Whilst on vacation I saw a commercial for a new Super Mario Bros. game for the Wii and it featured four players playing simultaneously.  Holy moly, I almost ran out and bought the game and a Wii on the spot.  The game is only $47 on Amazon.com.

Pac-Man recreated in real life using hacked Roombas linked wirelessly to homebrewed guidance software. And the story makes it seem waaay more complicated than that. [via]

I was searching for some actual footage of the upcoming Wii exclusive Epic Mickey. But aside for some concept art, there doesn’t appear to be any actual game footage from Warren Spector’s Junction Point studio.  What we do know is very little, but sounds very cool, especially that insane steampunk, trippy, nightmarish vibe of the game.

Cool enough to make us want to buy a Wii.

According to Ars Technica: “In the game, Yen Sid, the sorcerer from the classic 1940 animated film Fantasia, has created a strange wasteland inhabited by the forgotten Disney characters. When Mickey stumbles into the world he accidentally creates a path of destruction, changing the world for the worse. Wielding the Wii remote, players can use either paint or thinner to reshape the wasteland, forcing them to make choices about how they will progress through the game.”

In addition to Mickey and Yen Sid, the game will feature other lesser known Disney characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the star of 26 silent Disney cartoons between 1926 and 1927 and the precursor to Mickey Mouse.  It’s rumored that Oswald is the actual villain in this game, because of his jealousy of Mickey.  Oswald rallies the inhabitants of Yed Sid’s strange world to take revenge against Mickey Mouse.

One of the ways he does that is by unleashing the Phantom Blot, a monster that invades the Disney universe and begins to disassemble it by using black ink and making the colors of the world run together (this explains the “melting” imagery used in concept art).

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is nothing I don’t love about the idea of older Disney characters unleashing their pent up rage towards Mickey, Pluto, Donald Duck, etc.  If only Disney would make an animated movie this dark and twisted.

What do you get when you take six very talented footballers (Paul Wood, Paul Klein, Darryl Stewart, Tom Pett, Lewis Foster & Harry Adcroft) and create a giant game of Guitar Hero controlled with footballs?  The track is Kasabian’s “Underdogs,” which, um, could have been something better.

Well this is certainly a clever use for Microsoft’s Surface table computer.  I’ve only played D&D a few times in my life, but I’ve got to say that the game paired up with the Surface looks pretty fun.  [via]

Damn.  First there was Iggy Pop, then David Bowie, then Blur and now Queen?  Yes, I’ve been rocked indeedy.  [via]

British band Blur is joining Iggy Pop and David Bowie and getting the Legoized treatment for their Rock Band edition aimed at younger kids.  I love this in everyway possible.  Everything from Albarn’s green eyes and Parklife-era track shirt to Graham Coxon’s geek-glasses and Alex James’s bangs. 

With all the sets that Lego actually puts out, I’m a bit miffed now that they don’t have a “rock star” line when you can put together tour busses, stages, green rooms, practice spaces, drug dens, groupie closets, etc. [via]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scott Bradlee and Ben Golder-Novick, better known as Eight Bit Jam, have teamed up to bring you this: classic video game music played jazzy-like with piano and saxophone.

Love 8-bit Nintendo games but not necessarily 8-bit musical instruments? Wish you could hear the soundtracks of those games rendered by live musicians as you play?

Eight Bits of Jam will come into your living room and provide real-time acoustic soundtracks to old school games such as Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punch-out, and many more. All you have to do is put the television on ‘mute’ and Eight Bits of Jam will take care of the rest.

Ho. Ly. Shit. Why don’t I still have an 8-bit NES? [via]

Despite tepid reviews for Bungie’s latest Halo release, the brand still has legs selling two-million units during it’s first 24-hours. It’s obvious people are still excited about the franchise, even though recent sales ares down 30% from sales figures of Halo 3.  No one is complaining.

The sales figures were compiled from VGChartz.com and they point out that 1.5 million of the first day sales total came from America with the other 500,000 copies sold in Europe and elsewhere. [via]

Ben Firshman has created a javascript emulator for the 8-bit NES.  And if you don’t think I’m going to waste my day playing Contra now, then you didn’t know me as a seven-year-old.  [via]

1) No thanks, you can keep your creepy zombie Kurt Cobain.

2) How cool is it that they designed his game appearance with the Daniel Johnston t-shirt?

3) Why can’t I remember the Nirvana song that starts, “Mom and Dad went to a show/dropped me off at Grandpa Joe’s”  Is it “Sliver?”  Someone throw me a bone here, I don’t feel like cruising my iTunes all morning.

