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Editor's Note: Get confused whenever you get ready to fire up one of your favorite multiplayer games or when you're trying to figure out if you have enough Xbox Live Points to buy the latest downloadable treat? Andrew Hiscock shares some of the things he feels are most confusing about games today. -Jason

Videogame players have a remarkable ability to decipher complicated phenomena. Take your average videogame website. If you can navigate IGN.com, you deserve an honorary degree in geography. These skills are developed in dealing with our chosen hobby. User interfaces, hardware connectivity, and even the very games we play have developed a new tier of problem solving for humanity.

Should the world at large ever take these skills seriously, they would find a readily available segment of the population ready to be air-traffic controllers, IT consultants, and mediators for Middle East peace talks. If you can figure out any of the phenomena listed below, you'll be able to impress any old professor of quantum mechanics.

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Welcome to Bitmob.com, your resource for the hottest companies in [insert your city here]. Whether looking for a long-term relationship or something to spice things up on the side, you'll find a videogame company that offers deep connectivity and intuitive user interfaces, no matter who you are! Good luck, and happy merging, acquisitioning, and buy-outting!

Sega
Likes: What Nintendon't, Retro style, Pachinko
Dislikes: Console Manufacturing, Long dev times, New IPs
"Hi, all out there. A while ago I broke up with consoles, and now I'm playing the field. I'm happy where I am, and I'm not looking for commitment, just a night on the town and we'll see what happens. I'm a restless spirit, but don't call me whore, I'm just living my life!"

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Editor's note: Poindexters, set your brains to "analyze." Andrew Hiscock comes back with another ridiculously researched piece that is quite interesting if you take the time to follow it through. Which you should! -Greg

If you've checked out some of my more statistics-focused articles (NeoGAF charts and Critically Acclaimed Retail Bombs), you know that I enjoy playing around with numbers. My last such article had me knee deep in gamerankings.com numbers. This work made me ask a series of questions that were irrelevant to my purposes at the time, so this time out, I decided to see if I could find those answers. First, I wanted to know how the games for each console are doing four years into the current generation. Secondly, I wanted to know how these games are doing over time. With this in mind, I ran out and got the gamerankings scores for every single current generation console game (with 5 reviews or more), and played around with the numbers a bit. The results are below.

Aggregate Aggregator

Fig. 1: Average review aggregate scores by console, year by year

The first figure represents the average review aggregates for all games (5 reviews or more) in a given year for each console. This includes everything for each console that has received 5 or more reviews -- retail releases, downloads, retro games, everything. The raw numbers are given below.

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Compared to outlandish ones like Final Fantasy or Xenosaga, Bethesda's RPGs are grounded in reality...relatively speaking. Vampirism, magic, mutants, and mini-nuke launchers aside, you can pretty much relate to the people and worlds in Oblivion and Fallout 3. Strangely enough, they're kinda normal.

Maybe that's because Todd Howard is kinda normal himself. Bethesda Game Studios' game director and executive producer is a big (make that huge) Bruce Springsteen fan. He watches Friday Night Lights. And he thinks he can become Batman someday. He's an everyday guy who just happens to make epic games for a living. Epic games that feel "normal," that is.

He's our latest subject in our 21 Random Qs interview, so let's get to know...Todd Howard.

1. What is your favorite end-of-the-world movie?

Todd Howard: 12 Monkeys.

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Editor's note: Andrew whips out the TI-86 graphing calculator again and turns its withering, number-crunching gaze on the biggest sales disappointments of this console generation. Armchair analysts will find some pretty fascinating stuff in here, especially in the genre breakdowns after the jump. -Demian

Concluding my series of articles on top bombs for the current generation of consoles, I will now round up all the titles to compare the biggest bombs from this generation. Using the AURA index ("Achieved Under Review Aggregate", click here for more info on this scoring system), I have balanced scores and sales data to look at the biggest commercial bombs that were critical hits.

A brief introduction, if you haven't seen my earlier articles. The better the review score, the higher the AURA score. The lower the sales as a ratio to a console's install base, the higher the AURA score. An example of how it works: When comparing two games with equal sales, the game with the higher review score will be the bigger bomb. Likewise with sales: When comparing two games with an equal review scores, the lower-selling as a factor of console install base will be the bigger bomb. And a final clarification, if a game has a higher review aggregate, it can sell more copies while still remaining a bomb, under the assumption that games with higher scores will sell more. The rule: the larger the AURA score, the larger the bomb.

Follow the links to see the previous lists featuring console-specific bombs: Top Ten Wii Bombs, Top Ten Xbox 360 Bombs, Top Ten PS3 Bombs.

The following list was created using data from gamerankings.com and vgchartz.com. The 228 games across all platforms that scored an 80 or above on gamerankings.com (an arbitrary line that denotes "consensus critical hit") were scored using the AURA system. And for the sake of continuity, I have two lists, one with sports titles, one without.

