This week we gaze into our crystal ball (rabbit's head) and see what the industry would be like if things like the 1983 video games market crash never happened. Spoiler: Nolan Bushnell becomes emperor. If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.

It's interesting how quickly countervailing opinions become prevailing opinions these days. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that the Internet is so good at challenging every belief I would care to share (and a few that I should probably keep to myself). It's good to question your beliefs and ideas, and it's good to have voices that tell me not to pin my hopes, dreams and livelihood to a falling star. I'm sure my wife appreciates all the naysayers who've stopped me from chasing daydreams that would lead me away from my fairly secure job with steady paycheck and reliable insurance benefits. But few dreams become reality on accident, and well entrenched cynicism will never stop me from daydreaming.

A lot of ears pricked up when companies started murmuring about streaming high-res games over the internet. Wild, crazy rumors about a world where we wouldn't need to struggle to keep pace in the PC-hardware arms race. A new world where we'd almost automatically keep up with both new system requirements and the Joneses. Next thing, I was thinking about jet-pack commutes and sex-worker AIs that downloaded right into your high-tech pants at the blink of an eye.

But I can count on the Internet to challenge those daydreams. Maybe OnLive's game-streaming service wouldn't be quite as shiny without the studio lighting and lens effects. Maybe that jet pack would turn out to be a gas-guzzler, or the AI sexbot would download and start up while I was in the middle of weaving through jet-pack traffic, and even then it'd be all pixelated and awkward. But a jet pack would still be pretty cool, even if it wouldn't get a reasonable price point and the kinks worked out until iJet 3.0. And maybe, like my purchase of the original Kindle, buying iJet 1.0 could be a small vote of confidence in the potential of the technology.

I have an insane theory about the airline industry — I think they genuinely want me to stop flying on their airplanes.

I think that when major air-carriers tuck into their silk sheets at night, they dream of a hyper-efficient fleet filled with steely-eyed business class flyers with practiced methods of travel and corporate expense accounts. Never again would they be burdened with a bunch of pesky amateur flyers with screaming kids and an over-inflated sense of entitlement just because the family managed to scrounge up a few hundred dollars to fly to Omaha.

Were I to write to Delta airlines and tell them of how I chose to spend three days driving across the country with my two boys rather than endure ten hours under their thumb, would the response be a curt but genuine, “Thank you?”

Sometimes it very much seems like certain companies are entirely comfortable with the idea of just annoying a certain segment of consumers away. You know, companies like Ubisoft.

I’ve been staring at this screenshot from the original Everquest for what feels like hours. The graphics are dated, of course, since the game has been out for a decade, but that’s not what has me so transfixed. This screenshot is like looking through a wormhole into my past and seeing a younger, less hairy me slumped in his dingy computer chair and trying to retrieve his corpse before sunup.

It was a time when I was still single and jobless. Aside from phoning it in on some computer classes, I didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life. I was 18 years old, living in the big city in a house full of crazy people, and my only real concerns were leveling-up my Wizard and whether I was going to eat Subway or McDonald's for lunch. It was an existence devoid of any lasting meaning or direction.

It sucked, but it was awesome.

God of War 3. As if I weren't lusting after this particular game enough already, the endless praise from the enthusiast press has only cemented my need for this game. Both previous games exist as prime examples of pure, unadulterated fun, and my enthusiasm for a third trip into the murderous realm of Kratos can not be measured on mortal scales.

What is interesting about this week, however, is the also rans. This is not a week to be too quickly dismissed as all about GoW3. Metro 2033, for example, tempts me with promises of moody gunplay in the fascinating setting the Moscow underground. Developer 4A Games describes this game as a love-letter to PC gamers, which is a phrase that instantly endears me.

I haven't even gotten to Dragon Age: Origin - Awakening yet, about which I know relatively little except that it is more Dragon Age, and thus is sure to be a hit. More Pokemon on the DS means the rich get richer and the addicted get their digital methadone hit one more time, and last but not least, the once might Command and Conquer franchise slinks onto the PC for a fourth iteration .

This is the paragraph where I point out what a busy November it is, but of course, we're not in the middle of the Christmas rush. This is March, people! Honestly, I have no idea what's going on anymore.

My six-year-old is wheeled back into pre-op wiping fresh tears from his eyes with hands noticeably shaking. I was not expecting to see him nearly so soon. In fact I didn’t expect to see him again for several hours yet. To the best of my knowledge, getting your tonsils out takes substantially longer than three or four minutes. Something has definitely gone wrong.

“We had a melt down,” my wife says with forced calm that tells its own story. “When they tried to put the mask on, he just …” she doesn’t say “lost it” and she doesn’t have to. I know what that panic looks like. I’ve seen it during enough blood draws by now to recognize that it’s an electric thing that takes on a life of its own. The anesthesiologist smiles from behind the elaborate gurney, frustration buried deep behind a practiced expression.

