These above are all of the voice clips included in the Nanami Madobe, Windows 7-tan, theme for Windows 7 included in some of the Japanese editions. Sounds for all your basic windows actions, including the dings, the beeps and the system errors. Boy oh boy, I don’t think I’d mind constant system errors with this. This is the official complaint deterrent for obscure errors only found by geeks, it turns errors into features and nerd rage into a moe-induced trance.

Anime merchandise is a dime a dozen (or several hundred dimes anyway), new stuff comes out on a daily basis. Figures, wall scrolls, posters, pillow covers, lets face it, most of it is pretty useless and rarely really carries the ingenuity of the artist. But there was once an exception to this rule a product that was both useful and carried the creativity of the artist! Masamune Shirou, of Ghost In The Shell fame, was commissioned to created a computer mouse back in 2002. The result was the MAPP1-SM from Elecom. This mouse you see above looks like it was brought out straight from GitS or Appleseed. At launch they sold for around $80, finding one now on resale would easily cost up to two or three times that amount.

Frankly I cant think of many more anime pieces of merchandising that are actually functional while still keeping with the aesthetic of the source material. Sure we’ve seen the Evangelion bike and headphones… and I guess Ona Cups, pillow cases and big breasted mousepads do serve some sort of purpose. But really, I challenge you right now to come up with 3 other pieces of merchandise which you might buy even if you had no idea it was anime related.

[Elecom]

I always enjoyed Left 4 Dead but I never really found it terrifying, not even a bit scary, until the Teletubbies came. Left 4 Teletubbies is a L4D mod made by Flameknight7, which replaces zombie models with the Teletubbies, complete with the ‘he-ho’ sound those horrid creatures made. With a few gory zombies left for ambiance this mod turns L4D a lot more sinister and, I have to admit, a bit startling to play.

Now if they’d only substitute the Tank for Barney, the Witch with Baby Bop and the Hunter with IT the clown, we could call it a day and be done with many childhood frustrations.

Today the unexpected and quite welcome First Ever Classless Update for Team Fotress 2 came out. With this latest update we get eighteen new and quite awesome hats. Too bad they are still rare as hell. We also get a new game mode, King of the Hill. The verdict? Like every other KOTH mode on any other FPS… it’s a spamfest, and this is coming from someone who plays Demoman a lot.

The devil, as always, is in the details though. A really big list of small updates to the game were implemented that make the game more enjoyable and for once this all happens without a class getting overused for two weeks. There were really very heavy hints at the next update being for the soldier and there are even conspiracy theorists that claim that Friday Valve will release a fourth day of updates.

Not excited? How about this: There’s a small segmen on GTTV tonight with Valve and apparently they will talk more about TF2 animated clips, the comic and even Half-Life Episode 3. You heard that right, Episode 3. Expect more in the morning.

A behind the scenes look at the story of the upcoming futuristic first person shooter, Section 8 (not to be confused with Niel Blomkamp’s District 9) being published by Southpeak Games and developed by TimeGate Studios.
After viewing the newly released trailer above, it is probably a safe assumption to assume that the game is on schedule for its release PC and 360 release next month on September 1.
Speaking of releases, the Section 8 couldn’t be shipping at a better time as the Xbox 360 received an update earlier today that, along with other social features, encourages users to spend more money on virtual goods in order to deck out their Avatars-perhaps we can expect to see some sweet Section 8 and Arm of Orion armor pop up on the Avatar Marketplace..?

We want to hear what you think about Section 8. Leave your comments below.

Recently some very influential voices in the tech world have been denouncing the death of the desktop PC and, by association, PC gaming. Their claims are not unfounded, Desktop sales went down 23% last year and while a decline is no surprise in the current economic climate; a fall of nearly a quarter of sales is an astounding blow to the market.

I believe rumors of the desktop PCs death have been greatly exaggerated. While laptops are every more popular, cheaper and powerful, most of their innovation still comes from that happening in the Desktop field. On the contrary I propose that the Desktop is not dying but evolving. I’d even venture to say that the only part of the Desktop that’s changing is the Desk part.

Our PC’s are taking the role of hubs and media centers, the best storage, fastest processors and better graphics are all on the PC. With the impending rise of virtualization our PCs will become even more important as they will become the backbone to your local computer. Your very own cloud, if you will.

