Welcome to The Ten Reasons: Decade Edition.  In this column, I'm going to discuss the various things that happened in videogames over the past ten years.  There were high points (2003, 2007), low points (2002, 2005), and transitions to new consoles (2001, 2006) in the 2000's.  Quite a decade!

2000

In 2000, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Banjo-Tooie were released for the N64.  Normally, this would make it a banner year, but everyone ignored it because it was "too late" in the lifetime of the N64, and everyone bought the brand new Playstation 2 instead.

Too late?  Too LATE?  If they released Banjo-Threeie for the N64 today, I would still buy a copy!

So, basically, this was the year that two of the greatest N64 games ever were widely ignored.  Not a good year.  We should have let Y2K take this one.

2001

In 2001, a bunch of new systems were released, including the Gamecube, Xbox and GameBoy Advance.  You'd think I would have a lot to say about this, but you'd be wrong. For the first time ever, I am on top of the console race, with my personal copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, which is still a great game.

2002

Several good games came out in 2002, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the best-seller lists.  In fact, the best-seller lists this year was dominated by Spider-Man.  Yes, a licensed game outsold Kingdom Hearts, Halo and Super Mario Sunshine.  What were we thinking back then?

This is also the year where Microsoft purchased Rare.  Nintendo fanboys made a major stink about this, because Rare made pretty much made all the best N64 games, and without any games from Rare,  the GameCube might fail to have a decent game collection.  Looking back on these arguments, I think we can safely say that the Nintendo fanboys were 100% correct.

2003

2003 was one of the best years of the decade.  Just look at the list of games that were released this year, if you don't believe me. There are classics like Beyond Good and Evil, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Splinter Cell, Fire Emblem, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Ware Ware, Metroid Fusion, Call of Duty, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Devil May Cry 2 and, of course, Nancy Drew: The Haunted Carousel.

This is also the year Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is released.  This is the first of six Cartoon Zelda games that get released in this decade.  I think we can safely say that the cliff-hanger at the end of Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask will never be resolved.

2004

2004 had a hard time standing up to 2003, as most of the games that were released this year were sequels, like Pikmin 2.  Oh well.

Also, the Nintendo DS was released.  This definitely helps set the stage for what happens in...

2005

Game development took a backseat as the focus shifted to new consoles.  This is reflected by the fact that the top ten best-sellers list contains three Star Wars games and five sports games.  The Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 went through heavy development this year, and Microsoft wins the console race hands-down by releasing the Xbox 360, long before any of the other companies release their consoles.

2006 

Perhaps Microsoft released the Xbox 360 a tad early, seeing as it was outsold by the Gamecube during the first quarter.  Ouch.  But at the end of the year, the DS Lite, Wii and PlayStation 3 were released.  The biggest games this year are Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports.

2007

2007 was another great year for videogames, especially the Wii, what with Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Fire Emblem Wii and Metroid Prime 3.  A new trailer for Duke Nukem Forever was released, and I joined the GameCola staff.

In handheld news, the first and second Professor Layton games hit Japan.  Also, the second and third Phoenix Wright games hit the non-Japanese countries.  Multiple entries for popular handheld series in the same year?  Ah, those were the days!

2008

In 2008, the Wii grabbed onto the market and refused to let go.  The best-selling non-Wii game was Grand Theft Auto IV, which had to take 5th place overall, coming after Wii Play, which is a game I hadn't heard of until now.  Apparently, it's a repackaged version of Wii Sports...and it outsold Grand Theft Auto IV.

2009

In 2009, the best games were mostly a complete surprise.  In May, there were surpise announcements about a number of games, including Tales of Monkey Island, Super Mario Bros. Wii and Professor Layton 2, all of which were released this year and got great reviews.  Meanwhile, many of the big games that we did know were in development got delayed to 2010.

So that's The Ten Reasons: Decade Edition.  If the 2010's are anything like the 2010's, I'll have to go through high school and college again. *shudder* Let's hope the new decade isn't just like the old one.

—Michael Gray

Does anyone remember last year when I made a blog entry about a fan-made movie for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? This one?

As the annoyingly large annotation says, the movie has now been completed, and you can watch it at any time you want!  What better film is there to add to your New Years Eve movie marathon?

Of course, if you haven't played the game itself, you might get confused, so what better way to prep for the movie than by watching my video walkthrough for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?

