15 Dope Sega & Nintendo Rap Lyrics from Back in the Day

(By the way, are white girls allowed to say “dope”?)

Rap’s love affair with video games is noth­ing new . Rap­pers have been drop­ping video game ref­er­ences since back in the day, which for me began in the late ‘80s and lasted through 1999, the year I grad­u­ated high school. Dur­ing that time I was raised on a steady diet of Sega and Nin­tendo, and when my par­ents weren’t pay­ing atten­tion (which was often) I lis­tened to a whole hell of a lot of explicit rap and hip hop. (I think I turned out OK.)

Back then it wasn’t nearly as cool to be a “gamer” as it is today–especially if you were a girl. It was amaz­ing how quickly the pop­u­lar kids would scat­ter when you said things like “I’m really into RPGs.”  That’s why I always found it inter­est­ing (or per­haps it secretly made me feel a lit­tle cooler) when­ever I heard video game ref­er­ences pop up in my favorite rap and hip hop songs.

That was the era of Nin­tendo vs. Sega–much like the East Coast/West Coast feud –where kids had to choose their alliances care­fully. It’s no sur­prise, then, that Nin­tendo and Sega made fre­quent appear­ances in rap lyrics.  With­out them, rap­pers wouldn’t have any­thing cool to rhyme with “innu­endo” and “Schwarzenegger.”

Here are fif­teen of my favorite Nin­tendo and Sega lyrics from rap & hip hop songs back in the day:

Warn­ing — Most of these audio/MP3 clips are NSFW!

House of Pain “Jump Around”

Year: 1992
Album: House of Pain

This song, par­tic­u­larly this ver­sion of this song, never fails to get me up off my ass to dance like a total idiot while rap­ping along. And I nerd­crush a lit­tle every time Ever­last drops the Sega reference.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I’m the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig ’cause a pig is a cop
Or bet­ter yet a Ter­mi­na­tor, like Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger
Try’n to play me out like as if my name was Sega

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo “Bad to the Bone”

Year:  1990
Album:  Wanted: Dead or Alive

Man Schwarzeneg­ger was a pop­u­lar rap lyric. That, or House of Pain totally ripped off this rhyme.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I run the game like Sega
Go to war like Nore­aga, hit like  Schwarzeneg­ger
Excitin’ when I’m fightin I’m fright­enin’
Stick chicks slick in quick like greased light­ning

K7 “Come Baby Come”

Year:  1993
Album:  Swing Batta Swing

This is one dirty, dirty song. And you know some­thing? It’s fuck­ing great. I don’t know what­ever hap­pened to K7, but before he faded into obscu­rity he at least gave the world one hell of a sex anthem–and a new pickup line for gamers everywhere.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Come and get some of this
Don’t for­get the innu­endo
Play me like Nin­tendo
Never ever let go

Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. feat. 2Pac “Juicy”

Year: 1994
Album: Ready to Die

Big­gie had so much money he owned both sys­tems AND played them on a 50″ screen. Prob­a­bly pretty impres­sive for back then. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to see the next gen.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Super Nin­tendo, Sega Gen­e­sis 
When I was dead broke, man I couldn’t pic­ture this 
50 inch screen, money green leather sofa 
Got two rides, a lim­ou­sine with a chauf­feur 

2Pac “Fake Ass Bitches”

Year: 1997
Album:   R U Still Down? (Remem­ber Me)

Find­ing this pic­ture of Tupac play­ing Sonic the Hedge­hog was worth the effort of this blog post alone.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Fly how I fade her
Played her like a game of Sega
Fuckin’ with the player that done made her

Ras Kass & Coo­lio “Drama”

Year: 1996
Album: Soul on Ice

This song is already awe­some, but it’s made even more so because Ras Kass admits to lik­ing Sega CD . I keep telling peo­ple there was once a time when Sega CD was awe­some, but nobody believes me.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

On a three story house, drive a four door Ac
Favorite song of all time Mobb Deep’s “Hit it from the Back”
Then jet, I turn a bitch into my favorite
She know my name cause I got more game than Sega CD

Das EFX “Some­body Told Me”

Year: 1998
Album: Gen­er­a­tion EFX

From the group who gave us the sage advice “Chiggedy-check yo self before you wriggedy-wreck yo self.”

