Harmonix has revealed the next batch of downloadable content for Rock Band, giving you something to look forward to for next week. They’re taking a step back to the 80’s (and half a step back to the 70’s) with the new Classic Rock Track Pack, which will feature these three songs:

• “Call Me” by Blondie (master)
• “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (master)
• “Message in Bottle” by the Police (master)

Ah, I loves me some classic rock. Rumor has it that the following week will bring Def Leppard tracks, so we’ll have to keep an eye out for that.

Via Rock Band Forums

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Everyone has been speculating that Sam & Max would be coming to the Wii, but now it is official because today Telltale confirmed that Sam & Max Season One will be coming to the Wii and is expected to ship to retail stores worldwide this fall.

Thanks to fans who launched an email campaign clamoring for a Wii version of the series along with continuous rumors and rampant speculation online, Telltale is now focusing on console development in addition to PC, and the company can finally bring Sam & Max to the Wii in response to this overwhelming demand. Whoo Hoo!

You can check out the full press release after the break.

Read the full article

Four days. That’s how long it took for the wrath of the internet community to cause a moron to cave and return a stolen Xbox 360 to its rightful owner. You may recall an interesting tale recently where a man named Jesse McPherson returned home to find his house had been burglarized and his TV, laptop, and Xbox 360 had been stolen. Not only that, but then he began receiving harassing voice messages on his new console from a person claiming to be the thief. So he did what anyone familiar with the powers of the internet would do and sent the internet after the thief by posting his story and the kid’s Xbox Live account online. After the story got picked up by Digg, the internet community leapt into action and managed to find out the kid’s real name, address, high school, phone number, AIM name, etc. Then they pretty much began harassing him non-stop over the weekend, leading the kid to hand-deliver the laptop back to its owner.

Well, now this story seems to have reached a somewhat happy conclusion as McPherson has reported that his Xbox has now been returned safe and sound. The kid’s mom dropped the console off on his doorstep wrapped in a white trash bag and then called him to tell him it was there. McPherson also said that the police now have a lead on the actual robber and “seem to be doing their job,” as opposed to before when he pretty much gift-wrapped a lead for them and had the door slammed in his face. But since he’s got his 2/3 of his stuff back, he asked the admin behind the wiki page with all the kid’s personal info to remove all the content; and they seem to have complied. And internet justice has prevailed.

Via McPherson’s Blog  [image via Weird Asia News]

Welcome to your moment of superiority for the day. In Delhi, Louisiana, a 29-year old man excitedly called up his friend to brag about his success in an Xbox game, proclaiming “I have killed them all.” Well, it turns out he had accidentally dialed a random woman by mistake. That woman called the police, who went to investigate the man’s home. While they didn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing, they did discover he was wanted on a 5-year warrant out of Baton Rouge for failure to appear in court for a cocaine possession charge. He was then arrested and is set to be transferred to Baton Rouge for sentencing.

“It was weird the way this all came down,” [Sgt. Julie] Lewis said Tuesday. “This isn’t something you could just make up.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself, Lewis. But you see? Doesn’t that just make you feel a little superior now?

Via FoxNews.com

UK police in Huddersfield are hoping to locate the owner of a Wii by releasing descriptions of the Miis found on the system. The system was recovered after a man was arrested on theft charges and is believed to have been purchased as a Christmas present. The Wii contains 16 Miis with names such as Seb, Pheebes, Nicks, Ellie, and Evie and has an ID code of 7901 7431 3732 8898. If anyone thinks this might be their lost Nintendo console, they should contact the Kirklees CID.

There’s a new security feature for you. Just make a Mii that looks like you and name it, “If found, please return to (insert name and phone number).”

Via Huddersfield Examiner

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police made international headlines back in October when a Polish immigrant named Robert Dziekanski died following a tasering at the Vancouver International Airport. A video of the incident eventually surfaced, and a big PR nightmare ensued, with much of the public criticizing the actions of the police. If you watch the video, you can see the police throwing him to the ground, holding him down, and then shocking the man while he screams and writhes on the floor. As is the thing to do these days, someone decided to make a parody video of the incident; this time using Mega Man as a backdrop. As you can see, the video, titled “Mega Man vs. Polish Immigrant” basically has Mega Man using his “tazer mercilessly” power on Dr. Wily with Dziekanski’s face pasted on. Many people didn’t even notice the video until it was highlighted by Jurek Baltakis, who gave the eulogy at Dziekanski’s funeral:

“It seems like a little innocent video game, but I can tell you for Robert Dziekanski and his mom it was not a game. It was terribly shocking.”

Poor choice of the word “shocking,” but you get the idea. The video was created by a Vancouver resident named Mike Greenway, who said:

“The video was really more of a statement on police Taser use than anything. The video that I made is a tongue-in-cheek parody about the incompetence of everyone involved, not police brutality.”

