There’s insanity and then there’s insanity, and this qualifies as the “and then there’s insanity” variety. A speed-runner on YouTube has hacked Super Mario World so that Mario’s noggin takes a metaphysical leap to a game of Pong, where it is batted around between two wood platforms. Next, it moonlig
“Procedural generation” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but hearing about how it’s used in the space-flight game No Man’s Sky is pretty fascinating. Speaking to Edge, Sean Murray of Hello Games describes all the crazy, unexpected things that can happen when relying on artificial intelligence to
Magic: The Gathering is the perennial deck-building card game about wizards and elemental spirits and evil and stuff. And sometime in the future it will be a motion-picture bursting at the seams with high-fantasy lore, as Twentieth Century Fox has acquired the rights to adapt it into a motion pictur
If there’s one thing that games excel at, it’s capturing grimy post-industrial apocalypses. But the other thing they’re really good at is portraying really adorable, cutesy stuff. The good folks who are making the platformer Rain World (they don’t have a studio name, just the makers of Rain World) c
The competitive sword-clanger Nidhogg hit Steam yesterday. You should probably play it, and not just because it’s a fun party game to play drunkenly at indie game parties where Doseone shows up because the rap world has rejected him. Talking to Venus Patrol, its creator Messhof, who’s been laboring
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from game with stealth elements such as Metal Gear Solid and more recently The Last of Us, it’s that when things go bad I’d do best to hide behind some cargo crates and start neck-stabbing buffoons. This is the norm for these types of games. But Path of Shadows—a go
There was a lot of hype around virtual reality at CES last week, but don’t overlook the fantastic possibilities of augmented reality. You can see what they’re capable of in the video below: namely, very-impressive holograms projected out in front of you. While this pair of CastAR augmented reality g
Today at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Toyota revealed a curvy, candy-apple red sports car called the FT-1. But before this sexy coupe was assembled, it existed in a videogame, tested extensively and designed on the tracks of Gran Turismo 5 and 6. The Verge reports that Pol
After nearly a year, Electronic Arts is now allowing SimCity to be modded, so players can tweak, twist, rejigger, and reinvent the metropolis-building game free of legal concerns. Yes, there are some stipulations, such as that modders can’t sell their mods, although asking for a donation is OK. Also
Martin Scorsese recently wrote an open letter to the film industry, explaining how the world of cinema is changing for the better, because things like the Internet and the decreasing cost of quality camera equipment are empowering small creators to get their art out there without the bankrolling of
The musician, digital artist, and game maker Lionel Williams does some of everything, but his work can be summed up elegantly as perplexing, usually playable, acid-drenched experiments. That includes this music video/videogame he directed for his band Vinyl Williams’ latest single, Stellarscope. The
We don’t know who this man is but he is our hero. We likewise don’t know where this legendary selfie was taken, other than at a crash site in the middle of an ocean somewhere recently. But we’re pretty sure he got the idea to snap a photo of himself with the wreckage of an airplane over his shoulder
Over at Atlus’s Japanese site, Persona’s director Katsura Hashino posted two tiny clips of early prototypes from Persona 3, and for the first time you can really see how the game connects to older Persona titles. Specifically, you can see how the old battle system was scrapped, but how the residue o
Minecraft is an island unto itself, built entirely of square, earth-toned blocks. Though it’s one of the most successful games in history, you don’t see any other game quite like it. This is rare in an industry where borrowing ideas from others is the standard. Sure, there are legions of lesser copy
In games, we typically see the same brainless dolts for zombies. Yeah, clickers in The Last of Us were a nice change of pace, but as a whole videogame zombies haven’t evolved far beyond the mindless shufflers from Night of the Living Dead. They’re just fodder. But zombies are a lot smarter than you
As of this moment, we are awaiting the first massive, truly next-gen-worthy title to show us what these new systems are capable of. But have some patience. According an investor relations guide from Capcom: The amount of work involved in making games for next-gen consoles is eight to ten times grea
When I watch Annie Hall, I see Woody Allen getting testy with a dilettante who doesn’t like Fellini. But when a computer watches Annie Hall, it sees a series of triangles drawn repetitively on a white sheet of paper. This is just one difference between man and robots. That’s what I took away from vi
Voting has just wrapped up on the best titles in the latest Ludum Dare competition, the semi-regular game jam that produces quick, irreverent rough sketches of games by the thousands. Some of the winners include One Take, which looks like in-game photography for the Atari. Also great, Last Chance Su
We recently learned that Oculus Rift—the guys who make the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset—are bulking up to develop their own games. They’ve already have brought on FPS-forefather John Carmack, although it was suspected he’d just be working on the technical aspects of thing. Not so! Now, they’r
The world of The Witcher is an uninhabitable continent with mutated reindeer and white-haired barbarians. And coming later this year is The Witcher boardgame, which is based on all of that stuff. The game is for four players and is a collaboration between CD Projekt Red and Fantasy Flight Games, so
Ultra or 4K televisions got a big push this week at CES, with major electronics companies such Sony, Samsung, and Lenovo coming out of the gates with new flatscreen models. The difference between these sleek flat rectangles and your soon-to-be-old 52-inch plasma is that they have a much higher resol
This was bound to happen. You can only shoot so many guys in the face before you get tired of it and start screwing around with the formula. What this tech demo called Museum of Technology proves is that the possibilities are huge. But also incredibly small. The game pokes holes in your sense of sca
If you’ve been following the tech and gaming blogs this week—and you have, or else you wouldn’t be here—you are aware that a pretty huge trade show known as the Consumer Electronics Show has been going down in Las Vegas. It can be a lot to keep up with, as this year we’ve got some big gaming news. W
You probably know Terry Cavanagh as the guy who makes beautifully difficult games like VVVVVV. Well, know this, inquisitive reader: He just announced that VVVVVV is coming to Vita, Ouya, Android, and all things iOS. But Cavanagh also fiddles around making all kinds of exquisitely strange little gam
As Sony made known yesterday, PlayStation systems are about to partake in an orgy of streaming content. Called PlayStation Now, the all-streaming, digital subscription service is a bold move by Sony, letting us play games the same way that we watch TV on Netflix, and listen to music on Spotify. You
