Time’s up, fellow geeks! It’s time to decide who deserves Wii Points in order to worry about their hard drive space, making you “geeks and otaku” just like Laurent Fischer said. In the last two weeks, we’ve gotten a handful of stories from a few of our more dedicated and worrisome readers, each trying to out-nerd the last in a shameless bid for free Wii Points. The deadline has passed, and today we shall select our two winners. But, first, in order to prove to you that we’re qualified to judge you, we’d like to share our own otaku moments — tales so pathetic that we wanted to use them to win the prizes ourselves. Oh, if only we were eligible for such things!

Shameless anecdotes and contest winners, after the break! Continue Reading

Don’t forget, folks — today is your last chance to win a handful of free Wii Points! In case you missed it, click on over to this post, where we invite you to share your finest “geeks and otaku” moment for a shot at glory/infamy and a chance to win a mess of Wii Points for all your Wii Shop Channel needs.

Entries will be accepted until the end of today; you have until 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time, 7/7/2008. Good luck!

As the kid-tested, mother-approved — hell, grandmother-approved — game console whose demand continues to outstrip supply over a year after release, the Nintendo Wii has certainly caused a stir — but not quite the all-out Revolution its creators originally hyped. Wii online sucks. There are few compelling hardcore games. For every critically acclaimed title that actually uses the Wii’s motion-sensing controls to some effect, there’s a steaming bucketful of shovelware with tacked-on functionality — and clip-on plastic attachments. Continue Reading

Straight from the horse’s mouth: Infinity Ward community manager Robert Bowling just announced that owners of Call of Duty 4 for the PC will receive the excellent Variety Map Pack free of charge this June 5th, courtesy of NVIDIA, as part of the game’s patch to version 1.6. Continue Reading

Ever wish you could clone yourself, and then have the clones do all your dirty work? Now you can, at least inside an ingenious little Kongregate game called Chronotron. I stumbled upon this gem thanks to Digg, and can honestly say it’s the most fun I’ve had all week.

And before you ask: yes, I haven’t played any GTA IV. I’ll get around to it. Continue Reading

If you never played Portal: The Flash Version, then you really ought to. Two major Valve fans put together a two-dimensional game that rather excellently recreates the clever puzzles and aesthetic of Portal, last year’s Orange Box masterpiece. If you never played Portal, then I don’t want to know you.

Now, spotted over at ShackNews, the folks at We Create Stuff have further demonstrated their love of glowing holes in the wall by recreating their game’s levels for the actual Portal game. All 40 levels are now available for download as add-on maps for your copy of Portal, promising players 3.5 hours of gameplay for free. Continue Reading

When Second Life Herald reported that NASA had lost funding for its upcoming educational MMO yet continued to seek game developers willing to work for free, we became curious. Why would NASA shoot themselves in the foot, yet continue to hobble along as if it never happened? But we soon found out the entire story lacked merit. Continue Reading

Gamasutra recently caught up with Ben Cousins, senior producer on Battlefield Heroes, and discovered just what corners had to be cut and what incentives offered to make Battlefield viable for the masses. Continue Reading

Criterion’s creative director Alex Ward has been dropping lots of Burnout Paradise goodies this month, and if you clever newshounds have already heard that the sprawling Paradise is getting even larger thanks to a brand new series of islands, and that this archipelago will be totally free, then try this on for size: Continue Reading