This is awesome! The music video for “The Touch” by Stan Bush which was featured in the original 1986 Transformers movie:

The 1980’s were a great and fun time to be a kid. As they say on VH-1… I Love the 80’s

Activision has finally announced that they will be releasing standalone wireless controllers for all four versions of Guitar Hero III early next year.

Bit of a bummer that they couldn’t get it together for the holidays, but I’m sure they won’t mind if you choose to pick up a full bundle of the game instead of waiting.

Microsoft is offering an impressive little bribe to European 360 owners to get them to persuade their pals to follow the way of the console, too: ten free Xbox Live Arcade games.

The pal with the new console gets the free games, too, thanks to Microsoft’s “refer a friend” promotion, which runs until December 14th.

The freebies are:

• Every Extend Extra Extreme
• Sonic The Hedgehog
• Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
• Bomberman Live
• Marble Blast Ultra
• Spyglass Boardgames
• 3D Mini Golf Adventures
• Small Arms
• Assault Heroes
• Zuma Deluxe

Uno and Worms, two of the Arcade’s most-played titles, are notably not included.

The relative age of most of the titles makes it likely that the existing 360 owner will only scoop up a few new games, but for someone just buying a 360, this is a huge bonus.

If the Nintendo Wii turns out to be as hard to get as predicted, casual players just might be tempted to go the Microsoft route instead.

Source: Next Generation

Doing some research on Pirates this evening, I stumbled upon an interesting gem of a website called Google Pirate.

The concept behind the site? Use the power of Google to scour every corner of the internet for exactly what you need:

I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!

This is definitely a useful website for many reasons… but before you fear (the reaper) getting your “Arrr” on, take a look at the legal disclaimer from the Google Pirate website:

This website is completely compliant with the DMCA. Before you send off emails, be aware that this site has a legal use and does not condone copyright infringement or intellectual theft in any way. This website does not contain any illegal material, nor does it even contain direct links to illegal material. It is designed using Google’s Custom Search tools to narrow search results down to filetypes to remove unwanted sites that aren’t related to the client’s search.

This website is not affiliated with Google. “Google” is a trademarked name of Google Inc. “Google Pirate” is not a trademark name/url and is only named such due to the relevancy of the word Google.

The use of the word “Pirate” does not imply that we condone piracy. Its simply because we think pirates are awesome.

I completely agree, Pirates are awesome and in times like this, I remember the words of Bruce Dickinson:

“Easy, guys… I put my pants on just like the rest of you – one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.”

I’m telling you – you’re gonna want that cowbell on the track! Babies.. before we’re done here.. y’all be wearing gold-plated diapers.

What does that mean you’re asking yourself? Never question Bruce Dickinson! Roll it!

In Memoriam: Gene Frenkle: 1950-2000

Heads up vintage game players and collectors, today MAME32 becomes MAMEUI.

With this exciting news, the 64bit version with a GUI for 64bit Windows OSes (XP64, Vista64) and 32bit version with a GUI for 32bit Windows OSes (Win98/ME/2000/XP/Vista) of MAME version 120.4 was released.

MameUI (previously Mame32) is the GUI version of the M.ultiple A.rcade M.achine E.mulator, a program which seeks to document the internal hardware and code of all arcade games.

All current versions of MAME are available in my download section. Enjoy.

I’m sorry Pac-Man, but the final dot you have to eat is in another castle.

I’m a little bummed that they didn’t include the “wacka-wacka” sounds when Pac-Man moves around but it’s still geektastic and a worthy gaming parody.