Morning readers, today in my news feed was a bit of a shock. The face we all know and love as the enforcer of XBL policies has turned in his two week notice.

Now whether you are a fan of his policies or not, you have to respect the man to sticking with the set policies and keeping things moving along as smoothly as possible. After dealing with the underage portion of XBL since the beginning, I can understand wanting to step away, but Stephen has stated that his decision is for personal reasons.

Regardless of this, I wish you well in your future endeavors StepTo. You will be missed as a voice on the Major Nelson Podcast and no one will be able to swing the banhammer quite like you did.

[source: Kotaku]

DragonVale has made another addition with it’s Seasonal Dragons! This one is obviously in time for Valentine’s Day… and is probably the cutest yet…

Let me introduce:

the “Love Dragon”!

“The rare Love Dragon hails from the Western Slope of the Berrywhite Mountains and only shows up for a few weeks each year when love is strong in the air. Getting one of these lovely beasts is sure to inspire your visitors to buy flowers and maybe even find a spark of love.”

From what I see, you can obtain this dragon by mating the Flower and Lightning. This is only a guess by what’s in the description, but I’ll post the exact combination when I figure it out.

UPDATE: Confirmed! You get the Love Dragon from breeding the Lightning and Flower dragons. Lightning on the left, Flower on the right. You may get a few unwanted dragons, but keep trying.

Happy Breeding!

Last year (at the last minute) PsychoVandal and I competed to reach our goodreads.com reading goals. We failed. However, this year we’re back with a vengeance and ready to get’er done! We even got InStyle76 to join us!

Each of us will receive a prize once we’ve reach the goal of reading 24 books. The prizes are as follows:

• PsychoVandal: TBD
• SickNdehed: TBD (we’re literally arguing about it as I type this. I keep telling Psycho he needs to pick a prize. But everytime I ask he says “what’s yours?…you can’t make me pick something if YOU haven’t even picked a prize yet.” I guess we’ll get back to you on this one.)
• InStyle76: Max 2 Dual Node Percussion Massager
• AJ: A Trip to Universal
• Josh: A Nintendo DSi

As promised, here’s out first monthly reading update:

PsychoVandal has taken off running by reading 4 books this month!

I finished 1 book for January.

Instyle76 started reading a book but didn’t finish it. I can’t blame him though. We’ve been working our asses off finishing up some web projects. He also seems to like reading those really long 500+ paged fantasy books. We’ll check back with him next month.

AJ read 1 book.

Josh read 3 books.

… and some other book called “What Do I Do?” which I couldn’t find a picture for.

AND.. that’s where we’re at for January 2012. As always please let us know what YOU’RE reading. Who knows? maybe one of us will read that next.

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“Conquer” by sicfReak0 on 12.22.2010

“My Elite” by RunningRenegade on 1.28.2011

“The End of All Things” by TheMoleN on 10.12.2010

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Nothing. But. DRAGONS! How awesome is that? Pretty friggin awesome.

Sick DL’d this game weeks ago for the iPhone (it’s also available on iPad) and I never even gave it a gander until a couple days ago. I was bored and decided to open it up and check it out. I loved it.

The premise is easy: you’re given a floating island to start your very own Zoo/Theme Park dedicated to Dragons. DragonVale starts you off with an easy tutorial on how to care for your dragons, manage your park, make money, and buy buildings and habitats from the market.

Everything is time based. Each egg you hatch, each building you put up, growing food, and breeding (yes, I said breeding, but we’ll get to that later.) — takes a set amount of time to occur.

That’s where a currency called “Gems” come into play. These red “Gems” help by speeding things up and instantly readies the task at hand. The tutorial sets you up with a few from the start so you breeze right through it, but these gems are limited, and to replenish them you have to Purchase them through an in-app market.
(DragonVale is a Free-2-Play iOS game with in-app micro-transactions.)

Now don’t get started on the whole “OH, That’s how they get ya” routine. These guys at Backflip Studios gave you an AWESOME free game to play. You don’t HAVE to purchase their in-game content… but if you like the game enough to play it, then they deserve a little somethin somethin to help bring you the next piece of awesome they’re working on. So buy some friggin Gems. AND, you should look at ALL the “Freemium” games that way. I’m gonna buy Gems JUST for the Strong Bad reference in the game. There are meme references, too. Let’s see if you find ‘em.

I digress. You can also earn gems through your Game Center friends. You have the opportunity to grant a certain number of gems per day to anyone on your Friends List. You hook them up, they’ll hook you up. It’s that simple… Unless you have no friends playing… Get them to. EVERYONE should check this game out. I want more friends playing too. (Hit me up! GT=PsychoVandal) You can also link your Facebook account to invite all those lovely friends, too. Friends, Friends, Friends!

Above is a shot of the floating islands. You get one to start, but after a while, you’ll have an entire floating fleet of them harboring your massive Dragon park. The amount of stuff you can buy is crazy. You’ll fill ‘em up quick when you get the cash flowing.

