When you work for an online news site, you deal with a lot of PR agencies and personnel. You rarely meet the people that you correspond with, as they are generally many miles away, and don’t always go to trade shows. Well if there’s one public relations worker that I wish I’d have met (while she was still working there), it’s Grace Kim, formerly of Activision.

The beautiful rocker in the video above spent a good bit of time as a PR agent for Activision, handling the Guitar Hero series. As luck would have it, she managed to land a gig with Playboy, and get herself a centerfold spread in the November issue. It seems that she also had some time to rock out with the new Starpex guitar from Peak Products. When you’re done enjoying the video above, you can read her review of the controller here.

November is nearly here, which means we’ll be catching wind of the upcoming Black Friday deals. I seriously pile money under my mattress all year long just so I can get cheap goods in exchange for waiting in the freezing cold. The first deal I’ve seen thus far is this one from Sears.

It looks like they’re offering up two different limited edition Nintendo DS bundles for $149 each. You can choose from an Ice Blue with Brain Age, or Red (with the Mario M) with Super Mario Bros. It might not be the biggest bargain of the season, but that red Mario DS does look pretty cool.

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Planning on asking for a Wii this year? Well once again, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Santa wasn’t able to get his hands on the console. Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime announced that their production of the Wii has gone up 33% from last year, up to 2.4 million consoles being produced each month. That might seem like a lot, but he still hinted that it very well may not be enough.

At this rate, there won’t be enough supply to keep up with a demand until Nintendo releases their next console sometime down the road. Oh well, looks like it’s about time for the scammers to come back out and buy up all of the Wii’s they can get their hands on, only to sell them to others for $100 profit.

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If you’re a hardcore geek, there are some things in life that you just can’t do the normal way. You buy everything but bread and milk of the internet, you’d rather send an IM than call someone and you propose to your girlfriend via video games. No, not many people would risk such a special moment with an in-game proposal, but this guy did, and it worked. Here’s the story in his words.

“On October 17th, 2008, I proposed to my (now) Fiance. Originally I wanted to retun to the site of our first date, Mount Baker, near Bellingham Washington. Sadly, there was no discrete way to get her out there. So I turned to the next best thing, digitally recreating the mountain!
But why stop there? I figured I’d try and recreate many of our other favorite memories — stargazing, dancing, even her favorite song lyrics (from the Princess Bride). I’m a college student who is studying Computer Science, and I wanted to do something unique that used my talents, so I did some research on Rom hacking, as she was playing through Chrono Trigger….
When her name appeared on screen (blurred in this video), she glanced over to me (on one knee, with the ring out), wondering, “How did they get my name in this game?” When she saw the ring, she reread the proposal, nodded yes, and said, “You are such a huge nerd! I love this!”
I spent a long time debating whether or not this proposal was awesome or incredibly stupid. Her friends, and my friends helped talk me into it, and it was a huge success!”

This is definitely one lucky guy. Not only was his girlfriend playing Chrono Trigger, but she actually said yes after being proposed to via a video game. I’m pretty sure the only better way to propose is when Jaws jumps out of the water.

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It’s always sad to see an online game get shut down. It is inevitable that such games will indeed have their servers turned off, since you can realistically only support a game for so long. What is really sad is when a game gets shut down after less than two years. Such will be the case for Hellgate: London.

Namco Bandai has announced that they will be shutting down the Hellgate: London servers on January 31st, making the game just over a year old before it died. After the poor launch and buggy gameplay, I can’t say that many people will see this as a surprise. On the bright side, the game will be free to play until the servers are shut down. I bet you’re glad you didn’t get in on that $150 “lifetime subscription” deal they had last year, aren’t you?

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It’s always sad for Wii owners to hear that they won’t be getting a particular game because the console’s hardware won’t be able to keep up. It rarely comes as a surprise, since it isn’t exactly the most powerful of the current console lineup. However, Resident Evil 5 producer Masachika Kawata dropped a huge bomb in a recent interview.

Rather than just simply saying that the Wii couldn’t handle the game, he went as far as to say it couldn’t even handle the graphics in the game’s title screen. While that very well may be true if the footage shown is actually rendered in real-time, that’s still just harsh.

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I’ve always said that every game would be better if you added Nazi zombies to it. Okay, so I’ve never actually said that before now, but I still think it holds some weight. If you’re thinking about picking up Call of Duty: World at War next month, you’ll have the chance to encounter Nazi zombies.

Once you play through the entire game, you’ll unlock the Nazi Zombie Mode. This is a special mode where you and your friends will be pitted against endless waves of the aforementioned undead. I don’t know what’s better, the fact that you’ll be fighting these zombies, or the fact that they will just keep coming and coming until you die.

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This is the coolest gaming accessory you absolutely don’t need.  With this product what you see is what you get.  He stands there and holds your DS, that’s it.  Exciting stuff isn’t it?  Even this crappy little keychain at least plays classic Mario sound effects.  This 12-inch tall Mario doesn’t even have to courtesy to do that much.  The best part is that this unmoving Mario is being sold for $34.95.  Seriously?  Come on people, for that price he should at least have one other function.

Source: ChipChick

If you don’t have a Halloween costume yet, then you’d better get on it, since the holiday is only just a few days away. Unless you have a lot of free time on your hands, it’s probably too late to start putting together your own custom costume, so you’ll have to resort to paying cash. If you don’t mind spending the extra dough, and want to be the envy of every gamer you encounter, then this Master Chief costume is the one for you.

This fully-licensed costume looks rather authentic, and includes a quilted jumpsuit/EVA armor, gauntlets, boot tops and two-piece helmet. Battle damage is thrown in at no extra charge. So just how much will it cost to transform into the main character from Halo? Just $629 (that’s marked down from $849, so it’s a steal) plus shipping.

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One of the constraints that some developers have to work with when creating titles for XBLA is a size limit. They have to squeeze their entire game into a measly 350MB in order to be considered. Well, unless their name is Valve that is.

Portal: Still Alive was recently released on XBLA, and we were shocked to see that it will consume a whopping 629MB. Granted, these days a few hundred MB’s isn’t exactly large, but when you consider that they’ve gone over Microsoft’s size limit by nearly double, it’s a big deal. There’s currently no word from Microsoft on whether or not this was a one time thing, or if they are raising the cap for everyone.

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