I snapped this at work with my iPhone:

If you were Sooch’s boss, you might contend that bringing in a Halo 3 Edition Xbox 360, hooking it up, and playing it during work would be the most disturbing thing about this image. But you’d be wrong.

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The bad news: We had to postpone the internet’s most-anticipated podcast because Sooch, in his own inimitable fashion, decided to camp outside a West Valley City Gamestop for four long days in anticipation of the McFarlane-designed Halo 3 controllers.

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That’s a whole shitload of podcasts, people. Give it up to the XBL Radio crew–Steve519, Rusty Ranchero, Mr. CarpalTunnel, The Other Guy, GUI J, and SilentCypher–for independently building a bustling gaming community, never missing a week, and putting on a hell of a show. Congrats, guys.

Of the myriad gaming message board memes, one of our absolute favorites has to be the obligatory Post Your Setup! thread. Before reaching its inevitably bloated 100-page state, it always begins the same way—ostensibly as an innnocent request to see everyone else’s gaming rig. In truth, it’s an open challenge to the ultimate tech pecker contest.

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Illustration “inspired” by one hilarious photo of the Penny Arcade chaps.

By all accounts, 2006 was a banner year for video games. Two brand-spankin’ new systems launched, existing consoles and handhelds started rolling out their second-generation titles and loads of new functionality, and, generally, the triple-A titles flowed like water. Yet, while everyone else is predictably compiling their “Best Darn Games of 2006″ lists, I’m struck by an entirely different development in gaming that was much more significant to me:

2006 was the year it became more fun for me to listen to people talk about games than it was to actually play them.

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Microsoft has been threatening, ever since J Allard plopped down on the stage at E3 2005 in his fashionable hoodie/blazer combo, to give Xbox 360 users the chance—nay, the power—to create their own content and unleash it on an unsuspecting cyberpublic. Yeah, I scoffed at the time, due largely to the hamfisted presentation more than the concept itself. It was unclear what form this user-created content would take (other than we knew for sure we’d be getting a sweet-ass Amped 2 scarf from Ve1ocityGir1). In fact, a year later, following E3 2006, I was more or less convinced that their vision for sharing user content had been relegated to using the Xbox Live Vision Camera to change your gamerpic into a glorious snapshot of your genitals.

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With each new game promoted in EA’s current ad campaign, my partially digested vittles creep ever closer to the ole uvula. Surely I’m not the only one cynical enough to give this approach to advertising a huge eyeroll. You’ve likely seen at least the one for Superman (if not, here it is with the other in the series thus far, NCAA):

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