Apparently, Mark Wahlberg does and that is why he refuses to play Max Payne even if he is playing the starring role in the movie adaptation. I am sure that you know all about Max Payne but let me refresh your memory nonetheless.

Max Payne is a third person shooter game that can trace its origins back to the year 2001. Back then, the game was developed for the personal computer and was compatible with Windows. Soon after the Windows version was released, Max Payne for the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox were developed by Rockstar Games (of course you know who they are, right?). A year after, Mac users had the chance to play Max Payne on their babies.

The first game became very popular that in 2003, a sequel was published. This time, it was dubbed Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. To date, this video game franchise has sold over 7 million copies worldwide.

As the trend seems to be these days, popular video games are being made into movies – and that is what Mark Wahlberg is working on. The movie is set to be released in October of this year with Mark being the star. And yet he refuses to get himself a copy of the game and actually play it for himself. He said:

I didn’t want to play because I have an addictive personality. I got more responsibility now than I’ve ever had with the kids and everything else. I don’t want to be spending 14 hours on the videogame and then eight hours on the set. It’s not going to work out.

Tags: Psychology

I remember having really bad dreams after watching a scary movie when I was a kid. Come to think of it, it still happens every now and then as an adult. Maybe that is why I do not really have an affinity for scary movies.

Have you heard of people putting the blame on video games for nightmares, though? I have not, really. Yet apparently, someone has been fingering video games as being the cause of nightmares in children. Thank goodness for researchers, though, as they have conducted a study that negates this belief.

I read an article over at Canada.com about this topic:

Television and computer games aren’t to blame for dark dreams about things that go bump in the night, according to a new study that finds no link between children’s viewing or gaming habits and their nightmares.

The research debunks popular wisdom as well as previous studies in which parents and children reported that frightening dreams were triggered by TV programs.

“We found no correlation between the amount of TV watching and computer game playing and nightmare frequency,” says Michael Schredl, head of research for the Sleep Laboratory at Germany’s Central Institute of Mental Health.

The researchers were surprised to find there was no connection between nightmares and computer games or TV shows – including the police and crime shows that 14 per cent of the children said they watched regularly.

This is a very interesting finding. To be honest with you, I would have thought that TV and video games causing nightmares was logical. Don’t think that I am not happy with the finding though.

Tags: Psychology

Yes, that is for real. There is such a thing as a peeing game. Ok, the name is not that crude (I apologize if I have offended some with the title) but the idea is basically that. Dubbed the Super Pii Pii Brothers (there isn’t much of a difference, is there?), the game involves putting on a belt harness and making sure that the neverending stream of urine goes straight where it should be – the toilet.

The guys at ThinkGeek played this game themselves and this is what they have to say:

The play mechanics are simple. Prepare yourself by strapping on the included belt harness and jacking in your Wiimote. A series of toilets are presented on screen and the challenge is to tilt your body to control a never-ending stream of pee. Get as much pee in the toilets as you can while spilling as little on the floor as possible. Sounds easy eh? Well the toilets open and close whack-a-mole style and occasionally the stray cat or other cute critter pops up. Spray a cat for extra points. Get too much pee on the ground and your game is over. With realistic fluid dynamics for the pee and over 100 different bathrooms from bars and palaces to automatic Japanese style toilets you’ll be entertained for hours. And wait until your friends see the multi-player mode with dueling pee streams…

According to the Japanese text on the box “Super Pii Pii Brothers promotes good bathroom skills and allows women to experience for the first time the pleasure of urinating while standing.” What we say is that virtual peeing is damn fun!

Uhhh…ok…

Tags: Think Geek, video game