Top Talk

Pull together a list of the most iconic video game characters of all time and chances are there would be very few surprises. Classics like Mario, Sonic, Pac-Man, Link, Solid Snake, Donkey Kong and Samus will always be phenomenally important to the fabric of video games, but all of them first appeared on the scene during a completely different era. They're unquestionably iconic, and the only argument is over what order they'd fall into the top 10. They each may have appeared in modern games (with varying degrees of success,) but they're ultimately children of the Eighties and Nineties. If you take that group off the table completely, and focus on the significant characters that made their first appearances this century, you get a very different picture of how video games now present their leading figures. Seen all together like this, they're a potent reminder that the tone of games, for the most part, has changed dramatically post-PlayStation 2 and Xbox. 1....

Greening dear readers, and oh my gosh, didn’t Money In The Bank come around quickly this year? What started as a way to get upper tier midcarders with nothing better to do on the Wrestlemania billboard has turned into an institution that arguably rivals the Royal Rumble as a starmaking device and profoundly affects WWE booking through the twelve months after the match has taken place. While it certainly didn’t benefit from the inflation that inevitably took place when the pay-per-view started and two briefcases were fought over, the unification of the two world titles means that the match (and pay-per-view) has undergone a renaissance most clearly visible from the way the event saw the first chapter in the Ambrose/Rollins saga last year, and the subsequent way The Architect cashed in at Wrestlemania XXXI. With all that said, I thought it would be fun to rank the CASH INS, as opposed to the ladder matches themselves. My main criteria are as follows: 1) The drama...