- Yay for weekend GameSetLinks - headed by David Kushner's IEEE article on machinima (Bloodspell pictured!), and closely followed by Benj Edwards' 1UP article on Simon - the small colored device, not the GameSetWatch weblogger.

Also in here somewhere - why Scrabulous fighting is annoying, a neat European hack for a very Japanese NES game, the Mean Girls game, someone playing far too many Rock Band songs in a row, and... other stuff!

Okey dokey schmokey:

IEEE Spectrum: Machinima's Movie Moguls
By the excellent David Kushner, of Masters Of Doom fame - via MBF.

1UP: Simon Turns 30: The History of the Toy and Gaming's First Grudge
More excellent Benj Edwards write-ups for 1UP. About Ralph Baer, of course!

Indie Game Panel Reviews [July Edition] by Game Tunnel
Now cutely described as 'long-running Famitsu-styled panels', heh.

Interview with a drum hero: Rock Band pro plays all 235 songs in one day | Fidgit
'I just wanted to see if I could do it. Well, actually, about four years ago, I was training to do something similar for Dance Dance Revolution.'

Variety: 'Video Games Impact Report'
Lots of famous people. And Jamil! Haw.

Critical-Gaming: Organic and Inorganic Design
'It's a shame when a game works hard to establish a fiction and a form only to take away from it by arranging levels that don't make sense according to that fiction.'

COPE: James Wallis levels with you » Scrofulous
'Here, in three short Q&As, are what annoys me about the Scrabulous mess.'

auntie pixelante › warsaw city
'warsaw city is a patriotic hack [of nes game battle city] that has you defending poland from an invasion of nazi tanks'

Are Credits Really a Thing of the Past? « Applied Game Design
'I have eight games here right now, and not a one of them has credits in the manuals. Zip, zero.'

MTV Multiplayer » ‘Mean Girls’ Game Plays Like ‘Puzzle Quest’ In A High School, Stars Lindsay Lohan
Wow, awesome crazy.