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What's on your HDTV this week: Watch Dogs, The Life Aquatic, Wil Wheaton, Mario Kart
With Memorial Day come and gone and the temperatures rising, it's time to get ready for our summer TV schedule. The NBA and NHL are almost ready to enter the championship rounds of the playoffs, and most of the winter TV shows are out of the way. That means we have a few new entrants this week to take their place, including The Wil Wheaton Project, Crossbones and Undateable. HBO's Silicon Valley is also wrapping up with a season finale, but don't worry it will be back. For now, it will be replaced by AMC's new series Halt and Catch Fire, which focuses on a group trying to reverse engineer IBM's PC in the 80s. Also this week, NBC News will interview NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Movie and game fans have a lot of good options, lead by Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8, and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on Blu-ray from Criterion. Still, Game of Thrones watchers are probably focused entirely on Sunday night's episode, and with good reason, while soccer fans can tune in to all of the 30 for 30: Soccer Stories flicks on Netflix, and catch up on the US National team (suddenly without Landon Donovan) with ESPN's documentary series update on Thursday. Check after the break for a list of what's new this week plus a few trailers, and drop in the comments if you see any highlights that we've missed.
Latest Humble e-book Bundle lets you pick your own price for unicorns, Wheaton
For the next two weeks, you can snag four e-books for whatever price you want with the second Humble e-book Bundle. As always, each contribution benefits whoever you prefer, be it the authors, charity, Humble itself or a combination of the three. If you want access to all six books, as per the Humble pricing model you need to kick in a sum greater than the average $9.40 donation. For less than a few gallons of gas you'll net Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek and Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn in addition to the other four tomes shown below. The sun hasn't set on the first day of this six-pack promo and over $150K's been donated so far. Reading-on-the-beach season's half over, so get crackin'! The Last Unicorn - Peter Beagle Just a Geek - Wil Wheaton Little Brother - Cory Doctorow Boneshaker - Cherie Priest Spin - Robert Charles Wilson Shards of Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold
PAX 07: Audio from the Wil Wheaton keynote
We admit it. Our writeup of Wil Wheaton's PAX keynote didn't manage to capture the palpable energy of the crowd. And that's why we're happy to present you with this here audio file which should manage to better communicate the cheers of adulation and camaraderie. But don't go thinking audio is an infallible format! For example, can you hear the audience's fists pumping in the air during the speech's high energy moments? You may be able to feel it, but you can't hear it. So there.Listen – Wil Wheaton's PAX keynote (.mp3 link)
PAX 07: The Wil Wheaton keynote, just for geeks
The lights go out, and a phone call voice-over plays. Two hours ago...Lazlo's OfficeRockstar GamesNew York City Wil Wheaton is calling his buddy, an audio producer at Rockstar, trying to figure out a way to make a memorable entrance. They settle on something epic, something Lord of the Ringsy. The music bellows and Wheaton takes the stage. "My name is Wil Wheaton and Jack Thompson can suck my balls." The audience cheers. "I should note that today's keynote has been rated MA by the ESRB and if you have a problem with that, you can go fuck yourselves." He rattles off his geek cred: he's played NightWatch, he had an original Gameboy, and he carries around every 2600 game on a USB key (a USB key? We had them embedded subdermally years ago). He sure knows how to get the crowd going, citing classic gaming one-liners each one resulting in a chorus of applause. He rattles off popular internet memes like "the internet is a series of tubes" and "we need more cowbell" and "Leeroy Jenkins."His infectious preaching of "geek power" has a very rapt audience at PAX. He lays out his history as a geek, explains his manipulations, all geared towards giving him more time to play arcade games in between a busy school and audition schedule. One of his most endearing stories was about playing Wizard of War.
PAX07: Wil Wheaton keynote, TGS prize, Minibosses headlining
Additional details of this summer's PAX07 festival have just been released. We already knew about the larger venue -- the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in downtown Seattle -- and the dates -- August 24-26 -- but we didn't know about the keynote speaker, the Omegathon prize, and the headlining band. Until now.Taking the place of last year's thoroughly entertainging keynote speaker, Alex St. John, is wundergeek Wil Wheaton who's certain to find a receptive audience in the geek-hungry halls of PAX. Next up, the Omegathon prize. Taking the place of last year's tricked-out Scion xB, the gamer with the mostest gets a trip for two to the Tokyo Game Show (in new four-day flavor) along with $5K in spending money so you can nerd it up in Akihabara. Lastly, the headlining band. Taking the place of last year's face-melting Minibosses are ... the Minibosses! Of course, they joined by the likes of The OneUps, MC Frontalot, Jonathan Coulton, Freezepop, The Neskimos and Optimus Rhyme, so expect a full two nights of rocking (and rhyming, whatever the case may be).
Wil Wheaton loves the Virtual Console
Geek hero, Weblogs, Inc. buddy, and, yes, former Wesley Crusher Wil Wheaton has discovered the Virtual Console, and like all reasonable people who have just been given access to Alien Crush, he likes it! In a column on the generally-not-safe-for-work SuicideGirls website, Wil traces his NES experiences, taking us back to a time when people voluntarily played Kung Fu. After playing a demo NES in a store, he attempted to persuade his parents to purchase a system, calling it "...probably the most advanced computer that will ever be made."Naturally, when the Wii came along and gave him another crack at The Legend of Zelda and other NES classics, Wil was more than pleased to share the games he grew up on with his stepson. We love to hear good things about the Virtual Console, and we're also glad Wil chose to play NES games in his youth instead of nefarious mind-controlling puzzle games. This is probably the most heartwarming article we've ever read on a porn site.
Wil Wheaton on the death of the arcade
Wil Wheaton (yes, that kid from Star Trek) has a touching column on the slow death of the arcade over at Suicide Girls, of all places (page is safe for work, but links to NSFW content). Wheaton lays out some interesting historical analysis on what actually caused the game center's slow decline (endless fighting game clones might be as culpable as powerful home systems), but just as interesting are Wheaton's carefully laid out sensory memories from the gaming rooms of his youth. More than the games themselves, the pizza-stained, Mountain Dew-infused social atmosphere of the old arcades are what give them a special place in many an old fogey gamer's heart. These young whippersnappers don't know what they're missing with their online deathmatches and Xbox Live Arcade downloads and what-not. In my day, we played standing up at a wooden cabinet in a dimly lit room... and we liked it, dagnabbit!