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

In the crib I bought the leather, plus a movie screen
So my team can play Sega 

Dr. Dre “Shit­tin on the World”

Year: 1996
Album: Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath

Dr. Dre is totally an old school gamer. He doesn’t need no mutha­phukkin 32-bits.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Eat me, freak me, take your hand and leave me
All I wanna say is I don’t really give a fuck
‘Cause most he be mega
Copped the PlaySta­tion but still play the Sega

Jer­maine Dupri “Get Your Shit Right”

Year: 1998
Album: Life in 1472

Or, the demise of Sega as told by rappers.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Goin once, goin twice, every­day, livin nice
In the grey wit the ice, makin money rollin dice
Livin the life, that y’all dream of
Puttin niggaz outta busi­ness like Sony did to Sega

LL Cool J “Clap Your Hands”

Year: 1989
Album:  Walk­ing with a Panther

Or, the demise of Sega as PREDICTED by rappers.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

LL Cool J, and the J is for Jeremy
So BUFF ME, James Todd the earth­quaker
That’s right my brother, you’re goin out like Sega 

Method Man “Ele­ments”

Year: 1998
Album: Tical 2000: Judge­ment Day

Well that’s def­i­nitely an N64 ref­er­ence, but what Sega con­sole is Method Man refer­ring to? Sat­urn? Dream­cast? THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION I NEED TO KNOW.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Ya’ll broth­ers laugh now and cry later
I rap from Alpha to Omega, sixty four to Sega
Whoopin’ that ass, walk you dogs through the lookin’ glass
Been burnin’ MC’s since cookin’ class

Ice Cube “Fri­day”

Year: 1995
Album: Fri­day (Orig­i­nal Motion Pic­ture Sountrack)

Oh yeah–Super Nin­tendo also rhymes great with “smokin indo.” Leave it to Ice Cube. (Sadly I couldn’t get the explicit ver­sion for this MP3 snip­pet so you’ll have to make do with “like a Pinto.”)

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Smokin indo
Playin dat Super Nin­tendo
Hear a rat tat tat on my win­dow

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince “Then She Bit Me”

Year: 1989
Album: And in This Corner…

Remem­ber when Will Smith made good music?

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

No, really I saw him. 
He was play­ing check­ers. 
No, Nin­tendo. 
Ok, I’m lying. 

Pub­lic Enemy “Bed­lam 13:13″

Year: 1994
Album: Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age

Hid­ing weed inside a Super Nin­tendo? GENIUS!

Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Good e nuff to know no indo
Threw it out tha win­dow
Along wit tha Super Nin­tendo

Eazy-E “Sorry Louie”

Year:  1996
Album:  Str8 off tha Streetz of Mutha­phukkin Compton

I got noth­ing inter­est­ing to say about this lyric, so I’ll just leave you with a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment in Eazy-E’s honor:

Wear con­doms, kids.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I grabbed my bat and ran around the back yo
He’s at my win­dow, thinkin I’m playin Nin­tendo

Straight Outta Console: Nintendo-infused Nerdcore Hip Hop

Straight Outta Con­sole: The Nin­tendo Thumb Mix­tape is a fresh as hell nerd­core album by rap­per Heath McNease that sounds like what was born after your Nin­tendo banged a hip hop CD.

No, really–it does!  Have a listen:

“I did it all for Tanuki?” Come on now, that’s some clever shit.

Actu­ally, the whole album is full of nerd­tas­tic Nin­tendo word­play and McNease raps the hell out of it.  The rhymes come at you fast and furi­ous and are ridicu­lously smart and witty. What’s also strik­ing is how sur­pris­ingly clean they are–you know, for hip hop.  In fact I’m pretty sure there’s more pro­fan­ity in this para­graph than there is in the entire album.

And of course, because its nerd­core there’s plenty of gamer in-jokes ( Kon­ami Kode! ) and pop cul­ture ref­er­ences ( The Wiz­ard! ) lay­ered over those famil­iar 8-bit themes from your favorite Nin­tendo games ( Castl­e­va­nia! Mega Man! Paper­boy! ).

