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• OW Investigative Series: Violence in Video Games

  

  Written by Sage 11 Comments
  Last Updated:: June 21, 2009

  Part 4: Pokemon

  In recent centuries the world has been racked with animal on animal violence. You need not look further than Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, and sometimes History Channel (check local listings). Every where we look some animal is killing another animal. But why? Is it for food? Are the creatures pre-programed to hate each other? Or has gang warfare spilled over into the animal kingdom? Only recently, since man has evolved hunting and tracking capabilities, has human on animal violence escalated. Some people, so called ’scientists’, have postulated that these behaviors are what allowed human beings to become the dominate species on our planet. A quick look out the window, if you live in an urban area at least, shows you that yes there are a lot of humans everywhere. But why has modern man chosen to still attack, kill, capture, and even eat animals? Is it because proteins obtained from meat and poultry are essential to a healthy diet? Is it because a number of domesticated species would no longer be able to survive on their own without human intervention? Or is it because of the destructive influence a certain video game has had on the populace?  As we have shown in previous articles, all violence in society can be blamed on video games, so it only make sense that animal cruelty must also be the fault of video games.

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• Top 5 Reasons Not to Play Joust

  

  Written by Zeromage 15 Comments
  Last Updated:: October 22, 2008

  Everyone raves about Joust as being on par with Pac-man and Tetris. There’s a sacred set of games that are perfect in their simplicity. The later games are always amongst the first listed in this sacred set. For some reason though, people like to include the shitty game named “Joust” on that list as well. We are out to destroy that notion with this article. This game is boring, sonically annoying, and not worth the time for what the game tries to give in entertainment value. We hope that Joust will be disregarded as one of the great simple games after this article is read through.

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• OW Investigative Series: Violence in Video Games

  

  Written by Zeromage 12 Comments
  Last Updated:: September 25, 2008

  Part 2: Q*Bert

  In our last investigative report we covered the real world violence that Donkey Kong had caused between plumbers and gorillas. In this report we take a look at another game that rocked both the United States and the world abroad. This game was, of course, Q*bert. Before Q*bert’s release in 1982, pyramids were known as the most peaceful of all three dimensional geometries, and afterward they were known only as places of violence and graffiti. Q*bert was a violent foray into a dark and dangerous world, where people’s heads and color schemes were the target of malicious attacks.

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• Top 10 Types of People that Old-Wizard Hates

  

  Written by Zeromage 100 Comments
  Last Updated:: August 28, 2008

  As the readership of Old-Wizard knows, we have gripes with many different types of people. The most often cited people who we dislike are the Sega-heads who consistently claim that the Sega Genesis was better than the SNES. We have addressed this numerous times throughout many of our articles (top 5 worst video game websites), but we also gave them their due in our “top 5 best Sega games of all time“. What the Old-Wizard reader may not know though is that we have a lot of heat for more than just the Sega-head. We come across people every day that make us ask ourselves “Why do we have to live in this time”? While this may seem like too much of a gloomy disposition on our part, it is not without reason that certain people just tend to piss us off. We’ll go through these “types” in this list. We just hope that you’re not one of them!

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• Mega Man 9!

  

  Written by Zeromage 2 Comments
  Last Updated:: July 29, 2008

  It’s been eleven years since Mega Man 8. Whoever thought the original series was dead was dead wrong. Mega Man 9 will be one of the most anticipated releases for the Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 for this fall. The promotional art for Mega Man 9 looks as poor as that for Mega Man 1. If all else follows suite, we will have a great game on our hands. Dr. Wily is at it once again as Dr. Light is blamed for world-wide reploid tragedy. The game follows the same design as the old Mega Mans with our blue hero fighting 8 reploids before entering Wily’s castle. There is a major twist to Mega Man 9 though. The first woman boss to ever battled will make an appearance in this Mega Man. Her name is “Splash Woman”. No one knows as of yet what she splashes, but we hope that it’s got nothing to do with her gender. Other interesting reploid names include “Galaxy Man”, “Concrete Man”, and “Plug Man”. We hope that Galaxy Man brings back memories of Gemini Man’s level. We will keep a close eye on this release as we always have love for the Mega Man series (check out our top 10 Mega Man Bosses of all time list). Maybe one of the bosses in Mega Man 9 will knock out one of the bosses already on our list.

