The latest gaming podcast covers a flashback of Asteroids, from 1979, reactions to the latest listener comments and open the archive of great mascots covering Ryu. This weeks news includes:

• Guitar Hero III hits milestone
• Microsoft shuts down Gamerscore blog
• Violence has no effect on the fun video games provide
• Sega wants to broaden Nintendo Audience

This weeks soapbox is pretty broad, do HD graphics matter to gamers? Also, here are the youtube video’s discussed from Anomalous_Underdog:

Also, please fill out our Audience Survey, that would be super rad awesome.

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I just wanted to back up Don's comment, by saying that “The Last Starfighter” was, in my opinion, one of the best mid-budget space opera flicks of the 80's. (Obviously it was no “Star Wars”, “E.T.”, or “Star Trek.”) I also remember it being the first place I'd ever “seen” a digital picture frame. (One of the characters had one in his wallet; which is perhaps still beyond what we have, but probably only a couple years away.) Don't know if I've seen the movie out on DVD, though.

And though this isn't the Soapbox section, I also wanted to add that those converter boxes for “ghetto” TV's (like ours, a 31″ flat-screen CRT from 2004) let you watch HDTV even if your TV isn't HD. Assuming one even bothers watching TV, which frankly I hardly ever do (except DVD's, which don't count.) As for high-def gaming content, when I play console games (as opposed to computer games), for me it's more about the sound and motion than the resolution/textures. Again, our TV's not high-def anyway, and even if it were, I sit far enough back from it that the difference would only matter if I kept my glasses prescription up to date. ':P

Of course, that all may change when large HDTV's drop in price, and I get new glasses.