My poor Play Games page has been neglected for an awfully long time.
I had high ambitions for it when I first put it up, but to be honest, I just kind of forgot about it. So for the past year or so it’s only had two games on it. Sorry about that.
Today I finally got around to fixing things up over there. I added a ton of free games to my collection and spruced up the layout a bit with a fun vintage television set theme. Basically it’s no longer the big pile of suck that it once was. I’ll also continue to add more games as I go along, because I’m sure I’ve overlooked stuff.
Here’s a sampling of what’s in the collection:
Freeware browser &HTML5 games
Old school adventure games
Pure text adventures
Retrocade games
Virtual 80’s toys
Interactive books
And other fun stuff & things!
Now you have no excuses to be productive, doing whatever it is that productive people do. Head on over to my free games page and have some fun!
Today Nintendo unleashed a load of shiny new 3DS trailers in their Nintendo Direct presentation.
The game that most caught my eye was Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir, which is the newest addition to the Fatal Frame series of games. It also has the distinction of being one of the only few horror titles soon to be available on the 3DS platform (in the US, at least).
Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir introduces a mysterious girl named Maya who has been hiding in the shadows of an old house. Players must help Maya break free from a terrifying curse by aiding her escape from the clutches of a malevolent woman in black. By using the Nintendo 3DS system’s built-in camera, players can view Maya in their own surroundings as the game’s eerie events unfold.
Check out the game’s eerie trailer below:
I’m thrilled to see more upcoming horror titles for 3DS, and frankly, it’s about time. The DS platform sorely lacks horror titles, but the few that exist are exceptionally good games. I should really do a blog post about that…
Frictional Games, the developer of Amnesia: The Dark Descent— arguably one of the scariest games ever made—has been teasing fans with hints at a sequel for a while now. Today we get our first look at some screenshots, and later today there will be an interview with the game’s designers.
Joystiq has the very latest:
The power of two crowned indie developer darlings have joined together to form one team, set to bring the Amnesia franchise into a new era.
Speaking exclusively with Joystiq, Frictional Games and Dear Esther’s thechineseroom have revealed their latest project, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.
Developed by thechineseroom and produced by Frictional Games, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is planned for a debut on PC later this year. No firm date has been set, but internally the two studios hope to launch before Halloween. A recent alternate reality game has been teasing the the next Amnesia’s reveal, sending fans into a frenzy.
“It’s not a direct sequel, in terms of it doesn’t follow on from the story of Amnesia. It doesn’t involve the same characters,” Dear Esther writer Dan Pinchbeck told me. Instead, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs will be set in the same “alternate history and set in the same universe.” In short, the game will look to scare your pants off.
Today I saw a post over on the Adventure Gamers forums about a new indie adventure game for iOS that sounded like something I’d really enjoy, so I got all excited—until I remembered that I can’t play it because I don’t own any iOS devices except for an old iPod Nano that I barely use. Lately I’ve been hearing about more and more iOS-only games, many of them horror/adventure titles that, on any other platform, I’d have purchased and played in a heartbeat. Deflated, I began to wonder how many cool games I might be missing out on just because I don’t have an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch/iWhatever. That’s when it dawned on me:
Could this be (gasp!) Mac envy?
I’ve never been much of a Mac fan (for many reasons that I won’t delve into here), even though I do have respect for Apple and its products. So, I’m going to consider this blog post a kind of experiment. What I want to do is make a list of all the iOS-exclusive games that really interest me, and see how long I can go before I break down and do something silly, like go out and purchase an iDevice just to play some friggin’ games on it.
So here goes:
The Secret of Chateau de Moreau
Description: In The Secret of Chateau de Moreau , you are Antoine, the stepson of the Rich Count Moro. Your Stepfather was killed by poisoning and now you are entitled to an enormous inheritance but have also been named as a suspect of his murder. Now you must prove your innocence and discover who murdered your Stepfather through this exciting adventure thriller. Every decision counts! Make game-changing decisions through bone-chilling questioning.
