Every once in a while I come over all responsible and talk about about how the videogame industry should make more of an effort to appeal to women. Some time I pointed out Ayumi’s shocking character design and attracted a couple of vocal trolls, a bit of abuse and thankfully, some thoughtful posts from both men and women. I tried a few times to articulate my points at GameCamp last year but my distance from the development side of the games industry makes it difficult to argue against those who do this for a living.

Finally… I no longer need to struggle to make my points. Leigh Alexander has teamed up with Daniel Floyd to produce a fantastic 10-minute video that covers everything I’ve been trying to say about women and games for the past two years.

Although I do add the caveat that IMO, Ubisoft’s Imagine series does more harm to equality than good, as the choices offered to girls are Babies, Fluffies (Animal Doctor), Ponies, Fashion and Cooking. Hellooooooo life-limiting sterotypes. I suppose I should just be grateful for Imagine Figure Skating. Daniel did intend the Ubisoft reference to be tongue-in-cheek but it doesn’t come out that way at all.

For those of you who had an Amiga (A500 and A1200) like me, this website Recorded Amiga Games will bring back all sorts of happy memories. In my case it not only bought back memories of playing many, many of the games listed on the site, but also showed me the end levels of games I’d never completed.

Amiga classics like The Secret of Monkey Island, Stunt Car Racer, Turrican 2, Alien Breed II and Flashback are all available to watch in their entirety. Most of the videos consist of someone playing each game from start to finish (longplays), but there are several speedruns as well. Also you can either stream the videos (via YouTube) or download them from the Recorded Amiga Games website.

Nick Larson Media have made a very impressive stop-motion Lego animation of Portal’s cake-hunt. I’m very impressed by the sheer amount of work it must have taken to get over 1300 stop-motion Lego frames. OTOH, given the legnth of the video, there aren’t nearly enough portals. Good smoke stacks, though.

There’s no embeddable version but you can see the video at Nick Larson Media. Do you like it?

In keeping with our new look, we’re being much more proactive this year. You’ll find more frequent reviews and an almost-regular posting schedule. But first things first – I’d like to know who you are.

Why? Well, aside from the simple fact that I’m curious, we’d like to know what kinds of games you play. May as well review the stuff you’re actually interested in.

The other reason is this: As well as our new game videos category, we sometimes run sponsored videos in the sidebar. This week a Superbad advertising video has been available to our UK readers and.. well, let’s just say that some parents would not be impressed. It’s not explicit by any means. It just has a few dildo-shaped items in it.

So, here are a bunch of polls to tell me a little more about you. Please be nice. If there’s anything you want us to cover more (or less) often then leave a comment below.

Age

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Gender

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Video game genre

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Platform

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Thanks! I’ll post the results late next week.