Finding the diamond ring at the bottom of the champagne glass is so old school now, or atleast that’s what Bernie Peng, a computer programmer would like you to believe.

Associated Press reports that Bernie decided to pop the question to his girlfriend in a unique way by programming the popular PopCap’s game “Bejewelled” to have it pop up a wedding ring and a marriage proposal, once she reached a high score.

The marriage that took place this Saturday saw the couple’s wedding cake in form of a console and guests walked away with copies of the game as a gift.

Now who says video game nerds are not romantic enough. Now if only my girlfriend thought the same about me as well!

We, at The Angry Pixel, like to believe that we are pretty weird, but in a good way, though many might not agree with the “good” part. So we are always on the lookout for stuff that compliments our image. A normal search on the good ol’ Google always throws up some really crazy and weird stuff all the time. But sometimes, we stumble across something that makes even us go, “WTF!”!

While looking around on Google for some weird gaming peripherals, the search results regurgitated this piece of gaming goodness that has us scratching our heads (for a change!) that such masterpieces do truly exist in the gaming world. So presenting before you, our very first Weird Game Of The Week, Namco’s Chizu Saeki’s Dream Skin Care for the Nintendo DS.

The guys behind the game probably do not have a high opinion about the age-old adage that beauty is only skin deep. So they have come out with a game that will afford the gamers a chance to get all the goodness a beauty parlor has to offer, right on their couch, with their DS. Feed in your Basal Body Temperature (huh?!), weight, your living conditions, your skin type and even your menstrual cycle and it will chart out a beauty regime for you. Give it the details about the time period as in maybe a friend’s marriage date and it will spit out the skin care tips and cooking recipes that will ensure that you are the envy of all on the D-day. The game also includes 34 hour long videos that you can go through at your own pace to get an even more in-depth look.

While we are all game for innovative titles, this one is probably something of an overkill. We wonder how many copies this game has managed to sell considering there is really not much of it on the World Wide Web, and that’s saying something. If you are not on The Net, you do not exist for all practical purposes. We, at TAP, have crossed our fingers least we get to see a, God forbid, How To Conceive A Baby soon. Thank you Nintendo, but if we want to know, we will find it out the good ol’ way.

P.S. If you have been wondering who the guy in the picture is, it’s our Associate Editor, Reggie. I told you! We ARE weird!!

Hasn’t poor Kratos suffered enough? Got himself manipulated by Ares, lost his wife and daughter, not to mention his mighty God status in Olympus and all his powers!? And now he has to put up with people like this guy, who we’re sure will get ripped limb from limb in the goriest fashion possible if Kratos were around.

And poor Avinash Bali of Tech2 Gaming now has to add another horrible entry in his ever-growing list of nightmares. Attending the PlayStation Experience in Mumbai, he had to witness what could very well be the worst possible Kratos cosplay gone horribly wrong. I’m not going to rant on about how this is wrong on so many levels, but instead, I’m planning to sue Avinash for all the years of therapy I’m gonna have to undergo because of his picture. And Sony India, for ruining every bit of appeal God of War held for me by hiring this guy! Honestly, I can’t play another God of War game anymore! I tried looking away from the picture, but it’s got the same effect on me as roadkill and it is only sheer cowardice that prevents me from gouging my own eyes out right now.

Photo via [GamingIndians]

We all love Portal and think its the best thing since people discovered that the Internet could be used for stuff other than boring research papers. So quickly, before you question about how perverse we are, let us tell you that we did not make this. There isn’t much to say about this lil’ slash-fiction doodle, so I won’t say it.

But the real deal is, Portal is for lesbians! Or that’s what Heroine Sheik says. Obviously being as sarcastic as GLaDOS herself (we hope), the article looks at a number of in-game imagery that apparently point to such a conclusion - including the presence of an all-female cast and the “reshaping” of guns to fire orifices (or vaginas, for you purists) instead of bullets. Hmm, I always thought guns were just guns, but I guess I should start looking at everything in terms of sex. Not that I already don’t, but just saying…

After stumbling on the fact that the Weighted Companion Cube is indeed a male (hello, the achievement is called “fratricide”. Also, picture! ^^^ ) which kinda puts a lil’ ding in her argument, she pulls a Freud on the usefulness of men - “They’re cute, but they’re a burden.” Strange, that’s exactly how we men feel about women at times.

I suppose I could just as well look at Portal and start dragging religion and politics into the whole mess. Or I could just look at a set of blueprints and see a drinking bird. But I think I’ll go do what I do best. Run up behind a turret and grab it, chuckling as it panics and starts saying stuff that are eerily reminescent of what my girlfriend says if I do the same thing to her.

(Click image for larger version)

This picture has been sitting on my desktop for over a sodding week now, with me just waiting for our Episode Two review to go up, just so I could post this chilling awesome cosplay shot. I don’t really need to say anything beyond what you can already see for yourselves, and I am sure fans of our favorite mute theoretical physicist are just waiting, straining at the leash, to rip that poor guy to shreds with harsh criticisms. But Alyx! Sure, she doesn’t really look a lot like our favorite companion on our bleak trek  through the Half-Life universe, but as hardcore gamers who hardly have time to fondle our own girlfriends, we usually take whatever we get. Now if only someone gave that guy a crowbar. And a hard chin. And a thicker goatee. And more hair. And, oh, a life! Or they can avoid all this nastiness and just give me the HEV suit. And that girl.

Move over cinematic gaming! We’ve just entered a new era as far as videogame realism goes. Sure, it’s ironic that the world of videogames was intended as a way to escape reality, even as developers strive to bring more realism into our games, but hey, we don’t seem to mind! And in any case, it looks like we have the perfect solution to that one little console-hating partypooper that keeps saying “… But I can’t FEEL the game!”

In a markedly close step towards total immersion in the virtual world, a US surgeon working on “tele-health” has just made a giant leap insofar as force feedback is concerned. Meet the 3rd Space ForceWear vest. Designed by Dr. Mark Ombrellaro, the vest uses air pressure and force feedback to deliver highly accurate thumps to the player’s torsos whenever they get hit in a game. And the deal is that this little vest is highly accurate, mimicking bullet hits, RPG blasts, full body slams, melee contact, you name it, with great precision on your fragile, pudgy gamer body.

Showing off the device at the E4All expo, Ombrellaro’s company TN Games, said that they were even coming out with a vest that mimics G-forces and turning pressures for racing and flight sim games, so the next time you take a hair-raising turn at 190 MPH in Need For Speed: ProStreet or blast into a nosedive with afterburners screaming in Ace Combat 6, you’ll actually feel it!

The 3rd Space vest is priced at $189 and will be made available next month with full support for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, in addition to shipping with a custom-made title. As for me, I’ll just have someone whack me on the head with a mallet every time my head explodes like a watermelon in Gears of War as I wait for the next best thing - a full body tactile feedback suit and a complimentary copy of VirtuallyJenna 2: Feel The LUV!

[via Yahoo]

As such, I envy the guys who work at Google, since they get to do so much that’ll probably get my ass fired at my workplace. To add even more fuel to the raging inferno, it looks like they took their love for Mario one step further than I ever could. In a recent contest conducted in-house, the codemonkeys at the web’s largest Internet company were allowed to decorate their office spaces any which way, where one team decided that Mario was the way to go. The Dev Ops team, armed with cloth, wrap, posterboard, foam and lots of Mario love, managed to get the job done with typical Google aplomb, only to lose to a team that chose a Jumanji theme and a motion sensor box that roared whenever someone walked past. Cheats!

Livin’ in a Mario World [Google Code Blog, via 1UP]