rempers.jpg It's really odd how much the Internet is fixated on Tim Rogers, considering that the Internet claims to hate one of the alleged progenitors of 'New Games Journalism'. The latest prime example of this is Something Awful's newly penned spoof Sonic Riders review, apparently authored by a 'Tomithy Rempers', and starting out: 'As I ride the JR Sobu line back to my apartment, I clutch Sonic Riders in my anticipatory little hands.'

As a few messageboard commenters have pointed out, the problem with pastiching Rogers (who we at GSW know reasonably well through IC and occasional Sobu line rides, and who is currently doing marginally more reined-in work for biz site Next-Gen), is that he already acts at almost Liberace-like levels of self-referencing, whether conscious or not.

Still, we hadn't spotted a 2003 Tokyopia post by Wired Games' Chris Kohler doing the Rogers-pastiche much more adeptly than perhaps even the man himself, and get particularly tickled by this prime rib: "All internet cafes have one girl. She sat next to me a mess of keitai straps and clashing, layered tops. I stopped counting at five. I looked over at her computer. She was looking at pictures of Aerosmith. In a sofa booth across the way, a salaryman read a MiniMoni photo book and attempted to obscure his erection. It was not difficult." Dude, that's totally Roger-ian.

Really, a tremendously serious GameSpot article on the concept of 'New Games Journalism' back in 2005 sums it all up neatly: "GameSpot made repeated inquiries to Electronic Arts, Midway Games, Lionhead Studios, and other publishers and developers, and not one was familiar enough with NGJ to make a comment." So really, nobody cares. Which is why we wrote a long, well-thought out post on the whole thing and people keep talking about it.