“We’re going to give him a sedative. It might help his nerves. Also, the medicine we’ll use will probably let him forget what goes on once it takes effect.” There’s a hidden message there that every adult in the room understands. If we have to hold him down next time we take him in for surgery, the message says, at least he won’t remember it.

“I just couldn’t do it, Daddy.” Fresh tears threaten to spill onto his cheek. I nod in what I think is a fatherly way, but I don’t understand and I’m terrified that he will see the horrible hint of disappointment that I am working so hard to hide.

Forced death is something I've had an aversion to ever since the game Nocturne, in which you were forced into a hallway full of doors in which only one door didn't lead to instant death. Given the buggy nature of the game and the long load times, that hallway was not a fun experience. Instead it was more like an hour of desk-pounding frustration as I screamed at my computer screen every 5 seconds.

I've come around since then, as I've seen a few examples of death as a useful mechanic. Certainly Braid's rewinding of time helped me see the instructive value of the occasional death. There've been plenty of FPS games where the camera shows me who killed me, letting me know what I'm up against. There's also Starcraft 2, which what little I've gotten to play of the beta has me addicted to their replay feature.

Maru is different though. Maru, from Jesse Venbrux, is a 2D platformer where you jump between different platforms, moving toward a goal and avoiding spikes, except the gravity is towards the platform, not down--very similar to how Super Mario Galaxy works, but in 2D.

What stood out to me about the game though was how it handles death. You collect extra men as floaty little orbs that look just like your character's head. However when you die, you turn into a floaty little white orb of light. When you get back to where you died, you can pick that up. You then run into platforms that need those light orbs before you can proceed.

Death in a game can certainly be a learning experience, but having be required to pass? You get a little ball of light when you die that you have to collect and spend later. It's similar to how The Nexus works in Demon's Souls. In Demon's Souls, when you die you can attack demons for more souls in order to become more powerful. Except here, it's required to progress.

Why You Should Check This Out: Besides the forced suicide, it's an interesting platformer that has some really great physics. There's only 7 levels, though sometimes you may need to go through a level multiple times. The art and music are both pretty good for an indie platformer and certainly not generic. The multicolored platforms and weird, bugeyed protagonist give the art a different feel than most other games. While they're requiring you to die to complete the game, it doesn't feel too forced or onerous. Instead, it's a refreshing way to use death in a platformer as more than just a way to burn up extra lives.

My girlfriend and I are sitting on our recliner couch in that curious together-but-apart configuration that has become our weekday mainstay. She is furiously trying to prepare a lesson for the class she’s supposed to teach the next morning, while I am browsing the internet and updating my GameFly queue. As the TV drones on in the background, a flash of recognition tears my eyeballs away from the computer.

“God of War III is out next Tuesday”, I mutter, lost in a fugue of geekish intensity. It’s hardly a revelation, but there’s a feeling of being blindsided that’s hard to process, as though the game were silently dropping out of nowhere. My girlfriend pauses to give me a pitiful look, the kind only given to very stupid dogs or very ugly cats.

“I could always buy it for you”, she teasingly replies.

“That’s a great idea,” I say, “I mean, it worked out so well the last time.”

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble may have a suggestive title, but the game itself renders it more flippant than controversial. DHSG is set in 1920's America, where a group of young girls have decided to become upstanding independent-minded women, and make a lot of mischief for authority figures along the way.

Besides being draped in some wonderfully period-centric art, the story and dialogue are all pulled from similar inspirations. It's got plenty of 1920's slang to satisfy anyone's longings for quirky dialogue. The story is presented similarly to an RPG, with a series of quests that help move along the main story. It's wonderfully written and involves plenty of adults up to no good – and of course the kids who catch them!

The various mini-games are all about how the girls deal with these events, such as the principal finding you loose in the hallway during class. The girls could break out in such uproarious behavior as flirting, insult contests or even lying. Truly these girls are the height of controversy.

The gameplay itself is described as a “computer board game”. The board and pieces are actually rendered like a board game and most of the game's events happen on cards with dice. But I've never seen a board game like this, the game takes full advantage of the automated setting to make a game that's something a little more.

It scratches that board game itch without resorting to the normal board game tedium. The feel of a board game is intact, but the fast pace and sheer breadth of the game are far beyond what most board games can attain.

Why You Should Check This Out – An original setting, wonderful dialogue, and some interesting mechanics combine to make a truly original “computer board game”. Plus, where else can you win by exposing the maintenance man's secret love for a teacher, then blackmailing him? It's as the site says “This is the game where good girls get better by being bad!”

This week the crew looks back on Valve's latest Portal 2 marketing (or was it?!) scheme and how it fits in with the industry at large. Cory also sits down with Collin Moore, the community manager for Irrational Games! If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.