Turner Broadcasting System’s several-years-in-the-making broadband gaming service which I blogged about a few months back has launched to the public today.

Joystiq has coverage here, and Kotaku points out a set of viral faux-blogs intended to bring consumers into the new service.

There’s at least five sites out there, as reported below by Joystiq:

• What is ADAT?: A site dedicated to people suffering from Third Dimensia
• Upgradius: Think Gizmondo for video game characters
• X-Treme Platform Jumping School: The name says it all
• First Person Get Aways: A travel agency that specializes in video game vacations
• Jalopixel: A game car site with a very Gawkerish name.

After you wander about these blogs you’ll eventually get to the Gametap site, with this snarky little quote:

Well played. You found us out. That page you just came from? Not real. And there’s more like it out there. You see, you’ve fallen prey to one of our little traps to make friends with the world. We want to be your friend.

I’m not going to get into the arguments of fake marketing blogs. Draw your own conclusions. I’m just happy to see Gametap finally exposed to the public. I’ve been fooling with the app for a while, and it’s pretty entertaining to go back to the games of our youth, and to have access to some more recent PC titles I was too lazy to go out and buy. There’s some discussion on Joyqstiq about most of this being available via emulators and ROMs, but even if those are free, they are buggy, often a pain to setup, etc. I think it’s worth a few bucks to package these older titles in a cohesive manner, and let me drop in, play, and drop back out when I have a few moments. Oh, and the classic photo from Joystiq at the top of this entry is definitely a keeper.