Super Mario plushies go plink!

ThinkGeek, home of a million distractions, are offering Super Mario plushies that make authentic sounds when you whack 'em. So the Coin Block makes that oh-so-familiar coin sound when you thump it from below. The Goomba makes a 'bop' and then plays the defeated sound while the Star plays the Mario Star Song.

If you've devoted a significant part of your brain to archiving those (and many other) game sounds, you probably don't need any more encouragement to get thee to the Geekerie and have already scuttled away, leaving nothing but a Super Mario-style dust cloud in your wake. Just remember that it is physically impossible to have too many plushies, no matter what anyone tells you. It's one of Newton's laws, wedged in there between gravity and, um, whatever else he did. True story.

Night of a Million Billion Zombies exhumed

We've never heard the slightest whisper about Night of a Million Billion Zombies (NOMBZ) before, but it certainly looks like something worth spending a few minutes with. The name alone was enough to draw us in and the cartoony design doesn't hurt. There's a free demo on the website that we'll be grabbing hold of as soon as we find enough time to play it, and we'll let you know how it goes. But golly, don't wait for us! Go grab it yourself and become an effortlessly cool early adopter of the next big thing. Or, failing that, the next thing anyway.

Wii Rock Band dated and detailed

Rock Band is due out on the Wii on June 22nd, 2008 - in the US and Canada. It'll cost US$169.99 and includes drums, wireless guitar and microphone. No word on its release in other territories, and we wouldn't encourage you to hold your breath. We wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it didn't cross the pond until Christmas but fingers crossed that we won't have to wait that long.

To deflate the excitement a smidge, the Wii version won't contain any downloadable content or online play. Boo. Not entirely unexpected but still a little disappointing to actually hear it  confirmed. In an effort to make up for this shortfall, the Wii version will include five extra songs. No idea what those five songs will be, but there you go.

Or to put it another way: on June 22nd, some people will be able to play a gimped version of Rock Band on the Wii. Hello Cleveland!

Trailer Park: Requiem: Bloodymare (Gameplay)

 

Let's be brutally honest - Requiem: Bloodymare strikes us as one of the worst game titles we've heard in quite a while, sounding more like a high school death metal band with lots of bad makeup, foam spikes and hair gel than a cutting edge horror MMORPG. Still, going by the trailer, the game's not going to be lacking on bombast or blood spatter and could turn out to be quite a lot of fun. It doesn't look any more horrific than any other game with a wide assortment of monsters, skeletons and battle-axes - i.e. any RPG released in the past twenty years - but maybe it's got a few freaky tricks up its gore-soaked sleeve.

More details are available on the game's website, along with a link to download the full game that spookily goes nowhere and downloads nothing. The mindgames begin...

We're alive!

Oops! Gamersquad fell down the rabbit hole for a while there, but now we're back and pounding the streets, noses pressed to the pavement in search of  the tastiest morcels of gaming news. Thankfully, absolutely nothing of interest happened in the wide world of video games while we were gone  - honestly - so it all worked out quite nicely. Lucky coincidence or the mysterious fingerprints of powers unseen? You decide.