THIS is why I LOVE Nicole Lee.
MarioKart for the Wii by Nicole Lee from Flickr
A blurry picture of Mario Kart for the Wii tells me what I should have already known. Mario Kart was released THREE days ago. How I missed the news, I don’t know, but I’m heading to the video store right now to go pick it up.
Here’s a video to whet your appetite:
This video shows some of the video games from 1972 to 2007.
Which games did you play? Which were your favorite? I LOVE that they included Adventure on the list. It was my favorite game on the Atari and I can still navigate those mazes, even the blind ones, by touch only.
I am surprised that they didn’t include some of the handheld games that were popular in the early years like this football game from Mattel. I played this thing so much that the letters and arrows wore off. I remember handing it to my friend to play and she had never played it before and couldn’t figure it out because all the arrows were gone. This guy and Merlin were my video games that I could take with me. I loved them and to this day I don’t know why the industry doesn’t take them as seriously as the original games from Atari and Intellivision.
Via:
Once again, a group of concerned citizens are trying to save us from the evils of video games. This time, they are attacking Bully: Scholarship Edition.
The biggest problem I have with this game is that it’s not realistic enough. Surviving the school years is a difficult task, yet this group thinks that telling the truth about our school years isn’t appropriate.
Bully: Scholarship Edition features a shaven-headed teenager who adjusts to life at a new boarding school by harassing others, which the organizations say glorifies bullying. The abuse includes dunking pupils’ heads in toilets, photographing them naked and physically assaulting them. Teachers are also targeted.
“We’re asking retailers to be responsible,” Emily Noble, president of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, said yesterday. “Yes, they can sell it and make a buck out of this, but is this the kind of marketing that they want to be [doing], selling games that glorify violence?”
Mike and I were looking at this game at the game store the other day. I flipped through the guidebook showing me how to master the art of chemistry in order to create stink bombs and itching powder.
“I wish they made a girl version of this,” I said, “Then I would finally learn how to deal with girl bullies.”
Mike replied without missing a beat, “Too violent.”
And he was right. Games like this help us deal with bullies. They don’t teach us how to be bullies just like learning the exact buttons to push doesn’t teach us how to make itching powder. Just for once I would like a group of concerned citizens to actually PLAY the game before they protest it.
Check out this cool Nintendo DS Bento box from Alafista.
It always surprises me when strange food mixes with electronics. Who loves their Nintendo DS so much that they want to eat it in effigy?
We love the video game, Rock Band, but as with any new hardware, being an early adopter has its ups and downs. In particular, the first guitars that shipped with Rock Band had a common issue where the strum button would stop working correctly:
Although this problem has been known since November 2007, our Rock Band game purchased in January quickly developed the problem: you could strum up, but not down. Since I only strum downward, this put a serious crimp in my already amateurish playing.
Fortunately, Electronic Arts has a convenient warranty page that promised to quickly set me up with a new guitar:
The warranty process took five minutes and a credit card number, which theoretically won’t be charged if you return the defective guitar. Unfortunately, I started this process on January 20th, and I’m still not happy with the result:
So now we have a new working guitar (finally!) but EA still owes us a $125 credit. I’ll have to spend some more time on the phone straightening this out.
Got a Rock Band guitar with a strum problem? Here’s my advice:
I love Rock Band—it’s probably my favorite video game of all time—but when I pay $160 for a video game, I expect better customer service. Here’s hoping EA gets their act together in time for me to buy the sequel.
Here’s a video of us and our friends enjoying Rock Band together (with borrowed guitars):
I’ve been playing Animal Crossing for a year and a half and for the first time ever, I was able to shoot down the UFO. It has flown across my town probably a total of ten times in the last eighteen months, and last week was the first time I was able to shoot it down.
After I shot it down, it crash landed in my town and I was able to talk to Gulliver. He didn’t realize it was ME that shot him down, but he asked me to help him fix his craft so he could leave again. It was the least I could do.
You can see my encounter here:
It’s amazing that I can play a game almost EVERY day for a year and a half and it might still have something new to show me. Kudos to Nintendo and the creators of Animal Crossing. Once again, you have given me a pleasant surprise on what I thought was an ordinary day.
These videos from MammaMia19 show a little more of an encounter with Gulliver:
I have no idea how MammaMia19 knew to film on the exact day when Gulliver flew over their town.
“So I was just recording myself playing and Gulliver’s UFO flew by the top screen. Figured i would show you guys. I shoot this guy down left and right. No UFO’s get away with flying by MY village!!”
This video shows what it looks like to shoot down the UFO:
To read my other reviews of Animal Crossing, see here:
Sanrio is creating a massively multi-player online role-playing game (mmorpg) called Hello Kitty Online Game.
Applications for the BETA are now closed and those of us that applied have been asked to create a video saying why we should be chosen. So, I took a few minutes and filmed a video of myself.
I imagined a game of pure unadulterated cuteness without any violence or anything scary, but apparently, there will be monsters. According to their website:
“This game is not just about fighting monsters - there are many activities for players to choose from. Aside from the monster-filled adventure areas, players can dig for ore in a mine, or range the forests to pick fruit from trees. Farming allows you to plant, grow and harvest your own crops; be sure to take good care of your crops so you will have a good harvest, and if you have a healthy farm you can even show it off to your online friends! You can use many other skills like cooking, tailoring, making furniture, and building houses. Commerce with other players will allow you to make a living and - perhaps - even get rich!”
