Middle-east terrorist group Hezbollah is funded by the sale of PlayStation2s and Sony cameras in the region. This is according to Kotaku and the Miami Herald, two proud independent news organisations that would not lie simply to get internet traffic.

“Safadi and two Miami-Dade freight forwarders, Ulises Talavera and Emilio Gonzalez-Neira, face terrorism-related smuggling charges alleging they secretly exported a total of $720,000 in Sony PlayStation 2 consoles and Sony digital cameras to the shopping center between 2007 and 2008. U.S. authorities say the Galeria Page Mall, in Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este, served as a front for financing the Middle East terrorist group, Hezbollah” – Miami Herald.

Sony has now been accused of aiding international terrorism so many times it MUST be true. Picture from Game Politics. Story submitted by “Hugo”. All links hurriedly botched together by UKR.

There are some benefits to going outside where other people are – you might see something related to SEGA! Don’t bother typing in that domain name, it’s expired and points to a contextual list of car-related insurance sites.

“So I step outside last night and the first thing I see is this flagrant disrespecting of a registered SEGA trademark. I wonder if they asked SEGA if they can name their lorry company after the finest 16-BIT console? I DOUBT IT.”

“Taken with iPhone’s unspeakably shit camera in Leicester Square – I think the MegaDrive lorry was setting up some sort of film premier or something” – Adam.

We trust everyone in the London office of Sony Computer Entertainment picked up their free copy of Metro this morning?

You can get yourself a commemorative, high-resolution PDF version of this special day on Metro’s web site, to print out and keep. Link sent in by a man so protective of his identity he used a disposable instant email provider.

And here’s a close up of the text. With a bonus photo of a man as annoying and idiotic as Sony itself and his lovely wife.

They even did a cartoon about it. THE WORLD IS LAUGHING. THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD IS LOOKING AND LAUGHING. Sony says the bug has now magically fixed itself, which is a bit of a shame. At least we had some fun and some reputations got damaged.

Just one more update about this. Just one. Come on, it’s been a very big day. Here’s Sony’s latest advice to consumers regarding the APOCALYPS3 – don’t bother using your PS3.

“We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data” – Sony blog mouthpiece.

Please let tomorrow bring news of this being irreparable and requiring a $1bn global recall scheme to be put into place.

It’s only 2.45pm but today’s already turning out to be one of the best days in history. Even if we lose a limb this afternoon and get food poisoning from the hospital dinner and some idiot trainee doctor accidentally sews on a food mixer instead of the severed arm, it’ll still be an average day, overall, thanks to all of this and this:

Imagine the panic. Imagine the internal meetings. Imagine the group email exchanges. It’s almost enough to warrant cracking out the blank ‘Hitler video’ template (oh).

Happy Doomsday, everyone.

There’s some amazing PS3 news being reported out there today, with numerous owners of the older, fatter model of Sony’s malformed shit-biscuit tin reporting the error message 8001050F – which means SYSTEM SELF-DESTRUCT.

The error message also seems to mean “don’t connect to PlayStation Network and corrupt all Trophy data”, rendering the PS3 useless (more useless) both online AND offline. It is as if the LORD ALMIGHTY has waved a finger and eradicated all disease from the face of the planet.

It would appear all older 60GB fat PS3s are exploding and corrupting data when games are booting up on a network-connected system, basically. Enjoy the ultimate tech-support nightmare unfold live, by reading Sony’s PS blog and its PlayStation Twitter page. It’s OK, you don’t have to sign up to just read it.

LINKS OF MERRIMENT FOR THE PUBLIC RECORD:

– Eurogamer
– MCV
– Gizmodo
– Kotaku
– Spong
– Cnet
– NeoGAF
– EU PlayStation Forum
– Joystiq

“Whilst waiting for my mum to finish washing my clothes I noticed this on the machine display…”

Couldn’t bear to go through the psychological ‘rinse cycle’ of writing a caption for each individual photograph.

PlayStation controller used to detonate bomb, via some pretend American “news” station. The PlayStation controller features at around the 1.47 mark if you’re still pretending you have something better to do and want to skip to the money-shot.

“YET MORE proof of the ENEMY and its treacherous links with INSURGENT MILITIA. I can’t think of a funny comment so you might have to yourselves on this occasion, that is if you even decide to go with this. If it isn’t of sufficient quality I can provide high resolution images of Natasha Bedingfield to soothe all complaints” – Ian-Ian.

Here’s a new controversy that will surely set Twitter AFIRE WITH RAGE – our national broadcaster has been taking backhanders from the enemy in order to promote its latest cash-burning PlayStation3 software development to consumers.

Or perhaps this is a warning. Be wary of overly-hyped, big budget releases that are simply too important for anyone to say they’re shit until they’ve been out for well a year. Oh yes, THEN everyone will bravely pipe-up about it PERHAPS being a bit overrated. SCUM. ALL OF YOU. SCUM.

Not you, Nazaneen. Everyone else.

“I was keeping abreast of the local news this evening, being entertained by Polly Evans and the male presenter bloke on ‘South East Today’, with the mix of quirky and non-interesting stories gradually eating away at my soul. Then the weather came on, where Nazaneen Ghaffar showed us how much were going to get pissed on for the next few days, with soon after, some blatant advertising for the PlayStation3 exclusive (but not as good as Shenmue) ‘Triple-A title’ Heavy Rain. To me this seems a little TOO convenient to be a coincidence, with the UK release of Heavy Rain being this Friday. The enemy has infiltrated the BBC, or Nazaneen, or maybe both” – Sam.

Karl, who made that odd gangster-based Sonic game, has already bashed out another entirely separate release in a whole new genre. The likes of Bungie and Epic would do well to learn from Karl’s superb work ethic.

Here’s his latest work, entitled Zero Quest. You can download it here, if you think this sort of this is appealing:

“I would like to thank you for putting up my first proper attempt at a game (that cheese-dream Sonic The Hedgehog game). That has inspired me to go and actually take up making games as a hobby. I actually got my next proper one featured in Retro Gamer, which made me quite proud.”

“I have just finished a game that parodies Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda. I have attached it for you. You can upload it if you want, if you have a slow day.”

“I have hidden Dreamcast spirals in the game, as a thankyou to you. I also attach an image to prove this. They appear in a hidden area, where old video game characters drink themselves into oblivion to blot out the fact that they are now forgotten. I thought it was touchingly fitting” – Karl.

AN APOLOGY:

We are sorry to RetroCoders for not mentioning his/their Xbox Live Indie game Adventures of Sid. We were going to, then took too long about it, then it was mentioned again, then it seemed a bit awkward AND THEN we started to feel bad about it. Sorry. It won’t happen again.