Community Check-In: Belated May Day

Belated Happy May Day! Did you know that May Day is an ancient spring festival celebrated by a great many cultures such as Ireland, France, Germany, and even Sweden? **The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in the Pre 16-Bit days, when gamers across the world would gather in masses to pray for new and exciting IP's to be born into the world. May Day falls exactly half a year from November 1st (which in gamer traditions translates to Q4) when great titles are released into the wild for gamers to play and enjoy.

The most common way to celebrate May Day is to create a May Basket, filled with bargain bin gaming gems, swag, hot pockets, and various energy drinks. These baskets are then placed on someone's office desk. The giver then screams out whatever meme is relevant to the year and runs away. The person receiving the basket tries to catch the fleeing giver. If they catch the person, they must fight to the death in a game of Quake. And that my dear readers, is the history of May Day. Now onto some real news.

Community Happenings

Whispers around the office
I overheard plans to make changes to the commenting system. The comments will be down for a short maintenance on Thursday starting at 11:00 am PT and will be down for a short period of time (about an hour). You will also find messaging on the comments system during this time. More details will likely surface as early as this afternoon or tomorrow morning in theSite Enhancements or Technical Support forums.

5 Seconds to E3
Klondike is back again to give GameSpot members a chance to win a trip to E3. But you don't have to worry about embarrassing yourself this time. It will only take you 5 seconds to sign up and be entered to win a pair of tickets to E3 2012.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier Tournament TV
On May 22nd we'll be bringing back Tournament TV! Now, before you old school GameSpotters get too excited, there won't be a tournament leading up to a Friday live stream of the final match. If you live near the San Francisco Bay Area drop us a line at onthespot@gamespot.com with the subject title Tournament TV. Please don't forget to share if you can make it to our office to compete in person or if you'd like to be on a standby list to try for a slot to compete online.

Mass Effect Pixel Art Winner
There were some awesome submissions for our Mass Effect Pixel art contest, but in the end there could only be one winner, and that winner was yeah_writes submission, BEWARE! The following link contains massive amounts of awesomness!

Street Fighter X Tekken X Winner
A few weeks ago during On the Spot we did trivia a little differently, asking viewers to submit altered images of GameSpot staff members photo shopped as Street Fighter or Tekken characters. The staff argued and debated over their favorite entry until finally deciding on edubuccaneer's entry.

GameSpot Coverage

On the Spot Teaser - Rumor Has It
Sneaking in again to bring you the latest behind the scenes for this weeks On the Spot, we discovered that the fantastic fantasy Game of Thrones will be cutting across the screen during our live demo. Along with Starhawk, and Way of the Samurai. And as always we'll have our Maxwell McBargins to show of yet another gem from XboxLive Arcade. As for the trivia goodies, there will be some random t-shirts and Forza Motorsport 4 'Top Gear' DLC pack codes. Don't forget to join us on Twitch or Youtube at 11:00am PT to get in on the chatroom action because commenting system will be down for maintenance.

Making History
May is Video Game History month and many of you are aware that great games only get older with age. This week we will be showing off Street Fighter in celebration of their 25th anniversary. Be sure to join us during our live stream on Twitch today, May 2nd at 11am PT. Curious what else we'll be checking out? Here are other anniversaries we'll celebrate this month.

- Fallout 15th anniversary
- Metal Gear 25th Anniversary
- Zelda 25th Anniversary
- Wolfenstein 20th anniversary

Stay tuned for more details about how we'll celebrate these game franchises and more!

Video Game Forecast

Seems to be yet another strong week for most platforms. PC users will be delighted by sunny weather, TERA's release means it’s the perfect time to break out the multiplayer, but if you're looking to play alone in the dark during May Day, keep yourself company (and creeped out) with Call of Cthulu: The Wasted Land. Things are getting a little cloudy for the Vita but there is a slight reprieve with the release of Mortal Kombat. Short rainfall can be expected for the Xbox 360, you can expect to see a drizzle of arcade titles like Fable Heroes. And finally, Sony and Microsoft will both want to get their shades because the awesomeness of Awesomenauts is practically blinding. For more information on this weeks releases you can check out the extended forecast

This Week's Raffle Reward…

GameSpot community is introducing a new activity to our Community Check-In, the "Raffle Reward" program. How does one play the game? Simple. Just comment in the section below, seriously that’s it. What do you get in return? Well that’s where it will get interesting. This week we’re giving away a copy of Spyro Skylanders starter kit for the Playstation 3. All you have to do is finish the following sentence in the comments below:

Bonus Item

Check out this Portal parody called "If I were a Core", WARNING: some mild spoilers.