Show off your love for retro gaming with this animated pixel art frame. Similar to the Pixel and Pixel V2, Game Frame is a digital canvas that can be loaded up with hundreds of your favorite 8-bit video game characters and symbols. Time to show off some 8-bit art in your home.
Basically the frame is a grid of 256 ultra-bright LED pixels, for showing off all kinds of geek art. In fact, Game Frame comes with over 40 brand new animations from eBoy. The hardware is Arduino-based, and the complete source code will be released once they ship. Thousands of images & animations can be stored on SD and played back the way you want, configured by two buttons on top.
While it’s not as high resolution as the Pixel, there’s something to be said for the chunky square LED pixels on the Game Frame.
A pledge of at least $230(USD) will get you a completely assembled Game Frame, while you can pick up a kit version with all components but the frame for $150, or without the LEDs for $60.
If you want to announce your love of Super Mario Bros. to your guests before they even enter your home, you need this doorbell. YouTube user Joe Tsai designed this Mario themed doorbell that chimes with the sound of coin collecting from the game.
When a guest presses the button, the counter ticks upward and it makes the familiar coin-collecting noise. Special sounds like play at certain intervals too. Every 10 coins, it makes the 1up sound, and every 100 coins you get a mushroom upgrade. Sweet.
If you want to build one yourself Joe has a tutorial to help you out. Make one and put it on your door now.
It’s the next best thing to a Mario voice saying, “It’s a me! Mario!”
Jason Holtman, who spent several years working for Valve and was the company’s Director of Business Development, took up a job with Microsoft in the latter part of 2013, a … Continue reading
A company called Tivitas is working on the gamepad equivalent of Mad Catz’ R.A.T. mice, and then some. It’s called the Sinister, a glove-shaped gamepad that’s adjustable in different aspects. It also has a haptic feedback technology that’s supposedly more nuanced compared to the rumble motors used in most gamepads.
The images here are of the Sinister’s prototype, but the major features should be intact in the retail product. Like Mad Catz’ mice, Sinister’s overall length and the height of its arch are adjustable. The customization extends to its buttons and analog stick. These switches come in small magnetized modules that can be rearranged on the fly to suit your preference.
Finally, you can pick from different ways of using the gamepad. You can have the gamepad and your mouse emulate an Xbox 360 controller, with the mouse acting as the right analog stick. You can also emulate an Xbox 360 controller with just Sinister alone, leaving you free to use all of your mouse’s functionality. Finally, you can have the gamepad emulate a keyboard and map commands to its keys.
In its hands-on with Sinister, Polygon said that Vivitouch, the gamepad’s haptic feedback technology, is “lighter, smaller, quieter and more energy efficient than rumble devices and offers a more targeted haptic feel. A bullet shot feels a lot different to a sword clanging against a shield, or a long fall.” Polygon also said that the gamepad will have different rumble settings for different types of games, though Tivitas made no mention of that in its Kickstarter page.
Tivitas claims that Sinister is already compatible with Windows and Linux, with support for OS X on the way. Pledge about $109 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a beta version of the Sinister gamepad as a reward. I think the Sinister can make gaming on a PC more comfortable, but I can do without the rumble feature. Hopefully Tivitas will consider releasing a cheaper, rumble-less model.
Last weekend, game developer Don Nguyen removed his hit free mobile game Flappy Bird from Apple’s and Google’s app stores. He said he felt guilty that he created an addiction. Meanwhile, last week Coffee Stain Studios – developer of the tower defense hybrid Sanctum – released a video of an unfinished game that it made for fun. It’s called Goat Simulator, and it’s as stupid as it sounds. And now you can pre-order it. For $10 (USD).
Here is the first video that Coffee Stain Studios shared online. The developers revealed that they originally made the game for a game jam – an event where game developers convene to try and create games in a short span of time. In the case of Goat Simulator, Coffee Stain Studios said that they made it in just “a couple of weeks.”
