Ultimate screenshot collection of Tetris for the
Ultimate screenshot collection of Tetris for the Nintendo DS. Metroid + Tetris??!! Awesome.
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kottke.org posts about video games
Skiing videos
I did some skiing last week up in Vermont and took some videos with my phone on the slopes. The quality isn’t great, but hopefully you’ll get the gist.
A short clip of me skiing through the trees:
Riding the chair lift:
And one of me skiing behind Meg:
The motion in the last one reminds me of Quake…like I’m chasing after her with a railgun or something.
Gamers show a “similar pattern of high
Gamers show a “similar pattern of high performance in resisting irrelevant impulses” as bilingual people. “Maybe those kids who play video games and who are also bilingual will be the best of older adults at filtering out distractions.” (via sjb)
Sorry to hit you with this on
Sorry to hit you with this on a Monday morning because the falling sand game is really addicting so you might not get any work done today. Sorry in advance.
Burgertime art. The pickle’s package is *very*
Burgertime art. The pickle’s package is *very* disturbing to me. Yet, I cannot look away. (via nelson)
Blast from the past: influential online game
Blast from the past: influential online game SiSSYFiGHT 2000. I know a married couple that met on SiSSYFiGHT.
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous games of Gradius layered on top of each other. Robin says: “So what you see, instead of a single ship going at it, is a fuzzy cloud of ships — bright where strategies overlap, faint where someone does something especially daring (or dumb).” Very cool; reminds me of Jason Salavon’s amalgamation of Playboy centerfolds.
Ian Albert collects really large digital images (100
Ian Albert collects really large digital images (100-900 megapixels) and constructs maps of video game worlds, including Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. (via lia)
Very high on the list of things
Very high on the list of things that don’t need to be advertised is Tetris. Chances are you remember this Tetris commercial from the 80s anyway. “Use your thumbs, use your eyes, find yourself Tetrisized!”
More than you’d ever want to know
More than you’d ever want to know about Tecmo Super Bowl. Still one of my all-time favorite video games…I play it on my Gameboy and still have a Sega Genesis in the closet.
Beggar Prince is slated to be the
Beggar Prince is slated to be the first new game released for the Sega Genesis since 1998.
Rufus Griscom interviews Steven Johnson about television,
Update: This article appears to have dropped behind Nerve’s paywall. Sorry about that.
Transcript from the final moments of Asheron’s
Transcript from the final moments of Asheron’s Call 2, an online game that got turned off on Dec 30 because it wasn’t making any money. “This world will be shutting down in 2 minutes. Please log out.” (via wonderland)
The 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years.
The 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years. The original Nintendo Entertainment System should really be on here…it singlehandedly made video games popular again in the US. (via rw)
Two experts on street-level NYC go sightseeing
Two experts on street-level NYC go sightseeing in True Crime: New York City, a video game that has attempted to recreate the city down to its last manhole cover.
GameSpot has an ongoing series of articles
GameSpot has an ongoing series of articles about the greatest video games of all time. Lode Runner, Tetris, Quake, Oregon Trail, Defender, and Metroid all make the list.
With the release of Xbox 360, game designers
With the release of Xbox 360, game designers are bumping up against the uncanny valley problem, where in-game avatars are looking a bit too real for comfort. “When it first lurched out of the mysterious tropical cave and fixed its cadaverous eyes on me, I could barely look at the monstrosity. I’m speaking, of course, of Naomi Watts.”
Interview with Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto,
Interview with Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Super Mario Bros, Zelda, etc.
Traffic flow
One of my favorite things to do in new cities is to observe how the traffic works. Traffic in each place has a different feel to it that depends on the culture, physical space, population density, legal situation, and modes of transportation available (and unavailable).
Everyone drives in LA and Minneapolis, even if you’re only going a few blocks. In San francisco, pedestrians rule the streets…if a pedestrian steps out into the crosswalk, traffic immediately stops and will stay stopped as long as people are crossing, even if that means the cars are going nowhere, which is great if you’re walking and maddening if you’re driving. In many cities, both in the US and Europe, people will not cross in a crosswalk against the light and will never jaywalk. In many European cities, city streets are narrow and filled with pedestrians, slowing car traffic[1]. US cities are starting to build bike lanes on their streets, following the example of some European cities.
In NYC, cars and pedestrians take turns, depending on who has the right-of-way and the opportunity, with the latter often trumping the former. Cabs comprise much of the traffic and lanes are often a suggestion rather than a rule, more than in other US cities. With few designated bike lanes, cycling can be dangerous in the fast, heavy traffic of Manhattan. So too can cyclers be dangerous; bike messengers will speed right through busy crosswalks with nothing but a whistle to warn you.