As another year comes to an end, it becomes obvious that 2009 will be known as "the year that everyone except the Queen and the Pope lost their jobs".  It is also obvious that we should look back over the great games that came out this year, and...wait, we recorded a podcast about this topic already.

Okay, new topic.  Has anyone else realized that the DS Stylus situation is really, really bad?  Those things are smaller than golf pencils, which makes it a guarantee your hand will cramp if you play a stylus-intensive game like Metroid Prime Hunters or Legend of Zelda: DS.  Even with non-stylus intensive games like Super Princess Peach, I find myself forgoing the stylus altogether and just tapping the screen with my thumb.

Fortunately, while on vacation, I stumbled upon a solution to this problem that caused me to stop playing the DS.

A stylus shaped like a normal-sized pen.  Complete with the soft finger-grip thing they use to teach small children how to hold a pen! Losing the stylus is now near impossible, as is cramping your hand. Huzzah!

Good News: I have started a video walkthrough for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 1): Mean Mido

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 2): A Tree with a Righteous Mustache

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 3): Link is a Pyromaniac

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 4): Gohma, a Brief History of Hyrule, and the Fairy Ocarina

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 5): Kaepora Gaebora, the Stalker Owl

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Part 6): Link Meets Princess Zelda!

Bad News: Due to technical difficulties (which is a fancy way of saying my mom's TV hates my N64), I will not be able to continue the walkthrough until next month.

Recently, I picked up a Sherlock Holmes game called The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes in hopes of getting a good mystery. Instead, I got a really bad hidden object game.  It was so bad that I wanted to make a video walkthrough for it, just to show it off.

My video walkthrough is only one video long, because I don't think I can play any more of that game. I know it seems like there's a lot of video lag, but trust me: the game actually moves at that speed.  ...Yeah.  Basically, don't give this game to someone for Christmas unless you really don't like him or her.

Hot off the presses, everyone! GameCola's Head Editor Paul Franzen recently sent out a staff email, wondering if GameCola needs a new slogan.

QUOTE: It's been suggested recently that we come up with a new tagline for the site, because, as some people put it, just saying "videogame humor" is "total yawnsville." So I'm opening the floor up to suggestions. END QUOTE

Well, obviously, Paul doesn't remember the results of The Great GameCola Slogan Contest that I personally presided over last year:

http://www.gamecola.net/7-11/pimpmycola.htm

We had a number of great slogans (my favorite comes from Meteo--"GameCola: GameCola"), but apparently it's time for more. Maybe slogans like...

• GameCola: Don't Worry; We're Not Dead.
• GameCola: Total Yawnsville
• GameCola: Not GamePepsi
• GameCola: Eagerly Awaiting High School Musical 4.
• GameCola: Blasted Mooooooooooon People!
• GameCola: You Have Died of Dysentery

Any of you blog readers have good ideas?

You know, getting that sneak preview of Miles Edgeworth Investigations was so cool that I decided GameCola should do a preview for another game. After asking Captain Eric and his Psychic Thumbs for help, I came across an interesting game which is not yet in development, but will probably be soon.

Celebrity Dating Wii is a no-brainer for your Christmas list this year, and I mean that literally.  The game is based off two simple concepts:

1. People like dating games.
2. People like celebrities.

So what happens when you put the two together? You get pure gaming madness, that's what!

Have you ever wanted to go out with Jack Nicholson?  Marry Paris Hilton?  Break up with Nick from the Backstreet Boys just so you could tell him, "Quit playing games with my heart?"  Well, now you can do all those things and more!  Celebrity Dating Wii contains all your favorite celebrities like Harrison Ford, Marilyn Monroe and that guy from The Office.

Experience the joy of dating someone whom you could never, ever date in real life. Marvel at how our country's celebrity obsession has turned us into a nation of stalkers! Come up with all sorts of crazy celebrity pairings, like Britney Spears and Will Ferrell, or Tom Cruise and a human female!  All this and more in Celebrity Dating Wii, made exclusively for the PS3. Pre-order today!

I just finished a video walkthrough for the 2001 GBA version of Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion. It's just like the PC version with toned-down graphics, as little animation as possible, and almost no voice acting besides a three second sound clip.

If Nancy Drew isn't your cup of tea, you might want to check out my Phoenix Wright walkthrough page on IGN FAQs.  It's pretty fancy-looking, and provides easy access to all the videos at once.  However, if you're looking for the full-sized videos, the GameCola YouTube page is still the only place where you can find them.

