The Internets are a series of tubes…We apologise for the inconvenience

Everyone who is worth their salt in this world knows that the Internets are a series of tubes and, perhaps more importantly, that they are clogged.

Check out Lisa’s latest editorial on The Internets.

Japan Airlines including Japan Airlines and ANA will no longer allow passengers to use their Nintendo DS or Sony PSP on board due to safety concerns. Passengers were previously asked by the airlines to refrain from using gaming systems with wireless functionally but now The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that gaming systems with wireless capabilities are banned by a law coming into force on Monday.

Japan’s transport ministry has decided that the electromagnetic waves from the wireless networks can interfere with aircraft navigation systems. The question that I have been left pondering is what all those gaming gurus are going to do while winging it to the Tokyo Games Show next year.

If you are a PC gamer, don’t sigh with relief just yet because wireless computer mice and headphones not provided by the airlines are also banned. Electric razors, calculators and cassette players are, however, still permitted, so at least everyone will be cleanly shaven while being thoroughly bored. Hold on, I am sure we could make a Wario game out of an electric razor, a calculator and a cassette player, but wait, of course we would also need a handheld to make this fun…

It seems Japanese airlines have rethought the policy which they adopted last year to loan Nintendo DS handhelds and games to first and executive class passengers. Of course although the ministry says battery chargers and toys that give off electronic sounds can’t be used during take-offs and landings, it does not mention during flights so at least you can have a fully charged DS or PSP when you arrive at your destination.

Rumours are once again running amok on the internets…this time Microsoft and Bungie Studios are on the receiving end as reports fly that MS and the Halo developer are parting ways.

The source of the rumour appears to be a blog linked to the Seattle Post-Intelligence which claims to have confirmation of the separation from a friend in the know. The speculation also states that Microsoft will keep the rights to the Halo franchise but that Bungie will no longer be part of Microsoft.

If you consider that Microsoft is Bungie’s parent company and ponder the tremendous success Halo 3 has just had, this rumour seems farfetched but the bottom line is that nothing has been confirmed yet, either way.

So, you think you’re a gamer do you? Ever thought about what it actually means to be a gamer. Think about it for a minute or two - there are all sorts of kinds of gamers out there…hardcore gamers, casual gamers, console gamers, PC gamers…which one are you? Here is a bit of my gaming story.

Click here to read more

I’m starting to wonder how much the general groupthink of the games industry affects review scores. As much as you might hate or love Game Rankings, it, like Meta Critic (or Rotten Tomatoes in the movie sector) serves as a pretty good barometer of what the press thought of a title.

To spare you the pain of doing it yourself, I’ve spent the last hour watching Firefox trying to squeeze information out of Game Rankings. In its platform rankings we find little nuggets like:

• Uno on the Xbox 360, with a score of 81.9% is better than all but 5 games on the Wii and all but 10 games on the PS3. Really? Uno? The most luck-based game that ever existed - that Uno?
• The best platform exclusive game on the PS3 is Resistance: Fall of Man with 87.4%. This would place it at position 14 on the 360 chart, below Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.
• For games that are on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, the Xbox 360 version scores 3% more on average. There is not one cross platform game that scores higher on the PS3, and for some games the difference is as much as 5%. Perhaps the PS3 versions of these games are really inferior, or perhaps they came out quite a bit after the 360 versions - this might explain the discrepancy.
• The 360 has 56 games above 80%, the last one being WWE SmackDown! vs. RAW 2007 (huh?), the PS3 has 17 and the Wii has 7. This could possibly be explained by the 360 being out for quite a bit longer. Meanwhile, the PS2 has over 200 games over 80%.
• The PSP has 40 games above 80% while the DS has 30
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the sixth best game on the Xbox, and thus the 9th best game of the generation. (It should be higher!)

So what conclusions can we draw from all this:

• The Wii sucks.
• The PS3 sucks a little less than the Wii.
• The PSP is way better than the DS.
• Any game with achievements is worth 3% more than one without.
• Xbox Live Arcade games are worthy of Game Rankings but the PSN and Wii VC games are not.

I’m not sure Game Rankings is all that applicable to me, since my personal conclusions are, well, a little different to those.

Welcome to the new and improved EL33TONLINE, complete with a blog and bigger fonts!

A lot of video game news comes in the form of snippets, screenshots, bits of interviews, as well as rumours and rumours of rumours, and since we’d like to keep our news feed of the highest quality, we’ve launched a blog to accommodate all this other content.

We hope you like the new format, and please have your say - we’d love to hear your comments!

To Infinity and Beyond!

The EL33TONLINE team