I’m alright with monster-filled adventure areas as long as I can avoid them and just harvest my crops and say hi to Badtz-Maru every day.
“Not only do you have the ability to own a house, but you can arrange it with whatever furniture you want. You can also own pets. When certain monsters are defeated, they may drop “pet cards”, that once used will give the player that particular monster as a pet. As a special treat for players, some Sanrio characters may also become your pets. It is certainly fun to watch them follow you around, but they will also be helpful to the players in various ways, such as for item storage.”
I like the idea of having a trail of pets following me everywhere. Maybe it might be worth it to fight a few monsters if they end up my pets in the end.
Here are some screen shots:
Via: little. yellow. different. – Hello Kitty gets an MMORPG
If you have ever played Guitar Hero or Rock Band, then you have imagined yourself to be a Rock God with the game. The Guitar Zeros, however, are a real band that have harnessed the power of the Guitar Hero controllers and are creating real music with them.
You can see them in action here:
They have the complete instructions on how to turn your own Guitar Hero controller into a musical instrument here:
Using just a laptop computer, a Guitar Hero controller and some software from the Guitar Zeros, you can play music too. You don’t have to take apart your controller and it will still work to play your favorite game. It will just have super-hero abilities when you plug it into your PC.
Via: Guitar Zero is a band that has repurposed the Guitar… (kottke.org)
Guitar Hero was featured heavily on the main floor and was in many booths not sponsored by Harmonix or Red Octane. Guitar Hero already gets me off the couch and pretending I’m a Rock Goddess, but if you didn’t think Guitar Hero made you look silly enough, welcome to Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker.
Download this video for your iPod
The Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker comes with a magic belt buckle, an amplifier, two guitar picks and an air cartridge of songs.
The belt buckle reads your hand movements and starts the music playing on the amplifier. Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker is a dream come true for the professional air guitar fanatic!
As a child, I loved Barbie, but lately I have felt betrayed by Mattel. When I walked up to the Barbie Girls booth at CES this year, this betrayal was seething right on the surface:
“Oh, you’re a blogger. Are you going to write about this?” She pointed at the Barbie Girls MP3 Players. I had seen them in the store.
“No, because they’re lame.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Well, those might be lame, but this isn’t.” She held up the Barbie iDesign box and lead me over to the computer running it.
I immediately fell in love with Barbie all over again.
Fashion Plate Redeux
Barbie iDesign is the kind of toy that I would have LOVED as a kid. In fact, I had a toy that was very similar as a child called Fashion Plates. It was a coloring fashion toy that used plates to create outfits. I created a million outfits with that game and Barbie iDesign is a totally awesome update to that toy.
Gameplay
The Barbie iDesign is a computer program that runs on Windows and comes with a barcode scanner (called the Style Swiper and conveniently colored in Barbie pink). The Style Swiper reads the fashion plates that are included with the toy. Each plate represents a doll, a background, or a piece of clothing.
You scan in the doll and she shows up on the screen. Then you take a different plate to scan in her outfit and it shows up on the doll. Pants, skirts, tops and footwear are all different kinds of plates that you can choose from. You get a total of 60 cards with the Barbie iDesign, but there are a total of 200 available for separate purchase to augment your collection.
Once you’ve chosen a few outfits and dolls, you can have them walk down the catwalk in an Uncanny Valley extravaganza!
Download this video for your iPod
The strange little girl that I was would have systematically created every possible outfit and showcased it on the catwalk. Boots with swimming suits? YES… I must create each and every combination and walk it down the red carpet! I can even feel the adult in me wanting to play this game just so I can create every outfit. Quick, what is 60 factorial?! How many permutations are there?!
The additional card packs add even more permutations and are organized by style of dress. For the younger girls in your family, there is a princess pack with enough frilly dresses and crowns to please.
The fun doesn’t end with the fashion show, though. There were other games to play with the cards. You can play them against a friend or you can fight the clock alone. They were mostly games in which you were frantically searching through the cards trying to find the correct one to scan to get a good score. They didn’t look like they were intellectually taxing. Just fun.
The pieces of the iDesign looked pretty sturdy. I tried scraping off the barcode on the side of the cards to see if they were easily damaged, but they are printed well, so you won’t have to worry about your little girl breaking her toy. The worst you have to worry about is losing the cards.
Hacking
The most exciting idea I had was hacking this game. Trying out different bar codes to see what they create in the game was the first idea I had when I saw the iDesign. The easiest hack you can do is to photocopy the bar codes on the back of your friend’s cards so you don’t have to buy the additional packs. The only negative to that is that there is a lot of real world play that you do with the cards and since they are transparent, a picture of them isn’t good enough.
There is some hacking fun to be had with this game and I can’t wait to see what the girls of today do with their iDesign toys.
Complete 180
I walked up to the Barbie Girls booth feeling betrayed by Mattel and Barbie and walked away wishing I knew a little girl who I could buy iDesign for. I guess I’ll just have to buy it for myself…
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