Battlecast Primetime: These sportscasters, er, gamecasters deliver colorful C&C commentary.

In South Korea, Starcraft became a national obsession, spawning a following comparable to professional sports with star players, matches played in stadiums with play by plays, and even little Zergling sneakers. But what about in the USA? Can EA try to make Command and Conquer as popular in the US as Blizzard did with Starcraft in Korea? EA's new online show, Battlecast Primetime, isn't a bad start.

The first episode runs around an hour and covers an online match of Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars with play by play from no less than 4 commentators, features an interview with actor Joe Kucan (Kane from the C&C series), a preview of the upcoming expansion pack, and no less than 5 commercial breaks for other EA products. The commercials are short at least and the Simpsons game looks surprisingly promising. Players can submit recordings of online matches for consideration for future episodes of the show.

On October 21st the annual Retro Game and Computerday hosted by the HCC Commodore User Club took place. Mind you it's not a Commodore centric event, a whole range of platforms and consoles was on display. There's some excellent photo's and videofootage available of the event. Both MrCustard and I planned on going but I was prohibited from going due to a 24 hour shift that was thrown my way :(

Just watched an episode of Icons on YouTube that was fairly decent-- it covered the formation of the ESRB. While I didn't learn a whole lot from the episode that I didn't already know, its political slant made it appear more professional than the usual "cowabunga dude" casual demeanor G4 typically presents in its tripe it calls original programming. Check out the full link after the jump.

I wish the episode would have gone more into the controversy with the ESRB. Not too long ago, a Punisher video game was released for the PS2. The designer of the game was greatly upset at how the ESRB insisted upon censoring the special "violent kills" in the game; originally, they were in color and showed the full kill. In the finished version of the game, they are shown in black and white and sometimes fade to white or cut out early.