Ever wonder where Blizzard got all of their fun World of Warcraft dance animations from? This MMO montage tracked down some of the less obvious answers, and it compares a dozen in-game character animations next to their corresponding music or movie clips. You'll see the Horde doing Hammer Time, trees doing the Twist, and it ends with the sandwich song we all know and hate: Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Here's the full list of songs and clips used:

• 1: Saturday Night Fever
• 2: MC Hammer- Cant Touch This
• 3: Chubby Checker- The Twist
• 4: Alizee- J'en Ai Marre
• 5: Napoleon Dynamite
• 6: Daler Mehndi- Tunak Tunak Tun
• 7: Chris Farley Chippendales sketch
• 8: Britney Spears- Toxic (dance routine)
• 9: Michigan J. Frog
• 10: Riverdance
• 11: Michael Jackson: Billie Jean
• 12: Peanut Butter Jelly Time
  

I had no idea Blizzard used Tunak Tunak Tun, I have yet to see a more crazy foreign music video. For their new Black Temple patch, they should introduce OK GO's treadmill dance animation. There could be Black Temple treadmills set up, and the only way to complete the new 25 player dungeon raid is to keep four of your guild members alive long enough to complete the entire dance before the last boss. What's your favorite Azeroth dance move?

I know you guys love the Guitar Hero games, and as we wait for more of the upcoming playlists to be revealed, here's a song we won't be getting with the purchase of any new Guitar Hero games. TheBBPS found this video of several Super Mario Bros. songs played on Guitar Hero 2 for PlayStation 2, and it makes me wish Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s actually featured 80s game music instead of 80s band songs. It starts to get really fun at a minute and a half when the underwater music begins, and especially at two minutes when the sewer sounds kick in. If you're foaming at the fingers with desire to hack Guitar Hero 2 with your own custom songs, then check out this "idiot proof" guide. With a dozen steps and half a dozen needed programs to make it work, I wouldn't call it easy, but it's worth it to rock out to your own tunes with your own difficulty settings.

Of all the games Ubisoft is working on, which is a lot, this is by far the one I'm looking forward to the most. Assassin's Creed did nothing for me when it first surfaced with images, with a vague character and plot, and then the videos came out and changed a lot of minds. The animation is environments are large, the textures are detailed, the lighting is great, the battle system has fluid animation, and scaling buildings still looks like a lot of fun. We still don't know much about the story though, so pasting emotional music over the trailer is a good way to keep us occupied while we wait for more details on the character and his story.

It's hard to find something I don't like about this trailer. And if you're not a fan, then watch this video instead -- it's an interview with Jade Raymond, one of the hottest girls in the game industry, which isn't saying much. According to their conversation, Ubisoft isn't denying that there's some freaky time aspect of the game they've not yet revealed. She even calls it a franchise, so we'll be seeing plenty of this game in different settings for many years. With a few more awesome gameplay trailers, I can see this being a must-buy game when it comes out in September.

Every few years someone beats Contra without losing a single life and thinks they've done something no one's ever done before, and you can't blame them. Contra may not be the hardest game ever made, but when it was released on the NES in 1988 it brought more addictive agony than our finger blisters had ever experienced before. I went looking for the fastest Contra speed run and found this video (link below) by Tommy Montgomery. By cutting back on all the conservative routes in the game and skipping all unnecessary enemies he was able to rush through the rampage in just 11 minutes and 25 seconds, faster than all other twelve minute claims in recent years. Are any of you guys and gamer girls speed runners? If you've got any bragging rights, let's hear 'em!

Update: I changed the video to an even better Contra recording, the 10 minutes and 50 seconds world record speed run. You can watch the Tommy Montgomery video here. Thanks, Rob!

We've read lots of details, and seen lots of pictures, and now that the game is exactly one week from its American release date, we've finally got some video examples of what to expect. The game course we see in this video is the DK Treetop Temple level, which focuses more on vertical height than horizontal paths around a playing board. If you watch carefully, there's a row of stars in the background at the start, so there might only be a set number of stars on this map, with stealing them from others being your only alternative method of winning once they've been divvied out. To tie the Donkey Kong theme into the course, you can use Donkey Kong barrels to blast higher up on the map, or use warp pipes to slide back down to lower areas. They even have traps where rowdy monkeys slide barrels down the level and push players back a few spaces, like a less violent version of the original Donkey Kong arcade game.

One more week and we'll have our hands on Mario Party 8 for the Wii. What character have you usually played as in the past? I always pick Yoshi and manage to piss all my friends off by finding every hidden block in the game.

Update: There's one two new gameplay videos up, that show the actual mini-games in action, the skateboarding 1vs3 game is a clever use for the Wiimote.

