I don't really know how to describe this free-wheeling post about systems, games, and so on, so perhaps you should just go and read it.

A fascinating piece taking Hearts of Iron III - a simulation of the Second World War - as its starting point and leaping from that into a look at how the simplistic narrative we've built of the run up to that conflict is hiding a lot of the story. Well worth a read.

"Soho! is a game of skill and judgement for 2-6 players of all ages inspired by the two things for which this small, historic patch of London is famous around the globe: its pubs, and its one-way system." Nice. (I miss the magazines, though. Ah well.)

a chess champion calculates twenty moves forward in her game.

"The Cycle Challenge is a competition to see which team can cycle the most miles in a month. Teams that come top win great prizes."

"If we have used computers to build intentional flaws into the numerical heart of our deepest and most cerebral games instead of using them to elevate our understanding of the computational heart of the universe, then we’re doing something wrong." A good post that's doing the rounds but is well worth looking at.

"I started writing a comment on Chris Messina’s thoughtful post and it expanded into something post-worthy." It is too. Well worth a look.

"Sony's new portable is nothing but raw deal after raw deal. The complaints are numerous, the slights against consumers are many, and the hardware is flawed. On top of these issues is a price point that's so high it seems like a sick joke in the current economy. The PSP is a great system and a strong platform. The PSP Go is a terrible, terrible deal for everyone but Sony."

Will Wiles on Sim City, broken cities, badly fixing them ("the pleasure of being Robert Moses") and the conservatism that's come to life ("a common misconception about London is that it's "finished", that vast areas of it don't need anything to be done to them, and that's a crazy idea").

Subtitled "meet the Bafta-winning father of the videogames industry", this is an interesting look back at a career that only has its bookends in the subject at hand. No less worth reading for that, mind you.

200 covers for the 200th issue of Edge. A real mix, including some of the terrible tropes that infect the games industry, but also some lovely ones.

"we don't experience games like films at all. Designers may rely on the tricks and tropes of cinema to convey the worlds they create, but when we step into the shoes of that avatar, be it 1st-person, 3rd-person or otherwise, we exit the darkened movie theater paradigm and enter an intricate, performative, exploratory lab of untested ideas and speculation. We enter a playful space that feels and responds much more like a live theater rehearsal" I thought I was a bit dumb for only just realising this. Here's a long post explaining why games aren't like movies.

"Meggy Jr RGB is a new kit that we designed as a platform to develop handheld pixel games. It's based around a fully addressable 8x8 RGB LED matrix display, and features six big fat buttons for comfy game play." Looks a bit like a baby Tenori-On, and at a baby price, too: $75 (vs £700-odd for the Tenori-On). Of course, it's a very different beast, but still, impressive.

"kids are utterly, utterly obsessed with fairness." I don't know how much this is brought up when people talk about religion and the brain, but I think it has a lot to do with why humans created god(s): they're a means of kidding ourselves that the universe does care. (Also, I now slightly regret my off-the-cuff remark on one of the photos.)

Tom Insam writes up, in amusing fashion, how he scrapes the World of Warcraft site to extract the achievements of his guild into an RSS feed. For example: "they return an XML document with an XSL stylesheet referenced in the header that transforms the XML into a web page. Why are they doing this? It must be a huge amount of work compared to just serving HTML, I don’t get it. Let’s ignore that."

Ah, Drop 7. I was meaning to write a post extolling its virtues, but I think I played a few games of it instead...

Tycho on some rather daft patent suits, but more interestingly, on iPhone games. He makes a bunch of good points, especially about the battery life (if I forgot to go back to the home screen, Rolando would drain it entirely in about six hours).

"The situation is undeniably bad. What’s going to happen next?" Adrian Hon talks about the future of books.

"WOPR - fictional 20th Century military computer, disliked noughts and crosses" That's a bit reductive, but I suppose it counts as a win for the pop reference fans. The article's really about board games.

Subtitled "Far Cry 2's literary approach to narrative", this is an interesting read on the story and choices within a console game. Long, but worth a read.

Dan Hon turns a presentation into a long, but worthwhile, blog post on what "alternative reality games" are, and what they shouldn't be.

"Despite gaming being seen as a male activity, female players now make up about 40% of the gaming population.

In a lighter note, this made me laugh out loud at points with its ridiculous list of achievements. I only got to 90%; the last 10% are far too fiddly for me. Still, an amusing few minutes (and that's about all I get out of some modern art...)

Dan Hon put the following in his delicious notes: 'We're storytellers, and the reason why we keep turning to linear narrative media like novels, films, tv is that they're really quite good at linear verbal/aural/oral storytelling. Which is what we've grown up with and are good at interpreting. Scultpture, opera, etc. is "harder".' Sounds about right to me.

One of my favourite London Review of Books contributors (check the Cityphilia and Cityphobia articles, if you haven't already) tackles the old chestnut of video games and art. "If I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable. It’s a bit of an irony that difficulty thrives in the newest medium of all – and it’s not by accident, either."

"For me though the huge loss is board games."

