It was just a matter of time until a post about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (appropriately tagged as “wingnuts”, joining some fine company alongside articles regarding the Westboro Baptist Church) finally appeared on our quiet little blog. What took so long? While PETA has flirted with the entertainment industry before, this is their first incursion into videogame territory - in more ways than one.

It started with Samba de Amigo, one of the delightful little oddities which sprang-up during Sega’s Dreamcast era. Like a few other franchises from those days (Jet Set Radio still not one of them, much to continued annoyance), the anthropomorphic corpse of Samba has recently been exhumed and given new life on the otherwise safe and pedestrian Nintendo Wii.

Like many of the Sega’s experiments with the bizarre, no one really noticed aside from the old hardcore gamers… or folks like me, who still have Gunner’s Arsenal jerseys with Dreamcast sponsorship hanging in our closets. Oh, and PETA, who have somehow mistaken the title for some kind of virtual animal abuse. To the dismay of reasonable human beings everywhere, Sega caved to PETA’s demand to pull advertising. They received chocolates for their compliance. Vegan, of course. Probably carob.

As if the incident with Samba de Amigo wasn’t ridiculous enough, the upright citizens at PETA have now turned their eye towards Majesco’s Cooking Mama, which they have parodied in the form of a flash game. The goal is to convince Majesco to develop an entirely-vegetarian edition of their cutesy chef simulator - even offering to help promote it.

I have to wonder: if it weren’t for the virtual nature of the “offending” material, would PETA be taking such an outwardly-cordial approach in this case? Afterall, it’s exceedingly difficult to splash buckets of fake blood on a collection of pixels and polygons.

It takes a special hybrid to actually get into importing games, a cross between a rabid collector and a hardcore gamer. Of course, either one could get their toe wet, so to speak: the collector might pick up the Square Millennium Collection games because of all the extras that come packaged with them; the hardcore gamer might realize that they just can’t live their whole life without playing Akumajou Dracula X: Chi no Rondo on the actual system it was designed for.

While this is certainly true, neither camp would venture very far into import gaming. The collector likely wouldn’t even play any of the games purchased for their collection, while the hardcore gaming crowd might want to play a few things that were never released in North America, they probably wouldn’t go out of their way to experience anything more than the one or two games that initially got them interested in the first place. This is why the first lesson on importing games is probably the most important. I’m going to give you a cheap and easy way of figuring out if getting into the import “scene” is really for you. Hit the jump to find out how.

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Well, no, I’m quite obviously lying through my teeth, but you can’t blame a guy for pulling a bait ‘n’ switch now and then. Seriously folks, if the internet has taught us anything it’s that we should know better than to allow ourselves to get hooked by a cheap headline. Let this be a lesson to you all.

Onto the subject at hand, I share some of the reservations fans have over classic properties getting modern overhauls, especially when an abrupt jump beyond the original media or genre is involved. That said, I doubt Warner Brothers and DiCaprio will reach quite this comical height of Hollywood adaption bullshit. It’s not that I expect anything beyond total mediocrity in cases like these, which is pretty damned instinctual at this point, more that I’d prefer to take the high road for once and allow myself the luxury of a pleasant surprise.

A question: why is it always the sci-fi/fantasy anime which gets optioned for live action remakes? Why not mine source material which could be molded into solid critical successes, such as Grave of the Fireflies?

I can only assume that the conspiracy theorists referenced in the last news post were actually correct and that the regular staff of Caffeine-Fueled have all been taken hostage by a surgically grafted combination of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin hence my appearance here.

So, in really international news from our old friends, the Bay Bay Say, the son of notable terrorist Osama Bin Laden, Omar Bin Laden, has been undergoing something of a world-wide tour as of late. One of his 19 sons, Omar has denounced al-Qaeda and his father numerous times in the past and so has applied for asylum in a number of nations, claiming his denouncement of terrorism has put his life in danger in the Middle East.

Living in Egypt, where he married a British woman, Zaina Alsabah Bin Laden (formerly Jane Felix-Browne), and later applied for the right to live in Britain with his wife, his application was denied, prompting much accussations back and forth. Later, the two took a plane to Morocco and during a stop over in Madrid, Spain, made a request for asylum there. This was eventually denied as the Spanish authorities claimed they had no reason to believe Omar’s life was in any great danger.

Returning to Egypt, the two were barred from there as well, astonishingly, although the reasons why have yet to be revealed. However, the couple were then deported to Qatar, where Omar Bin Laden should be allowed to stay, due to his Saudi Arabian nationality. So, for now, at least, it seems like the peaceful Bin Laden family have a place to live but it’s still in the Middle East which was where Omar was trying to leave in the first place.

The controversey, such as it is, is the question of whether Omar, a metals dealer by day, is being unfairly discriminated against, despite his calls for peace, because he is the son of Osama Bin Laden. Will Omar, and his wife, settle down in Qatar, one of the more progressive Middle East nations (and one in which there is no tax)? Or will this international bouncing around continue in the future? Well, let’s wait and see.

Conspiracy theorists around the world mourn today as one of their most cherished theories, that the US elections are rigged and can only be won by rich white men, is dealt a mortal wound by Barack Obama. Well in excess of the 270 electoral votes needed to become President of the United States of America, Obama has become the first minority leader of the most powerful country in the world.

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