If you're looking for a cheap Xbox 360 and don't care about online features, Microsoft's recent decision to ban about a million (that's 10⁶, not a figure of speech) users from Xbox Live for hacking their consoles has led to a glut on Craigslist and elsewhere. It shouldn't be too hard to pick up a warranty-free box loaded with games for considerably less than the $200 or so you'd pay for a new, game-free console. That also means there are jackasses out there trying to pass off their modded discards as the real thing, so caveat the shit out of your purchasing decisions.

Microsoft said it's all about piracy, and while that's certainly a factor, they couldn't be too upset to see mods that help gamers cheat go down as well. Unfortunately, some of the banned consoles were modded only to permit homebrewed or foreign games. It seems oafish to ban them along with the pirates and cheaters, but MS has never shied away from oafishness when it comes to exerting control over their market. When is Google going to bust out with an open-source gaming console?

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Coming sooner than you could have hoped to PCs and Macs everywhere is Find Your Own Way Home, the first casual game to feature what the distributor (getting out ahead of critics) calls "a real rock band." REO Speedwagon: real.

• You're the nice lady rock journalist on the left.

Fans take note: Ten of the twelve tracks in the game are from their most recent album, so you can jump right into their more mature work, instead of wasting time catching up with your old faves. Search for hidden objects, rock out gently, and let the digital Rohypnol work its magic. Make no mistake: People will pay money for this. Find Your Own Way Home is like a poem about a dead pet waiting for you just outside Heaven—it means something to someone, even if what it means is stupid.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Some people think guitars are boring. Where are their opportunities to buy one-off controllers for their gaming consoles? Look no further than this week's release of DJ Hero. Seriously, look no further:

There's no gameplay in evidence, and I'm pretty sure DJ Shadow's eyes don't usually glow with a hellish green fury, but now I totally want to explode 18-wheelers with the power of my tight beats. Some sizable names were involved in the shenanigans: Besides Shadow, there's Daft Punk, Cut Chemist, Jazzy Jeff, Grandmaster Flash... Maybe they're trying too hard, but that's not the worst thing in the world. Plus they promise a DJ vs. Guitar mode. Inclusive!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

• ECITY BLUES / STRANGER FLICKR
• Make it work!

Bonus: Variety says "Sponsors that are integrated into the series may also appear in the game," so it's another delightful step forward toward the universalization of product placement.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

It turns out that robots are just like us squishy flesh things—they torment the weak, cute, and hapless among them, and each one's existence is a series of increasingly maddening puzzles culminating in an abrupt ending. That's how Jakub Dvorsky sees it, anyway, and since one of his people coined the word "robot," he surely knows more than we do.

Dvursky's web agency, Amanita Design, released Machinarium on Friday for Mac and Windows, and it looks and sounds sweetly demented, like Dvursky's earlier, tinier Samorost, which ingested countless nerd-hours back in '03. Fans of Czech animation, puzzle games, or cute, hapless robots should check out the trailer:

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

If so, you may not luck out at the Gamestop at Redmond's Town Center today from noon to 8 p.m., where Microsoft will station a 13-ton truck with a 14' wide payload and a bunch of Xboxen inside. A new Halo game hits stores in a month: Halo 3 ODST (assumedly stands for "Overly Dumb SubTitle"). Hence, MS is renting a big gaming truck to preview the title to fans, and the hometown gets first dibs on the exclusive sneak peek.

Even though a few tech sites soundly debunked that survey about gamers from earlier this week, whiny Internet articles don't tend to change minds. This event seems like as good chance as any for our city's mentally and physically fit hobbyists to step out and prove Dan wrong... though I'll admit, I'm tempted to encourage the stereotypical ones to come out and stand around with ill-fitting T-shirts and frumpy, frosting-stained demeanors. Like some exploitative art project.

At least they are around here:

A new study says the average age of video-game players in the United States is 35, and oh, by the way: They're overweight and tend to be depressed. Investigators from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory University and Andrews University analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

Are gamers likelier to be depressed, or are folks living in the Seattle-Tacoma area likelier to be depressed?