Last week at Sony's Gamers Day we got a sneak peak at Folklore, a new PS3 game that looks promising, and this new video trailer solidifies it as the next big game to keep track of. The setting and story starts off like a less serious Silent Hill 2 and quickly evolves into a fantasy game filled with magic. The few spells we get to see in the trailer show a beautiful battle system, and the lands you explore are equally intriguing. I get the feeling that the dialogue in the game will be both overly simple and hoky, and that the plot could be equally ordinary, but the visuals and gameplay draw from so many different types of appealing games that I can see PS3 owners being very forgiving and eating this game. As long as Folkore can surprise us with something new and imaginative taped around fundamentals that are old and trusted, then it should be enjoyable to a variety of different gamers.

The video above appears to be the intro cinema for Mario Strikers Charged, the football/soccer game that's coming out at the end of July. Keeping true to its angry Mario vibe, the characters' shadows dominate the lighting to make them looks even more rubbery, and every character is trying to kill each other. They should make a killing on emo sales, as well as it being the first game to give us online gameplay. This is what you have to look forward to this Summer:

I swear those smug white guys laughed at their opponents for being black, but according Sony after the racist PSP advertisement debacle, racism doesn't exist in the UK, so it's okay. Mario Strikers Charged gameplay looks just like I thought it would, fun for a week and then it comes down to how much you enjoy replaying sports games online. I don't see myself being disappointed or thrilled with it, it's just one of those games you get to enjoy for a week and pull out during parties occasionally. Although I'm still pissed they're not giving us Wii Sports online. How Nintendo could put off Wii Bowling leagues, Wii Baseball leagues, etc, etc is beyond me, their online population would explode over the Summer.

The huge announcement over the weekend was StarCraft 2. Blizzard announced the sequel at the World Wide Invitational in Seoul with the impressive video above. The official StarCraft 2 site went live and there's screenshots, artwork, wallpapers, and they've even got gameplay videos up already. There's also a Protoss section setup for you to look at the updated units and names, with the Zerg and Terran sections coming later. They plan on updating each races units for a few new abilities here and there to make gameplay even more balanced, and the map editor will also return.

No target release date has been set yet, Blizzard plans to launch StarCraft 2 globally in a variety of languages and for both PC and Mac, so we'll just have to keep checking back to their site periodically for more gaming goodies. I'm sure this will sell many more tickets to this year's Blizzcon 2007 event, congrats to everyone who bet money on StarCraft 2!

It might be a full year until the game's released, although it looks like they've kept their progress a huge secret until recently, it's obvious they've been hard at work for a long time (Blizzard says since 2003, after they finished WarCraft 3: Frozen Throne). StarCraft is one of the few games where the hardcore fans never pleaded for another game, since they've always been content with the first one. I can think of at least ten friends who I could call up right now and ask for a quick game, and they'd say "Fuck yah!" and drop everything they're doing, so Blizzard has all the time they need to make StarCraft 2 good enough to make Azeroth empty for at least a few weeks.

 . . . you use an Atari controller as a TV remote. The only thing more nerdy than buying a $250 TV remote control that comes with a friggin LCD screen on it, is not using it. Instead, this guy gutted an Atarti 2600 controller and rigged it to work his TV in a few simple buttons. Push left and right on the joystick to adjust the volume, up and down for changing channels, and then a few simple buttons in the back for more specific controls.

Only a gamer could go to this extreme to give poverty a digital donkey punch, I don't know how a company can sell a remote for more than the price of a Wii, and how someone that has it would not want to use it. He might as well program his entire house to tip in response to the Sixaxis tilt controls. Just rotate it forward and you and your couch slide to the front of the room where you can change the channel with your fingers without getting up. Better not drop the remote though, or it's game over for your big screen HDTV.

Sony Gamers Day has finally brought us a Heavenly Sword video that doesn't focus on just kicking ass and taking genitals. Although, after seeing Nariko and her . . daughter? . . . I'm now confident that Andy Serkis's emperor erection is safe. The lookout scene starts with Nariko half naked as usual, you'll rewind and try to look down her towel skirt thing, you'll fail, then she'll help you out and shove her boobs in front of the camera, and just as things start to heat up she introduces us to her retarded child -- ugh, I hate it when chicks do that. Uhhh, yeah, sure, no problem Nariko, I'm totally into kids, I want lots of kids, let's just talk about it in the morning, okay? Wait, what? You want me to do what? Twing twang?! And you're inviting your Princess Mononoke mime feral daughter into bed? Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Wrong fantasy, wrong fetish, I'm out of here. You can save the world on your own, I'm gonna start hitting on Ellen from Folklore now.