Judging from the site stats, plenty of you hunted for the birthday cake in Plastic Axe’s one-year-anniversary contest. But the number of entrants who correctly located and identified it was just a fraction of those who looked: nine! That’s right, nine! Which meant that each contestant had a one-in-nine chance of winning the Omega GM-1.

I headed to Random.org this morning to get a truly random number from one to nine, and the result was eight. And the eighth person to correctly respond was…

Ryan Allen, of Dryden, Michigan.

Congrats, Ryan! You’ll be receiving your GM-1 very soon. And thanks to all who entered. I may run more scavenger hunts like this in the future…though I think next time I’ll drop a hint or two so we get a bigger pool of potential winners.

Oh, and if you’re wondering? The birthday cake is here.  Thanks for playing!

Has it been a year already? Good heavens, it has. On August 25, 2009, I officially launched Plastic Axe; I had populated it with some content before then, but it was one year ago today that I officially flipped the switch and spread the word. It’s been an interesting time, I’ll tell you.

But I don’t want to get all maudlin and reflective; I want to celebrate! So let’s have us a little giveaway.

Well, perhaps not quite so little: I’ve decided to give away the Omega GM-1 that I reviewed back in March. If you’re not familiar with the product, it’s a set of sensors that allow you to connect a real, actual drum set to a Guitar Hero kit — or a MadCatz portable Rock Band kit with an optional adapter, not included — so that you can play real drums in your music game of choice.

Now, this unit retails for $250, so I’m not going to make it terribly easy to win this. You’ll have to invest a bit of time and have a bit of luck. You’ll also, I’m afraid, have to live in the U.S., or have an address in the U.S. that I can send this to; I’m not going to be able to deal with international shipping for this one. Aside from that one caveat, though, anyone can win. You’ll find all the details after the break. Continue reading →

Hey, remember that podcast I mentioned a couple weeks ago? It’s now up, live and in charge, for your listening pleasure, and runs an astonishing two-plus hours! Head over to the official site to grab yourself some sweet, sweet music-game chat.

Well, it’s an attention-getter, you have to give them that. The folks at Power Gig have elected to advertise the superiority of playing music games on a real, stringed guitar by collecting a huge payload of what appear to be off-brand guitar controllers, taking them up in a plane, and dumping them into a volcano.

See the whole video right here:

I guess now we now know where Acclaim’s PR staff ended up.

[thanks to Simon for the HOT TIP]

Don’t get ready to dismiss that other music game coming out this year just yet. IGN has just posted videos highlighting some of the tracks from the upcoming Power Gig, and as goofy as the game may look…well, see for yourself:

The Academy Is…	His Girl Friday
Bad Religion	I Want to Conquer the World
The Black Keys	Strange Times
Black Sabbath	The Devil Cried
The Get Up Kids	Martyr Me
Mastodon	Crack The Skye
Mutemath	Chaos
New Found Glory	Listen to Your Friends
Paramore	Ignorance
Queens of the Stone Age	You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like A Millionaire
Superdrag	Aspartame
Surfer Blood	Swim
Three Days Grace	Break

I have to say this is a pretty impressive lineup, featuring some deep cuts from some fairly big-time bands. Whatever else you want to say about Power Gig, you can’t say they’re not putting a lot of effort into securing a solid setlist.

Check out a playlist of all 13 songs after the break, and the gameplay videos at IGN by clicking the Read link.

[Read, via @murdoc129]

Continue reading →

The fellows over at Starpower, the Official ScoreHero Podcast, have put together a cast of miscreants and rogues for their latest effort, including Dan at Activision’s One of Swords blog, Tommy at RockBandAide, and me. Of here.

We’ll be recording starting at 8:00 pm Eastern (that’s 5:00 Pacific), and get this: You can tune in live to hear us “umm” and “uhh” without a net, by hitting the Starpower Live Ustream feed. I promise not to embarrass you.