The couple was more interested in raising their virtual child than taking care of the child they already had — in real life. The couple would give their three month old a single bottle of milk each day and leave her home alone while they went to the internet cafes. The parents returned home one evening to find their child dead — they then called the police.

The parents told police, “we found she had passed away when we woke up this morning.” The cops became suspicious at the claims due to how dehydrated the child was. An autopsy later confirmed that the child had died of starvation. A spokesman for the National Scientific Criminal Investigation Laboratory where the autopsy had been done said, “she appears to have starved to death because she was not fed for such a long period of time.”

The parents disappeared after the funeral in September and just recently were arrested — it’s about time. After the arrest was made, the parents said to the police, “due to our sense of guilt, we have no been to a PC gaming room over these last five months.” Regardless if they have been to a “PC gaming room” or not, the parents brought a child into this world and neglected it for a virtual child.

I don’t think video games are to blame here, but rather the parents failure to take responsibility for their actions — something seen far too often today. If you bring a child into the world, you damn well better be prepared to raise it.

Gamers ‘tot’ dies of Starvation [The Sun -- Thanks, Chippy 115]

“Grand” over at VG Box Art has made what he feels the box art for Half-Life on NES would look like.

This looks about right

That looks pretty accurate to me. Gordan Freeman looks exactly as he should in 8-bit — pixelated. Check out the high-res image for maximum Half-Life NES box art mock up satisfaction.

Half-Life (NES) [VG Box Art]

Last week we spoke with JJ Hendricks, collector and owner of JJ games, he told us that demand definitely played a role in the price of auctions like this — not this time around. We had the chance to speak with JJ this afternoon and he believes the $800k auction to be a fake. All signs point to this being a fake auction not only in it’s value, but with it’s product as well — we’re not surprised. Too much surrounding this auctions seems to be amiss

There are ways that you can tell if a game is truly in it’s original factory seal. An eBay user has written a helpful guide to educate people on just this. The seller has not submitted the appropriate evidence to support their claim that the game being auctioned truly is factory sealed. JJ has told us that he and several of his game collecting friends have attempted to contact the seller for additional pictures, yet get no response — something doesn’t add up. JJ himself has also authored a piece on why he feels the auction is fraudulent.

The seller’s refusal to respond or produce additional pictures has only helped to raise the assumption that this is a fake. I didn’t think anyone in their right mind would spend that much on a single NES game. For the time being, the record for most expensive NES game still goes to the winner of the $41,300 Stadium Events. To everyone else out there, this auction just goes to fit the old saying — caveat emptor (buyer beware).

Every Monday we will do this like an open forum. Tell us what you did over the weekend, what games you played, what the week has in store for you, share a joke, or talk about whatever you wish. Monday sucks, so let’s make it a bit more bearable — what do you say?

Try and have a good Monday everyone. See you at the broadcast this evening.

From last week:

• Rare Factory Sealed NES Game Sells for $41,300
• Star Trek Online: Space, The Final Review
• Video Game Ownership May Impair Academic Achievement
• Where Does Your $60 Go?
• Valve on Natal: “Don’t Just Make Sh**ty Games”
• Video Games are “Sexualizing Children”
  

The game’s auction ended at a staggering price tag of $41,300. It has helped one person’s NES collection inch that much closer towards completion, but at a significant price. $41,300 is a lot of money no matter how you slice it. This is the most anyone has ever paid for an NES game. Before today, the most anyone had paid for a single NES game was $20,000 — that man was JJ Hendricks.

JJ Hendricks, the owner of JJGames, is no stranger to paying a high price for something rare on the NES. Back in October, JJ purchased the Nintendo Campus Challenge cartridge off eBay for $20,000. It’s the only cartridge of it’s kind still in existence — the rest were destroyed. Until now, JJ held the record on what was the most expensive NES game sold. He has even authored a piece about the most expensive NES games ever sold. You could say he knows a thing or two about this kind of stuff.

When we asked JJ if he felt this copy of Stadium Events in this rare form had an appropriate price tag, he said, “The rarity of an item doesn’t determine the price though, the demand plays a big role too and Stadium Events is better known and has a ton of publicity going into the auction” He is right about that. Two weeks ago an unsuspecting mother made $13,105 for selling her NES with 5 games — one was Stadium Events. Going into this auction everyone knew how rare of an item this one was.

While JJ might not hold the record anymore, one hardcore collector now does — at the cost of $41,300.

