That said…

It’s not every day that MMA and video games collide.

The Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour is happening right now in Austin, Texas- and it looks like an old screen favorite has slipped in amongst the members of the video coverage team.  Notice how he keeps his mutilated right arm below the level of the camera at all times.

If you thought Lyoto Machida’s training methods were eccentric before, you haven’t seen anything yet.  When he’s not in the cage or avoiding a fight with the only guy who can possibly beat him, Machida is hard at work developing new techniques to keep him one step ahead of the next generation of MMA Fighters.  We here at TGIP have the scoop:

Above, you can see Lyoto loitering around the Grotto Mall.  He looks nonchalant but soon slips in the door:

And of course as we know by now, this was the result:

Next:  Shane Carwin gets ready to fight Brock Lesnar by eating a shitload of Merv Burgers. 

Of course, he wouldn’t be the first fighter to prepare that way.

Has anyone ever seen the show “Hoarders”? It’s a show filled with the least sympathetic mentally-ill people in captivity, a nonstop parade of white neurotics with no grip on reality.  It strikes me that many video game characters could use the help of a professional organizer or life coach.

Yes, we were naughty.  But just between you and us, it felt quite good to update again.

Updates are going to slow down, if not stop, while I concentrate on not dying a pauper’s death.  I really enjoy this blog, though, so I hope to eventually get back to making it my number one priority and completing all the features I started.

If anyone has a graphic design or content writing position open on a contract basis, contact me at geordietait[at]gmail.com – the mediocre skills you see here can be put to work offending the people of your choice.

In the meantime, thanks for reading and I’ll see you again soon, I hope.

TGIP:  Hi everyone, we’re here with NBA 2K10 lead designer Erick Boenisch to talk about some of the new features that the latest iteration of the series brings to the table.  Erick, thanks for being with us.

EB:  No problem.

1.  “Social Networking” Statistical Ratings

TGIP:  The NBA recently put the kibosh on tweeting and other forms of social networking during games, and team owners are making sure that their players are aware of the pitfalls of this new phenomenon.  This isn’t your daddy’s NBA, is it?

EB:  No sir, and 2K Sports is right there with “Social Networking” statistical ratings.

TGIP:  Explain to me how that works.

EB:  It’s like any other statistic.  Three point shooting, shot blocking, they’re all measured on a 1-100 scale, and this will be no different.

TGIP:  What’s the benefit of having a high “Social Networking” rating?

EB:  Well, for one thing, you won’t leave suicide messages on your Twitter and get sent to rehab.

TGIP:  Ouch.

EB:  Yeah.  A player with a higher rating will be less likely to lower team morale by complaining about team chemisty on his Twitter, blasting the general manager on his blog, or by posting a photo of himself wherein two hash bricks are leaning against his passenger-side door.

TGIP:  That sounds like a blast.  What is Shaquille O’Neal’s SN rating?

EB:  100, baby.  He’s the standard by which all others are measured.  Others with high ratings are Chris Bosh, Baron Davis…

TGIP:  What is Starbury’s rating?

EB:  12 out of a possible 100.

TGIP:  Really?

EB:  Oh, I’m sorry.  I was looking at the wrong column, that’s his 2-point field goal rating.

2.  Shaquille O’Neal Intellectual Property Theft Mode

TGIP:  What else do you have for us?

EB:  Well, we figured it would be fairly easy to model plagiarism, so we did that with “IP Theft Mode”, where teammates chemistry can suddenly drop when one makes a television show out of an idea the other had, and claims it was his idea.

TGIP:  And how does that effect gameplay?

EB:  It shows up in Association mode.  Team chemistry will plunge if you don’t do something to resolve the rift.

TGIP:  And how do you do that?

EB:  You get a menu option where you can either give the guy a producer credit or tell him to f— himself.

3.  Enhanced Training/Rehab Options

TGIP:  There seems to be a lot of depth to Association mode in this iteration, more than ever before.

EB:  Yeah- you will really feel like you are running the team, right down to managing how your stars come back from major injuries.  We’ve added a lot of depth this year…players even have “signature” training methods that have greater effects than the standard.

TGIP:  For example?

EB:  Well, Gilbert Arenas can train or rehab by sleeping in a hyperbaric chamber or oxygen tent.  That’s his signature menu choice.  He has other options too, like swimming, calisthenics, the treadmill, no-contact drills…you can micromanage every aspect of his recovery. 

