The latest OPM demo disc had a video preview of the sure-to-be-awful upcoming Playboy game. Actually, after watching the movie, it doesn't look as bad as I had imagined. Aside from it being nothing more than a complete Sims ripoff centered around a rock-jawed Hef avatar, there's one big redeeming feature: centerfold photo shoots. I love photography in video games; it could conceivably be enough to make me pick up Playboy when it hits the value racks four months after release. Could be.

Anyway, after watching the girlie model models bounce around in the demo movie, I started thinking about other sexy women in video gaming. Say, there's a phrase that's sure to pump up my Google search rating! Here's my highly personal list of sexy stuff I have witnessed in video games. And I am limiting this to just my collection, as much as I'd like to include DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball and Final Fantasy X-2.

So now that Zoe has been de-mited, distempered and spayed we needed a new excuse to keep going to the vet. So Annie is currently on pills for a bladder infection. She's been having trouble peeing - for a couple weeks now, I'm guessing... if the pills don't get her back on track then it could be something more serious. Once upon a time we had too much urine. Now it's not enough.

There's not much sadder than the look on a cat's face when she wants to pee but just can't. She'll amble into the litterbox, sit there for minutes at a time, and gingerly step out without having done anything. I first noticed some irregular bathroom habits about a month ago, but I chalked it up to the stress of having Zoe around. When Annie squatted over a discarded pair of my jeans right in front of me and released two tiny droplets of piss, I assumed it was a territorial thing. Turns out it was a cry for help just less blatant than sending me a sheet cake personalized with "Can't piss. Meow."

Part of what makes games like Magic exciting is the continuous influx of brand new cards. Right from the start, I wanted to do something like this for TaleSpin in the form of small expansion sets. Originally, I had drawn up plans for a Thembrian-themed set and a Pirate-themed set... but it seemed cruel to make players wait for Sky Pirate cards, so most of that imaginary expansion went into the current "base" set.

With TaleSpin being a single deck card game, there comes a point where you can have too many cards. Especially when they're sleeved, which almost doubles each card's thickness. Shuffling can be a bitch. So I have settled (probably) on two separate expansions, approximately 20 cards each. That will bring the final deck size up to around 140, which is plenty. (Although I'm considering adding variant rules that would split the deck into two decks for a 2-player Baloo vs. Karnage game. That will require some investigation into balancing two halves of the main game deck.)

My Pokemon LeafGreen adventure begins now, and this online diary will track my progress from neophyte to master.

Since LeafGreen (and its counterpart FireRed) are remakes of original Pokemon classics Blue and Red, it's back to the continent of Kanto, Professor Oak, and the original eight Gym Leaders. I named my character JoeLG, which was intended to stand for LeafGreen but now looks like JoeLarge. Bleah. How about JoeLegend? Yeah, let's go with that.

Since Oak can never recall the name of his own nephew - destined to be my greatest rival - I named him Liquid. I just finished Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, so the allusion amused me.

I have to wonder why Nintendo didn't keep the cool clock feature from Gold/Silver in the Advance generation of poke-games. It made those games all the more compelling to know that you could only enter the Bug Catching Contest on Saturdays, or that you have to be at a certain place during the morning, or whatever. The real-life clock really elevated Gold/Silver, and it is keenly missed in Ruby/Sapphire and FireRed/LeafGreen.

Speaking of bug catching, are there any sadder trainers in Kanto than the Bug Catcher boys? They insist on fielding Kakunas and/or Metapods that have no aggressive attacks, only defensive ones. It's an easy way to level up some lowly lv3 pokemon: against a lv9 Metapod that refuses to do damage to you. I suppose the Bug Catchers are placed here in the beginning of the game for just that purpose: painless experience-farming.

I kinda duck-and-covered my way through Mt. Moon. Things were getting hairy for my tiny crew, so I avoided a lot of battles. (Except the Team Rocket intro and the fight for the Helix Fossil.) Unfortunately, that meant losing out on some experience points... which made a difference when I got to Cerulean City.

I trapped myself for a couple hours. You see, the path from Mt. Moon to Cerulean is one-way and (initially) the only exit paths are blocked. The southern route is blocked by a CUT tree (don't have CUT yet.) The east path requires the cops to step aside from blocking the house that Team Rocket robbed. Stepping on the northern path triggers a fight with Liquid. Then there's Cerulean's Gym Leader, Misty, blocking the town's major plot point: the Cascade Badge.

In a vain attempt to post something not related to Pokemon, here's some newish websites for you to visit:

LazyTown: This is a Finnish kids' show re-done for Nick Jr. starring a neo-Power Ranger athlete ("Sportacus") who must spend his days teaching the hideous puppet populace of LazyTown how to not be slugs. As usual, boring parents everywhere are turning against it, just as they did against Barney and Teletubbies and everything else that young kids glom onto. After reading a blog mention of the show, I made sure to check it out today on Nick... and it's not all that great, actually. But Sportacus himself is undeniably awesome, and he deserves recognition if only for spending his workdays leaping and backflipping in front of a greenwall. At the least, you have to watch the preview video, which does a better job of presenting the concept's crazy verve than the actual half-hour show does.

