Mere words cannot do justice to The Great Gatsby for NES. Finally, book nerds and video gamers have something in common. Who doesn’t want to wander through West Egg as Nick Carraway looking for the mysterious Jay Gatsby? Nobody, that’s who.
Andy Baio of Waxy has put together an extensive list of metagames. What the heck is that? A metagame is a video game about video games. While not an exhaustive list (he’s asking for help if you know of some games he forgot/doesn’t know about, so get on it videogame nerds) it’s pretty through. He breaks the games down into various categories — Abusive (games that test your patience), Minimalist (the opposite of abusive), Game Mechanics Gone Wild (games that “single game mechanic or cliche and blow it out, usually for comic effect),” Violent Games, and Gaming Culture. It’s a great list and offers an interesting statement on gaming culture.
Today Boing Boing has offered up the most excellent Sons of Pong, a gallery of advertisements for knock-off Pong games from around the world. My favorite is the German one though I have no idea what it says. Just take a look at the dude in the lower left. Those pants? Awesome. The mullet/sweatband combo? Double Awesome.
P.S. There’s still time to RSVP for The Nerdery’s charity Wine Tasting event and to donate a buck or two to fight cancer and win an iPad.
The Thrilleresque dancing zombie is out and apparently, disco-dancing Zombies are in. MTV’s Multiplayer blog is reporting that the dancing Michael Jacksonesque zombie from the popular Plants Vs. Zombies is being removed from the game.
PopCap said they removed the zombie after Michael Jackson’s estate objected to its use.
A short 11-minute documentary about pixel art and early video games. There’s talk about Mario and how he got his bushy mustache (as you know Mario’s a particular Nerdery favorite), and how pixel art is more relatable (where Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is name-checked).
Once we realized that the PAC-MAN game on Google’s homepage was all Javascript, we (Ken) couldn’t resist modifying it. In our version the ghosts can’t move. We also disabled Blinky (the red one) so you can pass right through him.
Here is how to run our custom version.
Earlier today, Google tweeted about getting to level 256. I don’t know if they’ve hidden something secret in there, but now you have got a chance at getting that far.
If you are ambidextrous, click the Insert Coin button one more time and you can play as Ms. PAC-MAN with the WASD keys and still control PAC-MAN with the arrow keys.
Last Friday we got the inside scoop on the making of the Oregon Trail video game from our guy John Krenz, who was the lead programmer for the Apple lle version back when he worked for the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation (MECC), an organization that set out to teach kids life lessons like the value of strong oxen, a spare axle for your wagon, shooting wild game and steering clear of cholera. Show-and-tell also featured four of John’s former MECC colleagues: Rich Bergeron; Beth Daniels; Tom Zemlin; and Mark Paquette. Here’s a three-minute highlight reel from Friday’s BottleCap Talk, and also the unabridged video. On a personal note, I recently passed away. Cholera.
The Oregon Trail Bottlecap Talk: The Music Video from The Nerdery on Vimeo.
