By now you've probably heard of "Random Beats," the Teacher/Gamer/Rapper who made a hip-hop album using songs from the old 8 bit Mega Man games as his beats. I bought the album (called "Mega Ran") and absolutely loved it, so I figured that since this is a gaming site, it probably wouldn't hurt to actually go find the guy and do a little interview with him.

When I was a younger lad, one of the best Christmas gifts my parents ever gave me was a Nintendo 64. With the console I received Super Mario 64, which my dad and I played for dozens of hours to get all 120 stars. That was all fine and swell, but after that, Dad never really got back into playing games with me. Sure, we'd do a few rounds of Goldeneye every now and then, but it never was quite the same as when we played through SM64.

I like podcasts. In fact, I pretty much LOVE podcasts. I'm subscribed to 27 of them. (My excuse being that many are short, weekly or biweekly video podcasts that only last a few minutes) This American Life, NPR: Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, and IGN's Game Scoop are all great (although the voice of TMA's host, Ira Glass, is somehow annoying. People who listen to the show know what I'm talking about) but there's one that brightens my day more than any other. This podcast is one that I literally look forward to every week, and I always listen to it first after synching up my iPod.

There are an incredible number of games on the internet, and not very many of them are very good. In fact, most people would rather light their pants on fire than play a flash game. There are several gems out there, however, and this week I'm bringing you a few of my favorites. Each game has a link to either play or download the software in question.

Note: I'm not covering mods or copies of other games. Don't mention them in the comments, because I'll just delete your nonsense :)