They also rely on the internet and P2p gaming for their social outlets.  This is the inevitable outcome from an entire generation of kids being raised on video games.  But with all averages, they tend to be skewed by the extreme outer-participants.  And with a sample size of only 552, the average could look much worse than the norm.

I’ve never played Guitar Hero, but if there was ever a moment when I’ve contemplated buying a video game system just to play a game it was after seeing this trailer, featuring The Man in Black. 

I heard the game was getting a few Cash tunes, so here’s hoping that a few of his unsavory ones are on the list, like “Cocaine Blues,” aside from the hits and Christian gospel ones.

“Guitar Hero 5″, the latest rendition for rocking out but not really, is due September 1 from Activision. Late last week, the game’s full set list was revealed, and it includes some surprising choices outside the usual hard rock anthems.

Like Vampire Weekend’s “A Punk” or Elliott Smith’s “L.A.”, Sunny Day Real Estate’s “Seven”, Band of Horses’ “Cigarettes, Wedding Bands”, and Weezer’s Pinkerton-classic “Why Bother?”.

I would play the shit out of Elliott Smith on Guitar Hero.  Check out the full set list here.

[via The Daily What]

The mother lode.  The Fab Four finally make it in life by having their catalogue added to Rock Band. As if anyone on this planet needed to be reminded why they’re the greatest fucking band ever, you’ll be reminded at the 1:25 mark of the trailer, when it takes a hard left turn towards blowing your mind out the back of your skull.

I call dibs on playing George or Ringo.  I’m not picky, as long as it’s one of those two.

In stores 09.09.09.

Here’s the cinematic trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO video game.

Republic leaders have traveled to Alderaan to engage in promised peace talks with the Sith Empire. The most powerful Jedi have accompanied them to safeguard against an Imperial deception. The Empire’s real motive, however, was simply to lure the Republic’s strongest defenders away from Coruscant and set the stage for an audacious attack. Under the command of Lord Angral, the Sith fleet approaches the Republic’s capital planet for the first time in centuries. In advance of the fleet, the strongest Sith Warriors have flown a stolen Republic ship into Coruscant’s orbit. Their mission is critical – to destroy the planet’s defense grid mainframe hidden in the heart of the Jedi Temple.

More of this please.  Not only is this three-minute trailer better than anything that Lucas did in the prequel trilogy, but it’s also better than anything he did for the animated Clone Wars show.  It’s also why I don’t want to give up on the Star Wars universe, because there are great adventures to be told.  I just wish something like this had been the story Lucas decided to tell in Episode III.  [via Daring Fireball]

The classic NES boxing game is coming to the Wii, sans Mike Tyson unfortch, and this live-action, documentary-style trailer is from the guys who brought you the Wario Land: Shake It YouTube takeover sensation.  The gam is due in stores May 18.

Oddly, I always imagine Mac to be a little more Irish and a little less Italian?  Middle Eastern?  Vague ethnicity I can’t determine.

Also? Isiah Whitlock, Jr. (Clay Davis from The Wire) as Little Mac’s long-time trainer Jerome “Doc” Louis.

We’ve been anticipating this and glad to see it happen.  According to the AV Club, however, “Billy Mitchell wasn’t even the current champ–it was some dude named Ike Hall. Mitchell is only the third greatest Donkey Kong Jr. player in the world.” 

Your move Billy Mitchell – or not, since you’ve still got the Donkey Kong record.  We’ll have to wait until June 2, to see if Wiebe can claim that crown.

There are resignation letters and then there are resignation letters. Jarrad Farbs created the latter when he built a Super Mario Brothers game with his resignation letter built into the game play.

It’s a playable game, modified with “I Quit.”  Once you play, and you should, you’ll realize he didn’t quit or peace the fuck out, he simply wanted a creative way to say thanks, but I’m moving on. 

My new hero.

Now Steve Wiebe will attempt to reclaim the world record from his nemesis Billy Mitchell.  And you know that because this is being hyped like it’s appointment television, that something bonkers is bound to happen. 

Let’s back up a second for those who haven’t seen the documentary and are scratching their heads right now. 

Steve Wiebe lived a quiet life in Washington until he lost his job at Boeing and found solace in his video game obsession, “Donkey Kong.”  At the time, Billy Mitchell, a hot sauce mogul and a mulleted-icon in the world of competitive gaming, held the record for the highest “Donkey Kong” score, and Wiebe made it his sole purpose to break that record.  And in doing so he found a sense of purpose and drive he didn’t know he possessed. 