Among the 19 (yes, 19!) tight tracks you’ll hear:

• Sick hip hop beats by  For­Beat­sSake
• Sound bytes from the movie The Wiz­ard 
• Tur­tle Van Damme , a whole song ded­i­cated to Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles com­plete with Ninja Rap sam­ples and nods to the ‘80s car­toon theme song
• Lots of famil­iar Nin­tendo sound effects

Though the album was released back in July of last year, it some­how man­aged to escape my ever expand­ing web of awe­some* ’till I ran­domly saw this post over at Ghetto Manga.

McNease is pretty fly for a white guy and clearly a gifted rap­per and lyri­cist.  I was sur­prised to learn from his bio page that he’s also an emphatic live per­former who does over 250 shows a year.

Besides rap, his eclec­tic back­ground includes musi­cal the­ater, improv, and folk music, which sounds like it would make for quite an enter­tain­ing evening. If he ever comes to my neck of the woods I’ll def­i­nitely be buy­ing tickets.

*Yes, I’m well aware of the fact that I overuse the word “awe­some.” I’ll try to work on that.

Retro Blast: The Power Glove Instruction Manual from 1989

Over the week­end, my boyfriend was at his parent’s house dig­ging through some boxes of old junk in the base­ment when he unearthed some­thing that could prac­ti­cally be con­sid­ered an archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery by gamer’s stan­dards: the orig­i­nal Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual from 1989!  And in almost per­fect condition!

As soon as I got over my imme­di­ate jeal­ousy that he owned the Power Glove as a kid and I didn’t, I began to won­der if it might be worth anything—not nec­es­sar­ily in terms of money, but worth the infor­ma­tion and nos­tal­gia.  After all, only 100,000 Power Gloves were sold in the U.S, and how many of them still have the instruc­tion man­ual intact?  Although I’ve played with a Power Glove before (and was thor­oughly dis­ap­pointed by the expe­ri­ence), I can’t recall ever hav­ing seen an orig­i­nal instruc­tion man­ual.  So I did a few Google searches to see what was out there.

To my sur­prise, I couldn’t find a com­plete scan of the man­ual; only this  text ver­sion , and a few scanned images of ran­dom pages.  And that’s really too bad, because the Power Glove man­ual is a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of lulz.

I knew what I had to do. ( Skip Ahead to Down­load )

Lucas is a Lie

Just from a casual glance through the thirty-five page instruc­tion man­ual (yes, thirty-fucking-five pages!) it is read­ily appar­ent how com­pli­cated the Power Glove is to use.  Can you imag­ine giv­ing this thing to an excited lit­tle kid and then wit­ness­ing their sheer dis­ap­point­ment when they couldn’t get it to work because GOD DAMMIT you have to pro­gram it first using a series of com­pli­cated ges­tures and button-pressing sequences.  And if it still didn’t work (which it inevitably didn’t) you were encour­aged to call a 1–900 Mat­tel num­ber for “assis­tance” and charged $1.50 for the first minute, $.75 for each addi­tional minute.

In real­ity, this “new dimen­sion of game­play” the man­ual describes is a far cry away from those rad moves Lucas showed off in The Wiz­ard. I guess that’s why Mat­tel felt it was nec­es­sary to dumb things down for the kiddies.

Enter “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”

Meet “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”, a pair of white, non-threatening, casually-dressed car­toon char­ac­ters who exist solely to explain away the com­plex­i­ties of oper­at­ing the Power Glove with help­ful illus­tra­tions and what can best be described as church pam­phlet humor.

But are “G.M.” and “L.D.” (as they like to call each other) all that they seem??  Look a lit­tle closer and you’ll see that Lit­tle Digit, a naive boy of about ten, has a habit of get­ting him­self into some ques­tion­able sit­u­a­tions with Glove Mas­ter, an older gen­tle­man who refuses to take his jacket and sun­glasses off even though they are both clearly indoors:

What the hell is the “Sens­ing Zone” and what is Glove Mas­ter doing with his hands hid­den behind the TV?  Also, appar­ently Glove Mas­ter likes to com­mu­ni­cate via his crotch:

Didn’t I say it was a gold­mine?  For an amus­ing if slightly creepy snap­shot of video gam­ing life in 1989, I highly rec­om­mend you read the whole thing, which was painstak­ingly scanned and PDF’d by yours truly.

