If you combined a horizontal version of skee ball and a super small version of pop a shot, you would get this beer pong arcade machine. It takes all the basic tenets of beer pong (ping pong balls, red solo cups, etc.) but forgets the most important part: DRINKING. In the arcade version of beer pong, you just try and knock down as many cups as you can in 60 seconds… sober. More »
In an effort to get Xbox Live users to play more of Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade games, the company will be launching a new “Play To Earn” rewards system on Xbox Live on April 1 that will reward gamers with free items and Microsoft Points in exchange for playing XBLA games. The new program is only available to Xbox Live Reward members, so if you aren’t a member, get signed up now to take advantage of the new rewards.
Microsoft currently has three ways that you’ll be able to earn new rewards. First, you can play 20 hours of any combination of XBLA games and receive a free avatar item. Second, you can purchase any combination of four XBLA games that cost at least 400 Microsoft Points each, and receive a free month of Xbox Live Gold. Lastly, you can spend 3,200 Microsoft Points on XBLA games and get 800 Microsoft Points in return.
Furthermore, Rewards members can attempt to black out all three XBLA Punchcards during the month of April, which will give themselves a spot in an “upcoming VIP Exclusives.” From the looks of it, it seems that every XBLA game will qualify you to earn rewards by playing them, and some of the most popular XBLA titles include Minecraft, Trials Evolution, Castle Crashers, The Walking Dead, and Limbo.
Furthermore, six new games will be released in the XBLA market in April. These include BattleBlock Theater, Double Dragon II, Motocross Madness, Sacred Citadel, God Mode, and Monaco. Frankly, the new Play To Earn looks pretty great, and it seems like an easy way to earn extra stuff, while playing your favorite games at the same time.
Microsoft announces Play To Earn rewards on Xbox Live is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
As a video game fanatic, I really loved the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. While there were some actual arcade games in the movie, the machines at the center of the story were all imaginary. Perhaps the most iconic game in the movie is Fix It Felix Jr., and pretty soon you’ll be able to actually play the game.
What you’re looking at here is a Fix it Felix Jr. machine, made by Rick Uhlenhopp at Arcade Skin. It looks like a spot-on recreation of the machine from the movie, and even plays a PC version of the game (not Disney’s Flash version). As you can see from the video below, the machine started off as an original Nintendo cabinet, and much of the magic is done with custom made vinyl skins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3USX–42U
Here it is playing a version of the game written by SJAAK, but there’s another version by Rick’s buddy BadBoyBills which is going to be installed on the machine before it’s complete.
While you won’t be able to find this machine in an arcade, you’ll be able to see it in person at the Midwest Gaming Classic this weekend. The show runs from tomorrow (3/23) through Sunday (3/24) at the Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield Hotel in Brookfield, WI. I’ll be there, so I can’t wait to check it out up close and personal.
You can check out more details on the build over on the Hyperspin forums.
Now all we need is working versions of Sugar Rush and Hero’s Duty to go alongside it.
[via MGC Facebook page]
Man, I broke so many arcade records back in the day, but one game that I was never very good at was Missile Command. The game was released in arcades in 1980, and later that year on the Atari 2600. Two years later, a high score was set that hasn’t been broken for the last 31 years. Now a player finally managed to beat it.
The 1982 record was set by Victor Ali who played the arcade version for 56 hours and got a score of 80,364,995. It’s easy to see why the record stood for so long. Who wants to stand there for that many hours? Well, another Victor was not afraid to go for the gold. Victor Sandberg from Sweden.
Over the last couple of days, Victor live-streamed a single coin game of Missile Command that lasted 56 hours, 5 minutes, and 53 seconds. The record wasn’t shattered, but he beat it with a final score of 81,796,035, making it to level 172.
Now it will be up to another to try and steal the title. Any takers? Only one prerequisite: your name must be Victor.
[via Geek]
There are very few things on this Earth that can make a view of the San Francisco Bay even more gorgeous than it already is, and a pier with 67 arcade games lined up side-by-side certainly qualifies as one of them. This stockpile of amusement will soon be making its way into our exhibit hall at Fort Mason for the Engadget Expand afterparty, and we captured this glorious vista fresh off the delivery truck. The usual suspects are here: NBA Jam, Street Fighter, Tetris, Tron, Pac-man, Qbert and even Donkey Kong, along with a litany of other classics. Take a quick break this evening and have yourself a good long look at our gallery of goodies below, as well as a video showing the setup in all its glory.
Gallery: Expand’s Pier of Arcade
We’ve heard of gamers playing games for hours on end, amounting to days even, and it looks like those habits don’t look to be breaking anytime soon as according to reports, it seems that two players tried to beat a world record by playing classic arcade game, Q*bert, for as long as they could. The previous record was set by Ed Heemskerk back in 2012 where he played a record time of 68.5 hours. The new record on the other hand has been set by George Leutz who managed to clock as impressive (and extremely unhealthy) 84 hours and 48 minutes of gameplay, racking up a new world record score of 37,163,080! Leutz has managed to break two world records in the process, with the previous high score being set at 33,273,520 in 1983. While we have to admit that these feats of endurance are pretty impressive, we can only imagine how much toll that can take on the body. After all if you have been following gaming news, you’ve probably heard of how some players collapse, and some even die, from playing video games for too long without taking a break.