Boy, it's gray outside. Agh! Time to hide in the basement with video games again.

Ghostbusters The Video Game (every console): Harold Ramis, star and writer of the films, did a press junket to promote the new Ghostbusters video game, talking up '80s nostalgia and the like. Of most interest to me was this bit about writing for games instead of films:

You’re not only dealing with the repetition of the comedy, but you’re dealing with the repetition of the gamers mastering the game itself. To make a game so funny with so many comic alternatives, that would be like writing three hit movies. The scripts are impossibly long.

Seems like an attempt to justify how unfunny Ghostbusters The Video Game is. To its credit, the game doesn't overdo catch phrases and one-liners while you're chasing and catching ghosts. It favors dry, situational humor, and the writing isn't inherently bad; it's just spread thinly. Worse, Bill Murray's lines and delivery stink, probably because his romantic foil in this, Alyssa Milano, is a snooze of a Sigourney replacement. Even if the vocal work and jokes had been on point, the characters look like vacant, Chuck E. Cheese robots, so there's no "acting" to carry the humor.

I harp on the jokes because they're the front-and-center focus of an otherwise boring game. Other than a few "boss" scenes, you're capturing ghosts the same way again and again and again. The game leads you by the nose from joke to joke without interesting play or interactive twists. I wouldn't watch this as a movie... and they want me to grind to get through it? Pfft.

Splosion Man (Xbox Live): This'un's funnier. From the tiny studio that brought us The Maw comes this memorable spaz of a game. Spaz, I sez: You're an experiment gone wrong, hooting and snorting and cackling and making engine-revving noises, and you run-and-jump a la Mega Man to escape a lab. The gimmick is that your only move is to blow yourself up: it's your jump and attack at once.

It's hard to expect much new in the "run left to right" category, but SM's blasty mechanics feel fresh enough—or the goofy style and amusing animations tricked me into having fun. (Kill enough scientists and the game will award you with the "Get Them Out Of Our Schools" achievement. Run into the chubby scientist and the game's music will switch to a ukulele tune titled "Everybody Loves Donuts." Blow something up and you'll hear your guy scream lines like "Get to tha choppah!" or "We're done professionally.")

These are very clever worlds to blast through; you'll fling through the air, notice a floating explosive in mid-air ahead of you, and time another explosion to propel higher in the air while your little character cackles madly, then chain another few of these. $10 gets you pretty far here; after beating the lengthy solo mode, there's a co-op mode—just as lengthy—to play w/ up to three other friends. Blow each other up to fly even higher. Fun.

Here's what I really dig about Splosion Man: It wouldn't have existed a few years ago. Back then, you'd look at the box for a game like this, wonder what the heck it was (duhrrr there's no Mario or Madden on da box), and scoff at the high price. Now, download stores on every console make these weird, $10 experiments a legitimate option, and they're among the easiest games for game haters to enjoy. SM has one button. It's the "splode" button, and it's my fave button of the year thus far.

I've been going outside so much these past couple of months, I've barely missed my digital fix—haven't even packed the DS in my bike's bottle slot most of the time. But for six days of the year, Seattle's frigid, underground nerd caves sure look appealing, stink and Dew and all.

May as well dig through the stack of summer games piling up; this overdue review series begins with two locally produced titles.

Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (Xbox Live) - Before I tried this virtual version of Magic, my experience with the locally produced card game was limited to a 10-year-old teaching me how to play. If you ever want to go down the rabbit hole but can't afford psychotropics, here's a tip: combine a young boy's excitable, scatterbrained logic with a trading card game's endless rules/exceptions/tricks... and watch the pretty colors fly by.

To its credit, this Xbox version eased me into Magic's rules: you take a randomly dealt set of cards and play attacks and modifiers on both yourself and your opponent (along with "land" cards which, essentially, are ammo for your card cretins). The ease almost fooled me into liking the game, as did the swank presentation and the high-res, hand-drawn cards.

