It’s been a great year for games and as we consider the past year, we would like to pause and reflect on the big stories that rocked NothingButSoftware. A year with upsets, surprises, and plenty of odd stuff; these are our top 5 picks for the most popular NothingButSoftware Stories of 2008.

5.) Maple Story Murder
Simply because it was such an odd story it grew in popularity, and was even given a specific name for the incident “Maple Story Murder.” A story from the land of the rising sun in which a Japanese woman was jailed for deleting another persons character from the MMORPG Maple Story. As ridiculous as it sounds it is true, and it was one of the oddest stories we covered this year!

4.) Mila Kunis WoW Confession
Apparently Mila Kunis is a big World of WarCraft fan, and the WoW community loves it! This story dropped during The Max Payne movie release when Mila’s popularity was already growing and this story boosted it even more, at least with wow fans.

3.) The Little Big Planet Recall
Most Likely the Biggest upset this year was the Little Big Planet Recall. When the release of this title was quickly approaching a sudden world wide recall was issued, because quotes from Islamic text could be heard in the video games background music. Sony decided to play it safe pushing the game back another week until the quotes could be edited out of the background music.

2.) New Street Fighter Chun-Li Pics
Although the New Street Fighter film seems like nothing to write home about, the buzz surrounding this film was quit popular here at NBS.  When the latest photo’s of Kristen Kreuk as Chun-Li were released we did a post on it and it became one of our most popular stories this year.

1.) F.E.A.R. 2 Weirdest Press Release Ever

The oddest story we have covered this year, and most likely our most popular post in history the “F.E.A.R. 2 Press Release.” Although there is a lot of meticulous planning involved in a major press release this one takes the cake. The Entire F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin release was centered around targeting specific Video Game Contributors and sending them creepy unmarked mail, with locations to creepy destinations, to obtain creepy briefcases. Mike Fahey of Kotaku was one of these targets and he had to drive to a storage facility in the middle of the night on thanksgiving to pick up his briefcase. Inside the briefcase was nothing more then promotion material for a F.E.A.R. 2 event in New York, but all the mystery in just obtaining a briefcase of promo material was uber weird.

When I was cruising the feeds today I came across a story that was so strange I had to do a post on it. As you may already be aware, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin is due for release in February, and promotions have begun in preparation for that.  There has recently been a press release for the game, and in and of itself there is nothing strange about that, but the way in which it has been executed is about a 10 on the weird ‘o’ meter.

Mike Fahey, one of the guys over at Kotaku did a post shortly after Thanksgiving about a mysterious combination briefcase he had come into possession of, along with it video instructions from a shadowy figure (Zoinks). Mr. Shadow said to post an image of the briefcase on Kotaku and when it is confirmed that the image is on line he will send the combination for it via the F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin forums.

Well, Mike posted the image in an earlier post and low and behold a week later, shadowy figure guy posted the combination in the Project Origin forums. After all the waiting the briefcase was opened for the first time today and Mike posted the video on Kotaku.  Once opened Mike discovered (as he predicted) a severed limb, nah just info on the upcoming F.E.A.R. 2 promotional event In New York.

Although we have seen some pretty meticulously crafted press releases before, this one certainly takes the cake. The briefcase wasn’t just delivered to Mike he had to follow instructions from an anonymous letter to go to a storage facility ( just two miles from his house) to pick up the briefcase.  The fact that the guys over at Monolith were able to gather enough information to orchestrate this is really cool, and frankly a little scary. I think they should consider getting out of the game business and maybe give espionage a shot.