A t-shirt that finally answers the question: What video games did folks play in ancient Greece?

I tried but failed to come up with a witty name for the game and system being used in the following t-shirt, designed by Esther Aarts. Any ideas?

Here's an up-close-and-personal view of Aarts' design, called "Classic Gamer," in case you can't make out all of the details in the image above:

Anyway, be the first on your block--or even town, depending on how large it is--to own one of these shirts by ordering one today at threadless.com.

(Via gamergrrlz.net)

LEGO Pokémon post #352

OK, so it only seems like I've published 352 posts about Filip Johannes Felberg's fabulous LEGO Pokémon creations. In reality, I've only published six (including this one).

Is the batch below (see it here, too) Felberg's best yet? Not in my opinion, although I have to admit I'm quite impressed with his blocky recreation of that slippery Pokémon Black/White character, Shelmet.

You know which Pokémon I'd like Felberg to mold out of LEGO blocks next? Darumaka, Vanillish and Whimsicott. Make it happen, Filip!

See also: Previous posts about Felberg's creations

Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story fans take out their frustrations on Nintendo of America via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube

Well, it seems that a rather sizable contingent of North American Wii owners has had it with Nintendo's failure to localize its recent trio of top-shelf Japanese RPGs: The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade.

What are they doing about it? They're taking out their frustrations on the company via the usual channels--e-mail and snail mail, especially--but they're also doing so via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

For instance, nearly 3,500 comments in favor of a North American release for the above-mentioned games have been posted on Nintendo's Facebook wall in the last few days. Many similar comments have been aimed at the company's Twitter account thanks in large part to the folks behind Operation Rainfall.

Another way gamers are showing their support for a North American release of The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and Xenoblade: They're pre-ordering them (in the case of Xenoblade) and adding them (in the case of The Last Story and Pandora's Tower) to their wish lists on Amazon.com.

For more information on this campaign, check out this discussion thread at NeoGAF.com or click on the Operation Rainfall link above.

Four things I can't help but love about the adorably crazy Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip

As you can probably tell by the number of posts I've published about the game in the last week or two, I'm a bit obsessed with Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip at the moment.

I'd be lying if I said that surprised me; after all, I've always loved a good tennis title. Of course, most, if not all, of the tennis games I've loved over the years--such as Final Match Tennis for the PC Engine, Super Tennis for the SNES and Virtua Tennis for the Dreamcast--have been fairly straightforward approximations of the sport.

One of the few exceptions to that rule: Nintendo's Mario Tennis titles, which tend to eschew both tradition and seriousness in favor of good old-fashioned fun.

Although I'd definitely call the fun that can be had in Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip "good," I wouldn't call it "old-fashioned"--as I'm sure you'll see after you read the following list of four things I love about this crazy, Clap Hanz-developed title.

1. Crazy costumes--I mentioned in a previous post about Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip that I wore some sort of Elizabethan or Victorian gown during a recent match. Well, that crazy "costume" is just the tip of the iceberg in this wackadoodle game. Other head-scratching outfits currently taking up space in my characters' lockers include a grass skirt, a kimono, a panda suit (barely visible in the screenshot above) and a tutu.

2. An even crazier cast of opponents--I seem to be about half-way through the game at this point, and already I've competed against a chef, a cheerleader, a farmer, a Helghast (from the Killzone series), an "island dancer," a maid, a movie star, a ninja, a sumo wrestler and a surfer.

3. Loonier-than-the-Looney-Tunes story--Really, it's like a modern counterpart to the silly, strange story that supports the TurboGrafx-16 "classic," World Court Tennis. The goal in that much-maligned (although not by me) game: To bring peace to a place called Tennis Kingdom. The goal in Hot Shots Tennis: To bring the joy of tennis to, among other folks, the aforementioned cheerleader and movie star.

4. Wide variety of wacky settings--Most tennis titles give you a choice of three or four courts--clay, grass, hard (cement) and, sometimes, indoor--and that's it. Boring! All of them can be found in Hot Shots Tennis: Get a Grip, of course, but the crazy locales that surround those courts--including a mountaintop dojo, a TV studio set and a wooden pier--help separate this game from its yawn-inducing competitors.

See also: Previous Hot Shots Tennis posts

I kind of want an R.O.B. too

Here's the thing: I've never used, let alone owned, one of Nintendo's Robotic Operating Buddies (aka Family Computer Robots in Japan).

There's a good reason for that, of course. Actually, there are two good reasons for it. First, the NES Deluxe Set--the one that included an R.O.B. and a copy of Gyromite--was pretty darn expensive when it was released back in the day (late 1985 here in the States). Second, the early word on the street--or the word in my small-town-Wisconsin neighborhood, at least--was that the R.O.B. and the games that utilized it were duds.



Anyway, as is often the case with my gaming obsessions, my childhood lack of experience with the R.O.B. and its games has me (somewhat) clamoring to own one as an adult. Unlike most of the games, peripherals and systems on my wish list, though, I can't really see myself buying an R.O.B. or copies of Nintendo's "Robot Series" titles anytime soon.

Someone calling himself Alan Rappa on Flickr seems to have three of these SAINT Number 5-esque accessories (as evidenced in the photo here and above), though; maybe he'd be willing to give--or even loan--one of them to me? Yeah, I doubt it, too.

See also: 'I want a Famicom light gun'