Infinity Blade
Description: In the world of Infinity Blade you take up the ancestral sword of your forefathers to fight foes threatening to destroy your home, and as a heroic knight, you rise up against the sinister God-King and his brutish Titans. Epic boss battles and dazzling weapons and armor all await you in this thrilling iOS gaming experience.
With just a few basic swiping commands, you can spar with a wide variety of challenging opponents, upgrade skills, and cast spells. Not to mention, there’s plenty of loot to be had. As you build your stats and unlock a variety of achievements, you can get more powerful items to help you in your quest to defeat the God-King and free the kingdom’s citizens from an endless legacy of darkness.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
Description: S:S&S EP is a 21st century interpretation of the archetypical old school videogame adventure, designed exclusively for Apple’s touchtronic machinery. It’s a mix of laid-back exploration, careful investigation & mysterious musical problem-solving occasionally punctuated by hard-hitting combat encounters. S:S&S EP is an unusual genre-bending effort with an emphasis on sound, music & audiovisual style that has been positioned as ‘a brave experiment in Input/Output Cinema.
The Dark Meadow
Description: In The Dark Meadow , you wake in the bed of a hospital long ago fallen to stunning ruin, not knowing or understanding why you are here. You are greeted by the only normal looking person in this world, who sends you on a quest to gather what you need to track down and defeat the evil presence that has you trapped in this never-ending parallel world. The decaying hallways and rooms are haunted by creatures relentlessly hounding your every move. As you explore, you learn more and more about the mystery from the world and what you find in it, evidence to be gleaned from the environment, snippets of the past of this forsaken place, words and writings from others who have been trapped here, and you look for clues of how to get out.
Updates for 2/21/2012:
Found a bunch more games to add to this list. FML.
Pizza Vs. Skeletons
Description: A game that manages to make Plants vs. Zombies sound like a banal concept, Pizza Vs. Skeletons is a crazy mashup that pits a giant anthropomorphic pizza against armies of brittle skeletons. Players must try to roll over, crush, or otherwise destroy skeletons through tons of zany side-scrolling and underwater levels. You can even unlock bonuses like extra costumes for your pizza, like the badass pirate outfit pictured above (“Arrrrrgh!”).
The Secret of Grisly Manor
Description: The Secret of Grisly Manor is a “lite” horror-themed adventure game that blends hidden objects, puzzles, detective work and bit of classic adventuring into one entertaining little package. I’m not really a fan of hidden object games, but this game seems to have enough of a mix of different elements to make me interested. From what I’ve read, one of the only complaints about the game is that it’s too short.
The Lost City
Description: From the same developer as The Secret of Grisly Manor comes another adventure game. The Lost City is described as a Myst clone with lots of exploration and puzzle-solving amidst beautiful graphics and scenery.
The Hacker
Description: In The Hacker , you assume the role of an elite programmer working for Glider Corp. and are presented with a series of computer hacking challenges (e.g. mini games) that guide you through the story, which is something of a corporate crime thriller. I like the game’s vintage monochrome aesthetics. This one sounds like a pretty neat concept, and the reviews look very favorable.
To Be Continued…
Do you know of any other great iOS-only games? Tell me about ‘em in the comments. I’m especially interested in any adventure or horror titles , which I will gladly list here if they’re exclusive to iOS.
If there was ever a game considered right up my alley, this might be it. This awesome-looking game from indie developer Phosfiend Systems fuses sweet synth music with classic point-and-click style adventure gaming. As if this didn’t already sound amazing enough, lead developer Richard Flanagan describes it as “Rez meets TRON.”
FRACT is a first person adventure game for Windows & Mac much in the vein of the Myst titles, but with an electro twist. Gameplay boils down to three core activities: Explore, Rebuild, Create. The player is let loose into an abstract world built on sound and structures inspired by electronic music. It’s left to the player to explore the environment to find clues to resurrect and revive the long-forgotten machinery of this musical world, in order to unlock its’ inner workings. Drawing inspiration from Myst, Rez and Tron, the game is also influenced by graphic design, data visualization, electronic music and analog culture.
