Category: Entertainment

Some goofball dressed hisass up as one of the black silhouette dancers from the ubiquitous iPod ads and flailed around in a Michigan Apple store to the Beatles…er…I mean…The Kinks… I mean Jet. Everybody acted like they didn’t noticed.

[Via Cult of Mac]

I’m always fascinated to see what sorts of crazy new games Will Wright and Maxis (creators of the Sims games) come up with. Wright’s latest project, which has generated quite a buzz online, is called Spore. Players start off as cellular organisms and follow an evolutionary path (all the way up to intelligent lifeforms), tweaking (mutating) their creations as they go. This video demo by Wright at the most recent Game Developers Conference is so awe-inspiring. In a world of endless first-person shooters and racing games, Wright always bring something fresh, intelligent, funny, and creative into the mix.

BTW: Spore is built on a procedural synthesis-based approach (see previous item on the Xenon architecture), allowing tremendous amounts of game data to be stored on the game disc, traded over the Internet, etc. Wright says that he was inspired by the “Demoscene” and their ability to cram as much media data and performance as possible into the smallest amount of space.

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When I was a little kid, I was seriously creeped out by the Topps Mars Attacks! bubble gum cards. Even though the Martians were sort of over-the-top and funny looking, there was something truly scary about them. The Tim Burton movie, underrated if you ask me, did a great job of capturing the camp and cartoonishness, while delivering a satisfying degree of menace. Now you can see the entire 1962 set of Mars Attacks! cards at Trader Crack’s

Watching the E3 coverage, online and on G4TV, a relatively clear picture has emerged as to what the strategies are of the big three game console companies (Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo).

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is not really so much a next-gen console as it is MS’s stealthy attempt at getting a home entertainment computer attached to your TV set. They have bet that what people want (even if they don’t know they want it yet) is a box that can not only do games, but can be the gateway to a whole bunch of services and a virtual marketplace that’ll suck in the whole family. J Allard got a lot of snickers over a vision he laid out in the press conference of two 360 users: Striker, a hardcore gamer, probably the purchaser of the console, and VelocityGirl, likely his kid sister, who’s not interested in games, but uses the built-in marketplace/micropayments system to create T-shirts and other products, and designs game components to sell to gamers like Striker. Then, of course, mom and pop like the photo slideshow capabilities, the digital music playback, the movie trailers, etc. It’s one big happy family warming their hands over the digital fireplace thoughtfully provided by Chairman Bill.

Sony’s vision is very different. They’re all muscle and hardware, building their console around the amazing Cell processor. They really went all out to create a true next-gen platform that pushes currently available hardware to the limit. It’s all about wow factor and trying to get developers excited about creating levels of gaming experience not previously possible. The PS3 will have a removable hard drive and also have some home entertainment functionality, but that’s not really a focus. Same with online play. Sony thinks that online play isn’t nearly as important as MS thinks it is and they’ll offer more of it as the demand is there. It’s really telling that, as MS spent 20 minutes talking about Striker and VelocityGirl using all of the services on 360, Sony was showing jaw-dropping videos demonstrating the raw processing/real-time rendering power of PS3.

And then there’s Nintendo. So Japanese. Understated. Humble. Holding tight to their long-standing tradition of not overhyping what’s not ready to show (“understate and over deliver” is their motto). They showed scant little of the Revolution and premiered the weird GameBoy Micro, a cellphone-sized machine (with a teeny-tiny screen to match). But they seemed completely unphased by the bravado of the big 2. For them, it’s not about selling services or bleeding-edge hardware, it’s about creating the electronic equivalent of crack, games that are so good, so addictive, people will even buy the hardware just to play them. A lot of people bought the GameCube just to play Legend of Zelda, and Nintendogs, a pet sim, has made the Nintendo DS the biggest selling handheld in Japan by a wide margin.

