Alright readers, here we go! Tournament time.

Starcraft II is upon us, and good gravy is it ever delicious. So, before we have a huge skill gap develop between people who have played it for 20,000 hours and those who have played it for 3, its’ time to meet one another in glorious combat.

The Astringent Gaming Journal presents: The Astringent Gaming Starcraft II Open!

The tournament will start on Wednesday, August 4th. Registration is due NO LATER THAN Monday, August 2nd. You have all day on Monday, but the first minute of Tuesday will be considered LATE.

To enter, send an email to originofbob@astringentgaming.com, with the following information:

• Subject must contain the words “Starcraft II”
• Your real name
• Your name in Starcraft II
• Your shirt size

The top four finishers will receive totally sweet T-shirts commemorating the event. I will post a picture here as soon as the design is finalized. You may also achieve mild fame, because many of the matches will end up posted on my YouTube channel, TAGJStarcraft2. All matches that get posted on YouTube will be getting commentary tracks done by me! Woo. (If someone out there can help me set up a UStream or something for future tournaments, please get in touch with me.)

I, OriginOfBob, will also be adding you as a friend in Starcraft II. I would like to be a spectator in as many matches as possible, but if I can’t, at least one player is required to email me the replay, or the match will be considered void and both players will be disqualified. I will be getting in touch with all players through their Starcraft II accounts and/or email addresses regarding the scheduling of matches. It will be your responsibility to make sure the match gets played. If a match time is agreed upon, any player who is a no-show will be disqualified after 30 minutes of absence.

We will be using only official Blizzard maps. They are as follows:

• Agria Valley
• Crossfire
• Xel’Naga Caverns
• Nightmare
• Terminus
• Lost Temple (only as a tiebreaker)

All matches will be best of three, with the exception of the finals, which will be best of five. To determine which map is played first, players will take turns voting against a map, until one is left. The loser of the first round picks the second map. If it comes to a third round, the map will be Lost Temple.

The final two players will use a separate map list to be announced later on.

So start emailing me! I don’t care how well I know you already, you must send me an email to be considered an entrant. Absolutely everyone is invited to compete, and the more the merrier! Don’t forget to follow the above instructions for sending your email, and please don’t be late.

Alright people, let’s start fighting over shirts!

Zombies are everywhere. Like literally everywhere. The mythos of an unknown infection that spreads over the world has crossed over every medium as far as I can fathom. Movies, Games of all breeds, and Books, have all been grasped by the Zombie phenomenon . This widespread media consumption of the Zombie theory has made its own infection on the earth. It’s something fascinating to watch as imaginative ways of honoring the mythos happens every single day. Not too long ago a simple game has come out for just 1 dollar that has a contagious pull all of it’s own .

Quick question before I kick this off: Were you able to even read that title? It’s shockingly bad. Luckily, The game is not.

This disjunct scramble of internet garble is actually the title of a game on the Xbox live arcade. It’s controls handle like the popular twin stick shooter Geometry Wars. You start in a field with a gun. There is your story.

While you are playing you are serenaded by an original work that explains your situation… kind of. Using the right thumb stick you fire your standard machine gun to mow down the shambling horde. However, your machine gun just doesn’t seem to get the job done. Luckily there are a cluster of weapon pick-ups ranging from shotgun to laser gun and every gamut between. As time passes your environment and enemies change. It is truly an experience to behold. I would tell you more but then you would have already seen it and I love to plug independent projects…. (Manical laughter).

Seeing as how this game supports 4 players and it costs less than a gallon of gas it gets my vote as something you should definitely check out. I’ll just leave this right…..here…………..>>>

Okay, you know Snake. You’re a string of circles or boxes, and you “eat” more pieces to get longer. The more you eat, the higher your score, but the more you have to dodge around your snake’s body. Here’s an example. Perhaps most importantly, it’s mega fun! Now then, what if you could play Snake (and have mega fun) in a YouTube video?

Well, you can! Check it out:

Word of this little easter egg is just beginning to spread around the internet, but here’s the essential knowledge:

• You can’t play Snake on an embedded video, because it has to be in YouTube’s newest player. Click the video above to bring it up on YouTube.
• In the video, he says you have to press up and left to get it started. Just left is fine. It is a bit finicky, so try holding the key down for a moment, tapping quickly, etc.
• It seems to help if the video is paused when you’re getting started. The video will play alongside the game just fine, but try pausing to get started.
• It’s super sweet. Spread the word! Link this article!

Well, what do you think? Are you going to stop paying any attention at all to your YouTube videos?

Big thanks to Rock, Paper, Shotgun for bringing this to my attention! You guys are awesome.

What?! Another cross-over Capcom?!

As you probably know, summer is the season of conventions and reveals. One of the biggest reveals this year had to be Marvel Vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, the next entry in Capcom’s genre-creating cross-over fighting games. Well, now we have SDCC 2010 (Comic-Con) happening just a few months after E3 2010. While Capcom announced a few more of the characters for MVC3, that was just the beginning of their hat tricks.

Earlier today at SDCC, a new teaser trailer was released for YET ANOTHER CAPCOM CROSSOVER GAME. Take a look!

Yep, that just happened. You just saw the reveal of a Street Fighter VS Tekken game! While I’m extremely excited for this, I’m also slightly worried; that’s three cross-over games from Capcom in a span of just a couple of months- Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Megaman Universe, and now Street Fighter X Tekken. Ah well, Capcom seems to know what it’s doing, and they haven’t let me down yet.