The game is being further developed for release sometime in 2012. An older, playable prototype of FRACT is available for download for both Win and Mac; you can get it here .
According to a new study by Brigham Young University, excessive gaming often leads to unhappy marriages, and in many cases, divorce. The Chicago Tribune reports:
The researchers surveyed 349 couples with at least one spouse who plays a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), such as World of Warcraft or Eve Online, about their marital satisfaction. World of Warcraft, by far the most popular MMORPG, has more than 12 million subscribers worldwide, about a quarter of them in North America. The median age of players is about 26, and more than a third are married.
The results confirmed what Neil Lundberg, one of the study’s authors, already suspected: “Gaming widows,” spouses who lose the attention of their significant other to gaming, aren’t happy with their marriages.
More than 65 percent of spouses who don’t play video games said they fight with their husband or wife about gaming, and 75 percent of respondents said that their spouse’s habit has negatively affected their marriage.
Of course, the flip side to studies like these are those cases where gaming is a mutual passion, and something that spouses often share. When I played World of Warcraft, I knew plenty of married couples who had no issues logging four or more hours per day—as long as they were doing it together. I also knew people in the game who met, fell in love, and later married.
Moral of the story: couples that play together stay together!
It’s Valentine’s Day! And what more could you want than yet another list about video game couples? I know you’re excited. Don’t hide it.
I realize there’s no shortage of lists out there about video game couples. I’ve seen them all: “Best Couples”, “Greatest Couples”, “Top Couples”, “Worst Couples”, and my personal favorite, “Probably Gay Couples.” (Etc, etc, etc.)
But on my list you’ll find romantic couples spanning decades of video game history: couples from huge, well-known franchises to small indie games, as well as rare, older games you’ve probably never played or even heard of. There are married couples, doomed/ill-fated romances, couples you know/suspect are more than just friends, cute couples, dead couples, on-again/off-again couples, and a few silly ones thrown in as well.
I began this project with a simple mission: put together the biggest and best unbiased list of canonical, romantic video game couples that I possibly could.
And what did I learn from all this? That romance is alive and well in video games.
And I’ve got a list of over 100 video game couples to prove it!
With the North American launch of PlayStation Vita just days away, 1up has put together this in-depth evaluation , which serves as a scorecard of sorts to help you decide if Sony’s newest handheld will be a worthy investment of your hard-earned gaming dollars. Like many gamers, I too am weighing the decision of whether or not to drop $250 or more on this little piece of plastic, however slick and beautiful it looks at first glance.
After reading through 1UP’s four page’s worth of exhaustive hands-on review and commentary, I’ve distilled the main talking points into pros and cons to help me (and hopefully you) decide if Vita is the must-have, can’t-live-without gaming portable you should rush out to the store and buy immediately—of if you should save your cash and take the “wait and see” approach.
First, let’s get the fanboy hype out of the way…
10 reasons to buy a Vita right now:
1. The screen is drop-dead gorgeous. At 5 inches with a display resolution of 960 x 650, games look amazing even at oblique angles or from a distance. OLED technology means richer colors and pure, deep blacks.
2. Clunky UMDs are a thing of the past. For game software, the Vita drops universal media discs (UMDs), which were extremely clunky (due to all the moving parts required in an optical drive), in favor of proprietary, solid state flash memory cards. No more accidental disc ejections!
3. Decent battery life. Vita’s reported battery life is good for up to 5 hours of interrupted play. 1Up observed 3.5 — 4 hours of playtime running a high-performance game at full screen brightness. It’s not amazing battery life, but it’s certainly on par with most other devices.
4. Left AND right analog sticks for the win. The Vita is the only handheld that boasts proper left and right analog sticks (versus PSP’s weird little sliding analog nub thingy). Most modern games like platformers and FPSs are designed for dual analog sticks, so playing these types of games on Vita will be more comfortable and enjoyable.
