Entries tagged “video games”

Okay, these are just fun -- a series of custom-designed Mario levels that let the little plumber make his way through a whole level without the player ever having to touch a controller. A triumph of cleverly-placed blocks!

Find many, many more at this list of Automated Mario videos

Put these in your browser, and shake well.

• Facebook apps are not a long tail. So says Chris Anderson, who oughtta know. The tougher question is: Since the recent changes to app distribution on Facebook's platform, will there ever be another popular new application on Facebook again. Or is the era of hit F8 apps over already?
• Prince is Rolling Stone's most underrated guitarist. The article's got a great shot of Prince's most ridiculously entertaining affectation of recent years: His habit of throwing his guitar away in faux-disgust at the end of his solos. His poor guitar tech Takumi is gonna take one of these spiky symbol-shaped guitars to the head one of these days while trying to make the catch.
• I loved Ian Rogers' post about digital music, "Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses". Choice quote: "Back in 1999 ... We naively and enthusiastically suggested to labels that we’d be a great place to sell MP3s. The response from the labels at the time was universally, 'What’s MP3?' or 'Um, no.' Instead they commenced suing Napster." Working in music promo online back then, I got to see those reactions first hand, and I guess I was equally naive.
• Rafe points to Jeff Atwood's great post about copyright and YouTube. I have the opposite conclusion than these guys: If YouTube has created something fantastic, and it required copyright violation to do so, then copyright law should be changed to make it legal. Laws are ours, people -- they're not carved on stone tablets.
• The PlayStation 3 is a complete failure for casual gaming. That's not news, but it's never been articulated as well. Especially damning is that even the fanboys can only dispute minor facts, not the fundamental conclusion.

Armin Wagner's created a brilliant collection entitled Crates and Barrels, cataloguing the ubiquity of these containers in video game culture. Though they're obviously favorites in 3D games for their simplicity (hey, that's a cube, and that's a cylinder!), there's something kind of pleasing about the way they cross so many genres and generations of games.

You can even get separate lists of the most recently uploaded crates and barrels.

These are the things you ought to look at today:

• Real Empires Ship. I could link to Paul Ford's Ftrain every day and never tire of it.

The Romans would have loved Steve Jobs. I can easily see him in a turtleneck in the middle of an ampitheater, explaining the digital lifestyle to the assembled nobles at some ancient equivalent of the TED Conference:

• Calendario Romano 2007. Um, I'm pretty sure this is like a "hot priests" calendar. It's like hot firemen, but with this one YOU GO TO HELL.

• "Trailing Spouse": a husband or wife who follows a marriage partner who takes a new job in different city. I always love the Double-Tongued Word Wrester.

• And finally, A Halo Hovel in New York City. They really should focus on the Wii and get a broader audience.

But I was able to find Nyclan, thanks in part to the colorful sign hanging over the West Fourth Street sidewalk as though it were advertising yet another tavern. The gaming center was indeed underground, tucked beneath a ground-level bar called Absolutely 4th where plenty of martini-sipping patrons were visible through the windows.

But down the stairs and inside Nyclan, the atmosphere was strangely reminiscent of a high school computer lab: neat and well-lighted, with a pack of young people intently focused on the monitors in front of them. But the monitors were actually TVs connected to Xboxes, the contents on the screens were the first-person shooter Halo 2 rather than educational software, and the attendees were sitting in extra-comfy padded chairs--nothing you'd expect to see in a classroom. They were supplementing the game with lively conversation: yes, they do actually say, "You got pwned!"

And then, from the same story, the pullquote from Marc Stubbs, Competitive Halo player, "Sugar and more sugar. No caffeine. I mostly do an energy drink or something." To each his own.