The joy of encountering video game references in unlikely places never ceases. A friend sent over a link to a new Big Boi song featuring Andre 3000 and Raekwon called "Royal Flush." The song is, well, quite good. Listen to it at this link.

Here's the verse:

The morals that you think you got... go out the window /

When all the other kids are fresh and they got new Nintendo

Rap and gaming fans salute you, Andre 3000. And it's in a verse that's about trying to live a positive life, no less. Good stuff.

[UPDATED: Much larger image of group shot now clickable below. Test you identification skills!]

Tallest man. Heaviest twins. Person with the longest, curliest finger nails. Those are the Guinness Book of World Records my friends and I were fascinated by in middle school.

But that was years before the publication of the new "Guinness World Record Gamer's Edition 2008," which has records that are allegedly more relevant to me. Allegedly. To celebrate the launch of the book, the Guinness people bore witness yesterday morning to the Largest Gathering of Games Characters. The gathering occurred on the Millennium Bridge in London.

Eighty cos-players attended. A new world record, as witnessed by the record-keepers at Guinness, who provided some photographic proof.

Look below for the big group shot. Can you name all the costumes on display?

Photos: Andy Paradise / Guinness World Records

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Sometimes I think it was a bad idea to let my little niece see my Nintendo DS. I didn't know what those things could do.

Was I this bad at age four, this obsessed with video games that I couldn't play very well? Or does my DS simply emit a sub-sonic siren song that makes it as irresistible as The Wiggles and Dora The Explorer?

I will protect my niece's identity to shield her from generous people who might send her a free DS -- and cause her to spontaneously combust with joy. So I'm not naming her. But she is four, has been in love with my DS for over a year, and seems to consider it the most exciting aspect of any visit my wife and I take to see her and the rest of my wife's family in the South.

Just a week ago, after my wife and I returned from a six-day Christmas visit, my DS-fixated niece asked one of other uncles if he had a DS. It seems that she was jonesing. When he said no, she said he was "stupid."

Given that kind of attitude, I think Reggie Fils-Aime should consider making my niece the American spokeswoman for the system.

I'm curious about how such an obsession happens. I wonder what synapses fire in a little kid's mind. Is it the flashing lights that are cool? The fact that you can touch it and make something happen? I believe it is all that and the fact that it can be folded up. Plus, it has games she loves, even though she can't play them well at all.

Let me explain…because, in case you don't know, the love that hardcore gamers have for games has nothing on the fixation a four-year-old can posess.

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In the tradition of the Multiplayer contributors thinking a little bit out side the box with the way they use video game controllers I have conducted an experiment.I have followed in the steps of our fearless leader, Mr. Totilo, (playing "Wii Fit" while sitting) as well as our resident rocker-chick, Tracey, (taking on "Rock Band" all by her lonesome) and gone ahead and tried to explore "Zapper Compatibility."The Zapper's been catching a little bit of (well-deserved) flack since it was released a few weeks ago, mainly because it is simply a piece of plastic that houses your Wii controller. That's it.

As a consumer (as well as a Nintendo fanboy), I find it slightly offensive that games are being marketed as Zapper compatible, implying that games needs the Zapper to work. They don't. Some games may play a little bit better inside of the little plastic shell, but it's not a necessity. To test my theory, I tried to find out if a game that we have all come to know and love, "Wii Sports" is actually "Zapper Compatible." (Watch the results above).

I also gave one of the Wii's biggest games of the year a try using the Zapper, with intergalactically bad results. But that video just isn't quite ready for public consumption yet. Stay tuned.

The off-days are over and Multiplayer is back. It's time to share some notes from my Thanksgiving full of games:

"Assassin's Creed"

Even Penny-Arcade can't deny that Ubisoft's big game is repetitive... repetitive for those who played the fun first two hours of it on their debug Xbox 360 and then played those same two hours again on their retail Xbox 360. Not fun that way. Is this a polished short-session game masquerading as an epic? 

"Rock Band"

• "Rock Band" was the new Wii, at least for a day in the Totilo household. Dad was disappointed that I didn't bring Wii back for a second annual Thanksgiving video game bowling session. Family looked askance at massive bag full of "Rock Band" (this bag, mind you). But they changed their tune.
• No Totilo can drum like me, yet I can't drum well in the hard mode.
• When the lead guitarist accidentally selects bass and then tries to correct it, the game shouldn't back us out to the band-member selection screen.
• Characters created in the game are locked into playing a particular instrument. So no one playing this game sticks to assigned roles, as players keep taking control of each others' characters in order to play drums instead of guitar or sing instead of strum. Why won't Harmonix just let Daddyo decide what he wants to play, instead of forcing him to take my guy over?
• Band World Tour mode needs to be online, lest "The Squirrels" will never play again.
• "Rock Band" can be played just fine in a suburban house, but only in a big-city apartment when neighbors are away; far too noisy.

"Crysis"

Do not try to run this game on a 3.0 GHz, 512 MB computer with a Radeon X300. Not that the game will warn you. Installation will proceed even though the computer can't handle the game. Then it will take six minutes to poorly load the first level. And crash the computer.

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Imagine you get a gig wearing a Super Mario suit. Role of a life-time? Job of your dreams?