5. Rear touch pad and two cameras. It’s a hardware combination that should make for some very interesting games, if developers integrate them wisely.
6. Simple, elegant, multi-touch user interface. It’s clear Sony was inspired by iOS when designing Vita’s interface; except instead of little square icons with rounded corners, Vita’s are circular. Multi-touch lets you flick and swipe the screen to move between home screens and launch and close apps.
7. Multitasking is now possible. Unlike the PSP, you don’t have to quit your game to jump into another app. And there are sure to be plenty of 3rd-party Vita apps coming soon that you’ll want to have the ability to switch between.
8. Vita’s PlayStation Store rocks. According to 1Up, it “easily ranks among the best content stores anywhere.” Navigation is easy and more direct than on PS3, and the store is simple and clutter-free.
9. Exciting launch titles. The launch game line-up for Vita, though not extensive, includes several hotly anticipated, noteworthy gems like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , Little Deviants , and Gravity Rush .
10. The (somewhat) affordable pricetag. Yes, it’s $250, which isn’t a drop in the hat by any means. But this is Sony we’re talking about. $250 for a technologically superior portable gaming device doesn’t seem so bad when compared to, say, 3DS’s $250 launch pricetag.
And now for some harsh realities:
10 reasons NOT to buy a Vita (or at least wait a while):
1. You’ll have to buy your PSP games all over again. If you want to be able to play them on Vita, that is. Vita only supports PSP games purchased from the PlayStation store. So if you have purchased an extensive library of PSP games and expect to play them on Vita (which upgrades their graphics quality significantly), guess what? You’re shit outta luck.
2. It’s not truly “backwards compatible.” Even though Sony’s pushing this as a selling point. Yes, you can play PSP games on Vita and they look amazing with upscaled graphics, but with no way of playing your PSP UMDs on Vita without having to re-purchase your games, is it really fair to make this claim?
3. The analog sticks are likely to break. Having dual analog sticks on a portable is great, but not when they jut out so far from the device that they could easily break off. 1Up recommends purchasing a hard-shell Vita case to help shield them from accidental drops, or being snagged on something (like when you’re stashing it away in your bag).
4. The rear touch pad is awkward, uncomfortable. Gamers with large hands may have trouble holding the device comfortably, since merely grazing the rear touch pad accidentally with your fingers can trigger “back touch,” Sony’s new touch-based sensor on the back of the system. You’ll most likely need to constantly adjust your grip while playing games, which doesn’t sound very comfortable to me at all.
5. Vita’s storage media is ridiculously expensive. Sony only uses proprietary (read: expensive) storage cards for Vita. A 32 GB PlayStation Vita memory card costs $100. For comparison’s sake, you can buy a 32 GBSD card for about 30 bucks. And according to everything I’ve read, you’re going to need a lot of storage for Vita’s library of games.
6. The touch screen controls are inconsistent. Rather than giving gamers a choice between touch AND D-pad controls, you’ll be forced to use only touch screen controls when navigating the Vita’s menu systems. This is counter intuitive and inconsistent with some games like UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss , where players have the choice to use either/or.
7. The Vita games library is promising, but not stellar. Other than a few key Vita titles, the library at launch time mostly includes ports and re-worked games from other platforms.
8. That $250 pricetag is actually more like $400. By the time you purchase a memory card, a protective carrying case (which you’re going to need, due to the analog stick design flaws mentioned above), and a game, you’re looking at a total spend of around $400 or more.
9. Other than looking impressive, what does Vita really offer? Apart from the rear touch control (which, from the sound of it, is less cool in reality) there’s not much in the way of innovation here other than being able to play beautiful-looking games on a handheld.
10. Is there room in our lives for another portable gaming device? Most gamers already own a DS (maybe even a 3Ds) and a PSP in addition to their smartphones, tablets, Kindles, and other expensive gadgets that can also play games. That begs the question: where does PlayStation Vita fit in?