Seattle's coming-so-soon Penny Arcade Expo can be intimidating for folks who don't dress like Princess Toadstool. For folks who don't hold onto the back handlebars while they play Dance Dance Revolution. For folks who'd never dream of binding their FPS controls to ESDF instead of WASD. Normal folks.

But you don't have to be any of those things to get a kick out of the PAX10, the fest's indie gaming competition. Just announced today are the fest's hand-picked choices: complex strategy games, twitchy puzzlers that the Bejeweled set could love, and an interactive book for kids called What Is Bothering Carl?, among others. Oh, don't forget this entirely hand-drawn point-and-click adventure:

Our local pals behind Tag: The Power Of Paint are on the list, too. Congrats, guys. The full list of nominated games with links is after the jump.

Ever play Wii Bowling the American way? Give it a shot. While sprawled on a couch, jerk your wrist randomly, and your Wii character will nail a strike almost by default. Leave that bowl of Rold Golds on your belly, champ. It's not going anywhere.

Wii Sports was a pretty good ruse, limiting its games to tiny swipes because—hey now—the Wii remote only senses tiny swipes. It's more fun to think the Wii knows your real movements, Gramps, but your full-on bowling swing is for naught.

Or is it? This month saw the release of Wii MotionPlus, a doohickey that plugs into Wii remotes and promises 1:1 motion control—every angle, swipe, and shift of your hands is now, finally, so-long-awaitedly replicated. But it must suck to market this to the people who've already bought into the original Wii promise. What do you tell fun-lovin' Gramps? That it will sense "more" of his motion? Lost cause, Nintendo.

I've spent the past week testing the first few MotionPlus games and figuring out what "more motion" really means. Short answer: angular, not positional. Wave your remote around while standing still, and the sword on your TV will twist and turn in kind but stay frozen in space otherwise.

The latter issue kills EA's Grand Slam Tennis. The game plays fine at first when it senses your wrist angle while swinging a tennis racket; aiming and adding top-spin is better than the old Wii Sports. But the Wii can't tell where you stand in the room, so your on-screen guy will often hold the racket to his right while you're tilting it to your left. In high-speed tennis, this screws you.

Slower, simpler games do fine, which makes EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour '10 the most impressive MotionPlus game so far: full swing motions, front and back, are measured for power, while swing angles will hook and slice with consistent precision. Any dork who has slammed a trackball on a Golden Tee arcade machine should pay heed. They'll never recover from the rush of nailing a golf shot with MotionPlus. I, king dork, can attest to fist pumps. It's a typical, solid golf game otherwise, padded with 27 full courses and a long career mode. But the swing, it is everything.

For great Wii tennis, you're better off waiting for next month's Wii Sports Resort. This weekend, I got my grubby hands on the early Japanese version thanks to an import-happy pal. Just like the original Wii Sports, this sequel is a mini-game explosion, upped from 5 games to 13. Most of them show off the MotionPlus's abilities, particularly the table tennis game, whose accuracy is startling. Paddle angle, stroke speed, shot location... whatever, all you need to know is how fucking good this mode feels.

Similarly, the best games focus on the angular motion of MotionPlus, like the dinky frisbee-throwing game, the samurai sword duels, and the bit where you hold the remote like a paper airplane to fly around an island. Others are clunkers that are probably more fun with three drunken friends, such as the awkward basketball mode, the wonky water skiing, and the canoeing game. Yep: four people row one canoe as quickly as possible. Get ready to hate your condescending friend who orders everyone else to row to the left and right alternating.

If you're burnt out on Wii Sports, you're not going to get much wow factor here after smiling at the accurate sword game for a few minutes. But it's a solid package of varied mini-games, so long as you ignore the stupid bicycle one in which you pedal with your hands (???). You'll love the table tennis mode, and Grandpa will delight in the rest.

Speaking of Grandpa, golf and bowling are back from the original Wii Sports, and both are smoother. Your golf swing no longer randomly wobbles out of place, and in bowling, you don't have to release a button to let the ball go—a tiny change that makes a big difference. But just to get you depressed, Gramps, I tested the new bowling mode on the couch. Bowl of chips on the tummy, and I rolled a 154. No spills.

