For those of you who may have needed a reference:

Usually when you see a blog post about video game developer Tomonobu Itagaki, it's about something lewd - like a sexual harassment scandal with a female employee, or the titilating excess of Dead or Alive 3.  But this time around, Itagaki will have the last laugh.  His former boss at Tecmo resigned after multiple lawsuits tarnished his image and reputation, in a midst of corporate scandal.  

Itagaki left Tecmo claiming they owed him bonuses for his work in Dead or Alive IV, citing they had an agreement which the company ultimately did not honor.  Dozens of similarly disgruntled employees left after him.

What does this mean for gamers?  Well hopefully we can look forward to a return to form for Itagaki's work - perhaps he'll go back to Tecmo or start his own group with some ex-Tecmo employees.  The world clearly needs this man, if not just for his being an Ekin Cheng doppleganger.

Meeting people on the internet is almost cliche these days, but a North Carolina woman refused to become another lame statistic.  After getting dumped by her boyfriend who met her on Second Life (he did meet her in real life before dumping her...perhaps that was the wrong choice), Kimberley Jernigan drove up to Delaware to stalk and try to kidnap him.  She waited for him outside his work and tried to get him in her car by gunpoint.  That failed, so naturally she tried again at his home a couple weeks later. 

"She spent four days finding out the victim's address and then broke into her ex-boyfriend's apartment and waited for him to return, police said.

 She had a Taser, handcuffs and duct tape.  Jernigan is facing charges on kidnapping and buglary, and possibly animal cruelty from the SPCA.  One has to wonder if her "first life" M.O. was any indicatior of how she was in Second Life.  It's always the innocent - in this case, Gogi the mutt - that suffer. 

The moral of this bizarre tale?  Don't meet people off the internet from Second Life. 

Following a recent trend of video game fashion, French designer John Nouanesing brings you the Geekini.  This NES-inspired bikini is still a prototype but that doesn't make it any less awesome.  Ahh, I've got to say the placement of the D-pad, the A and B buttons, and Start/Select would keep my thumbs s0re all day.  The obvious question is what do you get for successful completion of the Konami Code? 

Sony doesn't need your grandma.  Hell, Sony doesn't even want your grandma near their systems.  Scott Steinberg of Sony Computer Entertainment of America says they have no plans to emulate Nintendo's formula of innovation, despite its success.

"I think the notion of that controller is a non-trivial point that you've brought up, that control and that familiarity is like comfort food - from my perspective, we lead, we don't follow," he said. "And as a brand, Nintendo's got their thing, and we're not trying to get the senior citizen group to get into gaming, we're looking to convert the PS2 owners and the tens of millions of installed base that were playing DVDs and playing games on their PS2, to now play Blu-ray movies and Blu-ray games with their PS3."

Sony believes that if they convert their PS2 users to PS3 upgrades, they can go ahead and tell old gamers to go fuck their dentures.  What those geniuses at Sony are overlooking, however, is that every human being on earth gets older by the second.  Before we realize it, we're all going to be decrepit, wheelchair-wielding, Viagra-popping senile gamers who use systems like the Wii to get their daily fix of motion. 

Think your gaming-related clothes got style?  Well that lame 1-Up t-shirt in your closet says otherwise.  Take a page from the fashionable Laforet Harajuku department store in Japan and try on their latest line of Space Invaders threads and accessories!

Space Invaders Extreme for the Nintendo DS has really sparked a resurgence of interest in the arcade classic...both in the gaming world and the world of fashion.  Only a cool retro game like Space Invaders can pull off something like this.  Those pixelated aliens are so damn cute, they're trendy.  Cute and trendy enough to fly over peoples' heads so they don't realize how much of a gaming dork you are, at least.  Accessorize yourself with this stuff and you'd probably even make perverted-videogame-fashionista Tomonobu Itagaki jealous.

If you ever need a way to burn five second intervals of your life, pick up this hot new game by Bandai that's sweeping Japan.  The object is to hit a button on the stopwatch-like device at exactly 5.00 seconds.  That's it.  You hit a button on the 5th second.  Leave it up to the same country that's known for collecting dirty underwear and tentacle-rape hentai to market a game that high school gym coaches have secretly been playing for years.

Ingenious.  It's an epic game that pits man against time...or at least his measure of it.  You can almost play this game 5 times a minute.  You could have one in each hand going simultaneously so you can double your pleasure.  It's something anyone can pick up and enjoy whether old, n00bish, s0rethumbed, mentally challenged, or even American. 

Just one question though - why don't people just use regular stopwatches to play this game?  If you're wrestling with this question like I am, you can preview it in flash form here.

Dear fans and groupies of s0rethumbs.com,

 Yesterday we experienced a huge spike in traffic largely due to the popularity of a certain Pokemon post.  Eventually we exceeded our bandwidth for the month, and although we were anticipating the spike and tried to increase our bandwidth before we ran out, certain factors beyond our control kept this from happening.  We were shut down for about 17 hours before we could remedy the issue.  We feel sorry for all those who landed here looking for some insightful commentary only to be disappointed.  Regardless, our recent surge in popularity only motivates us more to deliver great content for you, our loyal fans and groupies, to enjoy.  Thank you for all the support and admiration - we love you too.