FACTORY SEALED NEW NES NINTENDO STADIUM EVENTS NTSC [eBay Thanks, Robert A]

A few weeks back we took a look at the game’s beta. While the beta was great, the full game was an improvement (naturally) and has had a lot more for the players to do in terms of missions and depth of exploration. There weren’t too many noticeable differences between the beta and the complete version technically, but we did see that a lot of little things got fixed or replaced — excellent.

One thing I said was I felt it was too easy to level up. Well, after reaching the level of Commander and Captain, I can say I was wrong. When you get to the higher levels, while you don’t hit a rock in the road, you will notice that leveling takes a bit more time than it did before. This is great because players can no longer rush through the game and it offers the players a sense of gratification when they do finally reach a new level.

While not too much has changed since our overview, some of what we didn’t like has changed for the better. As you get into the game more, you’ll notice that missions become more than interesting and you find yourself wanting to play more. It seems a lot of the downtime issues have been taken care of as well.

While some of out opinions might have changed, some stayed the same. Unlike the overview, instead of things we liked or disliked, we’re gonna tell you the things you as a game or Star Trek fan will like or dislike, as well as go over the game from a technical standpoint.

Things You’ll Like:

Star Trek Universe: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Cryptic does a great job at bringing the Star Trek universe to live, but giving it to the players to explore. You’ll be sent across the universe to places like the Neutral Zone or Deep Space Nine. It’ll strike a note in any Star Trek fan and make them feel like they are a part of the vast universe. All the key races from the television shows are in the game. At level 43, you’ll even run into everyone’s favorite omnipotent being.

Missions: As stated in our overview a few weeks prior, the game has plenty of missions to do. As you get higher in level, the missions become more of a challenge and last longer than the lower level ones. Not only will they gain you more experience, but you’ll have the chance to meet and battle with familiar enemies of the Star Trek series. You’ll find yourself choosing between a whole myriad of different missions, but you’ll for the most part always have something to do.

Weapons, Items, and Drops — Oh My: My opinion of this matter stays the same as it did in our overview. There is plenty of great stuff to be found in Star Trek Online. While you’ll need to go looking for some items, others you’ll pick up from drops after battle. Some of the stuff you get will help you along your way not only on away missions but in space as well. If you don’t want or like the items, sell them off for some energy credits. After all this time, I still find myself excited to pick up drops after defeating enemies.

Fanfare: There is enough fanfare in Star Trek Online to make your head spin. Cryptic does a good job at giving user not only the universe, but ships, character references, and more. Despite some things missing from the game, Cryptic has promised to add what the Star Trek Fans out there really desire and help please the hardcore Star Trek fans out there. There is already plenty of great stuff in the game, but there could always be more right?

Two Sides Are Better Than One: If you become tired of being the good guy and want to leave the Federation — you have this option. After you’ve reached at least level six on the Federation, you are given the option to create a character for the Klingon Defense Force. The Klingon side offers very little in terms of PVE and is for the most part PVP oriented. While this might bother some, Klingons are warriors and using them as PVP characters was a great choice on Cryptic’s part.

Things You Might Not Like:

Little Inconsistencies: If you’re a Star Trek fan like me, you’ll notice throughout the game there are few things that just seemed out of place. While Cryptic did a fantastic job at recreating the Star Trek universe, there were also a few things they didn’t quite get right. It’s little insignificant things, but in the end some people will notice and it might leave them feeling like they don’t like these things.

Exploring the ship: Most people ask the question — why can’t I explore my own ship? Players (for the time being) are limited to only being able to explore the bridge of their ship. While it’s not a huge problem, it might leave some players feeling a little disappointed. While this might be something some people won’t like, Cryptic has promised to eventually give players the ability to maybe one day check on their warp core or share a glass of Klingon blood wine in ten forward.

Strange & Dull New Worlds: While there are plenty of planets in the game to explore, some will give you a lackluster feeling. Far too often you find yourself on a planet with close to little to offer in terms of visual appeal. Aside from lacking visual appeal, you’ll notice some planets just don’t fit very well at all. It seems a lot more time went into space and ships rather than the many strange new worlds you explore. While this is not the case for every planet, there are plenty you’ll find amiss.

