Print’s not dead. It has just been on heavily advertised life support. And now, in its critical condition, it’s being subsidised to your benefit. I know, you can get all your news from the magical intertubes, but right now, in what is probably a deal with the devil, EGM is giving out 1 year subscriptions to anyone who wants em.

Just follow this link.

In a previous post, I ranted about the subtle downfalls of digital distribution. One point I made was the relative inflexibility of fake digital currencies like Wii and Microsoft Points. In what must have been a reaction to my complaint, Circuit City has the mother of all sales on Microsoft Points this week. Basically, the sale lets you save $20 when you buy two Xbox Live products. For some reason, this includes the $20 Microsoft Points cards. Essentially, it is buy one get one free for points that never go bad.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well the problem is that just about every Circuit City in the country has sold out of them. Luckily, by using store policies against them, you can get a price match at competing stores like Best Buy. Yesterday, between price matches, and a coupon, I got $100 worth of MS Points for $40! Just wanted to let you guys know, if you ever want MS Points, now is the time!

I really like rhythm games, but have a hard time paying full price for them since they usually only entertain me for like 15-20 hours worth of gameplay. If you keep your eyes peeled, you can find rhythm games like Donkey Konga and Taiko Drum Master on clearance, since their large packaging and age seldom justify their mild popularity. The increasingly popular Guitar Hero is of course, an exception to this. Anyway, I have been wanting Taiko Drum Master for a while, but I’m a CAG and $50 seemed like to much. So when I saw it at Target on clearance for $9.99, I about flipped. It’s really fun, but doesn’t quite capture the crazy banging action of its arcade equivalent. Still, you can’t beat the price.

Despite Microsoft’s recent efforts to nickel and dime us with ridiculous microtransaction ploys, there are a couple of things we can do to get MS Points on the cheap. I ran across two deals today. First of all, signing up for 7-day free trial to True.com gets you 1600 MS Points for free. Or, as some would call it,a “pint”. Just don’t forget to cancel the subscription, or you’ll get slammed with a $49.99 charge. Also, currently at Best Buy, if you buy a Xbox 360 game, you can get a another “pint” for $4.99. For those still learning MS Point currency conversion, that’s $20 worth. With these two deals you can score $40 worth of MS Points for $4.99; that would cover the Lumines inflation.

On a recent trip to Fry’s I found a couple of interesting (kind of) gaming related deals. First of all, Fry’s currently has a deal on a Kingston 1 GB SD Card, $20.99 with a $10 rebate! Sounds like a good time to get that SD card for your future Wii purchase.

Also, I found this thing called a Gamebridge. It lets you play your video games on your computer. To explain in a technical way, it is a NTSC -> MPEG DAC. It takes Composite or S-Video, digitally encodes it, and streams it over USB. With this you can also record anything with composite or S-Video output. It does have some quirks, like slow software, but for the most part it works good. Usually this kind of device is expensive, but it was on sale for $14.99. I don’t really plan on playing games on my computer monitor, but it’s a cheap way to do video capture of video games. So here is my first recorded video. I present to you, the dumbest NPC ever.

Once again a game I wanted to play but didn’t want to pay full price for. This game has been $35 everywhere, but Chris found it at a Best Buy for $20. It’s pretty fun. It comes with a cute liitle GBA sized rumble pack too. It’s got a pretty tight presentation, great graphics, the Metroid music you love, and polished pinball game play. The developrs could have really relied on the strength of the franchise, but this game could easily stand well on its own as a pinball game. The included single-card Wifi gameplay means fun multiplayer as well.

When I first got my Xbox 360, one of the first demos I downloaded was Tomb Raider: Legend. I was impressed. It was adventurous, it was fun, it was pretty…..the graphics I mean, you know the umm, trees and stuff. Anyway, It was still $60, and I heard it was short, so tightwad I am, I waited. Last week Best Buy dropped it to $25, so I decided it was time. So far it has been very fun, but it is short, I am already about %50 of the way through. Admittedly I did play seven hours this weekend, so I guess 14 hours makes a good $/hr. entertainment ratio.

Tomorrow I have Jury Duty. I have never had Jury Duty, but from what I hear it involves a lot of waiting. Considering this, I wanted to find a good DS game on the cheap for tomorrow. I didn’t. Instead I found two GBA games on the super cheap. Target has put a lot for the their games on clearance. You should go check your local Target. I got Metroid for the GBA, which is really just the NES classic repackaged, for $5. And I got (*inhales) Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team Protoman for $7. Wow, that was a mouthful. The Mega Man game could be fun, it looks a lot like a Pokemon version of Mega Man, in that there are two versions of this game (Team Colonel/Team Protoman similar to Pokemon Red/Blue/Green, etc.) and it’s based off a card game. Games like this can be really hit-or-miss. If the battle system is fun and easy for me to pick up, it could be really addictive. Or I could just hate it. Looks like my Gameboy Micro will be seeing some more use.

Another quick CAG entry. This one is another cheap entry from a series I can’t get enough of. That’s right, I’m still lovin’ the Tony Hawk games. This one has me a little torn. The whole graffiti thing and childish voice acting is stupid, but I really like the cell-shaded look of the game. And all of the controls, combos, and crazy moves work out great on the DS. Special moves have been dumbed down considerably, but there is a pretty cool Slo-mo mode. Gimmicky? Sure. Fun? Admittedly. This is another $9.99 score, this time new from Comp-USA of all places.

After flipping through the previously played games at Blockbuster, I came up with this one for $9.99. Sure, I’m a CAG, but so far it’s pretty fun. Konami has been putting out Castlevanias like there is no tomorrow, but they all seem to be good fun. I’m sure this one will be fun, but I must say that the portable Castlevanias have been where the series really has shined lately.