Download

You can down­load the full scan (PDF for­mat) from Rapid­Share here:

Nin­tendo Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual — 1989 (PDF)

You’re wel­come, Internet!

Like 8-Bit Music? You’ll ♥ Leeni

She’s got two Game­boys and a microphone.

A girl after my own heart, Leeni is a 26-year old who spent much of her child­hood firmly planted in front of the Nin­tendo.  Influ­enced by 8-bit artists on MySpace as well as clas­sics like The Bea­t­les and Elias Smith, Leeni’s music is an enjoy­able  blend of the Gameboy’s famil­iar square synth sounds, her own voice and instru­men­ta­tion, and clever song­writ­ing.  With youth­ful, har­monic vocals lay­ered on top of those unmis­tak­able 8-bit bleeps and blops, Leeni’s music sounds rather like your Game­boy had a lovechild with that nerdy cho­rus girl you knew back in high school.

I dis­cov­ered Leeni’s music quite by acci­dent, brows­ing through ran­dom J-Pop selec­tions on Spo­tify, and some­how link-hopping my way to Leeni’s page via “Related Artists” links.  (By the way, if you’re not using Spo­tify yet, you’re miss­ing out on a truly amaz­ing music expe­ri­ence.   Per­haps I’ll write a sep­a­rate post about it soon. You can read my thoughts on Spo­tify here.)  “Head­phones On Your Heart” was the first track I lis­tened to, and imme­di­ately fell in love.

Have a listen:

Leeni already has two albums under her belt, each with a dis­tinct sound.  The first,  8 Bit Heart, is like an upbeat, happy-go-lucky romp through a bright, col­or­ful Nin­tendo game.  Her sec­ond album, Labyrinth is much darker and more down­tempo (think Super Mario Bros. under­world or Leg­end of Zelda dun­geon music) but still an enjoy­able listen.

Sure, there’s lots of other 8-bit artists out there, but Leeni has a unique musi­cal and lyri­cal style all her own. Most of the 8-bit music I’ve heard ranges from juve­nile to obnox­ious; fun but for­get­table retro-tunes that pan­der to your Nin­ten­dostal­gia. Leeni is dif­fer­ent and def­i­nitely worth a listen.

Nintendo at E3: Epic Yawn, for the Most Part

Fol­low­ing along with Nintendo’s E3 press con­fer­ence on Twit­ter, the live reac­tions were less than enthu­si­as­tic.  Well, it’s no won­der with a pre­sen­ter like this:

Does she look excited about Nin­tendo to you?

For the most part, Nintendo’s pre­sen­ta­tion ambled along like an old woman with a bad hip.  The over­all expe­ri­ence was so blah, #nin­tend­o­fail was in dan­ger of becom­ing a trend­ing topic for a while there.

These were the lowlights:

• Wii Fit Plus — Some minor improve­ments to Wii Fit, such as omit­ting wait-times between exer­cises and the abil­ity to tar­get spe­cific areas.  Riveting!
• Wii Motion­Plus — Add-on hard­ware to make the Wiimote sen­sors more pre­cise.  Will run you about $20 for some­thing that makes the Wii func­tion the way it’s sup­posed to.  Oh and by the way, some new games will require it, like Red Steel 2.
  (notic­ing a trend here with the tack­ing “Plus” onto every­thing?)
• Ter­ri­ble scripted jokes between Bill and Reggie.
• Final Fan­tasy Crys­tal Chron­i­cles: Crys­tal Bear­ers — Yet another Final Fan­tasy title…
• Women’s Mur­der Club: Games of Pas­sion — New “inter­ac­tive fic­tion” game series for DS, adding another nail to the cof­fin of real adven­ture games.
• Style Savvy — Yet another brain­less pink-packaged game aimed at tweenaged girls.
• DSi cir­cle jerk: over 1M units sold in less than 2 months, and DSi gamers will soon be able to share pho­tos on Facebook.
• Wii Vital­ity Sen­sor — Periph­eral that mon­i­tors pulse rate, ner­vous­ness, etc. I don’t even know what the fuck to say about this…

I’m on the fence about:

• Leg­end of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — Demo playable at E3 this week, but didn’t like the few screen­shots we saw.
• Mario vs. Don­key Kong — Play­ers will be able to design their own lev­els, game­play looked kinda fun.
• Golden Sun DS
• War­i­or­Ware DIY — Gamers can design their own minigames from scratch & share with friends; kinda neat, I guess.
• Res­i­dent Evil: The Dark­side Chron­i­cals — Another on-rails shooter from the RE franchise.

