This Week in Gaming: Sexism in Gaming, Best Buy Gets an NES, and Square Enix Boss Takes a Side Quest

Thursday, 28th March 2013
Posted in Week In Gaming News
Tags: best buy, gaming news, NES, PAX EAST, sexism in gaming, Square Enix, week in gaming news

Written by: Patrick Scott Patterson

Yes indeed… it’s time for another weekly dose of totally serious not-serious yet serious look at video gaming news from the past week. Watch as I make the internet humor without having to make penis jokes, possibly an internet first.

Best Buy gets an NES

The story of a Best Buy employee’s efforts to save an original Nintendo Entertainment System set went viral this week.

A customer brought in a boxed NES Deluxe Set, complete with original console and the R.O.B. robot, for the store’s “Renew Blue” recycling program, which exists as a green dumping ground for old electronics. How a person who didn’t realize the value of this set found their way into an electronics store was not explained.

Under company policy this meant the set had to be destroyed. The employee refused to allow that to happen, risking his job by doing so, until Best Buy corporate intervened, saving the set to place on display at their corporate headquarters.

Several boxed examples of the NES Deluxe Set can be found on eBay, ranging in price from $250-$400, meaning the acquisition of this set tripled the revenue of the Best Buy chain for the first quarter of 2013.

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Achievement Unlocked: 10G – Never teach grandma about recycling before leaving her alone with your classic game consoles, folks.

Electronic Arts Aims Again

Battlefield 4 has been revealed, totally breaking the tradition that says first-person shooters are not allowed to have sequels.

“That’s cute,” said Activision’s Call of Duty marketing team.

Achievement Unlocked: 20G – Hate for me that one if you want, but you and I both know which one is going to sell more. Yes, yes… you’ll be part of the reason why, too.

Another Game Studio Guru Steps Down

Yoichi Wada, the president of Square Enix, has stepped down.

In the tradition of the modern-day Final Fantasy games, Wada’s exit from corporate headquarters was linear, only taking numerous hours as he encountered people with long drawn-out stories.

On the flight home, Wada was reportedly confused by the in-flight movie, as it didn’t let him control the characters every 22 minutes.

Achievement Unlocked: 30G – “But I’m the leading man, and you know what they say about the leading man!” Wada was reported as saying on the way out.

Choppy Choppy Your Pee Pee

A minor league baseball park has installed a urinal with a pee-controlled video game installed. To move your snowboarder left… you pee to the left. Want him to go right? Pee to the right. No confirmation yet on if he has to eat yellow snow in the event of a crash.

While much of the coverage of this game has poked fun at it, groups of sexist male competitive gamers rejoiced at the invention of a video game they can truthfully claim to be superior to women in playing.

Maybe.

Achievement Unlocked: 40G – I’ll stick with my long-time favorite pee-game ‘Put a Hole Through the Urinal Cake’ for now.

Speaking of the Underbelly of Sexism in Gaming…

PAX East took place over the weekend. While many people returned with the flu and a thirteen pound bucket of promotional buttons, Crystal Dynamics Meagan Marie returned with a story. Turns out a member of the gaming “press” thought it was appropriate to ask a sexually-based question on camera during a Tomb Raider cosplay gathering.

Marie’s powerful blog about the experience, and several other industry experiences of it’s kind, was picked up by a number of gaming news sites yesterday.

“Wow, I’m sure glad everyone doesn’t know it was me who made that joke. People would likely have some things to say to me about it,” said a guy with the initials N.W., the person who I’ve confirmed made the weaksauce sexist PAX remarks.

Achievement Unlocked: 50G – Don’t worry, fella… just carefully explain how and why you thought it was funny and I’m sure everyone will totally understand and respect that, right? Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.

Check back every Thursday for more totally serious and hard-hitting video gaming journalism. There’s ways to check up and ensure that you are, you know.

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