I don’t care if you were the star quarterback, there’s nothing ‘cool’ about wearing a Jostens ring to commemorate your years spent in high school. So you can imagine what I think of these ‘Geek Pride’ models designed for kids who spent their spare time in front of a gaming console instead of playing sports, or debating, or whatever else high school kids do these days.
Brad Nelson, aka my hero for the day, created this amazing homebrew HUD system that provides pretty much all the functionality you’d find in a first-person shooter video game, but for real-life games of capture the flag or paintball. Thanks to a GPS and XBee RF module, as well as a small LCD display, each ZephyrEye unit allows a player to not only see the boundaries of the game field including base stations and flag locations, but also the other players, the direction each one is headed and whether they’re friend or foe. It even includes a microphone which is used to keep track of your ammo count in real-time. Most impressive!
Like in a video game, different gameplay scenarios and settings can be chosen via a basic menu system, like whether to show or hide enemy players, or to facilitate ‘re-spawn’ zones for players who’ve been ‘killed’, and a basic menu-based messaging system allows team leaders to direct their players or send general instructions. I’m not sure if Brad plans to mass produce or sell these units, but so far he’s posted a pretty detailed build history on his blog, including links to the source code if you’re interested in building your own.
As if having to wave your arms around while playing Nintendo Wii games wasn’t hard enough, those Riiflex Wii weights that we heard about nearly a year ago are finally up for sale. Each weight adds two pounds to the already hefty burdens of the Wiimote and nunchuk, which last time I checked, was a lot for someone who’s used to stationary gaming and looks forward to games that don’t require any movement at all.
The Riiflex cases are ergonomic and are made of soft rubber (which sadly doesn’t make them any lighter), and you can get a set on Amazon in that ugly green color for $30.
The trickiest part of this Superplexus 36 inch spherical puzzle isn’t getting the 5/8 inch wooden marble through the immensely complex maze, it’s convincing myself that $30,000 isn’t too much to spend for an over-sized mindgame. The majority of the track is handmade from Finnish birch (it apparently takes over 400 hours to build just one) though some sections require you to navigate the ball on 1/16-inch stainless steel wire, and if laid out in a straight line the whole course would end up being about 31 feet longer than a football field.
The labyrinth is held inside a giant acrylic sphere mounted to a stainless steel gimbaled mount allowing you to tilt it in any direction, and successfully getting the marble from the start to the finish through obstacles like stairs, sprirals and hairpin turns requires at least 425 turns (or plane changes) and a good amount of creative swearing I imagine. You can order one from Hammacher Schlemmer of course, if you’ve got 30g’s burning a hole in your pocket.
If James Bond was ever challenged to a game of checkers by one of the over-the-top villains he continuously encounters, I guarantee the game board would be just like this one. Except that everyone else playing Trapdoor Checkers will know in advance the board is fraught with 8 strategically placed trapdoors, as indicated by the levers on either side. While it may seem like just a lame gimmick, the trapdoors do add a bit of extra strategy to the game.
When it’s their turn, each player spins to see if they move a piece, or open or close one of the trap doors on the board. Now besides the obvious thrill of watching an opponents’ piece fall through a hole when you open a door below it, the open and closed doors also create random obstacles in the game that can either foil or facilitate a jump or a carefully laid out plan. Now I don’t think the trapdoor idea would lend itself well to other board games like chess or Scrabble, but Trapdoor Monopoly sounds like it has promise, as does Snakes & Ladders & Trapdoors. $29.99 available from Goliath Games.
If you’re still rocking an original Xbox, you might want to take note. Starting April 15th, Microsoft will be discontinuing support for all original Xbox games. Yes, that also means that your old copies of Halo 2 won’t work on Live, even if played in your shiny new 360. You’ll need to have a good old-fashioned LAN party if you want to play those titles with a significant amount of players.
So why the lack of love for Microsoft’s original console? It seems that the company is working on some updates that wouldn’t be possible to implement with the current limitations of these titles. They’re fairly mum on what these new features will be, though it likely has something to do with the Project Natal which is supposed to drop later this year.
I don’t think anyone’s ever lamented the lack of physical activity required for playing a game of Pong, that’s what tennis is for, but someone, somewhere, felt that the classic video game could use a bit more physical interaction, and hence Sportpong was born. Setup appears to be a little complicated since the game requires overhead projectors to be mounted and a decent sized area (the minimal dimensions are 4 meters wide by 7 meters long) but playing Sportpong looks to be as easy as it was with the original Pong.
Virtual paddles appear to be connected to each player’s foot thanks to a simple reflector they attach to their shoe, and the goal, as always, is to bounce the ‘dot’ past your opponents’ goal line. While Sportpong isn’t available for sale, the system can be rented out for special events by contacting the creators in Switzerland, and while it’s not posted on their site, the cost is probably mostly dependent on where they need to bring it.
If you’re still lamenting the fact that Duke Nukem Forever will never see the light of day, you might want to look away, since this news could be even harder to take. Way back in September of 1993, game publisher TecMagik announced that they had secured the rights to make a Super Nintendo (and Sega Genesis) game based on Steven Seagal. Oddly enough the game wasn’t based on a specific Seagal movie either (this was just before Under Siege came out making him a big name movie star) so TecMagik had signed him based solely on how well his previous films had done in the VHS rental market.
Sadly the game, which had Seagal wandering around with a female sidekick, fighting baddies in an effort to save her son, was never released. A 1994 release date was pushed back to 1995, and eventually the title disappeared after TecMagik announced a similar N64 title, which also never came out. The game’s graphics used the Mortal Kombat technique of filming live actors which were converted into somewhat-lifelike sprites, though a stand-in was used for Seagal since they figured people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference given the low-res digitized images. Deep down we would have all known though, so maybe the game’s demise was for the best.
Looking like a cross between a Sidekick, a PSP Go and a portable DVD player, the JXD V3 doesn’t seem like it’s made up its mind when it comes to what it’s good at, so I guess it’s just decided to be a jack of all trades… master of some? The 4.3 inch TFT LCD display has a resolution of 480×272 pixels, though it’s able to play back video files including RMVB, RM, AVI, VOB, DAT, MPG, FLV, 3GP, MP4, ASF and WMVs up to 1280×720 in size. When it comes to music it plays nice with MP3, WMA, WAV, AMR, AAC, FLAC and APE files, and there’s even an FM radio in there for some local content.
You’ll also notice a couple of 4-way directional pads which are important since the JXD V3 also plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES and other game file formats including flash SWF files, and they’ve even gone to the trouble of including a PSP-like flat analog stick. You’d think it would stop there, but you’ll also find a 5.0MP camera crammed in there that can capture 30fps VGA videos to its 8GB of internal flash memory. On top of all that there’s even TV in and out capabilities turning this into a portable gaming console, all for just $112 from Ownta.com.
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