Technical Babble:

Graphics: For what it’s worth, the graphics in Star Trek Online are pretty good. While they don’t reach the level of some of today’s blockbuster titles, they serve their purpose and are still good. Ships look great, space is beautiful and fun to explore, but there are some issues here and there. While it’s not the most graphically impressive game ever, it certainly delivers where it needs to. Just don’t expect this game to wow you along the lines of a game like Crysis. (note: I played on maximum settings with 4x AA on a Core i7 920, 6gb of DDR3 RAM, and a GTX 295 video card — it ran pretty smooth)

Ground Combat: My personal opinion hasn’t changed very much since the beta and I feel others will agree. The ground combat pales in comparison to the awesome ship combat. It’s not that the ground combat is awful — because it’s not, but it certainly could use some work. The control is not the issue, but rather the way it feels. It feels clunky and isn’t really as epic or exciting as fighting in space. While you won’t hate it, you might find yourself objecting to away missions just to stay in space. Again, it’s nothing game breaking, but it won’t leave you wanting to beam off the ship and down to planets.

Ship Combat: In our overview, I said that ship combat was a dream compared to previous Star Trek games — I meant it. As you level up, you’ll be introduced to more ships, each offering more firepower or more in terms of special abilities (albeit, your bridge crew plays a role in this) You’ll be able to choose from escort, cruiser, and science class vessels (oh my). Choose wisely though, don’t pick a science vessel when you’re all about raw fire power.

Connectivity: During the head start and it’s first week out, there were some issues with downtime and lag while playing the game. This has for the most part slowly disappeared. You’d be fooling yourself to think there would be a 100% uptime during the first week of an MMORPG’s life. Star Trek Online does a good job at keeping the servers up and ready for players to let loose. Downtime usually happens at around 3-5am PST, and it’s more than likely to release a patch or fix little bugs. Nothing major, but just expect that kind of stuff from time to time. They have done a great job at preventing unexpected downtimes though.

Support: While the game might have issues, what MMORPG didn’t have problems after launch? The Star Trek Online team has been very dedicated to not only keeping the servers running, but providing excellent support as well. The support doesn’t stop at a technical level either – oh no. Cryptic has already added some new missions and has shared plans for what they have in store for the game as well. This is a game that offers it’s players something most don’t — great support.

From our overview a few weeks ago to our now final review, some opinions have changed. Things or problems we didn’t like were either solved or got better as the game went on. While it’s not perfect, the game certainly appeals to Star Trek fans out there. There is a good amount of balance in most things you deal with in the game and they do a great job at giving the Star Trek fans a product they will appreciate.

Star Trek Online is a game that will go great in any Star Trek fan’s collection. The game does a great job at recreating the universe and giving it to you to explore. While the game might not be at the calibur of MMOs, it’s one that many of the hardcore MMO fans out there will enjoy regardless.

I recommend this game to anyone looking for a great Star Trek experience or a new MMO to add to their list. It’s worth it’s weight in gold pressed latnium.

Well, what does everyone think? Be sure to head over to YouTube and rate this video 5 stars for awesomeness.

Ethan Mars [YouTube Thanks, Tadashi]

Half of the group were given PS2s and the other half were not. Both groups kept a diary of their daily lives throughout the 4 months the study was conducted. The group with video games usually played games for an average of 40 minutes a day, while the group without games only had about 9 minutes of game time. The group without got their gaming in at either a friend’s or relative’s house.

The group that did not have consoles spent more time studying each day, clocking in at around 32 minutes. Makes sense, they didn’t have games! The group with the PS2s studied a good amount less than the kids without consoles. The average study time for the gamers was 18 minutes a day. The researchers found that “budding gamers” had lower reading and writing scores compared to the group without games.

The researchers said, “Our findings suggest that video-game ownership may impair academic achievement for some boys in a manner that has real-world significance.” Although this might be true, this seems to be another case where parents need to step in. Parents should make sure their kid’s work is getting done before they play video games each day. Kids from ages six to nine are still in early ages of development, so before we blame games, let’s make sure the parents are doing their part too.

Study Examines the “Displacement Effect” of Videogames [Game Politics]

There’s a lot of cover-based shooters out at the moment, but when a guy hunkers down behind something, you’ve just got to sit there and wait for him to pop his head up. Pops up, couple of bullets to his head, pops back down again.. and I’m waiting for him to pop back up again? Fucking boring. I can’t be bothered hanging around like that.

While this isn’t the case with all of the first person shooters out there, a lot do suffer from what he talks about. It seems today with the FPS genre, if you’re not helping to push the genre forward, you’re just another face in the crowd — a very big crowd. Stuart Black was recently hired by Codemasters to work on a new IP. Let’s just hope his game doesn’t suffer from what he thinks is “fucking boring.”

