Six teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, were arrested yesterday for mugging, attacking, attempting to carjack, and overall menacing in Nassau County. And the police say they were inspired by Grand Theft Auto IV. ...

Grand Theft Auto gets an '80s redux (heroin for 20 bucks back then seems a little unrealistic, however). If you ever wondered what the game would have looked like on the original NES, this one's for you: Undoubtedly "the most violent game on the original Nintendo, besides Duck Hunt." [via Kottke]......

As many gamers play hooky so they can play Grand Theft Auto IV, critics of the video game are voicing their concerns. City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., who spoke out against the violent game that's set in NYC doppelganger Liberty City last year, told WCBS 2, "This game plays to old stereotypes about New York City. Today we're the safest big city in America, with the best police force. This game, if it was......

Coming up on April 29th is the latest Grand Theft Auto extravaganza. The game wreaks havoc on Liberty City, which is essentially a not-quite-gentrified New York City (though it takes place in the current year). The latest leak from the anticipated game is a city map (we spy Roosevelt Island) and a map of the subway system, which has everyone opining. How does the Rockstar Games version of our 722-mile, 468-station subway system with 22......

A NY-based nonprofit called Breakthrough launched a video game yesterday called ICED: I Can End Deportation (also a play on the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department). In the game, the player chooses one of five immigrant teens, each of a different ethnicity and immigration status, and walks through their shoes -- learning "how immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights to all immigrants." A collaboration between Breakthrough, community-based organizations and......

For the past few years, the French game and humor site called Uzinagaz.com has been featuring an online video game which challenges players to prevent jetliners from flying into the Twin Towers. As the game progresses, the planes arrive with increasing frequency and eventually each tower collapses in a plume of digital dust. The tagline for the game, called New York Defender, says "Go beyond your powerlessness and use your mouse to fight back."......

So if you remember correctly, Grand Theft Auto IV, the New York City crime simulator, was supposed to be in stores by now. But between production delays and the million other great games this season to compete with, they decided to just push it back till next Spring and get it right. But just in case you've you've still got an itch for some Eastern European organized crime this holiday season, here's a brand......

Ghostbusters has been in the form of a videogame ever since it hit the big screen in 1984, and since then it's been through many versions and platforms. Seems it has taken nearly 24 years to perfect it though, as it's just been announced the movie will haunt us til the end up time with a series of top-notch videogames to come.First title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of Ghostbusters games......

The fourth annual DigitalLife event kicks off today at the Javits Center. Featuring over 200 exhibitors, it is easily the best preview of digital gadgetry coming to life in the fall quarter. Today saw new product releases from Palm (with the Centro - a $99 Treo follow up targeted to new smart phone users exclusive to Sprint), iRobot (new cleaning robots!) , Gateway (a sleek new all-in-one called "One"), and Microsoft (Extenders for Windows......

Into the Wild (directed by Sean Penn) Chris McCandless wanted to utterly divorce himself from civilization. He gave away all of his money, abandoned his car, changed his name and cut off all ties with his family. Adventure journalist Jon Krakauer wrote a very moving account of the young man's experiences tramping around the United States for two years and then spending four months living in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilds before dying......

300 (directed by Zack Snyder) As digital technologies get more savvy, it seems as though the line between video game and movie gets even more blurry. A prime example is the adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E. 300, which is out on DVD this week. Everything about this movie is overblown and over-the-top from the "brave few against the demonic many" plot line to the actors' chiseled......

The city's deputy mayor of health and human services Linda Gibbs announced some details of how the cash-incentives-to-the-poor program will work yesterday. Students (whose schools participate in the program and whose families meet the critieria) would get $25/month for at least 95% elementary school attendance and 50%/month at the high school level, $600 for each of the five Regents exams passed, $300 for taking 11 high school credits a year, $50 for getting a......

When released last year, the Nintendo Wii became a gaming phenomenon. Lines stretched around city blocks, people searched around the city to satisfy holiday wishlists only to come up empty handed. Lane Buschel and Steve Bryant, two Brooklynites, decided to organize a Wii tennis tournament they've called Wiimbledon (like Wimbledon, see). Wiimbledon is accepting a limited number of competitors today and tomorrow (the first day was yesterday), starting at noon. The tournament is this Saturday,......

If you're looking for a good way to mimic the great NYC outdoors, check out the NY Times article about police car sirens - the Times even has a separate page with MP3s of all the different sounds. While demonstrating the different siren sounds to Times reporter Cara Buckley, Officer Spiros Komis made his work sound like he's a DJ when trying to get someone to stop speeding:“I go through the whole mode,” he......

Five cars crashed during a crazy police chase on the West Shore Expressway yesterday afternoon. The whole matter started when the driver of a Toyota Camry was stopped by a Staten Island Highway Patrol officer. The driver took off and exited at Victory Boulevard, hitting a white Ford van. The Camry started to smoke, so the car's passenger got out and, according to the Staten Island Advance, went to call his mom. The passenger......