He not only perfected his game but surpassed Mitchell’s record and ended up with a thought-to-be-impossible 1,000,000 points.  A wave of media coverage followed and Wiebe quickly became a celebrity in his hometown of Seattle.  

Meanwhile, Mitchell hatched a plan to reclaim his fallen “Donkey Kong” record and, in the months that followed, Wiebe and Mitchell engaged in a cross-country duel to see who could set the high score and become the real “King of Kong.”  Billy Mitchell currently holds the world record. 

G4TV will air Wiebe’s latest attempt to reclaim the world record at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo on June 2.

I still say that if they ever make this into a feature film, and they should, that Nathan Fillion should play Steve Wiebe.  Maybe then he could finally have the breakout role the dude deserves.

From Supermandolini. But why mostly Nintendo related consoles?  I mean, sure there’s a PS1 and Sega Genesis on there.  But still.  Is throwing something out of the ordinary too much to ask.  Collecovision, Atari, Neo Geo, etc.

You must have OCD or the patience of a Buddhist monk to tackle Tetris in HD.  It took me about 20 minutes just to complete one line and then I gave up and will never play again.  Still, it was fun for that first twenty minutes.  [via waxy]

Thanks for Laughing Squid for pointing this out.  If you don’t hear from me for the rest of the day, you’ll know what I’m doing.  2600 Online features 50+ classic Atari 2600 games that you can play online for free.  Me?  I think I’m going to try my luck at Frogger.

Escape From City 17, an unscripted short film by commercial directors David and Ian Purchase (AKA The Purchase Brothers) based on the Half-Life 2 storyline, was shot on a budget of $250.

The commercial directing duo filmed guerrilla style with no money, no time, no crew, and no script. When they weren’t shooting they were hiding from security patrols in between takes. The spec project ballooned into a multipart series, and the first two episodes were made from beginning to end on a budget of only $500.

The short was sent to Valve, who in result flew The Purchase Brothers out to their Seattle headquarters last year. The second episode is nearing completion.

Amazon, who has been selling the game at it’s third-party Marketplace announced that it would be suspending sales of the game because of public outcry.  Not because the game itself is reprehensible and as a moral principle it was the right thing to do, but because consumers weren’t okay with it. Had there been no outrage, I’m sure Amazon would have quietly continued to sell the game.

You’ve got to love capitalism.

The Curvature has an excellent analysis of why this game isn’t okay and how it differs from the violence of say, Grand Theft Auto.

The point isn’t “oh my god, this game is going to create rapists.” The point is “oh my god, this game is going to make rapists think that people are on their side.” Which, of course, too many people actually are already, through their rape apologist jokes and excuses. The premise of the game reinforces the idea of rape as okay and not a big deal. It reinforces the idea that women exist for the sexual pleasure and abuse of men. And the preview of the game Boing Boing, which does not include any actual rapes but only attempted rapes, also ends up reinforcing the dangerous and stereotypical idea of your “real” rape victim who always cries, calls out in distress and overall completely breaks down at actual violence or threats of it.

Genuine and logical criticism of the game, I think, isn’t about it causing an actual number of rapes, but about it supporting and expanding the conditions that already exist, virtually around the world, that allow rape to be committed. The game might not create rapists, but it does make life more comfortable for the rapists who already exist, and life a lot more difficult for their victims.

And yes, I do worry about people missing those more nuanced points. I worry about the motivations of the British Labour MP Keith Vaz, who plans to raise the issue in Parliament. I worry about how exactly he plans to have it “raised,” and what he has done to stop actual rapes using real prevention programs, to educate the public about how rape is usually committed by someone the victim knows, and to increase levels of both rape reporting by victims and prosecutions of perpetrators. I worry about this game, an ultimately tiny piece to a huge puzzle of our expansive rape culture, being used as a way to express outrage while skirting the real issue.

The author of the piece also worries that reactions to this story will be reduced to two polemics: “you idiots, stop whining, this is no big deal because it’s not going to make a person rape anyone, anymore than Grand Theft Auto makes players murder anyone” or ““God, those Japanese are fucked up. I’m so glad that us good Westerners aren’t this misogynistic!”

Unfortunately, what won’t happen is for people to take a long hard look about the conditions of their society that make rape acceptable, er, not just acceptable but one that breeds a sort of blaming the victim mentality.  In America we still have conditions whereby real-life, less perfect victims continue to be blamed, shamed and accused of lying.

That’s not okay.

This kid’s costume at the Ohayocon is fantastic. It actually works too! [via BoingBoing Gadgets]

Does anyone remeber the maddening 8-bit Nintendo version of this game where the only thing you had to worry about was crossing the streams?  That game gave me video game rage the likes of which I’ve experienced with few games.

