Long before we had stacks of plastic guitars and enough withered dance mats to blanket all of San Francisco’s homeless, Nintendo was dropping superfluous add-ons at an alarming rate. And each time they shoved a new one out there, we lapped it up like a delicious treat, fully expecting longtime support for this latest and surely greatest peripheral. ...

Which console grabbed you and gave you the biggest, warmest electrical hug of them all? (PC is also acceptable, but tell us about the specific machine!) Why is it your favorite? How did you get it? Did you have to mow lawns, beg your parents? What games or features did you obsess over? ...

It’s not easy being a horse, especially a diabetic horse who loves sugar cubes and games. As a proud member of the Equidae family, I don’t give a damn about the new protagonist in Assassin’s Creed II or the stupid non-animal flying device he’ll pilot. I just want to know if Ezio will be riding a freaking horse through the Tuscan countryside. Will he get to mount a Salerno, or perhaps a San Fratello? ...

Contributors: Chris Antista, Charlie Barratt, Brett Elston, Matthew Keast, Shane Patterson, Mikel Reparaz

Hundreds of games are released every year, then played and forgotten by the next. Only a dozen or so will be remembered a decade from now, and only a few of those will have any lasting impact on the medium as a whole.

Which upcoming titles stand the best chance of leaving that meaningful mark? ...

Ever wondered what it would be like to have video game characters in your Pokemon party? Why choose boring old Bulbasaur when you can choose a beautiful Kasumi? Or a level 50 Sackboy?

We've given 21 game characters the Pokemon treatment, with four moves to choose from and some evolutionary states too.

Who would you choose? ...

Comment etiquette dictates that the first commenter must tack the word “first” to the beginning or the end of any comment they make. ...

How this works: We randomly collected together 100 recent examples of video game box-art all completely unrelated with the exception of one common factor: they all featured a person or people as part of the design. We then looked long and hard at all the examples to find out what types of people are most commonly used on video game box-art. And by extension, we guess, in video games. This is what we discovered. Prepare to be partially amazed ...

Although most guys know Hollywood uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer for summer action flicks like Top Gun, The Rock, Con Air and Armageddon, Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, would love for Bruckheimer to take MTV Games out of its comfort zone of rhythmic gaming like The Beatles: Rock Band and attract more females. ...

Every Fourth of July, Americans proudly celebrate the casting-off of British oppression by doing what we do best: staring at explosions. ...