Nintendo announced that it will host what it calls a "telethon" to promote its Nintendo video services on the 3DS. When you think of telethons, you might imagine Jerry Lewis helping to raise money for muscular dystrophy, or St. Jude's raising money for kids with cancer, so perhaps using the term "telethon" is a bit presumptuous on Nintendo's part.

If you've been banned from Modern Warfare 3 for being a jerk or cheating, you can start playing again in another 5,000 days. If you're a 13-year-old and you catch such a serious ban, you'll be 26.5 years old when you can play again. A serious ban is 5,000 days, or 13.5 years, according to MP1st. But don't worry - these bans are dubbed "temporary" by Infinity Ward.

It might have seemed cute when marketing company TrashTalkFCM pitched the idea of releasing thousands of balloons into the San Francisco sky to promote Homefront during the Game Developers Conference earlier this year. But THQ realized as the balloons flew upwards and then inevitably fell down into the San Francisco Bay that maybe it wasn't such a great idea after all. The bad local and national publicity wasn't worth it.

Andrew Eisen noticed something a little peculiar while playing through Telltale Games' Jurassic Park. Andrew makes an astute observation on the different reactions from a father and a daughter when dinosaurs kill them in Telltale Games' newest title.

We won't spoil it for you - watch the video. The audio and video are pretty awful, but you'll get Andrew's point after watching it.

You can watch all of Andrew's other videos here.

THQ says that the Saints Row: The Third community has created more than one million characters in the Saints Row Initiation Station, an online character creation system. The publishers says that there creations range from unique and hilarious, and to "often disturbing."

You might want to sit down for this.

There’s a popular war video game out there that not only allows players to shoot hundreds upon hundreds of human characters but it also features the horrific and brutal snuffing out of a small and innocent life.

Yes, in Electronic Arts’ recently released Battlefield 3, players can kill a virtual rat.

EA Maxis is having a bit of fun with Herman Cain's 9.9.9. tax plan this week with a new video created using various The Sims products. President Barack Obama, Texas Governor Rick Perry, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney guest-star. You can check out the short video to your left.

If you're not familiar with the former Godfather Pizza CEO and Republican presidential candidate's plan, it promotes a 9 percent personal income tax, 9 percent corporate tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.

To the left you see the banner Nintendo is using on its Anti-Piracy website’s welcome page.

Not very welcoming, is it?

Andrew Eisen's YouTube Channel has hit a wonderful 1,000 subscribers, so to celebrate he uses all the suggestions his subscribers sent in for a special MadLib. Unfortunately all of the suggestions for this MadLib were "penis." IF you find that word offensive I don't recommend watching the latest video.

If that word is a regular part of your vocabulary, then watch Andrew's latest and revel in it. And by it, I mean penis.

Congratulations to Andrew for his latest milestone!

The man responsible for the worst movie ever made (The Room) sets his sights on web TV with a new Machina.com show called The Tommy Wi-Show. In the first episode Tommy, or TW as his alien friends call him, takes on Mortal Kombat. Is the show bad? Good? So bad it's good? So bad it’s bad? I don't know - he sounds like a drunken German weightlifter... Watch the episode to your left.

Thanks to Kyle Orland for the tip.. I think.

In Andrew Eisen's latest video he actually may go bonkers as he contemplates another Legend of Zelda game offering "more than one hundred hours of gameplay." He illustrates the point with Wind Waker. On a personal note, a hundred hours is a drop in the bucket when you are playing Disgaea 4..

I'm all for letters to the editor, but one written by one Tina L. Bechtel, is particularly over the top and needs to be read to be believed. The Marysville, California mother of at least one son (at least the one she mentions in her letter) delivers what she calls her "long-overdue reaction to the 'supreme sellout' of our children," referring to the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year in the Brown v. EMA case.

Another interesting editorias about Tea Party Zombies Must Die - this time in the Washington Post. What's interesting about this opinion piece is that the author, Alexandra Petri, is a recovering (I think) comedian and part-time pundit who can see both sides to some degree but shrugs off the manufactured outrage as.. well, manufactured:

"I tried to get indignant about the game. I really did. This morning, I sat and furrowed my brow and thought dark thoughts for a good half-hour.

