Hasta La Gadget!

Zynga’s staffers might have had a laser-like focus on releasing FarmVille 2 this week, but that doesn’t mean the company has forgotten how to take a break. One employee (thankfully, also a Reddit member) has revealed that the developer’s San Francisco headquarters has a giant, 16-screen video wall for gaming in the cafeteria — and yes, they’re playing Halo in that photo rather than some future, first-person version of Mafia Wars. It’s no surprise that the employees aren’t playing their own games all the time; we’re pretty sure that even the most avid Facebook gamers would burn out if they did. Nonetheless, it’s hard not to smile at the thought that the same people urging us to buy new crops are sticking plasma grenades in their spare time.

Filed under: Displays, Gaming

Visualized: what Zynga workers do when they’re not playing FarmVille originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Sep 2012 02:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA has offered up some impressive statistics from the first week of availability for its new Madden NFL 13 video game. I think we all expected this video game to do very well – after all, it’s the most popular sports franchise in all of video gamedom.

According to EA, sell through for the game was up 8% year-over-year on HD platforms with more than 1.65 million units sold in its first week. EA says that this is the best ever start for the franchise on this console generation. The first week following the launch saw more than 24 million online games played equating to 47,000 NFL regular seasons.

It looks like a lot gamers spent their Labor Day playing Madden with over 3000 games per minute started on average on Labor Day alone. EA also notes that there are more than 1.4 million fans connected online during the week and there were more than 702,000 unique visitors to the enhanced Madden Ultimate Team mode.

A labor of love 7 years in the making, this heavily customized, Nintendo-themed variant of Risk was made by – drum roll please – redditor NintendoRisk. Instead of our countries and continents, the territories are places from various classic Nintendo games, including the Kanto region, Hyrule, Eagleland, Dinosaur Island and more. It also has aerial territories such as Zebes and the Great Fox ship.

The art looks really good, not just the stuff on the board, but on the cards – there are 100 Hero and 42 Territory cards – as well. NintendoRisk said that all of the artwork is in high resolution. The board for example is about 20,000 pixels wide and its digital copy is about 700MB.

My only suggestion would be to add a border graphic of some sort on the board. I’m sure NintendoRisk can fill it up with Nintendo’s vast cache of characters and icons.

[via Imgur via Reddit]

Do you love the Final Fantasy games? I don’t just mean love. I mean, are you obsessed with the franchise? Do you collect all of the merchandise? Well, here’s the ultimate package to feed your obsession. To celebrate 25 years, Square-Enix(JP) has packaged together all of its core Final Fantasy titles into a single box set.


You’ll not only get discs for Final Fantasy I through Final Fantasy XIII, but you also get a numbered presentation plaque with new artwork from character artist Yoshitaka Amano, a two-disc soundtrack and a commemorative DVD. It will cost you 35,000 yen, (~$450USD). To play all of the games, you’ll need a PlayStation, a PlayStation 2, a PlayStation 3 and a PSP.

It will arrive in Japan on December 18th, but sadly it probably won’t go on sale internationally any time soon, so the rest of us will just have to deal and whine about it.

[via Joystiq via Engadget]

If I could play the guitar and play it well, then I’d definitely go out and try to score myself one of these awesome customized Mario Bros. guitars. I mean, just look at it.

Of course, the first thing I’d actually play is a rocked-out version of the Super Mario Bros. theme. How about you?

This custom guitar was made by ’geekd out’, who hails from Australia. He describes it as:

24 Fret, Full size, amazing quality. Full floating tremolo, Locking neck, Easy access to the top of the neck, Mushroom inlays, amazing sound, and looks fantastic.

Here’s a clip of him playing his awesome guitar:

Looks like the Super Mario guitar is for sale up on G33KeD for $489 Australian Dollars (~$500 USD), and you’d better move quick if you want one. You never know if Nintendo’s lawyers will swoop in and try and stop to this wonderful (but likely unofficial) guitar.

[via Obvious Winner]