As part of Adidas's new spring line of End to End sneakers for Foot Locker, the German shoe manufacturer has created an EndtoEnd Project exhibit in an empty lot on Lafayette and Houston. Adidas had different graffiti artists create designs for shoes in an East London warehouse, so in bringing the finished shoes to the states, Adidas has the artists tagging a replica of a NYC subway car! Cue for a quote from City......

With the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer circulating a good six months before the game's release, NYC officials are giving the thumbs down. The Daily News has comments:"It's despicable to glamorize violence in games like these, regardless of how far-fetched the setting may be," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "The mayor does not support any video game where you earn points for injuring or killing police officers," said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor......

Well, it looks like those faithful to Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise will be able to steal cars in New York City in Grand Theft Auto IV. The newest GTA, which won't be released until mid-October is actually a sequel to GTA III, which took place in a "quasi-NYC". It wasn't enough to have Activision's game True Crime, where you could be a rogue street cop (maybe not so far from the truth),......

The Wind That Shakes The Barley (directed by Ken Loach): This weekend as all of the Celtic-themed Murray Hill bars fill with green beer drinking louts honor your Irish leanings at the movies with Ken Loach's new film, The Wind That Shakes The Barley. Winner of last year's big Cannes film festival prize the Palm D'Or, the film follows two brothers caught up in the "troubles" in rural Ireland during the '20s. The always excellent......

Add "Do you play video games?" to the list of questions you might want to ask your surgeon. The Archives of Surgery published a study that shows a strong relationship between video game skills and a surgeon's abilities with laparoscopic procedures. Reuters reports the study's findings show out of the 33 Beth Israel surgeons surveyed, the nine doctors who played video games at least 3 hours a week made "37 percent fewer errors, performed 27......

Some of our earliest literary friends like Christopher Robin, Amelia Bedelia and Ramona Quimby stay in our consciousness our entire lives. That’s why the job of “children’s book writer” is such an important one, and not to be undertaken lightly. Author and Brooklyn resident Lisa Graff tackles that set of responsibilities with both wit and gravity in her recently released first novel for young adults called The Thing About Georgie. Graff introduces us to Georgie......

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,......

THEATER: Adam Rapp’s Stone Cold Dead Serious is being revived at Theatre Row on the West Side. The surreally dark comedy deals with a struggling family on the outskirts of Chicago who pin their hopes on their video-game obsessed teenage son. The kid just has to put his skills on the line in a real-life fight-to-the-death video game competition. Fun fact: When Stone Cold Dead Serious was presented at Chashama in 2003, stagehands changed the......

MOVIE: In their ongoing series about The Next Generation of Film, the Film Society at Lincoln Center has been bringing award winning filmmakers to the Upper West Side to discuss the behind the scenes of their work. This newest installment features Ben Affleck, the Oscar winner who seems to be on the road back from being a celeb couple punch line with his work in the recent film, Hollywoodland. Affleck will be screening this movie......

According to the New York Times, the new new in Tokyo is spending 8 to 10 hours in a tiny cubicle, binging on media: ON a recent afternoon, at around 5:30, I visited the Gran Cyber Café in the Shinjuku neighborhood for the first time, to read e-mail and visit a news site or two. Checking in, I was assigned to pod 16-A. I loved 16-A the instant I saw it. I closed the door,......

Paul Kermizian, filmmaker and owner of Barcade...

Clothing entrepreneur Marc Ecko is suing the city once again. Ecko who found himself pitted against the city when a permit for a party to celebrate his new Atari game about graffiti taggers was revoked last summer- only for a judge to rule that the party had to go on after Ecko sued the city - is battling a law that makes carrying broad-tipped markers and spray paint illegal for people under 21. The......

That's assuming you have 10 hours of your life to spare. Fox Sports has a great little interview with the man behind the RBI Baseball re-enactment of the 10th inning of Game 6 in the 1986 World Series, which we mentioned last week. For those that were wondering how Conor Lastowka (the man behind the amazin' clip) did it, the interview clues us in. It turns out that Lastowka used a Nintendo Emulator on......

How perfect. 2006 is the 20th Anniversary of the 1986 World Championship for the Mets and San Diego Serenade made an amazin' re-enactment of one of the signature moments of the World Series. As a tribute to RBI Baseball, Serenade's "favorite video game of all time," he made the video above, re-enacting the bottom of the 10th inning in game 6 and setting it to Vin Scully's broadcast of the same game. If you......

Over 200 years ago people gathered under a tree near one end of Wall Street and traded securities. From those quaint beginnings, the New York Stock Exchange rose to become the most prominent exchange in the world and now you can own a piece of it. For years that privilege was only available if you had some serious coin and one of the 1,366 seat holders was willing to sell. Now, for about $72 plus......