I recently had a chance to talk to one of the more famous female gamers for a Girls Don’t Game exclusive interview. So who’s the special lady? Well, it’s none other than Old Grandma Hardcore, the gaming granny with a mouth worse than the foulest of foul sailors who makes the Angry Video Game Nerd look tame. You may have seen her on YouTube, or on MTV, or maybe you even read her blog–we know we do!

Read on to find out this 71-year-old’s stance on PC gaming, her fame, and high gaming hopes for 2008.

(more…)

I adore the weird, the wonderful, and the bizarre. Occasionally games bore me - I have a “Oh look, I’m a secret agent with a gun and I get to shoot people. How about that?” attitude. The nice thing about video games, however, is that unlike Hollywood, even the mainstream games can be absolutely off-the-wall. With the possible exception of sport and racing games anyway - and even some of those franchises slide into the surreal and the odd.

With this in mind, I’m going to bring you my top ten most stylish games. Some of them are weird, and some of them are wonderful. They are all interesting. Before we get started, a disclaimer: these are only games I have played, and is not an exhaustive list. There are some notable games missing, so I encourage you to drop me a comment with a recommendation for your own twisted and fantastical favourite.

(more…)

When I’m addicted to a game, and I mean seriously addicted, I’m talking not even sure whether it’s day or night, I go into what I call a gamer fugue. Basically it’s that period where you sit in your favorite chair or on your bed and say to yourself, “Just ten more minutes” for a good three or four days. There’s nothing wrong with these fugues of course, except I have the nasty habit of forgetting I need to eat or sleep in order to live. The last time I was seriously afflicted was when I got Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so very long ago. Nothing has really piqued my fugue since, sadly.

Every gamer, whether they’re in their zone or in a fugue has to eat. Period. I’ve been waiting for Nintendo to come out with its intravenous nunchuck attachment that just feeds mashed food directly into the body, but it hasn’t yet gotten past its testing phases.

The times I venture over to notorious gamer friends’ houses, there’s always an interesting combination of foods on the table next to the gaming chair.

(more…)

Video games have always been my own personal hell, as I have a tendency to be perfect in everything I do. I had to be the person with the top kills in a shooter, I always have to have top performer in Rock Band, and when it comes to a Korean grind MMO I’ll always aim for the max level. When it came to playing World of Warcraft though, that attitude had to change–a little. Instead of the entire group being rewarded with an accomplishment, only a few choice individuals were rewarded. Despite the annoyance of the system, I grew fond of it. You worked hard to get your new piece of shiny loot, then you would sit in a capital city for a few days just so that everyone who inspected you would congratulate you or ask where you got it. Despite how annoying it always was, you’d answer, just to see the reaction of how great you were.

Lately I have noticed how lackluster accomplishments have become and how little of a challenge games are. There have always been cheat codes for console games that would make everything easy, so I grew attached to MMORPG’s. World of Warcraft is the one I’ve played for three years now and well, what is there left to that game that can be considered a challenge?

(more…)

If to err is human, then why do we always remember the times we fucked up in great detail as if it’s a special and rare occurrence–even in video games? I mean, in video games, it’s not our asses on the line when we die. It’s not real. And yet, I can recant millions of times I’ve done stupid things in video games and paid for it with my gamer pride.

Hell, I’ll even blush while doing so.

(more…)

While stumbling around youtube to find various mario paint versions of my favorite game songs, I happened to notice that I was running into a lot of random fighting game videos. I’m not talking about your standard Mortal Kombat supreme demonstration. I’m talking about Peter Griffin fighting the green power ranger. Or Ronald McDonald versus Haruhi Suzumiya. A lot of times it was on a Street Fighter or Darkstalkers background I recognized. Othertimes, in the case of Ronald McDonald, it was outside a burger king. I guess the King decided the best way to liven up his restaurants after that whopper debacle was to bring in some good old bloodsports.

(more…)