I will scare the towel from your body señorita.

Hola. It is your site maintenance man Bucho. Chris is driving in a car so now I write for him. Today I try a new game called Ghost Master and es muy caliente. I am the boss of many ghosts and my job is to scaring the pants off many young college peoples. The part of the game where I am learning how to play happens in a sorority house. There are many young women prancing around in towels and pajamas not suspecting that Bucho will be Hellraiser movie to them.

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This summer the Museum of Science and Industry featured an exhibit and history of video games and video game development. It was pretty awesome! They had almost every video game imaginable, with everything from classic home consoles to new handheld games. They didn’t have every arcade game imaginable, but I wouldn’t expect them to have the space for all of that stuff.

There were a ton of classic and contemporary consoles though. It was a trip to see all of those different games and consoles all in one room. It goes to show how far the industry has come in such a short amount of time. Comparing the old game to the new, the difference is unbelievable. Yet, the old games are still just as fun as ever to play.

I took as many pictures as I could there. I apologize in advance for the quality; the guard there said I could take pictures but not with a flash–so some of them came out a bit blurry. Take a look and go through the collection on my flickr account:

Game On photos

If you’re in Chicago, you don’t have much time left to see the exhibit, it will only be going for another week or so.

I am replacing what would ordinarily be the first gaming post of the week with a wish of good luck and good health to our family, friends, editors and readers in New Orleans. I have been glued to The Weather Channel for most of Sunday hoping that hurricane Katrina would lose some of its strength. Unfortunately, it is set to hit the state of Louisiana with full category 5 wind speeds and the results will no doubt be devastating.

I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that our thoughts and good wishes are with those in the storm’s path. May it pass swiftly and without loss.

LEGO Qui-Gon after being told how Episode 1 ends…

I’ve decided to do a series of reviews on video game movie tie-ins. Since I am one of the few people who actually liked E.T. for the Atari 2600, I feel qualified to do this.

Historically, games based on movies have tended to be slapped together pieces of crap that outsell better games by banking on brand recognition and riding the coattails of the movie’s gigantic promotional push. You could fill a landfill in New Mexico with the number of bad movie related games made, while the good ones would barely fill the bin in your bathroom. I’ll never understand how someone can take ideas seemingly perfect for video games like The Incredibles, Batman Beyond, Fantastic Four, and The Matrix and make such bad games out of them. Hell, even Star Wars which has produced some great games in the past, fails to make good games based on the actual films. I know, Super Star Wars for SNES was good, but I don’t consider it a true movie tie-in if the game comes two decades after the film (see Godfather, Russia With Love, Scarface, and Dirty Harry; all titles currently in production).

These days, Hollywood takes video games more seriously since many of them have bigger opening days than most movies. This is both good and bad for the media. Good because more tie-ins are decent these days. The LOTR series for example, Spiderman 2, and Chronicles of Riddick. Bad because Hollywood is starting a trend of video game tie-in movies which I think is one of the signs of the Apocolypse.

I’m trying to be unbiased when selecting a tie-in game; playing both the good and bad. I chose my first title “LEGO: Star Wars” because it looked like a unique take on the genre and has gotten a lot of buzz recently. It’s hard to imagine this sort of marriage of mega brands making a decent game, but to my surprise it’s actually worth playing.

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Do you have any idea what the street value of this Night Elf is?

Let’s face it…our drug of choice is not getting any cheaper. No, not booze jackass…I’m talking about games. When a new title hits the shelves, you’re typically looking at dropping $50.00. If it’s an MMO, count on an additional $10.00-$15.00 per month just to be able to keep on playing it. Now how many of you only have one title in your library? Show of hands? Thought so. Some of us have collections that value in the thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars. All indications of future pricing point to a $10.00 increase per next-gen title, bringing the wallet pang up to $60.00 each…for that you could almost buy a Game Boy Advance SP.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Back in mid-March, Ubisoft released “Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30″ to fairly strong reviews. Given the numerous WW2 games I had purchased up until this point, I was able to hold off on getting my hands dirty with French soil (and plenty of Nazi blood). Alas, the allure of hosing down a squad of krauts bent on my destruction set to the sounds of war and swelling classical music proved too much this past week. I will preface the rest of this article with the note that I am currently 50% thru the game (final conclusions to come next week) - that being said:

You think you’ve played me before…don’t you?

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EMB faithful:

I have no games for you this week, just news. Next week I’m moving to San Diego to found the west coast offices of EMB:

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be driving across Illinois, Iowa, AND Nebraska.

Okay, I’m also starting a new job, but in my head it’s solely to extend the reach of EMB. Between the movers taking my possessions, the need to move myself, and the need to start a new job, I’m likely to be offline for the next three weeks. Keep gaming, and hopefully I’ll have Locomotion screens for you in mid-September.

- Chris

ps. if you think this would have be an ideal time for me to get in some portable system reviews, send an e-mail to ‘bucho@eatmybomb.com’ with the subject line ‘buy chris a psp’. Let the voice of democracy ring.