[Image Credit – Patrick Scott Patterson]
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Sony Teases PS4 Reveal With ‘Evolution of PlayStation’ Video Series, Halo 4 Majestic Map Pack Leaked,
Forget prize tickets or high scores. The minds at McKinney creative agency may have come up with the greatest reward for arcade victors — an ice cold pour of beer. Created as a marketing tool for Big Boss Brewing Company, the aptly named Beercade features The Last Barfighter, a Street Fighter-like arcade game set inside a biker bar. To begin, two players place their cups in the tray below their respective tap, which replaces the machine’s coin slots. Beer-thirsty combatants can do battle with a selection of five characters, all named after Big Boss brews. After three rounds of intense fisticuffs, fire throwing and unicorn horn impaling, the winner’s cup is filled with a sample of beer from a keg placed within the machine. Don’t believe us? You can click past the break for a video of the machine in action.
Source: McKinney
If you thought it was intense when Hot Wheels cars zoomed around loops, narrowly missing each other at high speed intersections that would make a civil engineer fall to his knees and cry, Hot Wheel’s new Carcade might give you a heart attack. And if your favorite speed is “10 mph under the limit,” the same applies. More »
Sony has announced PS Vita users are getting PlayStation Home Arcade today, a new app for their portable gaming beast. PlayStation Home Arcade is basically what it sounds like – an app that allows you to buy and play classic arcade titles. There will also be a handful of newer titles on offer, and Sony is giving away some free games to celebrate the launch of PlayStation Home Arcade.
Normally, it seems like each title is going to be priced at $1.49. In celebrating the launch of PlayStation Home Arcade, Sony has made Icebreaker and WipEout 2D free, offering up a free demo of Scribble Shooter alongside those two titles. PlayStation Home Arcade is launching with more titles beyond those three though, so check out the full list below:
• Icebreaker (Free)
• WipEout 2D (Free)
• Scribble Shooter (Demo available for Free) – $1.49
• Frogger – $1.49
• Time Pilot – $1.49
• Asteroids – $1.49
• Centipede – $1.49
• Astrosmash Gen2 – $1.49
• Shark! Shark! Gen2 – $1.49
• Mad Blocker – $1.49
Sony says that if you have already purchased any of these games as an arcade cabinet within PlayStation Home, you’ll be able to download it for free within PlayStation Home Arcade. So, if you’ve already been using PlayStation Home to get your classic arcade kicks, you’ll have a bunch of games waiting for you on your PS Vita after today. The company has also released a launch trailer for PlayStation Home Arcade, so give it a look and see if it’s something you’re interested in.
The PlayStation Home Arcade app should be available for download now on the PlayStation Store. While it isn’t anywhere near as exciting as a new game announcement would have been, some PS Vita owners will definitely like the idea of taking old school arcade games with them on the go. Are you going to download PlayStation Home Arcade on your PS Vita?
[via PlayStation Blog]
PlayStation Home Arcade arrives on PS Vita today is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
I’ve always wanted an arcade cabinet in my house so I could play all of the classic arcade games like they were meant to be played. But I keep putting off the purchase because I have more important things to do with my money, like pay for food and my mortgage. Still, if I ever have the money lying around, I’ll definitely bite the bullet and buy one. And if I hit the lottery, I know exactly which machine I’m buying.
This extraordinary arcade cabinet was built by Jack Thompson and the crew at ArcadesRFun with a massive Samsung 55-inch LED/LCD Smart TV, and full controls for up to four players. It’s also got a second 37″ LG marquee display at the top so it can display different images up there during gameplay.
It’s got every controller you can dream of, including RGB LED ball top joysticks, RGB LED buttons, an RGB LED trackball (perfect for Marble Madness, Missile Command and Golden Tee), a true 4-way stick for certain games like Q*bert, and dual spinner controls for games like Tempest and Arkanoid, which can be swapped with tiny metal steering wheels for racing games. It’s also pre-loaded with the awesome Hyperspin UI, so it’s easy to flip between games on just about any system you can imagine.
Under the hood, this beast is powered by a Dell Alienware Aurora R4 PC w/i7 3.9GHZ six core CPU (overclocked to 4.1GHz), with 16GB RAM, 2 – 2TB hard drives and a 3GB AMD Radeon 7950 Video card. It’s also got a Blu-ray player. Audio is provided by a powerful 232 Watt Corsair Gaming Series PC speaker with a “giant” subwoofer. And in case playing games on MAME, MESS and other software emulators isn’t enough for you, it’s also got a PS3, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox 360 w/Kinect pre-installed. You’ll also be able to play console games using the wireless Xbox 360 gamepads.
You can also select from other custom controls, such as a Discs of TRON style flight stick (also great for games like Zaxxon), dual light guns, and a special push-pull spinner (also needed for Discs of TRON and its pesky custom controls.)
The original one of these machines was built as a custom commission project for Monolith Games/HD FILMS founder/IGN host Jace Hall, who wanted a single gaming system which could “play every known game ever made.” While I’m not certain that you could play all of these on it, it’s got over 50,000 games covered between all of the emulators and physical game systems inside. It’s unclear exactly what the differences are between the model you can purchase and Jace’s original – its creators only say that it’s “slightly scaled down.”
Here’s a video of the original system. Jump to about 1:10 to see the machine in action:
So how much does all of this arcade and console gaming goodness cost? Well, bust out your 401Ks, because this bad boy is selling for a whopping $19,995(USD) over on eBay. If you’re serious about buying one, ArcadesRFun has a demo unit available in New Jersey. And if you can’t afford $20k, but you still want a cool arcade cabinet, be sure to check out their website, where you can get into a smaller 32-inch, 2-player system for under $3k, or an incredible virtual pinball machine, complete with force feedback, for about $8k.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
