Oh! Gizmo

By Luke Anderson

I’m something of a Guitar Hero nut, so I’m always happy to hear when the games come to new platforms. Guitar Hero III Mobile has been out for a little while now, but not until today has it been playable on Blackberry phones.

I had the opportunity to spend a little hands-on time with the game, and was pleased at how it performed. Obviously the screen movements aren’t going to be as smooth as when you’re playing on a console, but it was still fun to play. Now if they’d just get it on the iPhone, now that would be awesome.

By Evan Ackerman

Okay, I know some of you probably think that this is the coolest thing ever and you wish your parents had given you a board game that teaches basic programming concepts when you were 11 years old. If they had, you’d probably be pulling down six figs by now. C-Jump uses a ski race theme to introduce kids to loops, conditional statements, variables, and syntax used in C, C++, and Java. But come on, when you were 11, what did you really want? That’s right, a Nintendo 64.

C-Jump is $24.95 with free shipping in the US; scary pic of the game board after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Evan Ackerman

I was really good at chess in third grade, but I’ve gotten much much dumber since then. Dumb enough to get beaten by a table. It’s especially humiliating when I get beaten by the Thinking Machine chess program, since you can see the AI in operation. As the computer thinks through various moves, it sketches them out in colored lines on the board (its moves are in orange; what it thinks you’re going to do shows up as green). Click here to give the program a try.

If the viewer confronts the program, the computer’s thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.

That’s great, it really is… But could you make it think a little less? Please? For my self esteem?

[ Thinking Table ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I work from home so I’m willing to embrace any kind of distraction that gets me away from the computer. Even something as low-tech as completing a maze would fit the bill, so covering my entire apartment in this Labyrinthe design wallpaper should keep me unproductive for at least a couple of weeks.

As an added bonus you can even color coordinate the wallpaper to each room simply by using a colored marker that matches the decor. The zig-zagging lines actually end up producing some unique designs on their own, but if you’re not thrilled with the results the wallpaper can be wiped clean with a damp sponge allowing you to start from scratch.

You can buy the wallpaper directly from 5.5 Designers, and a 53cm x 10m black and white roll will cost you about $30.

[ 5.5 Designers - Wallpaper games - Labyrinthe ] VIA [ YoKiddo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

For some reason I’m pretty fascinated with classic ‘portable’ gaming, and even though I’ve never heard of Entex or their Adventure Vision System, I’m sure I could happily waste a few hours playing through its handful of games.

As the story goes, there were only about 10,000 of these tabletop systems ever produced and not only is this one in mint condition in the original box, but it even includes all 4 games in its library. If you’re curious what kind of graphics the Entex Adventure Vision was capable of just check out that gameplay promo shot there. The display only had a resolution of 150×40 pixels, but that’s not too bad for 1982. (Considering the original GameBoy released 7 years later only had 160×144 pixels.) I particularly like the cover artwork on the game boxes, I’d say it’s pretty darn close to what you see on screen.

This particular Entex Adventure Vision System is actually available on eBay right now, but it unfortunately has a ‘Buy It Now’ price of $5,500. Not surprisingly it’s yet to be snapped up by someone.

[ eBay - Entex Adventure Vision System ] VIA [ Joystiq ]