Gamertell

In Iowa, a 32-year-old man may spend 20 years in prison for possession of Japanese manga and will face penalties under the PROTECT Act (18 U.S.C. Section 1466A). Christopher Handley is still in big trouble because of the manga he purchased from Japan in May 2006 that the government claimed was obscene and depicted minors engaged in sexual acts.

Luckily for Handley, he no longer has to face the court system alone as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has decided to provide their expertise as a consultant to the defense and provide funds for use to support in obtaining…

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Title: The Horus Heresy: Galaxy in Flames
Author: Ben Counter
Publisher: The Black Library
Release Date: 2006
Price: $7.99
Rating: Two thumbs up, 90/100, B+, **** out of five.
Pros: Quick pace, gives more explanation to different events, develops all major characters wonderfully, fixes most of the problems that popped up with False Gods
Cons: The pace is occasionally too quick for the level of detail that it has, still has some of the same problem that False Gods had.
Overall: It’s well worth the money, even with the pacing and detail flaws.

Horus Rising and False Gods opened up the story of the Horus Heresy. It followed the formerly honorable Space Marines legion known as the Luna Wolves. Galaxy in Flames follows the quickly fracturing Luna Wolves as some remain true to the Emperor and some remain true to Warmaster Horus.

This is one of the hardest books in the Horus Heresy to read because it’s the most heartbreaking…

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Title: Game Boys (aka Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time)
Author: Michael Kane
Price: $24.95 (hardcover)
Release Date: June 23, 2008
Publisher: Viking (part of Penguin Putnam, Inc.)
Pros: Conveys the excitement, personality and seriousness of competitive gaming in a readable tone. A good book for gamers and pro gaming skeptics.
Cons: Starts a bit slow and has some overly simplified explanations of gaming and gaming terms.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up; 90/100; A-; * * * * out of five.

Kane’s Game Boys is so much better than the pop-catchy name implies. It is instead a well-formed, personal and serious look into select groups of pro gamers.

Click through for the full review…

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Gears fans, did you play the game for its story? Probably not but that isn’t stopping Epic games and Del Ray publishing from releasing three novels based on the games. The first one out the gate is Gears of War: The Battle of Aspho Fields, by Karen Traviss. It’ll be released on October 28, 2008 - just in time for the second game, which hits…

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Orson Scott Card is an author who has earned respect for political commentary in his science fiction epics. And the fact that many of his books can be adapted into games.

Empire is a beautifully horrific book that had been rumored to become a new game from Chair Entertainment. That rumor was confirmed

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Title: Dungeons & Desktops: A History of Computer Role-Playing Games
Author: Matt Barton
Publisher: A.K. Peters, Ltd.
Price: $39.00
Overall: A great resource guide that proves to be an educational, insightful and enjoyable look at computer-based role-playing games. A surprisingly readable history book that will certainly inspire a new appreciation for a long-lived and much-loved genre. Despite the old school art cover, this book is suitable for any gamer.
Rating: Two thumbs up; A-; 90/100; **** out of 5

Click through for the full review…

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Product: Guinness World Records: Gamer’s Edition 2008
Price: $19.95
Pros: A good-looking book with plenty of pretty pictures, trivia and, oh yeah, some world records.
Cons: This is more a trivia book with some fan gushing (and opinions) than a catalog of game-related world records. Some of the rankings are questionably subjective and it’s missing references to a few key consoles and Apple products.
Overall: A fun coffee table book with plenty of game-related trivia but not the all-encompassing catalog of world records you’d expect from Guinness.
Score: 7 out of 10

Bragging rights. Guinness’ published world records are the ultimate catalog of bragging rights. Sure, you usually think of wacky stunts, impossibly long fingernails, really fat dudes and that one weird episode of Happy Days. Get down to it and the Guinness book of world records is all about bragging rights no matter the craziness being recorded.

Sure, this is an extremely interesting and entertaining read, but I’m not completely convinced the 2008 Gamer’s Edition of the Guinness World Records book does proper justice to the game industry or to world records…

Click through for the full review and a Baby Gamer Mini Review!