Will laptops and netbooks continue their rise? Without a doubt, but in the very near future you are going to see many of the capabilities of those devices relying on those of your hub PC. So if you were thinking of shelling out for a high end laptop think again. Laptops depreciate twice as fast as desktops and are many times harder to upgrade. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that we’ll be seeing the resurgence of desktops within 5 years. And PC gaming dead? Don’t even get me started! But we’ll save that for another day. Over and out.

It was only a matter of time until a Metal Gear Solid game ended up on the Xbox 360. It makes sense. Konami know they can’t keep being exclusive with MGS to Sony this generation. They can’t afford to. No developer can really.

This game was never going to be exclusive to the 360 as many speculated when it was first announced. It just wouldn’t happen unless it was some crappy little side title, and nothing more. Konami would never leave Sony in the cold. Not after it has been 3 systems of theirs that has played home to the Metal Gear Solid series and allowed it to sell record numbers. To make a game exclusive to the 360 and snub PS3 owning MGS stanboys would’ve been a huge mistake. Konami did the right thing going multi format with this game. And PC gamers, peep this: The game is heading for PC too!

I’m actually more excited about this than I was Metal Gear Solid 4. Weird. Considering there is no news on this game other than it will feature Raiden as a playable character. Metal Gear Solid 4 was a great game, but it just didn’t amaze me in the same way Metal Gear Solid 3 did. If there was ever a game that didn’t get enough recognition or praise – it’s Metal Gear Solid 3.

Hopefully Rising will explain what the hell happened to Raiden, because MGS4 didn’t explain a great deal about him. And what was disclosed was plain stupid. A dude goes from having only the part of his face melded onto a load of cybernetics, just to end up with a normal body again, plus a few scars!? Hell no! Raiden should have died, turned into an Mk.III or ended up as a talking head in a tank. Many hated Metal Gear Solid 2 for featuring Raiden as the main character. But I didn’t have a problem with it really. My dislike of Sons of liberty was due to it being so boring and long winded. None of the characters, cut-scenes or conversations were particularly memorable.

There are no screenshots or footage of Metal Gear Solid: Rising, and there probably won’t be for a good 2 years. Then we’ll have an onslaught of images and over-long videos right up until the games’ release.

So enjoy that image of Raiden’s face. ‘Cause that’s all we’re getting for now.

The Horde is back and now it brought friends. Left 4 Dead 2 was announced today to the total surprise of everyone. Its bigger, better and brighter, with a lot of the campaigns now taking place in daylight. Set in the southern United States, this game is composed of 5 brand new campaigns which are now finally intertwined in a bigger story. Here’s what we know.

Read more!

Woa woa WOA! Looks like someone stole Valve’s Intelligence Briefcase. The video above, courtesy of Kotaku, shows the recently leaked Meet the Spy video. This video, part of the Sniper/Spy update, marks the longest, most action packed Meet the Team video ever. It also finally answers the question of where exactly is the spy from? For those still wondering, he’s french. This leaves only the Medic and Pyro left for their respective videos and Valve keeps raising the bar with each one.

Valve, why don’t you just make a feature length movie about Team Fortress 2 and spare us the shame of all the recent franchise movies? Or you know, just release some more photos of Scout’s mom, you wont hear complaints from us!

[Kotaku]

Today Capcom announced that Resident Evil 5, along with Street Fighter IV and Bionic Commando, will be ported to the PC. With SFIV and Bionic Commando coming out in July and RE: 5 in the fall this marks the newest step in Capcom’s attempts to bring its blockbusters to the PC.

No additional content has been announced for the PC version of RE:5 but it will sport a fancy new feature: 3D! The game will be compatible with Nvidia’s Geforce 3D Vision technology, allowing you to not only see Zombies in 3D, but Chris’ bigger-than-his-skull biceps and Sheva’s well endowed buttocks will also feel like they are coming out of your screen.

You may or may not know that Capcom actually released Resident Evil 4 for the PC as well and it was considered one of the worst PC ports ever, with basically no keyboard and mouse support basically forcing you to the same experience as the console versions. Now with this press release Capcom promises full keyboard and mouse support for all 3 games but adds that “for God’s sake, go buy a gamepad with analog sticks.”

To this humble editor this seems like Capcom is missing a big part of the point of releasing games for the PC, mainly that PC gamers are not that fond of controllers. So with this kind of attitude towards the PC its still to be seen what they actually mean when they say “full” keyboard and mouse support. But hey! At least there’s the promise of 3D ass, cant ague with that!

[Capcom]