Welcome to Carbonated News, the column where I get you up-to-date on the latest gaming news.  Although, to be honest, I only write this column at the end of the month, so the news isn't all that up-to-date.  If there is breaking news like the Lufia II remake, the GameCola staff will tell you about it long before I will.  Like I've been saying for the past several months, maybe one of them should write this column instead of me.

Anyway, here's the news I learned about during November.

• Assassin's Creed 2 came out on the 16th. People were slightly irked that Ubisoft decided not to release a demo version of the game, but Ubisoft figured people would buy the game anyway, because they liked the first one. Ubisoft also figures this is the case with Prince of Persia, as they have revealed the newest Prince of Persia game will be a direct sequel to the last one.
• In somewhat silly news, certain bands that signed contracts with the Guitar Hero Company are now mad that their characters are in Guitar Hero games. Their problem is with the fact that their characters can be used at any time during the game, so gamers can do things like have Green Day band members playing a non-Green Day song (gasp!). These bands say that this is an intolerable situation, an offense to the noble art of music, bringing it down to the level of mere karaoke. We here at Carbonated News are tickled pink at the idea that this is where bands are drawing the line between Guitar Hero and karaoke.
• I was hoping for some really interesting to report, but when I checked the news, I found out that nothing important happened during the second week of November.
• New Super Mario Brothers and Two Unnamed Generic Characters Wii was released, and already hot tips like "collect all the special coins" are pouring in. Also, Nintendo of America President Reggie released a statement concerning the game's lack of online multiplayer, one of the game's biggest faults next to title and character selection. Reggie's statement basically boiled down to "the developers in Japan made the decision, not me. Please buy many copies of this game so I can afford to feed my family."
• There was massive debate over President Barrack Obama's new health care plan. One of the more heated debates was on the abortion issue. The President's plan requires that people provide funding for abortions, because apparently he thinks being pregnant is a disease. Pro-abortion groups have shown their solidarity with the President by holding sit-in protests in maternity wards.
• Meanwhile, the economy has gotten much, much worse, so preparation for Christmas shopping started extra-early this year, in hopes that people would buy more things if given more time to shop. As far as videogames are concerned, GameCola Head Editor Paul Franzen says that "absolutely no good games came out this year", which would mean even worse sales than usual this holiday season.
• Okay, ignore the last bullet point. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke all sales records for anything, ever with $550 million dollars earned in the first week of its release. Um...wow.

Well, that's news for November!  Looking back, it seems that November was not the biggest month for news, but it was a big month for releases. Let's hope all these new games are worth playing!

—Michael Gray

The trailer for the upcoming movie Prince of Persia: Sands of Time has been released.  Those of you who know about the other games in the series will notice things from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones in the trailer as well.

The movie is being produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the genius behind such classic films as Pirates of the Carribean, Kangaroo Jack and the 3D talking hamsters movie that came out this July, so that means there's no way it can be bad.  Since I played all three Prince of Persia games in the series (my walkthroughs for the first two games were quite popular), you can pretty much expect that I'll write an Oh the Humanity! article about this movie, for sure.

In other news, IGN FAQs has posted my video walkthough for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney...but the videos haven't been processed yet, so the guide is humorously useless right now.

You may not know this, but there are sixteen puzzles in US version of Professor Layton and the Curious Village that were replaced in the UK release. Some of them were changed because they would have been lost in translation (like the puzzle based off the US calendar dating system), and some of them were changed because they were really stupid puzzles that shouldn't have been in the game in the first place (I'm looking at you, alphabet puzzle).

I just finished making three videos that cover these 16 UK-exclusive puzzles, at the request of someone who may or may not be GameCola's mysterious British author, The Mid-Boss.

I'm not sure why the first video is widescreen when the other two aren't.

Here is some of the latest (AKA month-old) videogame-related fanfiction that I've written.

Queen of Prosecutors is a Phoenix Wright story about Franziska von Karma wanting to win the King of Prosecutors award.  It's basically the comic strip I drew for "Oh, the Humanity!" on The Miles Edgeworth Files, but in story form.

Soony Gets Fired Again is the story of how Sonny Joon was fired shortly before Nancy Drew: Secret of the Scarlet Hand for spreading conspiracy theories about aliens and eating too much chocolate.

