I may be young, but that hasn't stopped me from being a total Tron fanboy.  No I don't have a custom-made suit (I'll keep dreaming though) but I do love the movie and mythology around it.  I even played the terrible Tron 2.0 for the GameBoy Advance.  Last night's Video Game Awards on Spike TV gave us the first look at the game to accompany next winter's sequel.  I just squealed with delight.  No lie.

Our pals at Kotaku have a great round-up of everything new shown off at the VGA's, including sequels to Arkham Asylum and The Force Unleashed.  We can has the future now, please?

I'm not sure about everyone's affinity towards Nintendo and Mountain Dew but for this gamer here it borderlines on obsessiveness.  Right now as I type this, my Super Mario pillow person is staring at me while I consume yet another delicious Dew.  However, even I would like to think that I draw the line somewhere in regards to my fondness of these brands.  As you can see from the above picture, some artisan from that great site Etsy (not Paper Street Soap Co., thankfully) has gone and merged two of my favorite things into bars of soap.  So instead of smelling like some sweet fruit or strange man-scent you can now bathe in geekitry and smell like soda.  That is if you are okay with a $34 price tag.

You could say that the Sega Activator was the original Project Natal.  Using the same technology as the U-Force, but more immersed than the Power Glove, Sega's answer to silly peripherals almost began and ended with this octagon.  As with most things Sega did in the Genesis era, it was a decent idea, but maybe not executed that great.

I think I'm even more disappointed that my Activator didn't come with this awesome training video.

I'm a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that's really just consisted of the video variety. That's a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game's analog brethren... the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I'll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you'd like to try out for yourself.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about the abstract board game DVONN, which I said was "harder than checkers but easier than chess." It proved to be a big hit with readers, and led me down the obvious path of taking a look at another of the abstract games in the same series. ZERTZ is an interesting game and hard to nail down to a simple description, though I suppose I could say it's kinda like Chinese Checkers on an ever-shrinking board.

It's an intriguing concept to be sure, but is it fun?

Surprise, surprise.  The rumors were floating around, but I didn't want to believe them.  Not because I don't love Mega Man but because I didn't want to get my hopes up and see them dashed.

It'd take some real gusto, or money, for me to bungee cord my new PS3 to my back and dangle over a building, but I'll be damned if watching someone else do it isn't the coolest thing ever.  As Gizmodo points out, it may be an Epson ad in disguise, but there's no denying it's super cool.

My dream:  An epic game of RISK on the Genesis projected onto the fountain at the Metropolitan Opera House.  That would work, right?

I throw random 8-bit related junk at you guys, oh, pretty much all the time... but this time, its for a good cause. Charity!

This painting, entitled Los Illuminados, was created for the Child's Play Charity Dinner Auction 2009.  The artist (previously featured here on BBPS) is now selling fifty copies at $35, with half the proceeds going directly to Child's Play.  For those of you not familiar, CP is an organization that gathers books, games, and cash for children's hospitals around the world.  This is a great cause, one that helps ease the suffering and boredom of sick children everywhere.  Give the gift of game!

[Etsy]

In 1999, the Swedish company, Elektron released a popular synthesizer.  Rather than being equipped with a keyboard, these machines were controlled by knobs and a keypad and had an LCD screen, similar to Korg's Electribe line.  They have three oscillators and four LFOs, the signals of which pass through a single analogue filter.  Elektron's synth is used by a variety of popular bands such as Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, and KMFDM.  But what's all this got to do with chiptunes?  Well, I'm not telling you unless you hit the link.

Thanks to Scott for the tip-off