We had brought you news that rapper Soulja Boy was reviewing Braid and that was a classic moment, but watch as he punks one of his fans to be on his friend list. He openly gives out his Xbox 360 Gamertag (Souljaboytellem)and then shouts out the other guy that is trying to play with him, but he won’t let him be his friend unless he says that “Soulja Boy is the best rapper alive”. Man if you are a fan of this punk I would re-think that situation, he might be a bit nicer if he wanted to keep fans, nothing says I am a tool like forcing a fan to clown himself and then call him names.
In an interesting Easter Egg for all PSN users three special gamertags were discovered. When you send these special PSN users a friend request their names change into different things.
Here they are:
Hideo Kojima which turns into Old Snake.
hal_emmerich which turns into Tiagra.
rosemary which turns into Queen.
This can go into the not very useful, but cool pile. Please note that the Hideo Kojima tag filled up within minutes and I would imagine that the other two are also filling up if not full already.
I’m sure Richard Gaywood had a fun childhood where no one ever made his name a focal point of a conversation. Well, MS did. His gamertag, RichardGaywood was revoked. It’s his real name. MS will not let any gamertag have the word “gay” in it simply because a child might see it or it’s most likely used in a derogatory manner. Moral of the story: being gay is A-okay, it just can’t define you as a gamer. My other gamertag, Mike Oxlong is flourishing as we speak.
Ever wonder what it would be like to lose your gamertag? I had never thought about it and then came across this guy who wrote an article recalling his adventure or misfortune of going to the university for a year and trying to come back and get some gaming in, only to find that he was screwed out of his account. Apparently if your credit card expires while you are not a member and you are away for more than a year, your account will be canceled and not be allowed to be re-opened.
The horrible part of it all is that he not only lost his gamerscore, but also all of his downloaded content and games. That means all his arcade games are gone and will not be given back to him. This actually sucks especially for those gamers that are going away to school or in the case of a guy I met just yesterday, who was stationed in Germany and then leaving to Iraq for who knows how long? Imagine going off to fight for your country and then coming back and finding out that MS screwed you.
Here is some of this gamer’s thoughts and the replies he got back from the friendly MS customer service rep. [Via Totally 360]
“But why?” I asked. “You have a violation of billing” he responded. Apparently due to my credit card expiring I had violated the terms and conditions of Xbox Live. “You haven’t phoned us for a year and thus your account is cancelled”. I went on to explain I had accessed my account on Xbox.com for the last year and was able to message and receive messages from friends as well as add gamer tags and check achievements. “Yes your account is on the system but is cancelled” he hastily said.
“But surely if my account is on the system, you can re-activate it. If I provide you with new credit card information, surely you can give me a subscription back” I worryingly asked. “You are too late Sir; your account is cancelled forever”.
I am sure that my feeling of disapproval with pricing schemes in regards to gamerpics and themes on the Xbox 360 marketplace is shared. I for one like having different Gamerpics and actually try and switch mine up every once in a while as well as the themes, but I just cant see myself paying for many of them for a couple of reasons.
My main reason is that you can only have one theme set at a time and a max of two gmaerpics. This stinks in my opinion, why pay for multiiple themes or pics if you can only use one set at a time? If Xbox added a feature to rotate your different pics and themes I would certainly purchase more. Have it set so you pick like ten gamerpics and maybe 4 or 5 themes and have it rotate on a timed basis, kind of like your backgrounds on your computer and screensavers.
Also the pics and themes typically are overpriced, they are just small pictures, why make them cost so darn much? It does not take much to have them up and I do not understand how some are free and others are a couple of bucks? Either make them all free or make them a nominal fee, I would lean toward free.
The Xbox 360 camera pics should also be able to be saved as themes or allow users to use multiple personal pictures to be used on each blade of the in game menus instead of just having one on all. You can take a pic using your camera and make that your gamerpic, which is kind of cool but then that is one less purchased gamerpic you can’t use.
Why play your games when someone can do it for you. The uber nerds behind levelmy360.com have a plan set up where they will add almost any amount of points to your gamerscore, for a nominal fee of course. I really don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand, I could care less because the gamerscore is kind of a pissing contest anyway, but the fact people are willing to pay for something as irrelevant as this just irks me. I don’t know of anyone who has undertaken this service, but if you do, please let us know.
Independent game and toy developer The Behemoth announced yesterday that the top players of Alien Hominid HD on Xbox Live will receive handmade trophies for their efforts. These aren’t just cheesy trophies from a shop but truly handmade pieces customized with their Gamertag, high score and date etched into the trophy’s base. Sweet!
There are some rules that apply in order to receive the trophies so read up. You can also check all the current leaderboard stats at their website.
I am impressed with Behemoth, both for creating a fun side scrolling shooter for the Xbox 360 Arcade and for following up with some nice incentives for gamers to go for the gold! Bravo guys! I think I am gonna go get my Alien Hominid on, maybe I’ll get a trophy for honorable mention?
From the press release:
The trophies, built with love and elbow grease at the developer’s studio, are being mailed out to players who have scaled the heights of the Alien Hominid HD leaderboards.
“We wanted to find a way to recognize the top players of Alien Hominid HD,” said Alien Hominid HD producer John Baez. “Making some spiffy trophies here in the office from genuinely simulated gold seemed like just the ticket.”
Games Radar has an article about the psychological backgrounds for choosing what do for gamertags. Does yours mean you’re a sexual deviant, a sociopath, or something else you don’t even want to think about? Are you looking for attention or approval? Or just looking for somewhere to hide in the miscellaneous world of the intarweb? Whatever your reasoning, there is always a good reason why you chose your gamertag. I mean, DonkeyBalls69 didn’t just hit some random characters.
It’s a good read, so check it out.
Since my gamertag revolves around an animal, this is what the site has to say about me:
these tags tend to be some of the more creative and use some of the best humor
Well, that about hits it right. The actual source of my gamertag was hanging around drunk one night. I asked a friend what would be a cool new gamertag, because I was tired of my original gamertag from the days of the Xbox Live Beta. He said “wouldn’t it be hilarious to see on the screen ‘You were head-shot by a group of drunk pandas’?”. I found it intriguing, and shot over to the Xbox v1 (this was pre-360) to see what I could come up with. Due to size restrictions, it had to get shrunk to drunk pandas, but it still invokes a good level of laughter when you see that on the screen.
What do your gamertags mean? Let us know in the comments.
We're like Spaceballs... we're making Loot Ninja everything. Coming soon we'll have hats, shirts, hoodies, possibly banana hammocks if one Editor has his way...
Check out the shirt prototypes here and the hats here
I am sure that my feeling of disapproval with pricing schemes in regards to gamerpics and themes on the Xbox 360 marketplace is shared. I for one like having different Gamerpics and actually try and switch mine up every once in a while as well as the themes, but I just cant see myself paying for many of them for a couple of reasons.
Why play your games when someone can do it for you. The uber nerds behind 
Independent game and toy developer The Behemoth announced yesterday that the top players of Alien Hominid HD on Xbox Live will receive handmade trophies for their efforts. These aren’t just cheesy trophies from a shop but truly handmade pieces customized with their Gamertag, high score and date etched into the trophy’s base. Sweet!
Games Radar has an 
