Now that most of your food has digested and the tryptophan has worn off it’s time to focus on getting gifts for the special people in your life.
The holidays are a time for tipping back drinks with family and friends. Unfortunately not all of the people close to us can hold their liquor. If you don’t know anybody like this then you probably are the person.

I have somebody in my circle like this.. Let’s call him Til. He was the man in high school. He use to serve people on the basketball court and if he hadn’t found the bottle early-on he might’ve played college ball at Kansas. But Til loves Hennessy. I mean loves it. Wakes up to it and goes to sleep with it.. I reached a point where I couldn’t be around him because I was pissed at him for what he let himself become. It’s his choice and his life but he literally could’ve been somebody..

With that said the Game Party series by Midway Entertainment for the Nintendo Wii is the shiznit.

You can play 11 games including Quarterback Challenge, Trivia, Hoop Shoot, and Shuffleboard, but the the big attraction is Ping Cup aka Beer Pong. There’s no need to buy a beer pong table, ping pong balls, or plastic cups with Game Party. Just buy your favorite beverage and turn on the Wii.

Beer Pong or Beirut or whatever the kids are calling it these days has surged into the lead as America’s top drinking game. There’s a Beer Pong Movie, two different Beer Pong games for Nintendo Wii, a $50,000 tournament, and black people are playing. The game’s official.

American Equistock Racing is hoping to ride the success of the drinking game by naming one of their racehorses Beer Pong. BP was the sixth horse in the fourth race at Saratoga on Friday.

American Equistock has a horse named Clemens in their stable too. To my knowledge the horse has never used steroids or performance enhancing drugs. Hopefully Beer Pong the game won’t suffer the shame, humiliation, and fall from grace that Roger Clemens is experiencing.

As far as Beer Pong goes.. He placed second in the race and paying some good change.

Beer Pong, Horse Racing, Saratoga, drinking game

The first beer pong game for the Nintendo Wii, Game Party, was introduced last year and it was received pretty well. The second beer pong game for Nintendo Wii, Frat Party, has not been met with the same enthusiasm.

“Frat Party Games-Beer Pong” has come under fire from school coalitions, a state attorney general, and now Nintendo has succumbed to the pressure. The founders of JV Games (and creators of Frat Party) aren’t happy.

Their game, originally titled Frat Party Games – Beer Pong, was renamed to the more family friendly Frat Party Games – Pong Toss.

This conflicts with some of Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime’s statements last year about how “Nintendo will not do any screening of ideas” on WiiWare. JV Games co-founder Vince Valenti recalls how they “had a little discussion with Nintendo and there were some angry parties.” The two founders were shocked by Nintendo’s reaction. As Valenti puts it, his company’s use of the word “beer” was “just like you would hear in any movie or on TV.” Co-founder Jag Jaeger said they “wanted to focus on the sport of beer pong, not the alcohol that’s associated with it.”

It’s weak for Nintendo to force changes to the game just because some people got upset. All of the shoot ‘em up video games get endless criticism and yet they keep cranking them out. And even with the changes the game is still beer pong whether you say it in the title or not.

Nintendo Wii, Beer Pong, video games, frat party

If you like to drink competitively without having to set-up some cups on a table you can play Beer Pong on the Nintendo Wii. Game Party was released last year and features a game called “Ping Cup”. The guys at JV Games Inc. think they’ve raised the bar.

Featuring two distinct competitive games, Frat Party Games™ – Beer Pong will offer a traditional tournament-style game of Beer Pong for one to four players and Speed Pong, during which two to three players compete at the same time, each trying to be the first to eliminate all of his or her cups.

At the rate that Beer Pong is growing it won’t be long before BP highlights are shown on ESPN and the game is recognized by the Olympics. The sport is getting so big that bars are adding Beer Pong setups, tournaments are held for big money, and there’s a documentary about the World Series of Beer Pong. There’s also a Frat Party Beer Pong website and myspace page. The game is only available via WiiWare, but if the XBox and Playstation people are smart, they’re developing a Beer Pong game right now. They don’t wanna miss out on the chance to give lazy college students an easier way to get drunk.

Beer Pong, Nintendo Wii, video games, Frat Party

The country is experiencing a major financial crunch but that’s not stopping Americans from spending billions of dollars on electronic relaxation. March of 2008 saw $1.7 billion in sales of video games and gaming consoles, a 600 million dollar increase over the $1.1 billion from March of last year. A lot of the credit can go to the release of new titles.

From GameSpot:

Software sales for the month were up 63 percent year-over-year to $945.6 million. To put that figure in perspective, last March–a month that saw the release of God of War II on the PlayStation 2 and Guitar Hero II on the Xbox 360–only managed $957 million with software and hardware sales combined. While catalog titles like Wii Play, Rock Band, and Call of Duty 4 have driven game sales so far this year, March was dominated by new games.

The overall 2008 numbers will get another boost when Grand Theft Auto IV and Madden are released. Here are the top selling games for March:

TOP-SELLING SOFTWARE – MARCH 2008
Title / Publisher / Release Date / Units
1) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) / Nintendo / March 2008 / 2.7M
2) Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2* (360) / Ubisoft / March 2008 / 752.3K
3) Army of Two (360) / Electronic Arts / March 2008 / 606.1K
4) Wii Play w/ Remote (Wii) / Nintendo / Feb. 2007 / 409.8K
5) God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP) / Sony / March 2008 / 340.5K
6) Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP) / Square Enix / March 2008 / 301.6K
7) Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock (Wii) / Activision / Oct. 2007 / 264.1K
8) MLB 2K8 (360) / Take-Two Interactive / March 2008 / 237.1K
9) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare* (360) / Activision / Nov. 2007 / 237K
10) Army of Two (PS3) / Electronic Arts / March 2008 / 224.9K

On top of having three games in the top 10, Nintendo’s Wii and DS outsold the PSP, Xbox, PS3, and PS2 combined. The Wii is too goofy for my taste, but it looks like I’m in the minority with that opinion.

NPD: March game sales skyrocket 57 percent. Courtesy of GameSpot

Tags: video games, Nintendo Wii, sales, economy