Animal Crossing: City Folk

Most of us play games to escape reality. For a few moments, the trials of the material world trickle away and your only concern is how many goddamn gold coins you can collect in an hour. Then, out of nowhere, a friggin' Xbox 360 console shows up in the actual game and all your suspended disbelief goes right out the window. It happens more often than you'd think. So often, in fact, we had little trouble amassing a large collection of these sneaky cameos. Here are the best examples, from zombie-blasting Dreamcasts to a DS floating in space.

Real-life shopping. Unless you enjoy shambling about like an extra in a Romero flick, it's a mostly soul-destroying activity that ranks somewhere between 'watching The X Factor' and 'tasting vomit' on our list of Things We'd Rather Not Do If We Can Help It. So it's testament to the subversive qualities of games that they can make shopping not suck. How do games do it - what makes shopping in games so much more enjoyable than shopping in

Pac-Man and Mario owned the 1980s. Sonic, Lara and Snake took over for the 1990s. Their games are considered classics. Their names are timeless and iconic. Their images are burned into the memory of every gamer, even those who were born after the characters themselves.

Now we have another ten years worth of heroes, villains, sidekicks and love interests to occupy our imagination. Which, however, will remain there?

We love games. We love films. And most of all, we love a good pun. That’s why we’ve taken some of our favourite movies and games and stuffed them into a giant blender for mighty mash-up results. Ever wondered what would happen if Kratos collided with the Corleone crime family? Or if Sackboy met Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes? Well wonder no more, because we've answered your day-dreaming prayers with the following mash-up movie

You may be familiar with Andy Riley's superb book The Bunny Suicides. We liked it so much, we thought we'd create an homage to it, using everyone's favourite flower-headed people.

These Pikmin burned too bright for this world. Rest in pieces

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.

Just because a game gets rated 'Mature' doesn't mean it's going to be grown up and serious and any better than something deemed suitable for younger gamers. However, chances are it is probably going to be more fun, simply because it'll have more violence, more sexy, more swearing, more alcohol. And all of those things, as any responsible adult will tell you, are the main ingredients for a good time. In our opinion, the following games could

Breaking news! Toad isn’t actually a toad... street fighting doesn’t involve fireballs… guns rarely come with chainsaws attached… and a theoretical physicist has never spent his scientific career smashing zombie head crabs with a blood-soaked crowbar.

As we demonstrated last week, however, the real world would be a hell of a lot more interesting if any of the above was true.

December is always good for a fight. We award our favorite games, mock our least favorites and shout at anybody whose opinion differs from our own. The one thing we can usually all agree on, however, is that gaming has progressed. Gaming has evolved. Right? Not this year.

Anyone who listens to TalkRadar knows I’m something of an Animal Crossing fan. Been playing since the first week it was released in the US some six years ago. Always found it a nice relaxing break from all the head-shotting, eff-bombing Mature games that dominate the market. Nothing wrong with ‘em, no sir, just need a goddam vacation once in a while.