The Wall Street Journal has an interview with the creator of a very peculiar board game, called Train.

It made its debut last month at the Games for Change conference in New York City. Players load boxcars with tiny yellow figurines and are asked to move the trains from one end of the course to the other. They pull cards that either impede their progress or free some of the characters. Once a train reaches the “finish line,” the game is completed and it is revealed that the destination of the trains is Auschwitz. Nobody “wins.”

(Via Tablet. No, not that Tablet.)

Highlights from my brief-and-giddy visit to the NW Pinball and Game Show last night:

Some of last year's coolest pinball tables are missing, but in their place are '80s monsters like Bride of Pinbot and High Speed, modern wowzers like a new NBA table from Stern, and vintage machines like the one with shotgun Nuge (above). Tip: Wait in line to give the Twilight Zone machine a shot. Worth the wait.

New this year is the arcade room, filled mostly with '80s hits like Donkey Kong and Pac Man. You'll find a few relatively recent games—of particular note is a set brought in by Slog reader Bob*, who was nice enough to walk me through the most obscure of his slick-lookin', Japanese sit-down machines—but the most interesting selection is Donkey Kong II. Nintendo never made this game, but a few showgoers saw this pro-lookin' cabinet and assumed otherwise. This game is actually a slick, fan-made project, AND IT IS THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME EVER MADE. Do not play it. You have to play it. But don't.

You'll get your $20 ticket's worth if you set up residency and play even 1/3 of the 200+ games on display, but bring a gasmask. The ventilation sucks in the game rooms, and there are pinball tourney players who are sweating their nerves out of their Pop Tart pits. And among today's seminar sessions, Steve Wiebe will make another go at the Donkey Kong world record, though I never got an official start time for his attempt. Anyone involved with the show care to update us in the comments?

More pinball/arcade photos after the jump.

* I don't think your name is Bob, feel free to correct me. I told you I was bad with names.

...but in Nintendo's world, video games will soon play themselves.

Beginning with the upcoming New Super Mario Bros. Wii (due this holiday season), players will be able to pause a game during a particularly difficult level and let the game take over to complete the level. Press a button at any time to resume playing. This will help reduce barriers of entry for new or younger players — without purchasing a strategy guide or resorting to cheat codes.

Unavailable for comment: The dork at Gamestop who always asks if I want to pre-order a bunch of strategy guides.

Hey nerds, there's an alert coming down the pipe from my 2400 baud CompuServe BBS! Or, at least, it looks that dated:

Redmond's Steve Wiebe, the likeable dad and teacher best known for the world's second-highest score in Donkey Kong (and associated doc King of Kong), has just announced that he'll go for the DK record once more at the 2009 NW Pinball and Gameroom Show this weekend at Seattle Center. Though KoK's famed gaming douchebag and Kong record holder Billy Mitchell has "donated" the above promotional JPG (seriously, look at the tag at the very bottom), and is even shipping limited edition, customized bottles of his hot sauce, he won't be there to defend his mullet and American flag tie in an epic Kong-off on Saturday. Shame.

Bring your nose plugs, cuz it'll be an old-school gaming who's who this weekend. The Pinball and Gameroom Show will have a few seminars hosted by pinball game makers of yesteryear, along with Walter Day, the guy dressed up in sweet referee stripes in KoK and Chasing Ghosts, as host of a Twin Galaxies Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Sadly, that'll induct gamers, not game characters—sorry, Mr. Do. Maybe next time. Even more interesting might be the session with former NBA player, and current seven-foot-tall Bainbridge Island resident, Todd MacCulloch, who has transitioned from getting dunked on by Shaq to getting dunked on by nerds in pro pinball tournaments. Watch him giggle and slap himself in the face in the below video, or at the very least, watch long enough to see his vintage home arcade. Twenty seconds are dedicated to the Slurpee machine:

If watching other people play games isn't your thing, have no fear; over 100 pinball tables and over 100 old-school arcade cabinets will be free to play with the cost of admission. It was fun last year; looks like it'll be better this time.