So, Street Techies, time for a straw poll. In your opinion, which of these visions of the near future will win out (and yes, I understand that Nintendo is sort of in a category by itself and has no expectations of “winning” the console war)? Is the NEAR future about moving beyond the gaming experience into a wider entertainment field via the console? Or is it about creating mind-bogglingly immersive gaming worlds that are ever-closer to reality? Or does it really come down to something as “simple” as making really fun, addictive games without all of the smoke and mirrors that the other two players seem distracted by?

Discuss.

I just saw the video teaser for the game Killzone 2, being developed for the Playstation 3, and it was truly harrowing. The graphics are amazing, the cinematics are fluid and life-like, and the action is intense, like you’re suddenly in the middle of the “hold the bridge” firefight scene in “Saving Private Ryan.”

When this vid premiered today at the E3 Expo, debate immediately raged over whether what was shown was a pre-rendered computer graphics (CG) video or a capture of real-time game play (or a clever mixture of both). Sony claims it’s real-time. It, and the rest of the Sony press conference, has caused quite a stir among gamers and stolen much of Microsoft’s thunder for their XBox “360.” And gawd, don’t you want to cut through the crap on the: “It’s ‘360’ cause you’re now in the middle of the gaming experience?” It’s vacuous market poo. From now on, we should just start calling it the Xbox 2, ’cause that’s what it really is. They just didn’t want to call it that ’cause Sony has a PS *3*. So they paid someone who drinks far too many fussy coffee drinks and covers his desk in Koosh balls, Zen rock gardens, and other “brainstorming toys,” a lot of money to come up with an excuse to use “3” followed by some other digits.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the Xbox — it’s one of the few MS products I actually like. But the more hype and gooey marketspeak they slather onto the 360, the more I want to demote it to a 2. And the more I hear about the PS3, the more I think it’s actually a true next-gen console worthy of a number unto itself.

Click on the image above to see a larger image from Killzone 2 (likely a composite).
Click here to see the amazing PS3 specs and links to PS3 coverage via Gizmodo.

UPDATE Here’s a link to the game trailer (QuickTime).

I’m on “vacation” right now (the whole family is with me) and I’ve been looking for games to play with the kids while it rains outside here in Portland.

Having grown up on Car Wars, OGRE, and other paper classics, I find myself drawn to analog tabletop gaming as my kids get older.

Board Game Geek has a nice list of games that are free to print and play

There are other “open gaming” resources out there, but they mostly seem focused on RPG titles such as the labrynthinely-licensed D20. I’d like to make/find an “open gaming” licensed version of something like the classic Ogre by Steve Jackson.

Cheap A** games has a lot of great stuff for <$5.00, including a section of free titles.

Apple has put up a gallery of movie trailers (and other content) in high-definition Quicktime. The recently-released Quicktime 7 makes use of the H.264 codec (compression/decompression) technology which is being widely adopted as the new standard for everything from third generation (3G) broadband cellphones to high-definition TVs. One thing that’s great about H.264 is its ability to offer incredible image quality at surprising low data transfer rates, making it perfect for streaming content, video on demand, and mobile broadband.

To play these QT HD videos, you’ll need a G5 Mac and Quicktime 7. The results really are impressive: fast download times and crystal-clear image quality.

If you’re reading this story, it means we’ve successfully moved from our old hosting service to a new one. Hopefully, nothing got screwed up in the process, but Murphy’s Law is one that we’re very familiar with. So if things seems a little screwy for a few days, please forgive us.

Those who fondly remember the animated series “Pinky and the Brain” will appreciate this page of the dysfunctional duo’s frequent “Are you pondering what I’m pondering?” exchanges. I always loved the read-in-what-you-want subversion of such lines as:

Brain: Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Pinky?
Pinky: Sure, Brain, but how are we going to find chaps our size?

B:Are you pondering what I’m pondering?
P:Umm, I think so, Brain, but what if the chicken won’t wear the nylons?

And the sheer Dada of:

Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?
Pinky: Uh, I think so, Brain, but we’ll never get a monkey to use dental floss.

B:Are you pondering what I’m pondering?
P:I think so, Brain, but I don’t think Kay Ballard’s in the union.

Funny Boing Boing parody site here.