There's a new Hiptop coming out. New design, different features, better camera, same flippy screen dealie. Still provided only by T-Mobile. I've been kinda on the fence about getting it, since the damn things are expensive ($300 retail) and I've pretty much burned through my fascination with the gadget. My Hiptop has been entirely utilitarian for months: AIM monitoring, quick eBay checks, killing time in waiting rooms, website updates on the road. And the odd phone call. I even stopped carrying around the plug-in camera.

That said, I couldn't live without it. It's too great to have all that functionality immediately available. And I have been using the same black-and-white model that I bought in October '02. I know it's trendy to order replacements because they're chincy and break a lot. I know it's cool to create forum avatars that illustrate the amount of broken Hiptops owned like Japanese flags on the side of an F6F Hellcat. But my Day One model has been a perfect little soldier for almost two years now. So suck it.

This sort of thing is less impressive in the modern world of online game stats-tracking, but fun nonetheless. When you finish Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, you get an alphanumeric clear code... which ranks your accomplishment worldwide when entered into Konami's Twin Snakes website. (That link is for the english version of the website, which is oddly translated. One page says "METAL GEAR SOLID: THE TWIN SNAKES has finally been released, and we believe many people have played it.") So here's what my clear code indicates:

Between Gyms 2 and 3, the world starts opening up for you and the path becomes less linear. Now is when you can begin getting lost... which makes the startup flashback feature all the more helpful.

I boarded the S.S. Anne, docked at Vermilion's port. This venerable cruise ship is little more than a floating battleground, so I got plenty of fights in. Happily, the second room from the right on the ship's first floor lets you heal back up, so you're not stranded with an ailing party. The ship's seasick captain - don't look in his trash can! - hands over the CUT HM, which is really the main purpose for shoving aboard.

Nintendo is now completely serious about the DS. It's set to launch November 21 for $150, with IM software PictoChat built-in and (maybe) bundled with a Metroid game. Head here for details. Great price: although Sony's PSP price is still pure conjecture, this could be undercutting it by as much as $100... which will rock sales, especially in the kid-friendly portable market.

Now where's the launch games list? That's what will make or break it, in these days where every business move is watched by a thousand magazines, a million websites, and a billion fanboys. Nobody can pull off a weak launch like the N64 ever again.

I haven't seen much said about the DS's wireless setup, other than vague promises that you can have it search for games over your pre-existing wireless network. If that turns out solid, Nintendo will have back-doored their way right into the online world... and with a portable, no less. Hotwiring PictoChat directly into the system was absolutely necessary. Hopefully this means we'll be able to use PictoChat as a kind of lobby service, accessible from any game. Although given Nintendo's prior fear (excuse) of not being able to provide watchdogged online content for kids, embracing PictoChat means that assholes can not only swear at buddies, but also draw cocks and swastikas at buddies. Maybe it will come with cock-blocking filters.

I don't like car games. Back with the first Gran Turismo came out, I was blown away by a demo disk and ended up getting it, Ridge Racer Type 4, and a steering wheel. But I ended up bored and annoyed by GT's plodding pace. I found out that, while the photo-realistic replays looked great, I lacked the motorhead gene that would get me through all the under-the-hood stuff. I'm just not interested in earning "licenses" and maintaining the engine.

Because what I want in a car game is fast racing, drifting through turns, and all-around aggressive driving. For years, I found this only in games like Crash Team Racing and Mario Kart. Even Smuggler's Run and Grand Theft Auto. And that was pretty much where I expected the genre to peak for me. Then I started noticing the reviews for Burnout 3: Takedown. (Note: I have never played Burnout 1 or 2, so I can't say what features are a historical part of the series and what is new to 3.)

With the Snorlax blocking the way and the route into Saffron City closed (which is something the Kanto Transportation Authority really ought to look into) there's still a lot of walking to be done. Today's diary entry is going to cover the most maudlin area in a Pokemon game before or since: Lavender Town.

Lavender Town covers a topic rarely broached in modern poke-literature, the deaths of pokemon. Apparently pokemon can die, and this is where they go when they do. Or, at least, this is where we bury them. Lavender Tower is a multi-storied building packed with gravestones and mourning trainers. I'm not sure what can kill a pokemon, other than the town's gossip about Team Rocket. Old age? Advanced Pokerus?

You can expect a game to be good, but sometimes you're taken aback by just how good. Katamari Damacy is such a game.

I'm glad I preordered it. My local EB scored exactly two copies. I bought one and the sales clerk bought the other one. I find it highly unlikely that I'll see many of these warming the racks.

Seeing games like this reminds me that video games are not a dying medium, that they're not stagnating like many suggest, and that there will always be those who take the effort to come up with something really different. And given generous publishers like Namco, some of them will actually reach the US market.

The first sound you hear upon booting up Katamari Damacy is the recording of a man singing a nonsense tune a capella. Eventually, you'll recognize his song as the recurring musical theme to Katamari Damacy, but initally it's just an unexpected oddity.

Which neatly sums up the entire game: an unexpected oddity.

Katamari Damacy (which I've seen translated as "soul of the blob" and "clump-soul", but it's probably untranslatable) is a game that should never have been released outside of Japan. It is uniquely Japanese from core to skin... not in the androgynous Final Fantasy character design way, nor in the big-eyed anime style way, but in the very normal way that Japanese people live their daily lives. Katamari Damacy - alien kings and magnetic balls aside - presents a glimpse into their country. I'm not saying it's a substitute for true culture research, just that it's interesting to learn that the Japanese have special car signs that indicate a Young Driver or a Senior Driver, among other things.