TGIP:  Awesome!  His knee will finally be 100%.

EB:  Nope.

TGIP:  Any other signature choices?

EB:  Yao Ming has a choice unique only to him where he trains by taking nonstop 16 hour flights and getting worked to death by the Chinese National Team.  It actually WORSENS injuries.

TGIP:  Why would you choose it?

EB:  The game chooses it for you.

4.  CAPBLASTER! Minigame

TGIP:  I heard a rumor that you guys added some Easter Eggs this year.

EB:  (laughs) Yeah, you caught us.  If you hit a certain combination of buttons you can play “CAPBLASTER!”, a bullet-hell game featuring Rip Hamilton.  You control a $34,000,000 ship and every time some cap space floats onto the screen, you blast it to smithereens. 

TGIP:  What other features does Rip’s ship have?

EB:  If you hit circle, it plays a recording of him saying “Me, ref?”  The ship also has a special attack where it sulks if the 2P ship is getting most of the action.

TGIP:  Who is the 2P ship?

EB:  Kenyon Martin.

TGIP:  Old-school graphics…but why a space game?

EB:  It’s not science fiction- it’s an actual representation of the technology we’ll have access to by the time the Pistons are any good again.

5.  Delonte West Offseason Mode

TGIP:  Any new modes to tell us about?

EB:  Yeah- we’re branching out.  I can’t say too much about this one, but here’s a screenshot:

TGIP:  Let’s move on.

EB:  Yeah, I’m not sure that will make the final game, you know?

6.  Quitting On The Coach Option

TGIP:  Yes, back to basketball.  I heard a rumor of team-specific menu commands.

EB:  That rumor is a bit overblown- there’s really only one unique option and it’s for one team in particular.

TGIP:  What effect does that menu choice have?

EB:  The stats of all of your players go down by 30% across the board.

TGIP:  Does the option only appear if Mike Dunleavy is coaching the team?

EB:  We thought about that, but honestly, Baron Davis can quit on any coach. 

7.  Josh Howard National Anthem Customizer

TGIP:  Moving on, I see you added some spiffy effects to the pre-game options.

EB:  Yes indeed.  We animated the entire national anthem and introductions, and we’re letting the player dictate exactly how his players act during the anthem in Association mode.

TGIP:  What happens if a player doesn’t stand as if he’s got a broom up his ass during the anthem?

EB:  Nothing.

TGIP:  I said ‘player’, not ‘white player’.

EB:  Oh.  In that case, expect a lot of frightening emails from southern states.

TGIP:  Anything more to know about this mode?

EB:  Two players have signature anthem behaviors:  Josh Howard and-

TGIP:  Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf?

EB:  Bingo.  We snuck him into the game just for this mode.

8.  Joe Johnson Health/Energy Meter

TGIP:  I saw a screenshot somewhere of Joe Johnson with health bar…what is that about?

EB:  Oh, that’s another new feature!  Basically, we added a bar to alert Hawks fans to the exact point in the middle of the season where Joe runs out of gas and starts playing like s–t.  It happens every year so we can just re-use the code for NBA 2K11.  We coded it for about 45 games, which is actually a bit generous.

TGIP:  Is there any way to toggle whether or not Josh Smith takes perimeter shots?

EB:  Just like in real life, no.  But you can always just control him in-game and make sure he always goes to the hole.  And speaking of toggles…

9.  Memphis Grizzlies Selective Control Locks

TGIP:  That must be a segue into the team-wide control input locks.

EB:  Yes.  Basically, there’s a pass button in the game but every time we would do QA testing for the Grizzlies, it would never come up.  The team actually plays most realistically if you disable that input button.  It’s the only one we have on by default.

TGIP:  Are there any others in the game?

EB:  The Golden State Warriors can’t hit the pause button.  The New York Knicks can’t hit the button to contest shots.  Ron Artest can’t hit the button to put on his pants before boarding the team bus.

TGIP:  Fascinating.  Well, that’s all the time we have, Erick.  Thanks so much for dropping by, and congratulations on a great game.

EB:  My pleasure.

It was probably a good idea to simply shorten the name to “PSP Go”.

