Archive for 2008

Vest

Metal Gear Solid fan? Call of Duty fan? A Little BF2142 maybe? How would you like to feel it when someone shoots you with their AK47?

Mark Ombrellaro, a Bellevue vascular surgeon, has invented an game-accessory vest titled “3rd Space” that interactively prods and pokes you during gameplay. Yowch! I like First Person Shooters for the very reason that when you play them you don’t walk out of the woods with welts all over your torso. Certainly there will be people that will want one of these, but I myself will steer clear–thank you very much.

And if that isn’t enough for you hard core war gamers, this isn’t the only new “feel-a-round” accessory that is being developed.  Prepare to fully immerse yourself for a full body experience with the a shot to your head:

“Coming soon is a helmet in which players can feel head shots and a racing-game vest that simulates the g-forces felt by a Formula One driver.”

“Yet another model was created for military training. Ombrellaro said he’s close to a deal with the Canadian military for units with wireless connections and gas cylinders that can be turned up high enough to leave bruises when soldiers are “hit” during training exercises.”

I just don’t think I would enjoy explaining to anyone why I have bruises all over my upper body. I could claim that my wife beats me. That would be only slightly more embarrassing than admitting I bought something that hurts me during gameplay in a video game.

Reported in the Business & Technology section of the Seattle Times.

Stockton, CA. A California online rag, Recordnet.com, reported that a video game store was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight on Father’s Day.

Two men — one carrying a black semiautomatic handgun – robbed the Video Game Exchange at 3008 E. Hammer Lane shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Read the entire article.

My coworker and I were just discussing this morning how much more violent video games have become even in the last 5 to 10 years. It’s easy to cite games like GTA, look at their predecessors and make comparisons and observations about the heightened violence in games. Anyone want to way in on art imitating life or is this just another random act of disrespect and a sign of a bad economy?

Posted under: Announcements / Events
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Bill_vs_Battletoads

Posted under: Humor
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Neo Geo SNKThis is relatively old news but with Virgin Media’s recent announcement for the release of SNK’s Arcade Classics Volume One in the UK, I decided to see what I had missed over at Amazon. Turns out it’s been out in the U.S. since April! Why am I not informed better of these things?

Many of us may think SNK was only known for their Baseball Stars series and other sports games. However, if memory serves–they also had a history of releasing some pretty good platformers and top down scrollers–both in the arcade and on consoles. I think my association of SNK and baseball must stem from not being able to escape the 900 million copies I seem to stumble upon at every used gaming store across the U.S.

SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 includes the following titles available on PlayStation 2, PSP and the Wii:

  1. Art of Fighting
  2. Baseball Stars 2
  3. Burning Fight
  4. Fatal Fury
  5. King of the Fighters ’94
  6. King of the Monsters
  7. Last Resort
  8. Magician Lord
  9. Metal Slug
  10. Samurai Showdown
  11. Neo Turf Masters
  12. Sengoku
  13. Shock Troopers
  14. Top Hunter
  15. Super Sidekicks 3
  16. World Heroes

I’m not sure you need a Wii to get the full glory of these games and so if you have an old PS2 (or a PS3 for that matter) you may want to pick up the cheaper option at Amazon:

Wii: $29.99
PSP: $26.99
PS2: $13.99

I don’t like a lot of Tag Clouds that are out there. I really don’t like the one that comes with WP. So I did a Google search for Better Tag Cloud WordPress and found Roy Tanck’s Flash-based Cumulus Tag Cloud–the one we’re now using in the GridCycle sidebar.

If you post something new, please try to remember to categorize your entry and add tags as you see appropriate. Tags are a mutable, organic part of blogging so you can use any words you choose. For example, you could file something under ‘Rad Racer on the NES’. Then that item would appear in the cloud. However, when there are multiple blog entries using the tag, it appears larger and more prominent in the cloud. This gives a reader an idea of what items are popular on the site.

So! If you want your blog entry to show up under a cloud item that is larger you should pick an existing tag such as ‘Retro’ if it’s a retro item.

Check out the nifty cloud. Bask in it’s bright and shiny glory.

P.S. Any admins that stumble on entries that have crappy tags *or none at all*, please feel free to update them.

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