It’s hard to believe it’s been a week already, but I’ve finally caught up on the sleep I missed from the awesome time Musashi and I had at GenCon 2008. As our esteemed editor in chief mentioned, we were joined by occasional contributor Centurion and his charming significant other Lindsey for a weekend of gaming, carousing and scoping out the newest developments in all kinds of games. We were joined by a record 28,600 unique and over 95,800 turnstile attendees.

This year, your humble staff indulged in gaming to an unprecedented degree. We started Thursday night with a modern-world-setting round of Call of Cthulhu. CoC is one of my all-time favorite RPGs, and it was a pleasure once again to experience the atmosphere of dread the game creates, especially since Musashi and I were denied in our attempts to join a session last year.

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Just in time for Gen Con Indy, the fine folk at Privateer Press have posted the entire rulebook for Monsterpocalypse, their kaiju-riffic collectible miniatures game. I’ve been eager to check this out for months now, and it looks every bit as fun as I’d anticipated.

We’ll be stopping by the PP booth, and maybe even the Gen Con Indy Cataclysm event, to check it out. Stay tuned for further coverage!

Full details at http://www.monsterpocalypsegame.com/

…so I’m on my way to work this morning, and my son in the back seat asks me ‘Does Anguirus swim?’

Well, hell. I dunno. Does he? It’s not the kind of thing I spend a lot of time thinking about, but I’d imagine four-year-olds have a lot of time to spend pondering all sorts of wierd things, including what Anguirus does in his free time.

I also noticed that he was humming Akira Ifukube’s classic Godzilla theme to himself . Now that made me smile.

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You may not have heard of The Peanuts, but if you’ve ever seen Toho’s Mothra or Godzilla vs. Mothra, you’ve probably seen them and never knew it. Pop singers (and twin sisters) Emi Itō and and Yumi Itō, collectively known as The Peanuts, portrayed the miniature native girls whose singing prowess wooed and summoned the giant moth. The Peanuts were a pop phenomenon in their own right and recorded a number of albums, all of which are decidedly excellent.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a bevy of music clips featuring The Peanuts in their glory days.

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Wow - how fun does this game look? It’s like HeroClix, but with GIANT MONSTERS. And the minis aren’t even painted yet..! I’d love to do a to-scale HeroClix Monsterpocalypse throwdown, pitting a four-foot-tall kaiju-mini at my HeroClix characters. Yep, there’s fun to be had there…

Privateer Press posted a bunch of photos from a recent playtest of Monsterpocalypse at the game’s Official Site. Man, I can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

I’ve been remiss in not mentioning an upcoming kaiju-themed collectible miniatures game called Monsterpocalypse, from the fine folks at Privateer Press games. Privateer has been promoting the game pretty heavily lately, and I can see why - it looks awesome!

I’m not a big CM fan (I miss the act of sitting around painting minatures, something the collectible market has largely done away with), but Monsterpocalypse combines two of my great loves, wargaming and giant monsters.

Like other wargames, Monsterpocalypse’s units are parceled into factions, giving players the impetus to build up armies of one faction or another, and over at the game’s site Privateer has been revealing each of the factions. This week’s faction are the Terrasaurs which - as the name suggests - are gigantic lizards. Last week it was G.U.A.R.D., the mecha-heavy faction consisting of big bruiser-bots.

There will also be a Monsterpocalypse comic, launching in Fall ‘08 (alongside the game), and there’s even a development blog, for those that want an inside look into the game’s development.

As usual, we’ll be at GenCon this year, and we’ve been assured that the game will be on tap. We’ll keep you posted as the game’s development proceeds.