In Bangkok, traffic is aggressive, hostile even. If a driver needs a space, he just moves over, no matter if another car is there or not. Being a pedestrian is a dangerous proposition here; traffic will often not stop if you step out into a crosswalk and it’s impossible to cross in some places without the aid of a stoplight or overpass (both of which are rare). More than any other place I’ve been, I didn’t like how the traffic worked in Bangkok, either on foot or in a car.
Traffic in Saigon reminds me a bit of that in Beijing when I visited there in 1996. Lots of communication goes on in traffic here and it makes it flow fairly well. Cars honk to let people know they’re coming over, to warn people they shouldn’t pull in, motorbikes honk when they need to cross traffic, and cars & motorbikes honk at pedestrians when it’s unsafe for them to cross. Traffic moves slow to accommodate cars, the legions of motorbikes (the primary mode of transportation here), and pedestrians all at the same time.[2] Crossing the street involves stepping out, walking slowly, and letting the traffic flow around you. Drivers merging into traffic often don’t even look before pulling out; they know the traffic will flow around them. The system requires a lot of trust, but the slow speed and amount of communication make it manageable.[3]
[1] This is the principle behind traffic calming.
[2] That traffic calming business again.
[3] Not that it’s not scary as hell too. American pedestrians are taught to fear cars (don’t play in the street, look both ways before crossing the street, watch out for drunk drivers) and trusting them to avoid you while you’re basically the frog in Frogger…well, it takes a little getting used to.
Tidying up
Today was a maintenance day around kottke.org. Some long-overdue backups, upgrading the OS and some applications, cleaning up the desktop, getting rid of some unneeded files on the web server, trimming my newsreader subscriptions, going through my spam, the kind of stuff that gets put off because it just doesn’t sound that fun and you can get by without doing it over the short term. I really don’t mind it so much…there’s a certain satisfaction you get in completing such tasks. The crossing off of todo items from a list, bringing structure to a messy situation, tidying up.
A friend of mine (who I can’t link to because he got cross with me the last time I did) has a theory that most modern sports are about tidying up. Put the ball in the goal, all the balls in the pockets, clear the tennis court of any balls, etc.:
Explaining to [an acquaintance] why I like watching snooker on tv so much (she doesn’t: it’s slow and boring), I realised that snooker is rarely tense, and it’s not enjoyable to watch at all: it’s extremely satisfying, relaxing almost. Snooker is a game where you have to make a big mess at the beginning with the break, and then you’re never going to get them all neat like that again, so it becomes a process of cleaning the balls away into the pockets very very carefully. First you put away the red, then the black, then the red, and, oh, I did that one wrong, so now I have to do the pink, and the red again…
Lots of video games are like that as well. Pac-Man, Katamari Damacy, Dig Dug, Quake, Space Invaders. Chores too, of course. Two chores I find extremely satisfying are bagging groceries and (especially) mowing the lawn. Getting all those different types of products — with their various shapes, sizes, weights, levels of fragility, temperatures — quickly into the least possible number of bags…quite pleasurable. Reminds me a little of Tetris. And mowing the lawn…making all the grass the same height, surrounding the remaining uncut lawn with concentric rectangles of freshly mowed grass. Despite the gigantic blisters I got on both my thumbs last time I cut the grass, I finished with a euphoric giddyness (perhaps akin to a runner’s high) that was simultaneously calming.
Shaun Inman’s Mint stats package contains a
Shaun Inman’s Mint stats package contains a great easter egg. Just key in the Konami cheat code (up up, down down, left right, left right, b, a) and you’re greeted with a custom graphic. More old school video game-inspired easter eggs on web sites please.
Photos from Robbie Cooper’s Alter Ego project,
Photos from Robbie Cooper’s Alter Ego project, in which he takes photos of gamers and compares them with their in-game avatars. More photos and an article about Cooper and his photography.
In-game space station recently purchased for $100,000. The
In-game space station recently purchased for $100,000. The game, Project Entropia, lets players earn real-world cash in the game, so it’s not such a silly investment. (via cd)
Informal investigation of video game addiction reveals
Informal investigation of video game addiction reveals that it burns bright and fast but stops suddenly. I’ve noticed the suddenly vanished compulsion with my game playing as well. (via rw, i think)
Timeline of video games, mostly business-related. But
Timeline of video games, mostly business-related. But holy crap, Hunt the Wumpus (a game I had for the TI-99) was invented in 1973? Cool.
Clive Thompson enjoys the miniest of mini
Clive Thompson enjoys the miniest of mini games, one-button games (more here and here): “video games that have a single button to control all the action”. Many of the mini games in Wario Ware use only one control and only last 3-4 seconds.
Troyis is a game that utilizes chess
Troyis is a game that utilizes chess moves (just the knight/horsey actually). Easy to start, difficult to master.
Cory Arcangel has gone INSANE and is
Cory Arcangel has gone INSANE and is offering original signed posters of his work for like $20. The posters feature the haunting landscape of the old school Famicom driving game F1 Racer.
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