The main question for me is: Do I really need this much gaming power in my pocket? Being realistic about the price, am I willing to drop around $400 for a device that doesn’t offer me any significant value other than looking slick and being able to play a small handful of beautiful-looking games? The thing that would be most likely to get me to change my mind at this point is offering more exclusive, must-have titles that would justify and support my purchase. UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss is a good start. But what else?
As I did with the PS3, I think I’ll take the “wait and see” approach for PlayStation Vita. How about you?
Yesterday’s news of a young man found dead at an internet cafe in Taiwan is just the latest case of an increasingly common occurrence: dropping dead while playing video games.
With the rise in popularity of “never ending” games like World of Warcraft , Star Wars: The Old Republic , and other online games that design their entire business models around keeping players hooked, video game addiction is an issue that’s getting a lot of attention lately .
But are the games themselves to blame, or does it come down to individual gamers who just don’t know how to take care of themselves? While many of us are able to play a lot of games and still lead (relatively) normal lives, it seems we’ve all known at least one other gamer who struggles to maintain a healthy gaming/life balance.
In my former WoW life, I never knew anyone who died as a direct result of playing the game—but I did witness firsthand how players’ addictions led to other terrible things happening in their lives. I knew people who lost their jobs, neglected their children, dropped out of college, and got divorced. And though they’d deny the root cause of these problems, it wasn’t hard for the rest of us to understand the consequences that go along with spending 15+ hours of every day logged in to a virtual environment.
Below are six woeful tales of people who died playing video games:
Gamer’s Death at Internet Cafe Goes Unnoticed
Just yesterday, Chen Rong-yu, a 23 year old Taiwanese man, died while playing League of Legends , a free online MMORPG, at an internet cafe in New Taipei city this past Tuesday. His body was found slumped over in a chair with his hands stretched out towards the keyboard and mouse. The most horrifying part is that none of the cafe’s other patrons noticed until NINEHOURSLATER. The ongoing investigation into his death reveals the gamer may have suffered from cardiac arrest triggered by a combination of tiredness, lack of movement, and cold temperatures.
Xbox Addict Dies from Blood Clot
Budding computer programmer Chris Staniforth, who was only 20 years old, died from playing too much Halo . His 12-hour marathon Xbox sessions caused a fatal pulmonary embolism, a type of blood clot that can occur when someone sits in the same position for several hours. Chris had just been accepted to Leicester University to study game design when he collapsed outside a UK Jobcentre after complaining of a low heart rate. He had no previous medical conditions.
Online Gamer Dies After 3-Day Session
An unidentified 30 year old man in Beijing died after spending three days immersed in an online game at a local internet cafe. He lost consciousness and was rushed to a hospital but could not be revived. According to reports, the man had spent more than 10,000 yuan (approximately $1,500) on gaming in the months before his death.
Man Loses Job, Dies After Gaming for 50 Hours
A 28 year old man from South Korea died while playing Starcraft for 50 hours with only few short breaks. The cause of death was presumed to be heart failure stemming from exhaustion. The man, who had eaten very little during his marathon gaming session, only stopped playing to go to the toilet a few times and for brief periods of sleep. He had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.
WoW Gamer Kicked from Guild, Too Dead to Log In
Jerald Spangenberg, an avid World of Warcraft player, died while raiding with his WoW guild after getting into a heated argument during the raid. His cause of death was an abdominal aneurysm, presumably brought about by long periods of sitting at the computer combined with the stress of the argument. After Jerald suddenly went silent during the raid, he was auto-logged out of the game after 10 minutes of inactivity and did not log in again. His guildies assumed he was being childish and had deserted them, so they kicked him out of the guild and kept on raiding. It wasn’t until three weeks later that they learned what happened from Jerald’s daughter (and felt horrible about it).
Young Girl Dies After Playing WoW for Several Days Straight
A young Chinese girl known by her nickname “Snowly” died after playing World of Warcraft for several days straight during a national holiday. Snowly was a key member of her WoW guild, who said the girl had been preparing for a very difficult raid and had had very little rest in the days prior. An in-game funeral was held for Snowly in the week after her death, but sadly the event was overshadowed by the death of another popular WoW player during the same week.
