Absentmindledly sifting through gaming news a month or so ago, I saw a list of Germany's top ten games of 2002. This list in particular showed a game at number one that I had never heard of - Anno 1503. This list wasn't just strategy games or just German games or just games with Anno in the title, this was the complete list - so why had I never heard of this game Germans crave above all others?

All I'm saying is that it is time for a new Sonic game, and I don't mean new to the GameCube. Rumors said the new one might not be a remake, and wouldn't that have been nice!

You might not know this about me, but I am a cookie freak. Having been my roommate for a number of years Tycho can no doubt attest to two things. One, I don’t understand how to work can openers and two, I am totally obsessed with cookies and milk. In fact, until I got married and I was forced to eat real food I often consumed cookies and milk for every meal of the day.

I thought I would chime in on the topic of PSO on the Xbox since I keep getting mail about it. I read the press release just like everyone else and I agree that eight bucks a month for your hunters license is way too much. However the game comes with two free months and I honestly can’t imagine it holding my attention any longer than that. That is about how long I played it when it came out on the DC. However, I think that it does set a bad precedent and this is something that Tycho actually brought up when we were invited out to that Xbox Live event at MS before the service launched. Mainly games charging fees on top of your Live fee is hard to swallow. The idea that I might have to pay for a hunter’s license in PSO and another fee for Star Wars Galaxies and another fee for some other game all in addition to what I already pay for Live is insane. There should be one fee for the Live service period. I think Tycho will agree with me on this one.

In his latest article Storm Shadow gave us the low down on his recent trip to CES. One of the items he mentioned in passing in that article was a possible new price and design for the Xbox. Here is the excerpt from his article:

I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to say "eschew."

I've been waiting to see first word on this one, and (at least in this case) the word isn't all that good. I'm kind of in the mood for a straight FPS at the moment, so I'm sure I won't be able to resist it on the shelf, but I wonder if an FPS can eschew a multiplayer mode these days and still survive.

The guns are actually called that. So is the song.

Thank you very much for all the great feedback on the Dante Pic. I got the same questions a lot so I am just gonna answer them here.

I've been playing a bunch of Devil May Cry 2 and I was inspired to do some new Gabeart. Click the thumbnail below to see my take on Dante.

You might remember that everyone came away impressed with Duality at E3, and it's hard not to like it on paper. I wholly expected it never to see the light of day, that's how beautiful it was, but I guess we're looking at first quarter 2003? Hey! We're in the first quarter now!

Yow, it's taking some sound beatings out there - check out GameRankings for a list of all the reviews. A couple gave it four out of fives, but there's a seven and a six out of ten as well. Take these under advisement, I suppose. That kind of depresses me, things started out well enough in the game. I guess we'll see.

Sometimes, when I fix one of my stupid typos in the strip under server load, it fucks up the image. I think I've got it going now.

I've spent some time reading the bios at the Soul Calibur 2 site this morning, and I thought you might also enjoy it. Some characters don't have their histories in yet, but there is still plenty available - it's interesting to see how characters have been changed or replaced.

I just jumped on Mechassault to see if they had made liars out of us, but no, it's still true: the promised content for January is still missing. This is an example of a topic I want to be wrong on, and the moment I become wrong I'll mention it here.

Check out this ReadMe for the 1.3 Battlefield patch. It's like a completely other game, look at some of this stuff.