I don’t know if this really makes a statement on anything really, other than “I have way too much free time.” Even a spokesman for the RCMP, Staff Sergeant John Ward, commented on the video:

“Any right-thinking person who would look at the video would be offended by that. A gentlemen lost his life and it is in extremely poor taste.”

Yeah, I have to admit that’s pretty offensive. But you know what’s really offensive? A guy being thrown to the ground, shocked multiple times, and dying as a result of some overzealous police. But no, let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on some YouTuber with too much time on his hands. That’s the real issue, people.

Via Canada.com

I’ve been saying Xbox Live is chock full of weirdos, but this one takes the cake so far. In Saratoga Springs, New York, 20-year old Joshua Stetar met a 15-year old girl, who was living in Spokane, Washington, through playing Halo online over a year ago. He apparently found her address online and began sending packages and flowers to her home, all of which her parents returned. He also sent several hundred text messages to her cell phone, which forced her parents to change her number. But he managed to find her new number by “Googling” her and then drove 40 hours straight to her neighborhood. At around 9 pm on Friday, he sent a text message saying that he was driving by her house; her parents in fact saw his car pass by. Then at 9:36, he sent a message reading, “Tell the cops that I’m gonna rape you and your sister.” The girl’s parents called the police, who found Stetar at a nearby motel. After interrogating him, police learned that he had actually visited Spokane earlier and drove by the girl’s house in a rented U-Haul truck, which the girl’s parents were unaware of. He also had apparently been sending numerous text messages to the girl’s cousin, who lives in Billings, Montana, over the summer, until the police called him and told him to stop. He was booked in the Spokane County Jail on one count of felony stalking, but was released on Saturday on bond.

Wow, what a creepy, creepy guy. Let this be a lesson to you kids: Xbox Live is full of freaks and weirdos, so don’t give them your real name or anything. Man, it’s like the new MySpace or something.

Via KHQ

This should go out as a lesson to anyone who feels the need to threaten others over Xbox Live – be careful of what you say. This is no doubt what a 19-year-old Frostburg State University student is thinking after being taken into custody after making a threat of “shooting up the school” while playing Call of Duty 4 on Xbox Live.

According to the Cumberland Times, Allieu Shaw has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of disrupting a school operation. He faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $5,000. That’s nothing to cough at.

He was reported to local police by Kaipo Damurand, who resides in Oregon. Shaw was arrested Tuesday afternoon after police learned his location.

I would hold hope that gamers on Xbox Live will be more careful with what they say from now on, but I know better than that.

Cumberland Times

This past summer, a line of urinal-based games began cropping up in Europe, where you were required to pee on a sensor to guide a car on a screen in front of you. If you did badly, a warning popped up asking you not to drive home that night. Well, bad news if you were hoping to be the next champion of the urination-powered video games circuit in Belgium. Police there just banned the urinal games in the GamePower Expo in Gent, citing them as indecent. So, you heard it here first, peeing in a bathroom is illegal in Belgium. The street corner though? Perfectly fine.

Via Engadget

Well, here’s a piece of gamer-related violence you can’t blame on Manhunt 2 (though “he who shall not be named” will undoubtedly try). On Sunday, police in Indian River County, Florida responded to a domestic dispute involving an “out-of-control child.” Apparently, a young boy was playing Halo 3 when his mother told him it was time to shut it off and go to bed. When he refused, she took out the Xbox 360’s wireless adapter and hid it. The boy then flew into a rage, storming through the house looking for the device. When he couldn’t find it, he punched his mom in the face, which prompted the parents to call the police. The boy locked himself in his room and, when two deputies entered with a key they got from the parents, he resisted and punched one of them in the face. He’s now under the care of juvenile authorities facing charges of battery-domestic violence and battery on a law-enforcement officer.

It’s a good thing there were no plasma grenades in the house, I guess. On the plus side, this means one less little kid on Xbox Live doing a horrible Ludacris impression into his mic. One down, about a million left to go.

Via TCPalm

In England, police raided a man’s house yesterday after they saw a silhouetted figure holding a gun that turned out to be a statue of Lara Croft. A 42 year-old computer shop owner, David Williams, had taken the mannequin home from his store so he could sell it on eBay. Later that night, he called the police to complain about several prank calls he had received. The officer arriving on the scene saw the figure through a front window and called for backup. A team of armed officers then proceeded to bust down the back door.

“It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so terrifying,” [Williams] said yesterday. “One of the police held a gun and yelled, ‘Where’s the weapon, where’s the weapon?’”

“I didn’t have a clue what was going on, I assumed they’d got the wrong house. I couldn’t believe it when I realized they’d mistaken a Lara Croft dummy for someone with a gun.”

Rather than apologising for their mistake, the police then arrested Williams on a “suspected firearms offence.” That’s right. They arrested him for the fake guns in the fake character’s hands. He’s out on bail now, but the statue has been impounded and he’s speaking with a lawyer about a possible false arrest suit.