As reported here on Joystiq, Warhammer fans who are also Mac owners will now be able to sit around slamming their hams just as easily and fruitlessly as their PC-owning counterparts.  As a result, anybody who needed a magazine layout done, or who otherwise absolutely had to have the attention of an arrogant prick, will likely experience some wait time. 

No trouble, though- 75% of Mac owners who crack the box and discover the program isn’t actually a multimedia creative suite will quickly return to whatever it was they were doing.

Sometimes I wonder, (because I’m insane) if video game characters were to submit their innermost secrets to PostSecret, what sort of postcards would result?

Here’s my attempt to find out.

(You can check out a similar concept, Video Game Facebook Status Updates, here at College Humor.)

Game 3 – Friday, April 10th, 2009

Video Game All-Stars 12,  New York Yankees 2

The fans lining up at Nintendo Park for this historic series between the New York Yankees and an all-star squad of their favorite video game characters are concerned with who will be there.  The New York Yankees, though, are focused on who isn’t in uniform.  Untimely injuries to Hideki Matsui (who tweaked a hamstring in Game 2) and Alex Rodriguez have left their mighty lineup depleted, a state that is akin to a death sentence against pitchers with stuff the likes of which no MLB hitter has ever seen. 

This was no more apparent than Friday evening, when the middle of the Yankee batting order couldn’t touch VGA starting pitcher Mega-Man, a diminutive blue dynamo crafted by Dr. Light to save the world.  Yankee slugger Mark Teixeira was unapologetic about his 0-4, 2 K line.  “That guy has an absolute cannon for an arm,” he remarked.  “That isn’t a metaphor or whatever.  It’s an actual cannon.”

Indeed, some of Mega Man’s offerings sailed over the plate in excess of 120 mph, leaving Yankee hitters to shake their heads.  In the early innings, when Mega Man was charging up his Mega Buster before each delivery, some refused to stand in the batters box.  Said one Yankee player on condition of anonymity:  “If you think I’m standing anywhere near home plate with that s–t going on, you’re f—ing crazy.”

Only backup outfielder Brett Gardner had any luck, hitting a perfect 3 for 3.  The Holly Hill, SC product only smiled when asked his secret.  “I just sat on the fastball, started my swing early, and hoped,” he said.  Despite Gardner’s performance, the Yankees couldn’t muster much at the plate until Mega Man switched to a more conventional, non-charged-Buster delivery in the 7th inning- a move that ruffled some feathers on the Yankee bench.

“They say he’s a nice guy and wasn’t trying to show us up,” commented Joe Girardi, “but we’re grown men.”

The consensus in the Yankee clubhouse is that the series might be different if the team were healthy.  Hideki Matsui, sidelined for this game with a bothersome hamstring, agreed.  “He may be Mega Man over here but I know him as Rock Man,” he explained.  “I feel like I could have helped us out there today.  And no question, A-Rod too.”

Some opposing players quickly grew tired of the excuses they heard coming from the Yankees at the post-game presser.  Cloud Strife, speaking to reporters after the game, was the first to directly address the issue.  “I’m out six weeks with [this wrist injury], so they have no right to complain about guys being hurt.  A-Rod may be a good player but the guy we have replacing me is a f—ing scientist who sits around on his laptop all day, watching Policenauts episodes…so I don’t want to hear their b—-ing.”  Indeed Hal Emmerich was 0-5 on the day with three rally-killing strikeouts.

There was some disharmony during the game as well, as hot-headed powerhouse Lu Bu destroyed the team’s water cooler and attacked a bat rack when All-Stars manager FuSoYa decided to send up weak-hitting Professor Layton to pinch-hit for him.  He disappeared into the clubhouse and was livid after the game.

“I want to know what sort of weakling he thinks I am!” he seethed.  He left soon after on his horse, Red Hare, and refused to talk further with reporters.

Professor Layton seemed embarassed about the whole thing, as he was struck out swinging by Mariano Rivera.  “Oh dear.  I just couldn’t solve his fastball,” he admitted.

The Yankees now find themselves on the brink of elimination…but on the bright side they have some time to take care of the injury problems that have plagued them.  Because of scheduling conflicts (many of the All-Stars have other commitments besides baseball, such as saving the Mushroom Kingdom) the next game won’t take place for several months, when the Video Game All-Stars visit the new Yankee Stadium.

The All-Stars lead the series 3-0. 

To be continued in Part 4.