Our own Andrew Eisen offers an interesting video that proposes a unique marketing campaign for Fox News involving moms. The source material will be familiar to GP readers - you can find those videos here and here.

London's theater world is apparently about to get a taste of video game culture thanks to Sony, Resistance 3 and London theater group Punchdrunk. Running September 1, through Sunday, Punchdrunk performs "…And Darkness Descended," an "interactive theater experience based on the game Resistance 3, where participants must survive, by cooperating against alien invaders (or not cooperating, as the case may be). Punchdrunk is keen on performing in a way that encourages lots of audience participation and this particular performance should be no exception.

MMO developer Artix has been experimenting with ads that players only see when they die in the online game AdventureQuest Worlds. The practice is getting some interesting reactions from players, according to CEO Adam Bohn, who spoke at length with [a]list Daily in a recent interview. The ads are what are commonly called "house ads," or ads promoting the company's own products and services such as other game titles and the company's store:

EA's trash-talking to Activision about its Call of Duty franchise may be frowned upon in some circles, but Scott Steinberg of TechSavvy Global sees it as a clever ploy on the company's part to draw attention to its Battlefield series.

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson has offered a novel way to settle the impending trademark litigation Bethesda might bring against his company Mojang for its upcoming game "Scrolls" - and it involves deathmatch.

Someone was extra excited about seeing Skyrim on the big screen - so much so that it sent her into labor - at QuakeCon. According to a Game Informer story, during Bethesda's 40-minute presentation of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at QuakeCon, expectant mother Stevi suddenly started having labor pains, much to the surprise of her fiancé Chaz.

Electronic Arts founder and Digital Chocolate CEO Trip Hawkins has accused Nintendo of presiding over what he calls a "feudal dark age" in the industry in which developers "don't own the land that they are tilling." He has a point, but Nintendo certainly isn't the only platform holder guilty of that.. At GamesBeat in San Francisco today, Hawkins talked at length about the power of platform holders and how they often limit creativity in comparison to open platforms.

"Look at the world wide web and how many great companies have been built on that open platform," he said. "Nintendo is a great, amazing company, but how many companies have been built on the back of Nintendo's platform in the past 25 years?"

Prithvi Virasinghe, creative director at Comedy Central's internal game studio, would like to see a game based on Tak Jensen, a character created on Comedy Central's Colbert Report. Speaking to Joystiq, Virasinghe said that Tek Jansen, and the Colbert Report are subjects he'd like to make into games. Naturally such games would require the green light from Colbert and the network.

"I've honestly tried to do this many, many times," he said of concepts for a Colbert-themed game. "One of the ideas we had for Colbert was we wanted to do 'Colbert Quest,' which was kinda like an homage to the Police Quest or Space Quest games." Apparently his team at 345 even went as far as to put together a "design treatment" for "Colbert Quest," which he detailed by saying, "You're sort of in this world that's humor-based, that's kind of situational and quest-based, and it would have Colbert as some sort of overlord of this domain."

While professional video game players don't have the equivalent of performance enhancing drugs such as steroids, pro medical marijuana publication Culture Magazine thinks that many use Marijuana to enhance their abilities prior to tournament play. The publication cites a comment made by Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, to game publication GamePlayer.

"I’ve seen a number of players at national tournaments who came in ‘baked’ purely so they could play better," said Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, in a recent interview with Gameplayer.

It's kind of a funny story, though it might be more folklore than fact; Computer & Video Games has a report about a personal assistant to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick trying to get him in to see Battlefield 3 behind closed doors. As you can imagine, EA said no to the request.

According to the C&VG report (citing "a senior informant who witnessed the exchange first-hand") Bobby Kotick's personal assistant discussed the chances of a hands-on trial of the game with EA reps at the door of the publisher's private meeting room. The female assistant jumped to the front of the line on Wednesday morning to request a personal showing of the game for Kotick. After mulling it over inside the private meeting room, an EA representative declined the request, saying that "it would not be possible."

The PA put up a small fight in front of those waiting to get in and then left in a huff, according to the witness.

