Games

You may remember Metallica.  They’re that band that used to kick serious ass, then got really lame and bitter.  Well now they’re trying not to be so bitter (though they’re still lame…).  Billboard is reporting that Activision is going to release an edition of Guitar Hero featuring the band, much like the soon-to-be-released Aerosmith edition.  Metallica has had several songs included in various editions of Guitar Hero and Rock Band already, but this new version would focus on their music, and ostensibly music of other bands they choose to include.

Despite the fact that I really haven’t enjoyed or appreciated anything Metallica’s done in about 12 years, I’m pretty psyched about this.  If they get the majority of the good songs from Kill ‘Em All through Metallica (the black album) it should kick ass.  But let’s just all pretend St. Anger never happened, please?

For those about to pretend to rock, we salute you! As someone who’s been hopelessly addicted to Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III, and Rock Band I’ve been anxiously awaiting information on the upcoming fourth installment of the Guitar Hero franchise. Activision has finally given us the full skinny.

The official title is Guitar Hero: World Tour and it’s due out October 27th. From the feature list it looks like they’ve taken everything from Rock Band and improved on it, plus added some stuff. Kick ass!

Watch the preview, then we’ll discuss:

More video, pictures, and a full feature list after the jump.
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Some genius crazy person inspired madman managed to get a remote controlled car to play the Super Mario Brothers theme on water-filled bottles.

I don’t even want to know how long this took to setup. It’s cool though, so props to the crazy dude who took the time.

This is why Jonathan Coulton is the Godfather of Geek Rock. JoCo took the stage at the Game Developer Conference to do a short set. To close the set he brought up a couple of friends and PLAYED HIS OWN SONG IN ROCK BAND. Turns out his song “Still Alive”, which was featured in the game Portal, is going to be a downloadable extra for Rock Band. Check out the video below:

Great job Jonathan. Though next time try to get better than 95% on the vocals…

Recently I’ve become hopelessly somewhat addicted to Guitar Hero III, so this video made me chuckle. Conan annoys his writing staff while they’re playing Rock Band, then sings The Beastie Boys’ “Sabatoge”, as Edith Bunker. A match made in heaven!

Turns out Conan’s not a bad guitar player. Keep on Rockin’ in the Writer-Free World Conan!

At the intersection of “geeky” and “culinarily handy” you’ll find these little gems: cookies-based pixels formed into an homage to the 8-bit glory that is Tetris.

Flickr user Eva Funderburgh has posted pictures along with instructions on how to make your own pixel cookies. Turns out the real secret is in standard Play Doh tools…

Check out all the pictures and instructions

Sometimes I think people have too much time on their hands. Luckily they seem to find interesting things to do with that time.

NOTsoNOISY, a Swiss design company, used their time to create stop-motion videos of old school video games, using humans as the pixels. The description doesn’t do it justice, so just watch:

Tetris

Oddly captivating, isn’t it? I love the fact that someone’s doing the music a capella. Need more? NOTsoNOISY has done other games:
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This is probably the most random of the Random Covers. It’s a manualist named Gerry Phillips performing the theme from Super Mario Brothers. What’s a manualist? It’s a person who makes music by squeezing their hands together, forcing air out in the process. It sounds kind of like farting in tune…

If you’ve got some time to kill I highly recommend checking out Gerry’s full YouTube page. He has 62 videos up there, ranging from covers of Britney Spears, Journey, and Ozzy Osbourne to his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel performing “Bohemian Rhapsody”. I’m gobsmacked.

I love watching Gordon Ramsay on TV. I get some kind of sadistic pleasure watching him rip into aspiring chefs on Hell’s Kitchen, and I like seeing his less ferocious side on both the British and American versions of Kitchen Nightmares. But I really don’t see how a video game adaptation of Hell’s Kitchen could possibly be entertaining.

Canadian video game developer Ludia is out to prove me wrong however, as they’ve announced they’re developing games based on the show for platforms ranging from PCs to mobile phones.

How’s this going to work? You somehow use a keyboard to try and cook, and if you fail Gordon calls you a wanker? Hmm. On second thought that could be entertaining…

Variety has the full scoop
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Usually Wii comes AFTER beer pong, but it seems that Midway is bringing the popular drinking game to the Wii over a year after the console’s launch. Technically they’re actually releasing a game called Game Party, a collection of bar and party games that will take advantage of the Wii’s unique controls. Besides beer pong the collection also includes air hockey, darts, tabletop shuffleboard, basketball, and SKEEBALL! Where do I sign up for Wii skeeball?

More info here

Ah, good old German ingenuity. Problem: people go to bars and drive home drunk. Solution: create a video game that will let the player know they are too drunk to drive. But how do you make sure people play it? Put it in the pisser of course. (Insert Wii joke here…)

The twisted geniuses at SAATCHI & SAATCHI in Frankfurt have created a system called the Piss Screen which allows men to play a car racing game by pissing on buttons installed in a urinal. If you crash the car a message appears on the screen asking if you’re too drunk to drive. Then the phone number of a local cab company comes up. These folks officially qualify as ad wizards for this one.

