The level is this:

GWEN STEFANI’S NEW VIDEO MAKES US THINK OF SEGA
Look. Gwen’s new video for Hollaback Girl looks like it’s a Sega game. Because it has two — or at a push three — things that remind us of Sega. That’s it. There is no angsty hidden depth to this news.

Here. See. Gwen’s video looks a bit like Sega:

It’s lovely Gwen — the American Cheryl Tweedy — in a yellow convertible full of skate-punk, Jap-cool weirdos! This is really like the car in Crazy Taxi. Isn’t it?

She’s being followed by a weird collection of people. This looks a bit like Space Channel 5.

(This update isn’t going to be a classic, but we’ve already done the hard work of downloading the video and taking the screenshots so shall persevere).

It’s the Crazy Taxi car again. Take us to the downtown, Gwenny Gwen!

Now come on. You *must* think that’s quite a bit like Ulala in Space Channel 5.

(NOTE: At this point we made quite an effort to work out how to play videos in slow motion in Media Player Classic, mainly for the bit where she does a high kick in this leotard thing).

It’s the Monkey Ball DX viral marketing campaign phase two!

This should be something rude about bananas, but Gwen’s the kind of girl who sits at home doing Google searches for her own name and we’d hate for her to stumble across us making lewd comments. Because if she REALLY likes Sega we could possibly be her friend.

All we need now is:

A Sega Dreamcast emulator

A Sega Saturn emulator

A Sega Mega Drive emulator

A 10Gb Memory Stick

A free PSP off Sony

Here’s the top 10.

1. EA Canada (93,513,089 pounds generated at UK retail)

2. Rockstar North (71,067,230)

3. Maxis (31,907,533)

4. EA Redwood Shores (30,600,306)

5. Ubisoft Montreal (22,930,009)

6. London Studios (SCEE) (22,914,433)

7. KCE Tokyo (22,127,973)

8. Sonic Team (20,762,935)

9. Codemasters (19,153,610)

10. EA LA (18,934,945)

Bungie is at 11 with Halo 2 on 16m and all of Nintendo is at 28 with 8.6m.

Sumo Digital was not listed :(

“By showing off your modding and driving skills, you’ll gain ‘Respect’ from the rival crew chiefs, and will soon be invited to their race events, challenge them to race ‘for pinks’ via video calling and bet against them for cash. As your notoriety grows, new drivers will call you up to ask to join your crew, opening up the never before seen ‘crew races’ where your skills at managing your drivers while you race are key to beating your rival crews.”

The video games industry is doing our jokes for real.

Point is, we’ve found the below “blank canvas” image, ideal for Photoshopping on the games console logo of your choice on and posting it on web forums.

It’s from the press site at Axion and is, interestingly enough, a controller that lets you play Mega Drive games on its portable DVD players — but in the right hands could be anything.

Click on the image to download a hi-res version ideal for Photoshop fun!

That was an easy update, courtesy of the “lifestyle” gaming brand we love to really really really hate Joystick Junkies. Please don’t download all their PR images and post abusive Photoshop jobs on our forum. That’d be a terrible occurrence!

Especially if you made this one say something rude, or made it look like something was going into her mouth:

We hope they have copyright clearance to use all this valuable videogame intellectual property.

YES, WE JUST SAID…
The Christian Game Developers Conference. Luckily for them it doesn’t seem to have a web forum. But it does have a Mission Statement:

“Dear Jesus, please let me complete GTA San Andreas without spilling any precious lifeblood”

WHAT TO EXPECT AT CGDC:

Three thousand Jeff Minter lookalikes.

Ring tone “Hymn Zone” for the kids.

EA spies scoping out if it’s a demographic worth buying into.

Us doing our OutRun2 sermon.

Assorted conversions.

Recently unemployed UK developers getting religion.

Disc duplication forum — how to turn one DVD into 5000.