You can’t look away, can you? Just try.

Thanks, Winslow B!

 
When I posted here in March about Zak Smith’s blog, Playing D&D with Pornstars, it was a merely a popular blog, but now it’s a Internet video series called I Hit It With My Axe, with a couple dozen episodes released so far. In the below clip you will witness Sasha Grey, Kimberly Kane, Mandy Morbid, Satine Phoenix and others, including Smith himself, participating in the favorite hobby of geeks everywhere. (Er, maybe their second favorite pastime, I guess, but this sort of incorporates both interests, doesn’t it?)
 

 
See all episodes of I Hit It With My Axe (The Escapist)

 
In a hilariously counter-intuitive move, young Linus Akesson here has transplanted some 8 bit synthesizer technology, meant for fitting into the smallest of devices, into the shell of an old family entertainment organ. Hence: The Chipophone. Looks very functional and makes it easy to play all the uh, classics.

 
Thanks Mike Paradinas !

 
Wicked Lasers have released a new “toy” laser, except that it’s not really a toy, you see. More like a weapon.

In fact, it’s exactly like a weapon! Wicked removed the laser from a Casio video projector and placed it into a casing resembling something out of “Star Wars.” Witness The Spyder III in action above.

It will blind permanently and instantly and set fire quickly to skin and other body parts, use with extreme caution and only when using the included eye protection. Customers will be required to completely read and agree to our Class IV Laser Hazard Acknowledgment Form.

Worrywarts! What could possible go amiss with a laser beam capable of burning flesh and causing blindness?

Better than a silly old BB gun, eh? Be the first kid on your block to be arrested!

This Spawnkill editorial hits the nail on the head: game manuals were often cooler than video games themselves. Like record covers, and even CD liners now, game manuals have become a dead art. For those of us who grew up in the Nintendo era, but who lacked the resources to actually get a Nintendo, game manuals borrowed from friends were the next best thing, like a way to pretend you were playing the game. I remember long hours spent in the back of school buses imagining what video games must be like from the manuals other kids showed me, which were invariably more interesting than the actual experience…

Throughout those shining years of my childhood, purchasing a new game often meant thumbing through the pages of a mammoth tome detailing impending gameplay down to the letter. If I were stuck on a long car trip with a recently-purchased title, digging into that precious parcel and retrieving the manual was the first thing on my mind.  It was a way to game vicariously through a few simple, innocent pages, and one of the first ties I established to any game I had my heart set on playing through. Unfortunately, it’s also a familiar constant that gamers new and old can kiss goodbye with the decision to downsize the distribution of manuals entirely, spearheaded by Ubisoft, and perhaps many more companies to follow.

Call me old-fashioned, but the feeling of thumbing through the crisp (sometimes colored) pages rife with back story, notes from the designers, and detailed instructions on how to play gave me a real sense of anticipation. It was genuinely difficult to wait those few short hours until the final journey home at the end of the day to eagerly devour the content on the disk (or cartridge) inside. In some cases, being treated with some delicious fiction related to the title was something to look forward to as well, especially if you needed a little extra hype to fully enjoy the adventure about to unfold.

And let’s not forget the lovely serial numbers or copy protection that would require you to find a certain line or word in the manual to be able to install the thing. Good luck if you threw it away! But even now, as illogical as it would be to require a simple word or pass phrase as DRM, it was part of the charm that came with buying a new game.

(Spawnkill: Lamenting the loss of manuals)

This is just stone cold. I can barely watch it.

This girl, whose gamer boyfriend apparently cheated on her, HACKS HIS EMAIL and SHREDS HIS STARCRAFT 2 BETA PASSWORD. Holy FKK THAT’S COLD. And as if that wasn’t enough, she then goes to his house and BREAKS HIS WINDOW WITH A BRICK. GOOD DEAR GOD LORD. I’m not sure which one is worse!

To paraphrase Al Pacino in “Heat”: “You might break a man’s window with a brick but YOU DO NOT GET TO FK WITH HIS STARCRAFT 2 BETA CODES.”

I hope this wasn’t one of OUR Brads. I’m gonna go hide in a corner now!!!

(Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Thanks again to Matt Musick at Motherboard.tv for sending me this segment they did on Sid Meier—the acknowledged greatest game designer of all time (he’s most famous for the game “Civilization”—“Pirates” and “Alpha Centauri” are two other favorites). The video follows Meier as he judges a contest to create a video game in 48 hours, apparently the video game equivalent of the 3-day novel and 24-hour comic book.

The master behind Civilization I through IV, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and dozens of other titles, Sid Meier is one of the most acclaimed game designers of all time. Always a true believer in the idea that games will someday rule the world, Meier wants to inspire a new generation of game designers. Namely, the ones from his alma mater at Michigan, where he returns in this episode of Motherboard, in order to judge and of course participate in the “7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest,” which pits coders and designers against each other in a race to create a game in two days.

Sid first used a computer as an undergrad at Michigan, when punch cards and time-sharing meant that one mistake cost hours of time. It was on that early IBM mainframe that Sid designed the first tic-tac‐toe game, a use for which he was chastised and nearly kicked out.

(Motherboard.tv: Sid Meier and the 48 Hour Game)

(Sid Meier’s Civilization V)

Shocking news—professional StarCraft, the biggest national sport in South Korea, has apparently been rigged by the mob for years. Infected Hive! INFECTED HIVE!

We all know South Korea takes their StarCraft seriously, but here’s a new window into just how seriously: Reports of widespread match-fixing and illegal betting is rocking the pro-gamer StarCraft community in the country, literally shaming some of the most popular professional StarCraft players into retiring.

As Gamepron reports, “various pro gamers” were involved in rigging their matches in coordination with illegal gambling groups, having some players intentionally lose their matches as well as leak replay files of their matches to said gambling groups. But it wasn’t just a few current players involved in the deceit—evidently the widespread match-fixing involved retired players and coaches who helped the gambling rings get in contact with the current players in the first place.

And what’s more, reports state that the e-sports organizers in South Korea knew about the match-fixing (although for how long isn’t clear), and attempted to resolve the issue themselves before actually discussing “the possibility of co-existing with the illegal betting sites.”

(1up: Starcraft Rigged!)

(Previously on Dangerous Minds: The Odd World of Professional Starcraft Players)

(Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Legend of Zelda remixed Old Testament style!

(Via Encyclopedia Dramatica)

(Via Copyranter)

“Chess Set” by Jack Jake and Dinos Chapman
 
(via Design Boom)

“Magic: The Gathering” was a popular teenage contraceptive device in the 1990s. Unfortunately, despite its pronounced effect in curbing premarital sex, it led its frustrated users directly to the occult. This edit of an instructional video demonstrates its use.

(Everything is Terrible: Magic)

 
Interesting essay on how the work of late science fiction author Philip K. Dick can be seen to have prefigured today’s role playing video games over at the mighty Pop Matters blog.

The thesis of author “L.B. Jefferies” is straightforward enough: “Philip K. Dick?��Ǩ�Ѣs fiction is a defense of the validity of video games because despite the fact that they are not real, his stories argue that there is still something valid in the artificial.” Good point, if an obvious one as well. It’s a wonder that an article like this wasn’t written before. I think you Dickheads out there might enjoy this.

About Blade Runner, Jeffries writes:

The underlying argument of the film is that the real thing isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt inherently superior to the fake. The android is not different from the real thing in any meaningful way. The ending to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has Deckard finding value in a toad he finds in the desert even after he learns that it?��Ǩ�Ѣs artificial. Dick argues in the The Golden Man, ?��Ǩ?�The external world supposedly consists of a number of different objects, but they can be known as different only because there are different sorts of experiences ?��Ǩ��of?��Ǩ�Ѣ them. Yet if the experiences are thus distinguishable, there is no need to hold the superfluous hypothesis of external objects.?��Ǩ��

Or as Jonathan Lethem phrases it in his introduction to the Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, looking at the world from this purely philosophical perspective of Dick?��Ǩ�Ѣs means that nothing exists. There is no perfect representation of reality. Engaging with various perceptions and ideas expands our identity and awareness of reality, but it?��Ǩ�Ѣs still just us putting an artificial value and standard to what is otherwise pure information.