The video quickly became popular and folksclamored for the game to be released. This being the Internet, the line between sarcasm and sincerity is hard to trace. So here we are.
Gamers are crazy. I see people complaining about the value of Humble Bundle’s offerings all the time, even though some bundles are essentially hundred dollar discounts. The aversion of mobile gamers to paying even just a couple of bucks for quality games drove us to the ridiculous in-app purchase hell we’re currently in. But now we’re willing to pay for what is essentially an intentionally buggy physics engine with a goat in it. Is the video funny? Sure. But would you pay $10 for it?
In fairness to Coffee Stain Studios, it promised that to polish the game and make it so players can create levels through Steam Workshop. More importantly, the developer is transparent about what it’s offering:
“Goat Simulator is a small, broken and stupid game. It was made in a couple of weeks so don’t expect a game in the size and scope of GTA with goats. In fact, you’re better off not expecting anything at all actually. To be completely honest, it would be best if you’d spend your $10 on a hula hoop, a pile of bricks, or maybe a real-life goat.”
To anyone who goes ahead and pre-orders the game, relish the moment that you enter your payment details. Shoot a video of that moment and upload it on YouTube. Be sure to name the video “Let’s Play Goat Simulator.”
It has been about two years since the original PS Vita launched. Not too long ago, Sony released a slimmer version of the handheld in Japan and a few other countries. Sony has announced that that new slim PS Vita will be coming to the US in a bundle set to land this spring. Exactly when it will be available to purchase is unknown.
The new version of the PS Vita is 20% slimmer and 15% lighter than the original version. The bundle will include a Wi-Fi PCH-2000 series PS Vita, Borderlands 2 Limited Edition game, six DLC packs for the game, and an 8GB PS Vita memory card. It has 1GB of internal storage and promises about an extra hour of playback thanks to the new battery.
The DLC content included with the game features Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate’s Booty, Mr. Torgue’s Campaign of Carnage, Psycho Character Class, Mechromancer Character Class, Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 1 and the Collector’s Edition Pack.
The bundle will sell for $199.99(USD), which is a pretty good deal when you see that the Japanese imports are selling for $250 to $300 without the bundle.
A very strange new study has been published by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that tries to link the behavior of gamers in the real world to the avatars they use on gaming services. The study took 194 undergrad students and got them to play a game where they were assigned one of three avatars. The avatars were either heroic (superman), villainous (Lord Voldemort), or neutral in the form of a circle.
After playing the game, the students participated in another study. In this study, the student had to taste and then give either chocolate or chili sauce to a future participant. The study showed that the players who were assigned the Superman avatar overwhelmingly chose to give future participants chocolate. On the other hand, the players assigned the evil avatar more often chose to give the chili sauce.
The study participants generally claimed equivalent levels of self-identification with heroic and villainous avatars, so they weren’t aware that the avatars were influencing their attitudes. Of course, correlation does not imply causation, so it could just be that the meaner people happened to be selected as Voldermorts.
What if, the next time you played a video game, the main character not only looked like you but had the same body, same clothes, same everything? How would it change the way you related to the game? How would it change the way you relate to the other characters in it? I found out.
Few Hollywood announcements are treated with such fierce-yet-wounded anticipation as video game adaptations. Full of incredible artistry, instantly-recognizable characters and an increasingly-mature approach to storytelling, you’d be forgiven for thinking gaming is a medium particularly well suited for making the jump to the silver screen. But history tells another story.
If you are a fan of The LEGO Movie, the video game companion to the film is now available to purchase. Naturally, the game is called The LEGO Movie Videogame.
In the action adventure, gamers will play as some of the most popular characters from the movie voiced by the same big name actors that voiced the characters on screen.
The game is available for just about every console out there from the new PS4 and Xbox One to the Wii U, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. Portable gamers can also get the game for the 3DS and PS Vita. The PS4 and Xbox One versions are $59.99(USD) with the versions for other consoles going for $49.99. The PC and portable versions are $29.99.
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