What’s the game like? Apparently it’s a knock off of the Need for Speed series. Their blog sums it up:

The Game Design is pretty simple, you can only drive to the left an the right by pissing on the corresponding sensor. If your reaction is too slow, the car will crash in the oncoming trafic and a video sequence of an accident is displayed.

Pictures and video after the jump.
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On the surface this Pac-Man hat is a little odd. I mean it might look cute on a little kid in an ironic sort of way, right? Then you read the product description and realize it’s for adults. Yikes. Further reading reveals it’s imported from Japan. Ah, now it makes sense.

But wait. Why can’t you ship it to Massachusetts, Ohio, or Pennsylvania? Are there statutes on the books there that outlaw the transfer of Pac-Man hats across state lines? Are those states cracking down on gangs that use Pac-Man hats to signal their allegiances? Or are they just pro-ghost states? I’m confused.

via BoingBoing

Some asshat team of Canadians has written a computer program that cannot lose at checkers. Aside from the fact that this ruins a decent game, it apparently took an average of 50 computers EIGHTEEN YEARS to figure it out. Is this really where we need our resources? Not curing cancer? Or AIDS? Or mapping the human genome? But solving checkers? Oy.

Also disturbing about the BBC’s article is that the guy that wrote the program consulted with champion checker players. Um, what? There are checker champions? Are they the guys the chess club beats up?

Watch as Little Macauly Culkin tries to defend himself from The King of Pop…

Ever wonder what would happen if you masturbated to the fairy in the legend of Zelda. Why, you get sucked into the game of course!

File under creepy: artist Le Gentil Garçon’s representation of what’s going on under Pac Man’s skin. His description:

Second version of Pac-man’s skeleton, conceived in collaboration with François Escuilié, palaeontologist, from the comparative observation of human and various predatory animal skulls. His studio’s team, “Eldonia”, specialized in casting fossils, made the edition.

This might actually keep me awake tonight…

via Kotaku

A bunch of industrious students at UC Santa Cruz made a four story high picture of Donkey Kong out of Post-Its. Maybe “industrious” isn’t the right word… It’s definitely cool though.

Via BoingBoing

Some dude from Peru has created a genius gaming mashup: Mario characters in Doom II. Check out the video:

Via BoingBoing

What would happen in Mario and Luigi left their little mushroom world and stumbled into Vice City (home of Grand Theft Auto)? This video from Robot Chicken answers the question…with hilarity!

FanTent has posted a collection of eclectic renditions of the ever-popular Super Mario Brothers theme. My personal favorite is the beat boxing flautist, presented below. What’s a beat-boxing flautist you ask? Until I saw this I had no clue. Just watch.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 20 years, here’s the original:
Super Mario Brothers

In the same vein as the live Super Mario Bros. performance, here’s a bunch of folks acting out Mike Tyson’s Punch Out:

I love the details here. Especially the training between fights (complete with the Statue of Liberty). And Mario as the referee. Well Done!

They just don’t make commercials like this one anymore. It’s a Toys R Us commercial from 1985-ish has all the things we love about 80s commercials: cheesy voice over, bad acting, and even worse special effects. But it does bring a little tear of nostalgia to my eye. Check it out:

Yet another great find on YouTube courtesy of ebaumsworld.com it’s Live Action Super Mario Brothers. I’m guessing this was from a college talent show of some sort but regardless this is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

via B4NG

So someone known only as Celarent has made a brilliant animation of what Mario would have been like in communist Russia. Wish I had more info on this, but here’s the link anyway. Anyone know the deal? Leave it in the comments.

I read a book this past weekend with an interesting premise: modern pop culture is making us smarter. The book is Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson, and it makes a compelling argument.

Johnson’s premise is that modern television and video games (and to a lesser extent films) require a level of interaction that actually improves the consumer’s problem-solving skills, social networking skills, and raw intellegence (as measured by IQ). He’s not arguing that TV or video games should replace other methods of learning, just that they are not intellectual junk food.

The book’s arguments are well constructed, well written, and very persuasive. At least they were to me. But I wanted to believe them the moment I read the subtitle of the book, so I’m a little biased.

One of the examples in the book is how the game Tetris helps build visual pattern recognition skills. I played a lot of Tetris as a child, and I really hope it helped me in some way. Because if it didn’t I wasted a lot of my precious childhood. Also, I recently bought a game for my PSP called Lumines, which is essentially a combination of Tetris and crystal meth. I’ll let you read the description of the game for yourself, but I will say that it’s the most addictive game I’ve played in a long, long time. One thing that the game’s description doesn’t mention, but I think is very cool, is that your gameplay actually affects the music. Instead of silly sound effects when you move or rotate a block you get musical samples which enhance the soundtrack. To a music geek like me that’s just freakin’ sweet.