OK, to the Breeding. Each Dragon has an element type. The basic Elements are Fire, Earth, Water, Lightning, Air, Plant, and Cold (Ice). I almost said “Heart”… Captain Planet came to mind… Anyway, you hatch the egg, feed it to maturity, then send it to the Breeding Cave and wait for the “Magic” to happen. The cool part is that there are MULTIPLE Dragons for each combination, as well as rare ones that come from breeding the hybrids. I counted 32 types from different combinations, but I heard they’ve added MORE. I also assume they’ll KEEP adding them in the future. This just makes me think of Pokemon, “I gotta catch em all”, I know I want to see them all.

Anyway, I’m done telling you about the game. you need to see this thing for yourself. Go Download(desktop, click here to open in iTunes) this bad boy NOW. And, while you wait for that to happen, watch this…

The boys at Backflip have done good. Real Good. A great game idea with great artwork and usability like this should be in your Top Games folder on your iPad or iPhone. This game will keep you entertained for a LONG time. Follow them at @BackflipStudios on Twitter to keep up to date on new DragonVale additions and new games they produce!

Today… We’re talking “Magic”!

“Magic” by Cyber Connor on 10.09.2010

“I Have Powers!” by The Ninja Kai on 1.09.2011

“I’m A Wizard” by Lord Lulzinheim on 9.26.2010

Want to be included in our next Screenshot Sunday?
Send an email to Screenshots@AMatchMadeInHalo.com with a link to your image or fileshare on Bungie.net. OR Better yet, Tag them using the in-game tagging system with “SSS”.

So, come home today and sit down to check out some news before I go perfect my mage on Skyrim. Seems people have been getting invites to the Halo 4 beta.

Of course all this is a hoax, the content editor of 343i (David Ellis) even going on record and saying there is no beta but still a possibility in the future. A very expected joke played by people on the internet.

I was actually a little disapointed to not find some fake beta invites floating around in my inbox. Almost feels like I was left out of all the fun. Anyone get a message about the fake beta?

[source: Joystiq]

No time.

New Year:

One of my resolutions this year was to give you guys new stuff to read about, new games to check out, and most of all, more content. So far, that hasn’t happened.

I’m sorry.

Slap me, yell at me, or kick my shins. I just hope you can forgive me.

New Missions:

Room Cleaning…
If you’ve been keeping up with us at the end of last year, you’d remember that we had a GoodReads Reading Challenge and that Sick’s prize for completing was ME cleaning the kids’ room. Well I have been working on that… DEAR GOD was it a challenge. I’ve been hacking at it bit by bit like you would a big tree with a machete… It’s taken a week.
And Tomorrow should be the last day… Thank BUDDHA! I need some Zen after that…

Site…
We’re also going to be doing a little straightening up around here. People need props, we have more stuff to add, and a way to make certain parts of the site look better. So stay tuned and, “Please excuse our mess while we remodel”… something of that sort.

Achievements…
Another thing from last year was my Hunting Party. I’m adding stuff to that. Tips, Tricks, and not so many Cheats. I don’t like cheating, but I know some of you do, so I’ll post things that I find that might help you through the games that I talk about here.

New Problems:

Nunya! Just know that this is why I be slackin!

Complaints…
What’s a video game writer if he doesn’t have shit to complain about? Yeah, Yahtzee? He doesn’t complain…

New Findings:

Oh boy have I got some treats for YOU! I’m gonna roll them out one by one over the next week, so keep a look out. Here’s a sneak peak at what’s in store…

There’s a tidbit of what’s to come… I’m also revamping some of the other posts I started last year, adding more stuff that I hope you guys like. Of course, If you DO NOT, you can always let me know in the comments. Just be constructive about it…. Oh yeah, and Nice.

Props to those who give me the names of the three games in these Pics in the comments below. (Hint: Nothing to do with an AR)

“Immortal” by Xx808RGARCIAxX on 12.26.2010

“Sapphire” by Grim 0 on 9.24.2010

“Defend” by M a x w e l l on 1.29.2011

Want to be included in our next Screenshot Sunday?
Send an email to Screenshots@AMatchMadeInHalo.com with a link to your image or fileshare on Bungie.net. OR Better yet, Tag them using the in-game tagging system with “SSS”.

So, with the decision to go forward with my project to build a MAME cabinet…I am faced with one glaring decision that could make or break this project. How much money can I throw at this?

While I am in no rush to complete the project, it would be fairly awesome to assemble this rig ASAP. So far the biggest way for me to cut costs on this project will be to find a way to get the cabinet itself built for cheap. There are a few arcades local to my area, so my hope is one of them puts up an old cabinet for sale that isn’t one of the top sellers.

Having a pre-built arcade cabinet would cut down some costs of the project and I can always redesign my control panel around the available space. The only requirement for the control panel is that it must be comfortable for two players to game alongside each other. I would jump for joy if I could locate a decent condition cabinet for a few hundred dollars locally.

The real question about all this still remains, do I charge my friends to play on this awesome machine once it is done or not?