of its time.

The four-disc set will be available February 13, 2007 from Shout! Factory.