Do you agree with what Mr. Black has said. Do you feel that most of today’s FPSs are “fucking boring?”

Black creator: current FPSs are “f***ing boring” [OXM via VG247]

Mario and Donkey Kong share some brewskis

When Mario isn’t busy fighting the likes of Bowser, he’s kicking back and enjoying life with good friends. Who would have ever thought that Mario is a normal guy who likes to kick back with a brewski and a cigarette. I guess saving the Mushroom Kingdom time and time again is a tougher job than we all thought.

One can wonder what kind of beer he’s drinking — let’s hope it’s not light.

Alcohol Brings People Together [Koku Gamer]

After seeing this, who just learned something new about themselves?

Life Cycle of a Videogame Franchise Addict [GameSpy via GameCulture]

This is where your money goes

As you can see, that $60 gets split up several different ways and in the end the publisher only ends up with a little less than half of what the retail price is. This should also help you understand why GameStop loves to sell used games. They are much more profitable.

Anatomy of a $60 video game [LA Times]

Stating that he believes Natal is “really cool,” Faliszek then goes on to say, “hopefully we’ve gotten past the point of mini-games. I’m sick of that [makes arm movement]. That’s not a game for me anymore. Let’s get some real interaction going.” It seems developers have taken that route too often with motion controls. We’ve all seen it with the overflow of party games on the Nintendo Wii.

What Faliszek said next is something most gamers will probably agree with. “We have these technologies now that let us interact in different, really exciting ways. It’s developers’ jobs to do something with it. Impress me. Don’t just make sh*tty games I wouldn’t want to play if I had to use a joystick.” When asked about what Valve was looking to do with Natal, Faliszek said, “We’ll see. You won’t have to make the arm movement of sawing off a zombie’s head in some tiresome mini-game. I can promise you that.”

It should be interesting to see what kind of stuff Valve has in store for their games once Natal hits the market and is in gamers homes across the world. At least we won’t have to worry about mini-games like “whack a zombie” where you wave your hands around like an idiot.

Valve slams ’sh*tty party games [CVG]

In an attempt to “attract and entertain” the youth, the CPAC added what they called the “XPAC Lounge.” No, we’re not talking about the former WWE wrestler X-pac here. Creator of the “XPAC lounge” Kevin McCullough said, “We’re gonna have the most popular games. There’ll be Guitar Hero. There’ll be Dance Revolution. There’ll be Call of Duty.” The lounge was set up with 10 video game consoles(Xbox and Wii) and two seven foot screens.

Now, here comes an interesting fun fact for all of you. If you didn’t know, Kevin McCullough is the same conservative blogger from a few years ago who said the first Mass Effect was “pushing our next generation of young men through the gates of hell as fast as is humanly possible” and “Mass Effect can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes.” He then later went on to apologize to gamers for his comments, and rightfully so.

Funny how now this guy is using video games to help the cause when he spoke out against them not too many years ago. If irony were made of strawberries, we’d all be drinking a lot of smoothies right now.

CPAC Organizers Try to Turn Up Hip Quotient With Video Games, Rap [Fox News via G4 via Joystiq]

According to a recent Telegraph article, Papadopoulos “criticized computer games containing highly sexual content, such as Miss Bimbo, in which girls compete to accumulate boob jobs in order to marry a billionaire.” The article also went on to say that a government report due out soon will explain how “children are being sexualized from an increasingly early age by computer games, pornography and sex-related slogans.”

The different forms of media praise whores people like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian for making a sex tapes, but then this woman goes ahead and blames video games for the “sexualization” of children. Many different forms of media portray sex as a game when we try to teach our children that it is not. Few major video game releases glorify and promote sex the way these other forms of media do, so why is Ms Papadopoulos blaming games?

When it comes down to it, what is your child watching on TV or playing on their video game console or PC? Are you as a parent in control? Parents need to stop being afraid of saying “no” to their children and step up to the plate and act like a parents instead of enablers. People can point the finger all they want, but parents and guardians need to start stepping up to the plate. Instead of buying your 13 year old kid that iPhone with the data plan they don’t need, hire a babysitter for when you’re not around. Ultimately, people need to take responsibility and stop blaming everything around them.

Video games are ’sexualising children’ [CVG via DToid]