Mirror’s Edge, from EA, is a first person shooter with a physics and movement engine modeled after parkour.  Parkour is the snazzy thing where people run and jump throughout a city environment.  It was seen, most notably in the opening of Casino Royale and for geeks like me in the French film B2.

The game will apparently make you vomit, or at least pretty queasy.

Only 15 minutes into the game, my mouth began overproducing saliva, and I had to pause the action for a few seconds to avoid carsickness. I would feel like a total lamer, but apparently even the Penny Arcade guys wrestled with nausea.

Still, it made me wonder: What makes Mirror’s Edge so different? Sure, the action is swoopy and vertiginous, just as it is in many other games. But I’ve played plenty of first-person shooters that required me to navigate ridiculous, zero-G boss lairs that were suspended over improbable heights, and none of those ever made me feel nauseated.

Why does this game get its hooks into my brain so effectively? Why does it feel so much more visceral?

Apparently it has something to do with proprioception, which is the scientific term for knowing where your body parts are without looking at them.  It’s how you walk up stairs without looking down, how you throw a baseball over your shoulder or behind your back and catch it with the other hand.

So why does Mirror’s Edge make you sick and how is it different from other first-person video games?

Mirror’s Edge, in contrast, does something very subtle, but very radical. It lets you see other parts of your body in motion.

When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you’re vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you’re looking at your thighs as the world spins around you.

What’s more, the Mirror’s Edge world feels tactile and graspable. Because the game is designed around the concept of parkour, or moving through obstacles, most times when you see something that looks like you could jump on it, you can. The gameplay requires it.

The upshot is that these small, subtle visual cues have one big and potent side effect: They trigger your sense of proprioception. It’s why you feel so much more “inside” the avatar here than in any other first-person game. And it explains, I think, why Mirror’s Edge is so curiously likely to produce motion sickness. The game is not merely graphically realistic; it’s neurologically realistic.

Want to play out of curiousity more than anything else.  [via Clusterflock]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lucas Arts have tapped into the primal urge all of us geeks have by allowing us to control and wield the force at our leisure. Every seven-year-old that watches the original trilogy dreams of using a light saber and crushing someone’s esophagus from across the room. Wait, you mean that was just me? Shit. Well, I always wanted to be an evil Jedi. Vader was so much more of a badass then Obi-Wan, Luke and Lando Calrissian combined.

EW has premiered the new trailer for the game and again, I’m drooling. Then last scene of the trailer might be considered a minor spoil, especially if you want the unfolding storyline to be fresh. Still. Bad. Ass.

Nintendo’s Wii revolutionized how games are played.� Its motion-sensitive controller put players in the front row, waggling a stick around like an uncooked lump of salami, looking foolish and playing subpar video games for kitsch�and therefore temporary�value.

Anyway, since you can lob that white stick around and play tennis n’ stuff, Nintendo made the next logical step: Beer Pong.

Right? That’s what you were thinking too, right?

Naturally, Nintendo’s Beer Pong came under intense scrutiny from tight-assed politicians and anti-booze advocacy groups all over the place.� They changed the name from Beer Pong to Pong Toss, because that makes a boatload of difference.

In an unintentionally hilarious example of bad journalism, CBS Channel 4 out of Columbus, Ohio, posts this wonderful headline: Video Game Under Scrutiny For Resemblance To Beer Pong.� Uh, it’s not a resemblance, idiots; the game was called Beer Pong.� It is Beer Pong.� Pay attention.� Furthermore, the first 3.5 paragraphs of the article have nothing to do with the videogame.

Aside from being a Wii game, there is one huge problem with Pong Toss.� First, the joy of Beer Pong is … wait for it … drinking beer.� Playing the same game on a television screen using a videogame console?� Not as fun.� I suppose you could drink the beer sitting next to you upon scoring a shot and thereby avoid the messiness inherent in tossing objects into full glasses of liquid, but doesn’t that remove most if not all of the fun?� I can’t imagine hitting up a kegger only to be greeted with a 52″ HDTV connected to a Wii, surrounded by hairy apes saying, “Pick up a controller; let’s play some Beer Pong!”� I’d leave.� Immediately.� Because that’s dorky.

Despite the hullabaloo, it appears Pong Toss will still be published and sold.� I eagerly anticipate its sales numbers.� In fact, I want access to databases showing exactly whom buys this game.� I want to talk to each and every single buyer of this game and explain to them that college is over and it’s time to get a job.