Rock out with your cause out

As longtime readers of the blog will recall, Liquid Architecture is for the children (not unlike Wu Tang).  With that in mind, I’d like to invite all the NYC-area readers to this year’s edition of Funde Razor.

For the fourth year in a row, Joel Johnson (of Boing Boing and the very awesome Offworld) has put together an event that combines rocking, drinking, and helping out some very sick, scared children.  This year’s Funde Razor will be held on Wednesday, December 10 and once again feature the most impressive pretend rock stars in the tri-state area, along with the door prizes and good times that have combined to raise over $12,000 in the last three years.  Participants will be judged on style points (a first), so this year WILL be awesome, without a doubt.

• Where: Village Pourhouse
• Address: 64 Third Avenue at 11th Street, New York, NY [Google Map]
• When: Wednesday, 7PM to Midnight. (The raffle and prizes should be wrapped up earlier.)
• Age: 21 and over.
• Price: Free, but bring money for raffle tickets and donations!
• Hosts:: Joel Johnson of Boing Boing and Offworld, Miguel “Smeeguel” Molinari and Jennifer Boere of RockGamer.com

Of course, readers in the Denver and Bay areas will want to check out simultaneous events in their locales.  If you can’t make it to an event on the tri-city tour, please consider a donation at Child’s Play .  As you’re no doubt aware, it’s been a tough year across the board for not-for-profits.  For the price of two new games, you could help one of Child’s Play’s network hospitals put one more DS into a patient’s hands, or put some new games and controllers into their library.

Thanks and have a terrific holiday!

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Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

The annual Games Convention is going on this week in Leipzig, Germany.  When it was first introduced in 2002, the GC was an oddity at best.  It falls on the calendar barely a month after E3 and before the Tokyo Game Show, is open to the public, and is a mostly console show seated in the heart of a decidedly PC-centric gaming scene.  So it was a surprise to see any big news come out of the show.

Six years and a confusing E3 metamorphasis later, Leipzig still isn’t a white-hot show by any stretch of the imagination.  Nintendo’s not attending this year, and Microsoft won’t be holding a press conference.  However, a few nuggets were saved from min-E3 and are making a big splash at the show this week.

Capcom will finally be showing the console version of Street Fighter IV.  The arcade game was still pretty fresh at E3, and they gave the public a pretty good look at the San Diego Comicon earlier this summer.  Smart move to sit on the console version.  But the big Leipzig news that caught my attention came out of Activision: Guitar Hero World Tour on the 360, PS2 and PS3 will be combatible with all the instruments from previous Guitar Hero games on those systems, and even Rock Band 1 & 2.  It’s about time.

World Tour’s set list, composition mode and exclusive bands are attractive, but Rock Band’s commitment to DLC and serious, curatorial take on the rhythem game are a tough act to follow.  It was shaping up to be a tough choice for gamers (including yours truly) this Christmas between the two… especially for those gamers who couldn’t possibly bring more toy instruments into their living room.

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