TOP 25 CURRENT CONSOLE GENERATION CRITICAL HITS/RETAIL BOMBS
25. MLB Power Pros - Wii - .69
24. Guitar Hero: Metallica - Wii - .71
23. Pinball Hall of Fame - The Williams Collection - Wii - .75
22. Virtua Fighter 5 Online - Xbox 360 - .82
21. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection - Xbox 360 - .83
20. Okami - Wii - .87
19. Tales of Vesperia - Xbox 360 - .87
18. Eternal Sonata - PS3 - .98
17. Punch Out!! - Wii - 1.00
16. Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise - Xbox 360 - 1.18
15. NHL 2K7 - Xbox 360 - 1.24
14. Bully: Scholarship Edition - Wii - 1.25
13. The House of the Dead: Overkill - Wii - 1.26
12. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena - Xbox 360 - 1.26
11. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena - PS3 - 1.44
10. Zack & Wiki Quest for Barbaros' Treasure - Wii - 1.46
9. Mad World - Wii - 1.47
8. FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage - Xbox 360 - 1.60
7. Geometry Wars: Galaxies - Wii - 1.70
6. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 - Wii - 1.81
5. MLB Power Pros 2008 - Wii - 1.88
4. Rune Factory Frontier - Wii - 3.91
3. Boom Blox Bash Party - Wii - 4.38
2. Klonoa - Wii - 5.35
1. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 - Wii - 8.75

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Editor's note: We were fully in the grip of E3 when this mock profile of Mario was first posted, so we totally missed it -- in case you did, too, we're promoting it now. (Oh, and if any lawyers are reading and it's not already completely clear, this is a parody.) -Demian

I'm standing at the intersection of Warp Pipe and Vine, and I can hear the subject of my latest interview before I see him. About a block away, I can hear his 150 cc golden car power slide through a red light, and the characteristic slot machine sound of a power up queuing up as he bowls through an Item Box. He skids to a halt directly in front of me as I jump back from the curb.

"Get the fuck in, I got a Golden Mushroom here, and we got to let the lead out." The attitude is betrayed by a singsong farce of an Italian accent.

I jump into the back seat and with a "Let's a-go!" we are gone with a perfectly timed starter boost.

For better or worse, this is a day in the life of videogames' most famous character, Mario.

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Editor's Note: We're still trying to figure out how Brainiac here had the time to dissect the Big 3 press conferences from E3 2009 like this. Andrew's thorough, final conclusions are below (click "Read more" for the full report). And if you missed them, don't miss his individual studies, too -- very interesting info in each of them. -Shoe

Nintendo press conference report
Microsoft press conference report
Sony press conference report

Click here to see the full size graph

First and foremost, you'll notice in the above graph that there are no "event landmarks." Due to the amount of landmarks across all press conferences, I've removed them from the graph, as it would be completely useless. If you would like to reference the landmarks in the above graph, please see the individual graphs below (click the image for full size):

Reaction to the Nintendo Conference

Reaction to the Sony Conference

Reaction to the Microsoft Conference

Abstract: After the totals of neogaf.com forum members' reactions for each one-minute interval were tallied and charted, we now have a basis on which to compare the reactions to each conference. We can also see patterns in the responses that can offer insight that will allow us to predict future responses to press conferences, or offer guidelines on how to develop press conferences that will impress NeoGAF, and perhaps by extension, hardcore gamers. If that's what you want to do (Nintendo probably doesn't, for one).

Comment Totals: "Who won E3," a consistent theme appearing in the threads studied, is beyond the scope of this informal study. Only the immediate reactions were tabulated, and plenty of discussion has occured in the week following the press conferences. But we can still take the sum total of comments for each press conference. The results are below:

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Abstract: The online community at NeoGAF.com focuses its attention almost exclusively on videogames. The conversations can be indecipherable to outsiders, even those familiar with videogames. This passionate group of fans is one of the most influential in the industry. During live events, specific threads provide insight into the reactions of the community. It is the intention of this study to reveal their real time reactions to such an event, Nintendo's E3 press conference held on June 2, 2009.

Methodology: In order to chart these reactions, I assigned a score to each comment. If a comment was optimistic or positive, it scored +1. If it was negative, it scored -1. NeoGAF time stamps each post to the minute, so for every minute interval during the press conference, the sum total of response scores were charted.

A Positive Remark: Any remark that was positive in nature, either optimistic for events that may happen within the conference or approving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

A Negative Remark: Any remark that was negative in nature, either pessimistic of what was to come, or disapproving of events as they happened. These were restricted to the actual conference happenings.

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Editor's Note: More limerick awesomeness from Andrew We-Wonder-If-That's-His-Real-Last-Name. Also see his: Microsoft recap, Sony recap. -Shoe

There once was a company from Japan
Who had the casual market in hand
They left the hardcore
Wii Fit is a bore
Now Girl, age 12, is the average fan

Four-player Mario is unveiled
"The next hardcore title" it's hailed
PR spokeswoman Cammie
Her delivery uncanny
But in the game she actually failed

Wii Fit Plus was on display
Housewives thought it was okay
But they don't know
That it's just all show
And their cellulite won't go away

DS RPGs were aplenty
Because grinding is very trendy
There was no shock
And no excited talk
Because we knew about them already

The DSi and popular Facebook
Are now in connected cahoots
Snap and upload
But what of friend codes?
Pedophiles will finally get a look

Super Mario Galaxy was quite the hit
It made the executives all shit
Another core title
From Nintendo's idol
But they ask "Can it be like Wii Fit?"

Then President Iwata ran amok
With his replacement for the nunchuck
The Vitality Sensor
Electronic relaxer
And everyone asked, "What the Fuck?"

But there was one last game to reveal
One with some hardcore appeal
Team Ninja's "Project M"
It's Metroid again
Third or first person, what's the deal?

Haikus

Cammie Dunaway
She's slick, PR spokeswoman
Needs Style Savvy

Reggie shoots the ball
Keeping it real for the peeps
No! White men can't jump

Third parties win
So claims Nintendo's research
Shovelware still reigns

C - O - P Recruit
New open world DS game
Generic, thy name

No Miyamoto
He's still very embarrassed
Wii Music nightmares

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In other FAB-u-LOUS news, the Internet has uncovered more gameplay footage of Wiiware title Muscle March, the highly-anticipated (by me and maybe a couple other people) game about bodybuilders desperate to recover their jar of stolen steroids. I mean vitamin supplements. I mean amyl nitrate. Whatever, who knows what's in that magical jar? Just tackle that guy!

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