Modders and creative types are having fun mocking the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of an elite U.S. Navy Seals, but one of the best pieces of video game-related comedy on the subject comes from a French television show that uses Super Mario Bros. as the backdrop. Instead of Mario and Bowser, the animation features former U.S. President George W. Bush chasing down Osama in various stages until the 2008 election where Obama takes over. Check out the video to your left to watch the hijinx.

Source: Go Nintendo by way of Kotaku

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is only anti-game when it suits him apparently. Even as the Supreme Court deliberates over the validity of the 2005 anti-gaming law, Schwarzenegger confirms that Stan Lee is making a comic book that will inevitably be made into a video game. The comic book will be called "The Governator" and will be written by the legendary comic book icon Stan Lee. The comic book follows the exploits of a governor who leads by day and fights crime by night as a costumed super hero.

"First will come comic books, then a TV series and after that we will develop the games and then a movie," Schwarzenegger said at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend. "Maybe then we'll be back in Cannes for that."

The Times Leader reports on a drug and alcohol counselor who is agitated over the Half-Life 2 mod, School Shooter: North American Tour 2012. The CEO of Wyoming Valley Alcohol and Drug Services wants parents, teachers, school administrators to be aware of its existence and the possibility that it might be "available soon."

Showing that he doesn't understand the concept of a mod or that it is being developed online and to be given away for free, Ambrosino said he has warned the superintendents of area schools, federal and state legislators, as well as major retailers such as Kmart, Walmart and Target about the game.

Does it hurt to do a little research before writing an episode of NCIS? Apparently it's a major hassle for whomever penned an episode of the popular CBS crime drama about an MMO, as evidenced in this clip from the show. The storyline features a fake MMO called Fear Tower 3 and a "high scorer" named "MaxDestructo." Are they playing breakout or an MMO? Maybe they meant to convey that these gamers were playing an online game like Quake Live or Battlefield Heroes. I do not know, so watch the video and judge for yourselves.

Source: Kotaku

Ubisoft has confirmed that We Dare is a European only release. The saucy, adult themed Wii game that challenges couples to engage is some risqué behavior to score points and "get a little closer" is apparently too hot for U.S. gamers.

While the reaction to the We Dare commercial was mostly disbelief, it would be hard to say that journalists on this side of the pond found it to be offensive - silly, and a little too suggestive for our taste, maybe - but inappropriate for America? No way. If we can have Dennis Franz showing his big ass on TV, we can handle a couple taking turns spanking each other in a commercial.

Ubisoft must have felt some embarrassment at the trailer being so widely noticed online and ended up yanking it off YouTube under the guise of a regional copyright issue. In other words, it contacted YouTube to violate itself. Strange.

Ubisoft told IGN that We Dare would "absolutely not see release in the United States."

I am sure that Blizzard (and other MMO companies) is delighted with today's press release from World of Wacraft gold reseller outfit BYGamer. While the press release isn't particularly thrilling one could imagine that the China-based gold farmers are not well liked on this side of the world.

The company issued a press release to announce changes to its web site - BYGAMER.com - which now offers visitors a plethora of fancy colors, improved navigation and lovely new frames. Are they mocking Blizzard? It sure seems that way.

The company tops off its wonderful announcement with customer testimonials:

"It’s amazing! What a beautiful site and Buy WOW Gold here is absolutely a good choice!, said new customer Monica to one of BYGAMER’s call center operators.

The company says that this new design is already proving to help "increase traffic and sales."

Full release below:

As a general rule, everyone loves the antics of Sony Computer Entertainment America's fictional executive, Kevin Butler. His TV commercials are hilarious, and even his online chatter is good for an occasional chuckle. But a recent back and forth on Twitter may have put some egg on the face of SCEA’s marketing department. During a short exchange of tweets with Linux and Mac enthusiast Travis La Marr, Butler inadvertently retweeted the PS3 root key to all of his followers. The story is particularly embarrassing for Sony, who is in a mad dash to stop people from sharing that root key on the Internet.  

La Marr tweeted the code at Butler, and signed off with "come at me @TheKevinButler." Whoever handles that Twitter account for Sony did not notice the long string of code in the message. That person retweeted the entire message, adding the comment: "Lemme guess ... You sank my Battleship?"