And just to get revenge on Paul for not letting me post my totally awesome DragonBall Z fanfics ("not related to videogames", my fanny), let me link to a humorous Phoenix Wright story in which Phoenix is forced to take Pearl bra-shopping.  Paul is legally obligated to read everything posted on the blog, and he is traumatized by any reference to Phoenix Wright characters becoming older, so this strikes me as a suitable revenge.

Welcome to Carbonated News, the column where I get you up-to-date on the latest gaming news. I'm not very good at keeping up with the news, so for October, I decided to try something new: I got a bunch of people from other countries to tell me what the news is. Let's hope that the news they gave me was worth reading.

• Fifa 10 broke a sales record in the UK, as soccer fans bought more copies of it than any other game this month. As my British source says, "the football game outsould Professour Laytonne". Unfortunately, my source didn't say which sales record the game broke. If it turns out that the record category is just "sales of a Fifa game", I'm going to be disappointed.
• Nintendo is already claiming that New Super Mario Brothers Wii will top the charts both this year and the next. At least, Shigeru Miyamoto said as much in an interview recently. As my Japanese source says, "Fifa 10 is going down. With it's incredibly stupid title, graphics that are identical to the DS version, and lack of online play, there's no way this game will suck. Keep an eye out for this game and its myriad of underwater levels when it comes out on November 15th."
• My French source says that Xbox Live has released the demo version of Dragon Ball: Raging Fist in Europe. Just like every other new DBZ game in the past ten years, it has new, fancier graphics and characters who haven't appeard in other DBZ games, including Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta. My source further says that a black-colored Wii is being released in Europe, where "people are a lot more cool about that sort of thing."
• My source from Brazil went over sales records from the past few years and noted that "all successful games nowadays rely on successes previously in the series." He predicts a dystopian future in which no one will make new licenses, and all we will have are sequels and remakes. So, basically, it'll be just like the movie industry, but with videogames.
• Speaking of dystopias, my US correspondent was recently fired, so he was too upset to give me a report on the new God of War compilation for the PS3. Instead, he sent me a long email in which he complained that we're in a horrible world where companies only care about making money and have no problems with mistreating customers and employees. It is a sorry state we're in when companies think of their employees as Human Resources, not as actual human beings. I think he might be a little bitter about being fired.
• My source from the most exclusive of all countries—Disneyland—says that the dream of seeing Duck Tales 3 could become a reality. One of Disney's current videogame producers is interested in the idea and plans on pitching the game to the company as soon as he's finished with his current Mickey Mouse-based Wii game. Of course, he doubts that Disney will agree to fund the project, but it's still a possibility.

Well, that's all the news my sources came up with this month, by jingo. I guess October was sort of a mixed bag for the videogame world.

—Michael Gray

Breaking news from Carbonated News, everyone. Nintendo has confirmed that they are releasing the DSi XL, a version of the DSi with much larger screens. Specifically, the screens are 1.9 times larger than a normal DSi, which is 2.85 times larger than a normal DS (unless, of course, my math/sources are faulty). That's larger than the screen on Sony's new PSP, as you would expect; Nintendo wants to retain all bragging rights as far as handheld gaming systems are concerned.

Now, according to Cabonated News tradition, we will explain why larger screens for the DS is a bad idea. I believe a suitably large video from my walkthrough for Phoenix Wright will suffice.

Notice what happens when the game screen is twice as large as normal? Everything becomes pixellated to an annoying degree. And the DSi XL screens are going to be larger than this Youtube video (again, unless my math is incorrect), so the pixellation is only going to be worse. Not a pretty sight.

And that's why I believe having even larger screens for the DS is not a good idea, by jingo. Let's hope Nintendo has pixellation-compensation program in place. If not...well, that's probably part of the reason why the DSi is not backwards-compatible.

—Michael Gray

Halloween is here, and that means it's time for everyone to come up with costumes. This year, I was thinking of going as Phoenix Wright. As my staff photo this year proves, it wouldn't be too difficult for me to get a costume.

But you know what? I decided that the lawyer Phoenix Wright wasn't awesome enough for a Halloween costume. No, I need a cooler Phoenix Wright costume. I need the greatest incarnation of Phoenix Wright known to man.

That's right. I need to dress up like DRUNKEN HOBO PHOENIX WRIGHT from Apollo Justice!

Sure, the costume might frighten small children and make Paul Franzen (who denies the existence of Apollo Justice) cry, but isn't that what Halloween is all about?