Yes kids, it is possible to literally game yourself to death. May these stories serve as a warning to you, fellow gamers, to put down the controller every once in a while to eat and sleep. And for shit’s sake, get some exercise!
According to the Parks’ study, Trends in Digital Gaming: Free-to-Play, Social, and Mobile Games, the number of US gamers has increased by 241 percent from 2008 to 2011. Today, in a nation with a population of nearly 307 million, 135 million of those people are classified as gamers; that’s up from 56 million in 2008. Parks defines a gamer as “individuals in a broadband household who play at least one hour per month.
In three years, 44 percent of the country is now gaming thanks to a rise in social networking and mobile adoption. If the trend continues with the same momentum, we could see a majority of the country planting virtual crops and setting up virtual kingdoms.
I happen to love the Sega CD dearly and hold a special place in my heart for it, but holy shit did it have some terrible commercials. It’s a tough job marketing game consoles that have a maximum of 64 colors displayable simultaneously, but somebody’s gotta do it.
Today I’m waxing nostalgic about my favorite full motion video peripheral with this round-up of five awesomely bad Sega CD commercials:
“WHOOOOOOOA…NOTHINGELSEMOVESLIKEIT!”
Apparently Sega CD’s most bad ass feature is…that the disc spins.
This 5-minute long in-store commercial/demo reel for the Sega CD is a typical example of early 90’s teen-centric marketing: choppy “in your face” editing, subliminal text messages, kids expressing themselves in ironic sound bytes, and employs what I like to call the acid wash jeans filter. It could easily be mistaken for an episode of Nickelodeon’s Roundhouse . I won’t blame you if you can’t sit through the whole thing.
Hey, was that Lucas at 1:28? (“Sega CD? SOBAD!”)
“Still don’t have a Sega CD? What are you waiting for, Nintendo to make one?”
I hate it when angry black men break the fourth wall and fuck up my living room.
“There is no Nintendo CD.”
Jesus, didn’t Dwayne Wayne have anything better to do?
“Now that’s tight.”
Promo spot for Sega CD featuring Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make My Video . This is about as 1990s as it gets, kids.
“Just when you thought you’d seen everything…”
Explosions! Fire! Sharks! Cannons! Caution: may be too EXTREME for some viewers. Only watch this if you can handle how EXTREMELYEXTREME it is!
I hope you’ve all learned some valuable lessons today.
TDW Geek by way of Paul Gale is reporting that Rocksteady’s next game is called The Manhattan Crisis… a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. If you’ve played the standout Batman: Arkham Asylum or its even more acclaimed sequel, Arkham City, I don’t have to tell you how incredible this collaboration would be.
How amazing would this be? I’m a huge Turtles fan, but I can do without most of the campy, cartoonish TMNT games of yesteryear. It’s time for a darker, grittier TMNT game!
Update: As of 3:30 PM today, Kotaku is reporting that Rocksteady chief Sefton Hill has confirmed this report is false. Aw, man. :(
Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland , part three of Gust’s Atelier trilogy, is currently being localized for western audiences and prepped for launch by NIS in North America and Europe this May. NIS also published the first and second entries in the series, Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland . Via www.joystiq.com
Meruru is the princess of Arls, a little kingdom situated in the far north of the Arland republic. After her father and Gio, the leader of Arland, discussed the merging of the two lands, she met Totori, the now-graduated alchemist. Dazzled by the power of alchemy, and with a desire to help her country prosper, she forced herself on Totori as her first student.
Check out the game’s very pretty, very girly trailer here:
If you’ve been reading here lately, you already know that I’m on a big Pinterest kick right now. One of the things I love about Pinterest is how easily you can create and share curated lists about very specific topics. Horror-themed adventure games, for example (talk about a niche within a niche).