• Comic Book Preview: Hulk #5

  

  Written by Zeromage 20 Comments
  Last Updated:: July 26, 2008

  In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s a brand new Hulk running around smashing people in the Marvel Universe. He’s just like the regular Hulk, except he’s red and he gives off gamma radiation. Oh, and he uses a big gun. The Red Hulk has already defeated the Abomination, She-Hulk, Iron Man, the Green Hulk, and most ridiculously, knocked out the Watcher. Yes, you read that right, he knocked out the Watcher. And now it looks like he’ll be going toe-to-toe with everyone’s favorite Norse thunder god, the Mighty Thor in Hulk #5.

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• Nintendo Wii best selling console in US

  

  Written by Zeromage 7 Comments
  Last Updated:: July 22, 2008

  Are we right or are we right about Nintendo? The Nintendo Wii is now the highest selling video game console currently in the US. It has shipped over 666,000 consoles in June alone (which proves even the devil loves Nintendo). The Wii totals are currently about 11 million shipped in the US. The Wii now takes over Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s Playstation 3 as the most popular video game console system. What has made the Wii so successful?. We go into this in our top ten video game systems of all time, but how about the highly unique and intuitive controllers? How about the games themselves that reach out to all audiences (Who could have ever thought that there could be a perfect bowling game in Wii Sports Bowling?) Or finally a new Mario game (Super Mario Galaxy) on par with Mario 3? Nintendo has done it again with the Wii creating a video game system more powerful than a fully operational Death Star. What’s next for Nintendo? Only the future can tell. For now though, Nintendo once again controls the video game market.

• Noel Gallagher ties Video Games to Stabbings

  

  Written by Zeromage 4 Comments
  Last Updated:: July 20, 2008

  Everyone who visits Old-Wizard from time to time knows how much we prop up Oasis like most nerds prop up Star Wars. But our love for Oasis may have found its limits when Noel Gallagher criticized video games for creating all the high crime rate in the UK. In the past year, knife crimes have been up big time in the UK. Could this all be because of video games like Noel Gallagher thinks? First off, what video games are out there where the main weapon is a knife and theme of the game is knifing people? Violence in video games has become much more elaborate than the puny blades belonging to the likes of Arthur from Ghosts N’ Goblins. Is there a correlation between violence in video games and any type of violence whatsoever? Often, politicians and role models alike will try to find scapegoats for spikes in violence by blaming the video game market, but the evidence is always inconclusive. We love Noel Gallagher, but we suggest he sticks to writing great songs rather than being a social critic against video games. We’re pretty sure he has never actually played any.

• Top 10 Most Powerful Superheroes of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 1,842 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 23, 2008

  Here it is folks, the biggest debate on the whole interweb. Never has there been a more well thought out argument for a completely non-existent thing. Which superhero could beat up which other superhero. Never has a group of people spent more time drawing graphs, doing calculations, making charts, and writing computer programs to prove that the hero they love is in fact the toughest. These people do more literature searches than a graduate student writing their dissertation on literature. One can only imagine what world problems could be solved if comic book nerds would instead focus this same energy on say; poverty, healthcare, the climate, pollution, the economy, childhood obesity, cancer, sudden infant death syndrome, racism, genetic disorders, violence against women, the melting ice caps, sending a man to mars, depression, solving Goldbach’s conjecture, creating a unified field theory, un-raveling the mystery of DNA, figuring out what happened before the big bang, resolving religious tensions in the Middle East, finding peace on Earth, making cleaner cars, sustainable energy, nuclear fission, getting rid of hippies, and the million other things that would make this world a better place to live in.

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• This is an Actual News Story

  

  Written by Zeromage 1 Comment
  Last Updated:: April 27, 2008
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