In celebration of the imminent release of the game Fallout: New Vegas, Ryan Palser made a replica of the A3-21 Plasma Rifle from Fallout 3. As Ryan says, "It is one of the only weapons still manufactured after the great war." He's posted a fascinating series of build photos over at Flickr. A3-21 Plasma Rifle
Over at the Submitterator, lbigbadbob points us to this video of a Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen DRE voting machine hacked to, er, play Pac-man. This was done without breaking any of the tamper-evident seals. Nice work, J. Alex Halderman, University of Michigan, and Ariel J. Feldman, Princeton University! From the project page:
How did you reprogram the machine?]]>The original election software used the psOS+ embedded operating system. We reformatted the memory card to boot DOS instead. (Update: Yes, it can also run Linux.) Challenges included remembering how to write a config.sys file and getting software to run without logical block addressing or a math coprocessor. The entire process took three afternoons.
Why PAC-MAN?
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the iconic arcade game, we reprogrammed the AVC Edge to run Pac-Man. It uses MAME to emulate the original hardware. (We own the electronics from a real Pac-Man machine.) We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that's been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun!
Max Capacity [AM] has up a fantastic set on Flickr of pixel-art skyscrapers and cityscapes. [via Mituk]
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[photo courtesy lehighvalleylive.com, click for large size]
Visitors to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Big Time carnival last week in Roseto, PA (a small borough, population 1600), were invited to play "Alien Attack," a midway game shown above in which you shoot an effigy of U.S. president Barack Obama. Six shots for $5! Note the presidential seal belt-buckle (all presidents wear this), the target on the forehead, and the "Health Bill" scroll he's clutching. Oh, and the Troll Doll with a KISS t-shirt? Nice touch.
The local paper got an awful lot of mileage out of the story. Carny operator Irvin L. Good Jr., president of Hellertown, PA-based Goodtime Amusements, was adamant that the game was not a representation of the president—at least he was 'til the secret service guys showed up:
"Yes, a woman talked to me about it," Good said today. "She said she was offended by it. I said if you are, you might want to be. But you're interpreting it as being Obama. We're not interpreting it as Obama. The name of the game is 'Alien Leader.' If you're offended, that's fine, we duly note that." When it was suggested the health bill and presidential seal might lead players to believe the game did depict Obama, Good said, "You may be right there."
The entire original article is pure awesome.
Incidentally, lehighvalleylive.com might just be my favorite new news source. The "Obama game outrage" coverage blew up last week, but today the paper reports even more local crazytime: "Bethlehem Township, Pa., police today released a surveillance photo of a woman dressed in a clown suit who on Friday allegedly robbed a township bank."
She told police she had been abducted, and was forced to rob the bank by an unknown man who threatened to kill her and her children. Hey, at least he didn't make her take bong hits.
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Over at our Submitterator, BB pal Gareth Branwyn points us to Racer, Malte Jehmlich's real world R/C car "video game." It consists of a fantastic cardboard racetrack and arcade game cockpit. The driver sitting in the cockpit looks at a POV display of a camera mounted on the vehicle. Racer 0.2 (via MAKE: Online)
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DrivenByBoredom spotted a Mario cart [via Submitterator]
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Matt Marchini's designed the game I always wanted to be playing while I was playing The Oregon Trail. Alas, it's just a concept gallery. [Thanks, Judson!]
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The wondefully-named Gratuitous Space Battles, a visceral and compelling PC game wherein ridiculously epic naval engagements are meticulously planned--but not directly controlled--is now available for Mac. I've often thought that it would make an awesome mobile game, but creator Cliff Harris says that fitting it into the iPad's RAM is a challenge for the devs. While they're working on that, check out Osmos, another recent indie hit that that runs on Windows, OSX and Linux, and just made its way into your pocket too. I played through this recently; it's a meditation on life, the ptolemaic model of the universe, and screaming bug-eyed frustration.
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Ed Fries, former VP of game publishing at Microsoft, has created an Atari 2600 version of Halo. He describes in detail the challenges of developing for the ancient and extremely limited platform. But the results are superb.
Halo Goes Old-School [IGN via submitterator. Thanks, RevRight!]
Here's the story of how this game came about [Atari Age via Waxy]
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Electronic musician Tettix just released A New Challenger, a remix album featuring tracks from his earlier T.K.O.E.P.. Alex Mauer, Derris-Kharlan, Disasterpeace, Hélas Techne and Minusbaby worked with him to create it.
How did it come together?
Well, it's a funny story.
Initially it was a project for Attractmode. Adam Robezolli over there contacted me about doing a shirt for Dragon Punch. He was going to get this guy Akutou to do the shirt, print it up, split the proceeds with me. I was totally down for that. Then he recommended maybe releasing an EP of Dragon Punch remixes to go with the shirt and had some remixers in mind. This was almost a year ago now.
That's an aeon in internet time!
Obviously things did not go according to plan. The shirt, it turns out, was a total creative block for me and I eventually gave up and told Adam it was too stressful to work a design job all day and then come home and try to design a shirt, so I was handing the reins back to him. Perhaps a shirt will one day be created, perhaps not. So it goes.
So you took over the remix project yourself?
I took over the remix project myself. Started contacting chiptunes musicians I respected about being involved. Decided it would be more fun to open up the entire album for remixing instead of Dragon Punch. I was surprised how responsive people were! Initially, it was still going to be called "Dragon Punch E.P." and was also going to feature the album version of Dragon Punch in addition to the remixes.
Did you get everyone involved you wanted?
I had the whole thing buttoned up and ready to release. And then minusbaby got back to me three weeks after I emailed him and wanted to remix Clothesline. Obviously, I wanted him involved so I decided to hold off the release. His sudden unexpected inclusion was also when I got the "A New Challenger!" idea. So what was once "Disasterpeace's Dragon Fist Rising Mix" became "Disasterpeace vs. Dragon Punch!" and so on. I wrote the interstitial tracks, which were a ton of fun. Might do an extended mix of Continue, too. And then rebuttoned the album up for release. I'm glad minusbaby was such a late-comer, I think the album concept is much stronger because of it. And his remix is sick.
So, somehow, this project started as a Dragon Punch t-shirt and ended up as a T.K.O.E.P. remix album.
Download A New Challenger free of charge at Tettix's website.]]>
The video to "Brain Games," the third track from Arman Bohn's Atari 2600-inspired "Bits
Tiny Cartridge tells the story of an unsettling bootleg edition of the game Pokémon:
After selecting your starter, if you looked at your Pokémon, you had in addition to Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle another Pokémon -- "GHOST". It had one attack -- "Curse". ...When the move "Curse" was used in battle, the screen would cut to black. The cry of the defending Pokémon would be heard, but it was distorted, played at a much lower pitch than normal. The battle screen would then reappear, and the defending Pokémon would be gone.
You could also select Curse [on a rival Trainer]. If you did, upon returning to the overworld, the trainer's sprite would be gone. After leaving and reentering the area, the spot that the trainer had been would be replaced with a tombstone...
That's not all, either. The author didn't just leave it at that, but considered the implications for the game's narrative. [Tiny Cartridge via @brandonnn]
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Frenchiart.com's Press Start! flickr set is all about video games and, apart from a particularly odd Super Mario or two, appears to be mostly harmless. Pictured left is Game Over, by Christine Daigle, on offer for just $150. Sorely tempted!
Gallery [Flickr]
Thanks, Maskinn! Via Submitterator.
Here's the latest trailer for Nidhogg, a trippy but slickly-animated swordfighting game. Think Jordan Mechner on acid. Previously. [Messhof via Indie Games]
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