To promote "Super Mario Galaxy" you could be asked to take a Zero G flight with former astronaut Buzz Aldrin...

Or, to promote "Mario Kart DS"in 2005 you might be asked to hang out with Ronald McDonald...(second video after the jump)
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He has access I don't have. He wears better suits than I do. He asks pretty good questions.

And he's better at running a large Japanese company (though, to be fair, I've never tried).

Could Satoru Iwata be one of the top people in the field of games journalism where I toil?

He's certainly conducted some great, insightful interviews with his own developers over the past year. Why should we let the fact that he's reporting on his own company disqualify him? I mean, it has been done before.

First he showed off his chops late in 2006 with a series of Wii hardware and game interviews.

Now he's doing his best Keighley-Croal impression with interviews he conducted with 10 developers of "Super Mario Galaxy." (This is one of the only places where you'll see Nintendo publicly highlight the contributions of people other than star designer Shigeru Miyamoto and a select few other top talents.)

I wrote about some of the best exchanges between Iwata and the "Galaxy" team in my MTVNews.com GameFile column today.

Iwata has asked good questions of the 10 ... "But I'm sure you had differences in opinion with Miyamoto-san from time to time, right?"

He's gotten them to reveal odd weaknesses, like this one from "Super Mario Galaxy" producer Takao Shimizu: "I'm the type that gets motion sickness from 3-D games." (And he laughed at Shimizu as a result.)

And he's opened things enough for his company to be criticized, as when he got Shimizu to reveal that "Mario Galaxy" is not the game Shimizu's team planned to make: "About two years ago, after we were finished developing 'Donkey Kong Jungle Beat' for the GameCube, we had some time to plan what our next game would be. I had suggested creating a new, original game on our own, but then Miyamoto-san said in a rather sad tone, 'I wish you could make a game with Nintendo characters.' "

There's more in the column, including a great story about how hard it was to make the music for the game..

Oh, and to all you doubters out there, here's Iwata on the value of co-op modes, specifically the "co-star" mode in "Super Mario Galaxy":

The Co-Star mode. Actually, the cooperative mode in a video game is something that I feel particularly strong about. Miyamoto-san was the one who made the original "Mario Brothers" game, so it seems like every time he worked on a new Mario game, he was thinking of new and fun ways to implement a simultaneous two player mode. But it just hasn't worked too well. That's what he had told me while I was working at HAL Laboratories. It was about the time that I was working on "Kirby’s Fun Pak" for the SNES. Back then, he told me "Kirby games move at a slower pace than Mario games, so I think they’re suited for two player co-operative gameplay". When I heard that, (Masahiro) Sakurai-kun and I wondered, "why does Miyamoto-san raise topics that he can't work out himself?" (laughs) Thinking about all the struggles we went through back then, making this game must have been quite a challenge.

See? See?

Nintendo spokesperson extraordinaire Perrin Kaplan can handle any questions I throw at her.

So why hold back?

In today's second part of my recent interview with Kaplan, I ask her about criticisms of Nintendo's Seal of Quality insofar as it affects the quality of third party games, the lack of a consumer program in the U.S. that's as good as Japan and Europe's Club Nintendo and about her craziest days at work (surely the day that "Revolution" was re-named "Wii").

I even got her to speak Japanese -- just a little. And we discussed the Stephen Totilo Game Company. But of course!

For those interested in the full experience, start with Part One. Everyone else can read on...

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A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Nintendo's vice president of marketing in the U.S., Perrin Kaplan. I've talked to her quite a bit but have seldom formally interviewed her.

She's not a bad person or anything. She just has a reputation for so-called Jedi Mind Tricks (aka not really answering questions).

Still, the 15-year company veteran must know plenty about what Nintendo is up to. And with news of her end-of-2007 departure from Nintendo hitting the morning of our interview, it was a good time for us to chat.

What follows is the first of a two-part interview, conducted in a hotel in San Francisco, a few floors below the demo suite for Nintendo's gameplay summit.

In Part One, she and I talk about how Nintendo is re-thinking its release calendar, what Wii consumers are really buying, where the missing "September Surprise" went, whether the Wii jackets are the result of lawsuits, and much more.

Part Two will cover recent criticisms from the gaming press that the Nintendo Seal of Quality doesn't work, her thoughts on "Smash Brothers" vs Xbox Live and the most interesting moments in her career.

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Sure, you could read my minute-by-minute breakdown of "Super Mario Galaxy" and pick up all kinds of tidbits about the game's controls, difficulty, the thing that was removed from the game since E3 and even the best way to cheat when playing the game.

But you could also watch this video. Four and a half minutes of two areas I don't think you've seen before. It's narrated by Nate Bihldorff, one of the top writers at Nintendo of America and a frequent interview subject of mine (another one coming later today!).

If you don't want to have too much spoiled, but you want to see the most impressive Mario jump I've ever witnessed performed without computer enhancements, cue this footage to 3:00 (or 1:33 to go, as it were).

For those of you wondering what the deal is with my "Ratchet and Clank" comment, brush up over here. And don't worry, Nate can take it. So can Miyamoto and Nintendo Tokyo, the studio making the game.For a little extra, check out a "Galaxy" bonus clip in part two.