games

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The Man Who Pressed His Luck...and Won

In 1984, ice cream truck driver Michael Larson set a record by winning $110,237 (a combined total of cash and non-cash prizes) in one appearance on the game show Press Your Luck -- and he did it by gaming the system. He had noticed that the Luck board did not rely on luck at all, but was actually running in five predictable patterns -- which he memorized over the course of six weeks, with the help of a VCR. By the time the show's taping was completed, everyone from the host to the contestants were... READ ON

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The [adjective] History of Mad Libs

Leonard Stern, the [adjective] creator of Mad Libs, the wacky fill-in-the-word game we all [past-tense verb] as kids, died this week at the age of [number]. OK, I’ll give you that one: he was 88. Stern was a writer for shows like The Honeymooners, Get Smart and Steve Allen’s Tonight Show. Like all writers sometimes (…often…) do, Stern was sitting over his typewriter, stumped. “I need an adjective,” he told his friend, Roger Price. Before he could give some context by explaining the storyline... READ ON

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This Tetris Documentary Will Rock You

So I'll go ahead and assume you're aware of King of Kong, the videogame documentary that chronicles an epic struggle to dominate the game of Donkey Kong. Kong was a surprising movie mainly because it was supremely interesting to non-nerds, even though its subject was nominally a video game -- and who wants to watch a movie about a video game, much less a super-old video game? Well, the short answer is of course that the film was about people who play video games, and these days, that category extends to... READ ON

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Every Jeopardy! Clue and Response, Ever*

Let's say you wanted to know what went down on last night's episode of Jeopardy! Well, you'd be in luck -- browse on over to the Show #6128 page on J! Archive, and there you have it -- every clue, every response, all the scores, the whole thing -- you can basically play Jeopardy! for yourself by reading the clues, then mousing over the dollar amount to see the response -- remember to phrase your response in the form of a question. At first I thought the J! Archive included every game, ever, but several... READ ON

Article

Desert Bus: This is a Long Driving Game for Someone With Nothing To Think About

Desert Bus is a horrible, horrible driving game -- and it was meant to be. In the game, you're tasked with driving a bus from Tucson to Las Vegas. The trick is, you have to drive the bus in realtime, at a maximum speed of 45mph -- which means that the trip takes eight hours of continuous gameplay to complete (and there is no "pause" feature). The steering wheel pulls slightly to the right, so you have to sit there and actually "drive" the whole time. Upon completion of the trip, you get one point.... READ ON

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Now Waiting for the Bus Can Be Fun

San Francisco has one of the finest public transit systems in America, but that doesn't mean the buses and subways are always on time. Anyone who has ever lived in the city can tell you just how much time they've wasted sitting at the MUNI stations waiting to get picked up. Fortunately, Yahoo! has come up with a great way to keep riders entertained while they wait. The tech company has installed 20 interactive touchscreen systems at bus stops around the city, each of which have four games. Players are... READ ON

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Legend of Zelda Song Performed on Wine Glasses

In my own geeky way, I find this festive. Here's a man performing the "Song of Healing" from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask...on wine glasses. Using tight choreography, he multiplies himself and plays five parts simultaneously. Lovely and weird. More from this guy ("Sp0ntanius") after the... READ ON

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Dungeons & Drawings

If you're a geek of a certain age and inclination, you remember the Monster Manual -- a compendium of monsters for Dungeons & Dragons, including vital statistics (does the monster breathe fire, resist acid, turn you into stone with its gaze, etc.) and creative illustrations. Depending on your age, you probably have a single edition of the Manual that "seems right" -- for me it's the 1983 Monster Manual II, though I also had the Fiend Folio. In any case, two enterprising illustrators going by "Blanca... READ ON

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Kinect Hack Makes Shadow Puppets Real(ish)

The Microsoft Kinect has been selling like hotcakes, and geeks have been using it to do amazing things. The best I've seen so far is this "shadow puppet" app created in one day by exhibit designers Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson using free, open-source drivers for the Kinect. They actually connected the Kinect (ahem) to a Mac and wrote some code in order to make this work. This app tracks "the elbow, the wrist, the tips of your fingers, and your thumb" in order to turn a shadow puppet gesture into a... READ ON

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"There Will Be Blood," SNES Style

Spoiler alert: if you haven't seen 2007's There Will Be Blood, the video below is a massive spoiler -- in the best possible way. The creators turn TWBB into a sidescrolling Super Nintendo style game (sorry, not a playable game -- just a video) lasting just one minute. The original film is 158 minutes long, so this 158:1 compression is shockingly impressive -- particularly given that it seems to get all of the major plot points in there. If you have seen TWBB, you owe it to nerds everywhere to watch this... READ ON