But there were a few sprin­kles of cool:

• Wii Sports Resort — Bas­ket­ball, archery, sky­div­ing & more.
• Super Mario Galaxy sequel — yes, yes, yes!  The demo looked awe­some, the graph­ics bright and beautiful.

And then, sav­ing the best for last, Nin­tendo made up for much of its E3 snorefest with the announce­ment of…

Metroid: Other M

Okay, seri­ously, I want this game NOW!

Update: Penny Arcade sums up my feel­ings exactly.

Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly

Today CNN Money reports that sales of Sony’s PS3 have plum­meted 19% from last year’s fig­ures and the con­sole is lit­er­ally “dying on the shelves.”  Mean­while, Xbox 360’s 2008 sales have improved over 2007 and Nintendo’s Wii con­tin­ues to be a sell­out since its launch.

So why am I not surprised?

Huge Pric­etag

When it launched in Novem­ber 2006, the PS3 cost $500 for a 40G model, and $600 for a 60G model.  And that price only included one con­troller and no games.  Who could afford to spend that kind of money on a bare-bones video game con­sole?  Cer­tainly not me, and I’m a sin­gle adult in the 18–35 demo with a great job who loves video games–their tar­get mar­ket.  So I can’t even imag­ine how par­ents strug­gled to afford this price-bloated piece of plas­tic plus a $60 game game or two, try­ing to give their kid a merry Christmas.

But even though the console’s price has dropped sev­eral times and there’s now a wider range of mod­els to choose from, the still-pricey PS3 con­tin­ues to strug­gle.  If Sony’s con­sole sales hadn’t been dis­ap­point­ing since launch, I might chalk it up to the reces­sion, but that’s not easy to do when nearly every other game com­pany seems to be thriv­ing despite the economy’s cur­rent hard knocks.

Con­sole Com­pe­ti­tion

When it comes to video games, Sony is a rel­a­tive new­comer to the scene com­pared to Nin­tendo who has main­tained a huge fol­low­ing since the orig­i­nal NES ignited a love for video games in many of our hearts as kids in the 80s.  And over the years, Nin­tendo has always put out qual­ity sys­tems (I like to pre­tend Vir­tu­al­Boy never existed) with great libraries of games that have been fun and inno­v­a­tive.  The Wii, despite its silly name, was des­tined to be just as suc­cess­ful.  So why did Sony think it was a good idea to choose a launch date for PS3 so close to the Wii’s?  This is where I think they really under­es­ti­mated the competition.

The PS3 also launched at a time when the Xbox 360 had been out for a year already.  But Microsoft had been qui­etly bid­ing its time improv­ing the 360’s hard­ware, build­ing up a solid library of games, and win­ning play­ers over with its Xbox Live expe­ri­ence.  If Sony was expect­ing 360 own­ers to buy a PS3 as well, they cer­tainly didn’t have much of any­thing new to offer.  I’m will­ing to bet that most peo­ple who already owned 360s went out and bought Wiis instead.

Noth­ing New to Offer

Sure the PS3 has “amaz­ing graph­ics”, which has been its main sell­ing point.  But is that all that really mat­ters to gamers?  Sony’s sales have indi­cated oth­er­wise.  Other than improved graph­ics and offer­ing a Blu-Ray player at a time when most peo­ple didn’t even know what Blue-Ray was, what else did the PS3 offer?  Cer­tainly not an impres­sive library of games or inno­v­a­tive design over its pre­de­ces­sors.  Even the PS3’s con­troller design was more of the same.

Dis­ap­point­ing Game Library

The PS3 launched with a pretty under­whelm­ing selction of games that either nobody heard of, or titles that had already been out a long time on the 360.  Com­pare that to Nin­tendo Wii, whose launch titles included mega hits like The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Cor­rup­tion.  Sony should have off­set the console’s huge pric­etag by at least offer­ing more com­pelling titles, espe­cially at launch.  If a con­sole has great games, gamers tend to over­look the price, no mat­ter how ridicu­lous.  After all, what good is a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior video game sys­tem if it doesn’t have good games?   Like many, instead of buy­ing a PS3, I waited to see if any titles would launch later on that com­pelled me enough to pur­chase this sys­tem.  Two years later, I’m still wait­ing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Sony does to try to win over gamers and dig itself out of its hole.  CNN sug­gests deep price discounts–that would cer­tainly help.  I guess.  My advice to Sony: count your losses and just focus on Playsta­tion 4.

