Morning Cup O' Joe

Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time.

Google Wishes Pac-Man a Happy 30th Birthday

Happy 30th Birthday, Pac-Man!

Yes. It’s playable.

Happy 30th Birthday, Pac-Man (not to be confused with Pac-Man)! Even at 30, you still manage to frustrate the hell out of me.

via @jeremydizon

May 21, 2010 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Humor | , | 1 Comment

Super Mario Crossover

image

This labor of love, by explodingRabbit, is a wonderful homage to 8-bit gaming. You pick your favorite 8-bit hero and run them through the first level of the original Super Mario Bros. Special abilities/attacks still apply.

via Newgrounds via BoingBoing

April 28, 2010 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming | , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Phylomon! Gotta Learn Them All!

Phylomon!

An open source collectible card game that uses Pokemon-like game mechanics to teach kids about real animals? Very yes! This is a wonderful idea!

From BoingBoing:

Phylo (or if you rather use the preferred term of endearment, Phylomon) is an an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “artistic” wonder, and all via a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way. This means that it thrives on contributions from folks who are artists, folks who are scientists, folks who like games, folks in the business of educating children, as well as folks of other expertise as various situations arise. Essentially, every step of game development, from imagery to the rulebook(s), is an exercise in crowd sourcing.

On the site, you can even check out the phylo project’s origin story. Here, you’ll learn that it was essentially inspired by Andrew Balmford, a conservational biologist who in 2002 published a curious paper in Science that showed that children as young as 8 were able to identify and characterize up to 120 different Pokemon characters. Yet, by the time they entered secondary school, they still couldn’t identify half of the UK’s 100 most common plants and animals. In the paper, Andrew was understandably troubled by this, and simply asked “Why is this?” and “Is there anything we can learn from this?”

In any event, the project has just started off with 12 cards, so that people can get a sense of what the site is all about, but there are plans to roll out new cards at a rate of at least one per weekday starting next week. Anyway, do go check it out, tell others about it, or better yet, get involved. Currently, the two biggest requests is to have more artists submitting their work (drawing and/or photographs), and for gamers to have a crack at a prototype rule set, or to even come up with alternate rules.

Interestingly, there are some who currently estimate there being roughly 1.9 million different species that have been classified by humans. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a biodiversity card game with the potential to have that many cards?

via BoingBoing via PHYLO: THE TRADING CARD GAME

April 15, 2010 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Science and Technology | , , , , , | 1 Comment

How Gaming can Save the World

The cynics out there might chuckle at the title of this post, but there’s truth behind it.  Don’t take my word for it: (via Powered by the Tubes)

A TED talk I found truly amazing.

The speaker Jane McGonigal is a game designer who recently spoke on TED. Her big idea is that the average person is going to spend about the same time playing video games by the age of 21 as they will spend in every hour of school from 5th grade to high school graduation. That means that people are spending a second education’s worth of time getting good at something. Harnessing that something could be the key to saving the world.

She goes on to lists games that she has piloted to achieve this goal and all in all it is a very inspiring talk. Everyone knows making things a game works to make them a lot less tedious and bearable. Many of us are also driven by a competitive nature. If that could be channeled into doing good for the world or even your local area that would be awesome.

My parents were anti-gaming, so I had to sneak my gaming time at friends’ houses. My wife is anti-gaming, so I have to get my gaming time in during off hours. Despite the different vectors of negative connotation for gaming in my life, I still strongly believe that gaming teaches and reinforces useful and applicable skills in real life including problem-solving (think Zelda), group collaboration (think about taking a boss down in World of Warcraft), project management (that boss in World of Warcraft might take upwards of 30+ people to work together), hand-eye coordination (there’s a correlation that surgeons who gamed more had fewer errors) and hard work (sometimes you need to grind levels to make a character more powerful, think Final Fantasy).

As Jane McGonigal mentioned in her talk, gaming avatars can represent the most ideal person we can possibly be. I think that putting hours into practicing that will benefit the entire world.

Thanks for the link Brian!

via Powered by the Tubes via Kotaku via TED: Ideas worth spreading

March 19, 2010 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Geeks and Gadgetry, Philosophy, Video | , , | Comments Off

Chime for Xbox 360

I always appreciate games that are innovative, enthralling and simple to get into. Chime is one of those games. The music you create while manipulating the puzzle board is wonderful as well.

It’s definitely worth 400 Live points.

February 4, 2010 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Music | , , , , | 2 Comments

Gyromancer

A game by PopCap and Square Enix that’s a combination of Bejeweled Twist, Pokemon and Final Fantasy RPG-stylings?

My life as I know it has ended.

Penny Arcade sums it up perfectly.

via Penny Arcade

October 2, 2009 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Video | , , , , , , | Comments Off

Wind Waker Unplugged

This is one of the best one-person musical mash-ups I’ve ever seen.

Tom! I have another project in mind…

January 13, 2009 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Music, Video | , | 1 Comment

1112 – Immersive Adventure Game for iPhone

If we see more games like 1112 come out for the iPhone, there’s no doubt of its viability as a serious gaming platform, I think.

January 7, 2009 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Software, Video, iphone | , | Comments Off

Do You Want to Play a Game of Chess?

Chess
Anybody want to trash me in chess (via iPhone)?

December 30, 2008 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Software, iphone | 2 Comments

Auditorium – Music Puzzle Game

Auditorium

Here’s a nice little Flash puzzle game that has beautiful visuals and a hypnotic soundtrack.

Nice find, Joe!

December 3, 2008 Posted by Mike | Games and Gaming, Music | , | 2 Comments