Scary point-and-click adventure games rank among my most favorite types of games to play; many of my most memorable gaming experiences can be attributed to this genre. To that end, I’m always on the lookout for new adventure horror games, scouring forums for recommendations, and cruising Google news feeds to get my fix.
That’s why I decided my first Pinterest project would be to put together The Big List of Horror-Themed Adventure Games , to keep track of the games I’ve played or have an interest in playing. Each of the games on my list includes the game’s title, cover art, platform, year released, and a link to its Wikipedia article.
I know there are others out there who love these types of games as much as I do, and so I thought this list might become a useful resource for discovering similar games. Plus, I love how Pinterest turns the games’ box art into an awesome-looking collage.
Do you know of any other great scary, horror-themed or dark adventure games that aren’t on my list? Please leave a comment and let me know. I’d love to keep this list growing!
Game Informer has the latest new screenshots from The Last of Us , Naughty Dog’s upcoming survival horror action/adventure game, and they are absolutely breathtaking. It’s hard to believe these are actual, in-game screenshots. It’s clear that Naughty Dog is really stepping up their game with this release, pushing PS3’s graphics processors to the limit. Head on over to Game Informer to see all four of these beauties.
The Last of Us is set in a post-apocalyptic world where fungus has infected humans’ brains and turned them into zombies, but Naughty Dog insists that it’s not another mindless “zombie game.” The game will focus on the relationship between the two main protagonists, survivor man Joel and his 14-year old daughter, Ellie.
The Last of Us is due for release sometime in the last quarter of 2012.
I’ve been wanting some new social media icons for my blog to match the 8-bit theme I have going on, but couldn’t find anything decent. So I decided to create my own! The power mushroom from Super Mario was an obvious choice. I only needed a few icons, but I loved how they turned out so much that I decided to make a whole matching set—and give them away for free to you, the good people of the interwebz.
The Power Mushroom Social Media Icon Collection
(scroll down for download link)
Details & Terms of Use
My collection contains 20 different designs in transparent PNG format, in two different sizes : large (80 x 80) and small (40 x 40).
Please feel free to use these icons however you wish! If you want to feature this collection on your site or blog, all I ask is that you please link back to this page . I also love comments, tweets, +1’s & Likes. ;-)
Countless documentaries have investigated gaming addiction and the supposed dangers lurking in massively multiplayer titles, but it’s not often that someone who’s experienced an addiction talks about it himself. Third year film student and ex World of Warcraft junkie Anthony Rosner looks back on his six years in the game in a new short documentary on the effects of MMO addiction. With help from friends Dave Novis and Arron Amo, Anthony produced, directed, wrote, and edited the film himself, ensuring that he had the opportunity to tell his whole story and tell it from his own perspective. Via massively.joystiq.com
Yesterday, the new adventure game from Pendulo Studios, today unveiled a series of 4 new images! After leaving its mark in adventure gaming with its million-selling trilogy Runaway and, more recently, The Next BIG Thing, Pendulo has given up comedy for once and is offering an original and dark thriller. Via www.gamasutra.com
The Smithsonian American Art Museum will explore video games as art in its upcoming exhibit, The Art of Video Games . The exhibit will showcase 80 video games, from the early days of Atari and ColecoVision to today’s next-gen consoles like Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.
Among the familiar titles included: Pac-Man, Pitfall!, The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy VII, Rez (picture above), Portal, Heavy Rain, and holy shit is that ChuChu Rocket I see on the list? Here is the full list of featured games . The selected games were chosen by public vote, and were whittled down from a list of over 240 titles. (Which helps to explain why some obvious choices didn’t make the cut. Braid and Grim Fandango come to mind.)
If you don’t live near D.C, you may still be able to attend. The exhibit will be travelling to several other major cities, including Boca Raton, Seattle, New York, Toledo, Flint, and Memphis. Click the link for details.
The Art of Video Games exhibit will debut March 16 and remain open until September 30, 2012.
My poor Play Games page has been neglected for an awfully long time. 
Today I saw a post over on the 
I happen to 