6 Geeky Things I’m Thankful For

Thanks­giv­ing is just two days away. Come Thurs­day I hope to be in a full-fledged turkey and wine-induced coma, sur­rounded by fam­ily and friends, kick­ing off a bliss­ful four days of gam­ing, couch­ing, Net­flix­ing, and left­overs. Gear­ing up for the long week­end has got me think­ing about all the geeky things I’m thank­ful for.

Here’s a look back at 2008 from a grate­ful geek girl:

The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard

I’m thank­ful for The Tales of Bee­dle the Bard , the new children’s fairy tale book and Harry Pot­ter com­pan­ion piece from one of my favorite authors, J. K. Rowl­ing . Since 1997, I along with most of the world have adven­tured along­side Harry in his seven-year bat­tle against You-Know-Who, and like so many other fans, was depressed when the series came to its heart-wrenching con­clu­sion last sum­mer. Look­ing for­ward to the book’s release this Decem­ber 4th, when I and legions of Pot­ter fans can delve once again into a small piece of the wiz­ard­ing world.

The Dark Knight

I’m thank­ful that The Dark Knight was a piv­otal box office phe­nom­e­non, and arguably one of the best super hero movies ever made. I’m thank­ful that Heath Ledger will be remem­bered for one of the most riv­et­ing and bril­liant per­for­mances ever known to big screen vil­lainy. I’m thank­ful that this movie has defined the new stan­dard against which all future super hero movies should be judged, and I’m opti­mistic that Hol­ly­wood will start pay­ing attention.

The New Xbox Expe­ri­ence

I’m thank­ful for the New Xbox Expe­ri­ence , and Microsoft’s part­ner­ship with Net­flix to bring the “Watch It Now” movie ser­vice to the Xbox 360 con­sole free of charge. Net­flix sub­scribers that own an Xbox 360 no longer have to face the inevitable deci­sion to shell out $100 for a Roku Net­flix player, yet another periph­eral that would clut­ter up our home enter­tain­ment sys­tems. I’ve found the high-quality stream­ing ser­vice to work absolutely per­fectly. It’s just too bad about Sony’s sour grapes .

Wii Fit

I’m thank­ful for Nin­tendo and their seem­ingly end­less inno­va­tion when it comes to pro­duc­ing fun and easy to learn yet chal­leng­ing games for the Wii , most notably 2008’s sim­ple but sur­pris­ingly effec­tive title Wii Fit . While Wii Fit cer­tainly doesn’t score any points for breath­tak­ing graph­ics or intense game­play, there is some­thing to be said for any game (or non-game) that moti­vates us lazy gamers to get off the couch and get physical—and have fun doing it.

The Twi­light Saga

I’m thank­ful for Stephe­nie Meyer’s ridicu­lously cheesy Twi­light Saga , whose sopho­moric books man­aged to com­pletely suck me in for a good two weeks of unadul­ter­ated guilty plea­sure read­ing, the per­fect anti­dote to a stress­ful month . I’m also thank­ful that the equally cheesy and unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous Twi­light movie —which grossed $70 mil­lion on its open­ing week­end, thanks to dreamy Rob Pat­tin­son —made for one of the most enter­tain­ing and mem­o­rable girls’ night outs I’ve had in a long time.

Wrath of the Lich King

I’m thank­ful for Wrath of the Lich King , the lat­est and great­est expan­sion to the sec­ond life I know as World of War­craft, which gave me the excuse to get back in touch with old guildies and good friends (some vir­tual, some real) and fall in love all over again with the sheer awe­some­ness of this game. Bliz­zard has really out­done them­selves with this release. The stun­ning visu­als and beau­ti­ful music score alone were worth the wait. Indeed, things were get­ting pretty bor­ing around Aze­roth until you showed up, Arthas .

Look­ing for­ward to all the geeky things 2009 will bring!