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On Bioware’s news page, it lists a news nugget about an upcoming mass Effect novel, titled Mass Effect: Ascension. From the site:

Del-Rey Books and author Drew Karpyshyn have announced the title of the second volume in the Mass Effect series of novels: Mass Effect: Ascension. Set between the first and second game, the novel will arrive in Summer 2008.

That would most likely put the next Mass Effect game’s release in time for Christmas 2008. No word yet on the systems for the future game (or even the game’s name). Mass Effect was released November 2007 for the Xbox 360.

The first Mass Effect novel, titled Mass Effect: Revelation, was a prequel to the first game and was released on May 1, 2007, by Del Rey (part of Random House).

There will likely be three games in the franchise and Xbox Live content to fill in story gaps. How much you want to bet either a game, novel or some content gets “Reloaded” (a la The Matrix) as part of the title?

Read [GameDaily] Also Read [Bioware]

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No matter where you fall on the videogames as art debate, there is still plenty of respectable work being done by professional artists for videogames. To celebrate some of the often unseen and under appreciated masterpieces created for games, Midway has released the full-color, flatbound paperback book, The Art of Midway: Before Pixels and Polygons published by Design Studio Press.

The 160-page book collects more than 200 illustrations works that include paintings, pencil sketches, ink and digital creations for five games: Gauntlet, Mortal Kombat, Psi-Ops, Stranglehold and The Suffering. Many of the woks are presented in full-bleed format (8 1/2 x 11 in.) or spanning across the fold or wider works, with comments either by the artist or of the game’s lead artist. The last chapter also includes art from the company’s archive that was no used in any game.

All of the art in the book, save one pixelated image, is represented in high detail with lush colors. A few are so big you almost wish they had included some of those annoying fold-out pages so you could appreciate the massive scope of the work. There is a decent mix of character designs, concept art and background images used to study color treatments, lighting and textures for possible use in games.

The nice thing, this is not packed with images of scantily clad hotties you’d find in many so many so-called “art books.” Instead, it offers pages of intricate images you can study for hours, wondering how these artists produce such beautiful images in such short time (often a day or two each) that, if they’re lucky, are marred by a few editor’s scribbles and end up in a vault.

The art ranges from smaller sketches to large environments drawn on dozens of pieces of paper and then pieced together like an oversized puzzle. Again, you’ll wish a few works folded out for more detailed views. Styles also range from pencil to digital creations, showing than artists need to be able to work in many media even when the end result will be a purely a digital production.

Most gamers will certainly appreciate this as a nice coffee table book that guest can thumb through, picking out the Mortal Kombat character designs in the first chapter by Vince Proce, Angie Lange, Luis Mangeubat and Pav Kovacik. With four artists taking stabs at iconic characters, it becomes clear that most of these are group projects.

The most impressive art are the backgrounds and environment treatments for Stranglehold by several artists including Stephan Martiniere. The same chapter also features a hyper-realistic character designs by Vince Proce who took countless images of staff members and professional models and melded them into people you’d swear you’d seen in movies or even walking down the street.

Artist comments are also pretty interesting, especially those by Ben Olson for The Suffering. The most memorable lines are about to Swam Borrower, a character design that didn’t make it into the game, that reads, “I still think the idea of having a tube hooked up to your face that leads to your own swollen man boob is pretty twisted. Does he drink how own breast milk> Or maybe he’s an aquatic creature he fills his boob full of sea water so that he can breathe on land? Yea maybe it’s kind of a goofy idea.” The creative process can certainly take an artist into the strangest of places in his or her mind. Horror fans will appreciate Olson’s other works in the book often meld fleshy creatures with spikes, tubes and various weapons.

For anyone studying videogames or simply appreciating various art forms, definitely grab this book and give it a lengthy gander.

Site [The Art of Midway: Before Pixels and Polygons] Read [The Gamer Gene] Also Read [Destructiod]

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A book that treats video games as an art form worth studying is not a completely new idea but they are still relatively few and far between.  Cultural magazine Brooklyn Rail features an article this month reviewing one such book, Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark.

Gamer Theory takes a philosophical approach to the art of games, describing how they have shaped the way we look at the world as well as what games themselves say about the world.  According to Wark…

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