Here's a fun little chronology for all you guys. It goes a little like this:

1. Game Developer magazine Features Editor and Insert Credit supremo Brandon Sheffield is browsing eBay while perfecting his Gackt likeness and fending off Ziff Davis claims that he's emo! He discovers some very cool painted NES consoles on eBay, among them a cute Metroid case version.

2. Michael 'GeekOnStun' McWhertor over at Kotaku goes and reads IC, and posts about them too, leading to various commenters saying "...The Metroid painting was the only one that looked professional", and Brandon reporting Kotaku to the Internet link-borrowing authorities, even if they did credit him with a 'via' (he has his reputation as a moody goth to keep up!)

3. Still, it turns out that GDC Executive Director Jamil Moledina reads Kotaku, not Insert Credit (*nelson* HAH HAH! */nelson*), and he goes and smacks down $100+ on the 'Buy It Now' link for the actually good painted NES, the Metroid one. Then it comes to the CMP Game Group office, and we all point at it, and Jamil takes a picture:

If you notice, I called the picture 'jametroid.jpg'. Hee - I so funny! For reference, the other things in the picture include one of those neeto Katamari Damacy hats that came out early in 2005.

In fact, Jamil gave one to Keita Takahashi at the 2005 GDC, and Takahashi's Time Magazine profile later in 2005 had a picture of him wearing a hat and posing next to a cow. There are also artfully arranged GDC meeting papers and the latest issue of Game Developer. (Jamil's desk is actually more 'sprawling' than this and has more Battlestar Galactica merchandise on it, but he's being modest. 42!)

So the moral of this story is - everyone should use Kotaku for cube to cube merchandise recommendations within their office! It's quicker than smoke signals, and you get to see more YouTube videos of large unclaimed PS3 displays that way. THE END!