An internet user has taken it upon himself to give the P.C. version of Deadly Premonition a higher graphical resolution, upgrading it from the standard 720p. Our question is: Why would you want to do that? In case you need an introduction, Deadly Premonition was a B-game that gained a cult following
The selfie needs no introduction. Even my mom—hi, mom!—knows what it is. That’s why the Oxford English Dictionary has named “selfie” the 2013 word of the year, defining it as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media w
Last month, 32 million people watched SK Telecom T1 trounce Royal Club in the League of Legends Finals. Some eight years before that, 32.9 million Americans watched as Debra nagged Ray to death in the final episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. In the end, League of Legends is not yet as beloved as t
Microsoft has scrapped the idea to create a controller that sprays scent for the Xbox One. At first, I was glad; I can’t imagine Gears of War smelling like anything but burning tires and testosterone-drenched male. The research and development team got a similar reaction internally. “When we started
The Smash Brothers tournament community were none-too-happy with the changes Nintendo made to Super Smash Bros. Brawl when it came to Wii, in 2008. So, a team has modded the game to bring it back to its former glory, dedicating “four years and thousand of hours” to the restoration. Called Project M
Johnathan Tippett wants to make a giant, human-operated Rock’em Sock’em robot. Well, kinda. He’s calling it Prosthesis, a 7000-pound, two-story-tall “anti-robot.” The Prosthesis runs off of lithium batteries, and is built for the purpose of racing, not fisticuffs, although only one leg of the frame
These are a few of the characters that you can hook up with in Namco High: the Galaga Ship; Lolo (from Klonoa); Valkyrie (yes they get a bit obscure, don’t they?); Anti-Bravoman (who?); Meowkie (Mappy); Mr. Driller (Dig-Dug’s son); Albatross (Rolling Thunder); and my personal heartthrob, Donko (the
After designing Ultima Online, Raph Koster went on to write A Theory of Fun for Game Design, a book for game designers with a lesson for all of us. After ten years, it’s being republished, and its lesson still applies. We need to learn how to have fun. “After we grow up, we sometimes wonder, ‘Where
If the internet is to be believed—and they should, at least occasionally—The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for 3DS is sublime. And for that we owe credit to Monolith Soft, the Nintendo-owned subsidiary responsible for role-playing series that are prefixed with Xena, namely Xenosaga and Xeno
An interview at Wall Street Journal painted Microsoft’s outgoing C.E.O. as an old battle ax at a company who is trying to move with the agility of a fencer. “Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on,” he said. “As much as I love everything about what I’m doing, the best way for Micro
This Sunday, if you’re in the N.Y.C. area, we highly recommend that you drop by the Commonwealth Bar, located on 497 Fifth Avenue, for a night of alcohol and friendly debate playing The Metagame. From 7:30 to 10 P.M., game designers Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Eric Zimmerman, collectively known
Spelunky is a really great game, one of the best. But some players have taken it upon themselves to make the Windows version even better. In this bizarre modded version, of which we have no clue of its source (it was anonymously delivered to our inbox), Derek Yu’s modern classic has been outfited wi
One of the dilemmas of playing boardgames is that you have to have enough intelligent friends with the attention span and free schedules to sit down and play them. For our lucky readers in Manhattan, that will soon be less of a concern, as The Uncommons, which claims to be the one and only boardgame
You might know director Spike Jonze as the beautiful mind behind films like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, and Her, the upcoming film about a man who falls in love with a synthesized computer voice. Or maybe as a guy with a really cool name. Why couldn’t I have been bor
Bubsy 3D was just godawful, often claiming a spot on worst-game-of-all-time lists. If you played it back in the day, I’m sorry. Like witnessing a horrible traffic accident, it must be impossible to forget those nauseating pioneering 3D graphics. So, naturally, Bubsy 3D has been remade, ironically,
The trouble with the digital and physical worlds is that they’re separated by screens. The Tangible Media Group at MIT has partially solved that problem with inFORM, a “Dynamic Shape Display,” and it looks amazing. Basically, it’s a bed of rectangular pieces that rise and fall, capable of displaying
Dave Gilbert, our neighbor New Yorker and bossman at Wadjet Eye Games, has revealed that he is rereleasing his acclaimed point-and-click adventure The Shivah for iPhone and iPad next week. The cheekily-named Kosher Edition gives a makeover to his 2006 game about a rabbi unraveling a murder mystery.
So much for free play and good times. With the Three Spirits update, DOTA 2, that other MOBA game (we’ll stop with the acronyms soon–promise), is getting (even more) serious. I’m talking in particular about the addition of coaching mode. This new feature will allow players with more experience to gi
This video breaking down the artificial intelligence in Skyrim is one of the clearest explanations of the problems with enemy A.I. I’ve seen. Using Skyrim’s user creation tools as a testing ground, the author tweaks the behaviors of halfwitted mages until they become adaptive, formidable adversaries
In case you’ve missed the lines of sleepless people standing outside your local big box store, the PlayStation 4 launches tomorrow. And if you haven’t noticed, (and at this point you’re not too observant are you?), Sony’s new monolithic gaming machine is slanted. But this is more than a stylish deci
In 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, Navid Khonsari was ten, walking through the streets in Tehran, holding his grandfather’s guiding hand. Soon after, he relocated with his family to Canada. Earlier today, on Kickstarter, he launched a campaign for a game about that tumultuous period of his life
One of the profound things about Portal was the surreal way in which it bent perception, when you’d be staring into a portal and seeing the back of Chell’s head. Reset, by Theory Interactive, takes that as a starting point, and things only get weirder from there. As seen in this reality-bending new
Up till now, motion control has required you to swing around a remote-control baton, stand in front a motion-sensing camera, or swipe your iPhone. However, Chirp, a small chip engineered by a team at the University of California Berkeley, makes these bulky motion-capture devices unnecessary. You can
Players of Natural Selection 2 have crowd-funded over 30 thousand dollars on Go Find Me to pay for the first Natural Selection 2 World Championship. This makes the competitive first-person shooter one of the newest and unlikeliest of esports. The event will be broadcasted at a yet to be announced da
We’ve heard only good things about Catacomb Kids. And, really, with a name like Catacomb Kids, how could it not be superb? This platforming rouge-like has a definite Spleunky vibe conjoined with the action-y brawling of Towerfall, and, yes, dubious medieval torture devices that are guaranteed to mak