That?��Ǩ�Ѣs what makes his work relevant to video games and the argument that they are art. Unlike the characters of The Matrix who reject the simulation out of principle, in most of Dick?��Ǩ�Ѣs stories, the simulation is just another perspective. Since even what we call reality is subjective in this context, adopting other perspectives isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt really a problem because there isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt any one valid interpretation of the world. In the story ?��Ǩ?�We Can Remember It For You Wholesale?��Ǩ��, which the film Total Recall is based on, part of the appeal of purchasing virtual memories is that the experience will be perfect. The agent explains, ?��Ǩ?�You?��Ǩ�Ѣre not accepting second best. The actual memory, with all its vagueness, omissions, and ellipses, not to say distortions ?��Ǩ��� that?��Ǩ�Ѣs the second best.?��Ǩ��

The protagonist goes to Rekall because he knows that in real life he can never afford to go to Mars and even if he did, he wouldn?��Ǩ�Ѣt be a super spy saving the world. There isn?��Ǩ�Ѣt any risk of dying or needing to be qualified to go on this exotic spy adventure. The film constantly plays with this by having Schwarzenegger?��Ǩ�Ѣs character never really know if what he?��Ǩ�Ѣs experiencing is real or not. When he finds out that his personality was just a construct to fool the rebel?��Ǩ�Ѣs psychics, he still rejects his old personality for the artificial one. Even if he was originally a bad guy who went undercover, Schwarzenegger?��Ǩ�Ѣs character embraces the simulated worldview because he finds it more fulfilling.

Philip K Dick in a rare interview at a French sci-fi convention in 1977:

Philip K. Dick?��Ǩ�Ѣs Defense of Video Games

 

 
Here’s a replica Big Daddy costume shot at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The designer of the 60lbs costume says,

This costume is a replica of the Bouncer-type Big Daddy from the videogame Bioshock by 2K. This piece was completed in 7 weeks for its debut at DragonCon 2009, where it won 2 awards for “Best Journeyman” and “Best Professional Design.” After initial press after DragonCon, I was contacted by Ken Levine of 2K games who said, “You are the Big Daddy.”

This Bioshock Big Daddy costume is currently up for bid on Ebay.
 
See more of the photoshoot here.
 
(via Nerdcore)

Back around 1990, there was nothing in the world cooler than the NES. Michael Jackson tried with the “Dangerous” album. Macaulay Culkin tried to steal some attention. But outside of lingering buzz from Michael Keaton’s Batman, there was NOTHING in the world of the prepubescent male that could usurp the importance of the Nintendo, especially now that Super Mario Bros. 3 (aka God’s Latest and Most Important Transmission to Mankind Since the Angel Gabriel Dictated the Qu’ran to Mohammed in a Cave) was out.

That was why we were suckers enough to watch The Wizard with Fred Savage, collect Nintendo sticker books and eat Nintendo cereal. Hell, I didn’t even HAVE a Nintendo and I still did all that stuff just to compensate!

Then there were the Nintendo comics, published by a young Valiant press, later to become famous for resurrecting the Key superheroes (Magnus, Turok, Solar, etc.) and making them edgy and getting them video game contracts.

Comics Alliance reports on those lost gems:

The Super Mario Brothers aren’t just the stars of this week’s biggest video game release on the Wii, nor were they simply the heroes of one of the most disastrous films of the 1990s - they were also comic book legends.

Well, legends might be pushing it, but brothers Mario and Luigi certainly have some comic book credibility to their name. TRsRockin.com has an extensive rundown of the plumber brothers’ many comic appearances, including a lengthy Valiant Comics run.

There are some definite gems among the Valiant work, including a story titled “Beauty and the Beach” found within the pages of “Super Mario Bros.” #4. Mario, Peach and Toad wash ashore on a mysterious island filled with Toadstools and secretly ruled by King Koopa himself. Things go south when a volcano threatens to erupt, prompting the selfish Koopa to flee the scene while Mario and his pals save the day. It’s really cute, if only for Toad’s hilarious swim trunks.

Ah. Set adrift on memory bliss.

(Comics Alliance: Remembering The Super Mario Bros.’ Surprisingly Cool Comic Books)