Looking back at my personal history with the Burnout franchise, it's actually a little embarrassing. As a bit of a gaming elitist in my youth, I'd routinely dismissed what I'd deemed more casual racing series like Burnout or Need for Speed in favor of hardcore sims along the lines of Gran Turismo and Forza. Why, I often wondered, would a man of my discerning taste make the same mistakes as my non-gaming friends by wasting my time with those seemingly rudimentary racing games? I had gear ratios to adjust and 100-lap endurance races to win in Gran Turismo 3, and certainly couldn't be bothered with inferior product.

The second weekend of March Madness is never as fun as the first (unless, I guess, your team is still standing at the end of it. I wouldn't know, never having experienced that for myself). If you've filled out brackets, they're usually destroyed at this point, and you can typically tell whether or not you're going to win any pools you've entered. But it still brings some great basketball and fun upsets...at least, fun if your favorite school's name doesn't rhyme with "puke."

There's a good smattering of bargains this week across the board, although nothing terribly earth-shattering. However, while the usual retailers are up to many of their usual saling shenanigans (Guitar Hero bargains, anyone?), Wendy's enters the scene with a one-day-only shot at getting some absolute steals on some nice stuff. The only catch is that a lot of luck is involved as well.

Amanda does everything from avoiding the wolf on the way to grandmother's house to performing life threatening operations this week. Dana skips out on most gaming this week and instead looks to the outdoors...and learns that maybe she shouldn't listen to nice weather after all.

Video Games in Space!
President Obama and some school kids were talking to space people -- aka the crew of the shuttle Discovery -- and the kids wanted their president to ask the astronauts one very important question: "Can you play video games in space?". The answer was "yes" and that they have. However, the astronauts made it very clear that they're generally too busy for games because they have "real work" to do.

I can't help but be impressed by how regularly Rock Band has managed to provide entire albums for download. Clearly that whole MTV affiliation thing has got some muscle behind it. This week's offering is a flashback to the death of glam and the dawn of grunge. Brings a tear to my eye, it does.

This week's big release is the latest entry in the Guitar Hero franchise, featuring none other than Metallica, and available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii. If Metallica isn't your thing, then maybe you'll want to check out adventure games like Cate West: The Vanishing Files, or maybe you've been dying to get cozy with a whole bunch of different animals from the Discovery Kids series out on DS this week. Um, yeah. So what else is out this week?

Amanda and I have been spending most of this week popping in and out of sessions at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. It's my favorite conference of the year, probably because it isn't a bunch of presentations written by marketing people to make me like their games -- instead, it's people who make games talking to other people who make games, and I get to be a fly on the wall and listen to what they have to say.

When used together, the terms "piracy" and "video games" tend to hold very specific, untoward connotations, but there is indeed a lighter side to gaming pirates. Yes, we’re talking about our digital peg-legged, saber-toting, curse spewing, unshaven, sea faring brethren. Get ready; there are decks to be swabbed, villages to pillage, and planks to be walked! This month’s Free Bytes themed medley extravaganza sails the seas of freebie indie goodness with the ol’ skull and crossbones proudly flying high.

Modern music games are typically packed with songs from dozens of artists, but with this week's Guitar Hero: Metallica and the upcoming The Beatles: Rock Band, we're seeing more of a trend of companies basing games on the strength of a single band or musician. However, this isn't a completely new phenomenon -- games based on specific recording artists have been around for decades, and many of them aren't even traditional rhythm games!