"Forget design, even. As a subset of our culture, video games are clearly headed to center of the conversation, where it’s not inconceivable that one day they might shoulder aside old media mainstays like television and newspapers."

Commentary on the presence of early-voting ads, paid for by Barack Obama, in Burnout Paradise. "Do you really want them campaigning in your hobby? I don’t."

Subtitled "creating a world for wipeout on playstation", this is a nice little essay on how a writer came to join Psygnosis in Liverpool, and write the backstory for one of my favourite video game franchises.

Wired's gaming blog notes that the old GBA Bit Generations games - sadly, never released outside Japan (and I did consider getting some on import) - are coming to the Wii's downloadable game store thing. Which is nice.

Bruce Sterling's... well, maybe not his... keynote to the Austin Game Developers Conference a couple of days ago. Or something. You'll work it out. The line about MMORPGs is very good. Go on, read it.

Subtitled "Germany has a grip on the business of inventing brainy new board-games", this is a good (introductory?) piece on German board games, and the fact they're still being invented (and sound quite good, too). Mentions Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan and Keltis.

Right, that's that downloaded. Now to play with it. Well, a bit later maybe.

"The twist is that you now have control over time, and holding down the X button rewinds everything you've done. Time and its manipulation, not jumping, is the overriding gameplay feature." Sounds interesting.

I'm not convinced that the gameplay's up to much, but technically this is pretty damned impressive stuff. Each cube has different faces, and the computer recognises them and places the game environment inside. Just watch the video; you'll get the idea quickly enough.

How to get planetoids with the physical properties that Super Mario Galaxy seems to have. I haven't double-checked all the sums but it seems ok on a glance.

Looks like they've learnt lessons from the awful, buggy Lego Star Wars II for the DS, and have rewritten it completely. Hurrah! Looking forward to seeing it.

Coming up later in October. I might finally get myself organised and go to the game evening thing.

Despite Dan Hon's declaration that the fact you "snuff out candles by blowing into the mic" gives this Instant Fail, I think I'll be tempted to get this when it comes out in English in October.

Well, this guy seems to like it.

Why hadn't Google Trends updated since mid November? How am I meant to get a slightly bogus sense of which console is "winning" without dubious search engine statistics?

Pink PSP base pack now £100; black and white still £135. The DS price is the same for all three colours. Hmmm.

'[The judge] was "minded" to make a very substantial" cost order against Mr Kelly with a relatively "modest" penalty.'; 'The law has always been clear, commercial gambling needs to be properly regulated' Notice "commercial".

Londonist's commentary on the decision by a Snaresbrook Crown Court that poker is a game of chance, not skill, so it's illegal to profit from it. I point out that the "profit" bit is important- low stake games are probably OK.

Very punny. (You do see what they did there? You don't? Never mind. Better that way.)

"Cooking Mama picked up one or two awards at E3, which is entirely understandable as it makes an excellent first impression."

Probably not news to the gamers, but I found it an interesting read

"You'll want to avoid the DS version; it's broken and rather ugly" boooo

DS version apparently very buggy indeed. Damn it.

PSP version apparently very good. Unfortunately I don't have a PSP.

I wonder if the digest scheme is Apple's weirdo M4p thing?

I'm still a bit dubious about the stylus control but I'll give this a go, I reckon

found while looking for more on Southern Belle, a steam train simulator, but I was also reminded of Spy vs Spy, which looks like a DS game prototype, frankly. Please? Someone?

I wish I'd had a better DS game case. Any DS game case, really...

I managed to lose the rips of this I made from my own copy, and since then I've given away my Playstation and the game. So hurrah for internets! (now, where's the PSP version?)

Good article by Clive Thompson on Collision Detection, even if his reasons overlap somewhat.

Review of the first batch of the Bit Generations games that Nintendo have released in Japan. Oddly, they're for the GBA, not the DS, but then Nintendo do like to try and keep their portable consoles alive.

I really like Eurogamer. Nice writing style and they don't spit interstitials and popups all over you. Anyway, review of Another Code.

Mainly so I can connect the Japanese and English titles, and also because the Wikipedia "adventure game" article was handy.

Myst for PSP, already out in Japan. Why no DS port though? As the comments say, the stylus would replace the mouse much better than a joystick + D-pad.

Nintendo DS tech details. No use to me really, but interesting.

Aw, diddums, your stupid simulated life doesn't show up on Flickr. Guess what: it's there for REAL PHOTOS of THE REAL WORLD. Shut up and run off to your little gated photo site for people who spend too much times in MMORPGs.

Sad. But somehow not entirely surprising.

"A writing game devised by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard" to explore at home

GBA vampire hunting game?

I could never be arsed with WoW either. I even have a US game pack lying around. Pfft.

Scrabble, Thailand and Mattel- together at last! Wonderfully amusing article about the game and the World Championships

I don't get it. It's obviously old (spot the 10.2 stripes) and the linked adapter comes with Mac OS X drivers anyway

Great image. Great quote by ChrisDodo elsewhere on delicious, too.

Mind you, a new Mr Driller! (Not an addict, no sir.)

Jumping the gun a bit, aren't they?

Interesting