The tech industry burns through fads and trends at supersonic speed — some products seem designed for obsolescence. Companies schedule releases so fast (ahem, Apple) that gadgets are rendered outdated within a year or less! Here are some of the technologies that ended their run in the last year and the modern successors that quickly replaced them.
Not since Etch-a-Sketch and Pictionary has doodling enjoyed such a fine moment. If you've never laid a finger on Draw Something, a warning: this social mobile drawing game can be highly addictive. Although the popularity of the drawing game has declined in the recent weeks, the caliber of artwork certainly has not. It never fails to amaze me the kind of drawings that players can create with just a finger or a stylus. Here are some of the most incredible drawings submitted by users to Draw Something's Facebook page throughout 2012.
The world's most famous half-shaven dubstep DJ has stepped into the world of Warcra — I mean — online gaming. Skrillex Quest is a free online flash game that's as weird and amazing as it sounds, with eight-bit-astic graphics, a sword-wielding hero, and epic dubstep background music (obviously).
Game play goes like this: there's some dust in your game cartridge, and you need to defeat seizure-inducing glitches by swashbuckling your way through a collection of minigames.
Every time those darn glitch graphics pop up, there's a corresponding beat (just in case you forgot this was a dubstep-inspired game). The Skrillex score is strangely well-suited for questing, and an unfortunate side effect of this game is that it's wildly addicting, so make room for an unproductive day.
"The Starry Night," "The Scream," The Sims. No misreading here. The New York Museum of Modern Art just announced what so many of us already knew: video games are art! This week, MoMA revealed that it acquired 14 video games for its permanent collection, with the intention of adding a total of 40 works in the future.
In a blog post by the museum's senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, Paola Antonelli explains how the games are, of course, art, but they're also bastions of intelligent design. "Our criteria, therefore, emphasize not only the visual quality and aesthetic experience of each game, but also the many other aspects — from the elegance of the code to the design of the player's behavior — that pertain to interaction design."
So what games were deemed worthy of the museum's first round of acquisitions? The list starts with classics and continues to more recent hits: Pac-Man, Tetris, Another World, Myst, Sim City 2000, Vib-Ribbon, The Sims, Katamari Damacy, EVE Online, Dwarf Fortress, Portal, flOw, Passage, and Canabalt.
MoMA hopes to add more fan favorites like Pong and Super Mario Bros. over the next several years. While the museum has its criteria for selection, what would yours be? Which games do you think are worthy of a place among the white museum walls?
While the Star Wars/Angry Birds collaboration has been in the works for some time, in light of last week's news that George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Disney and the mouseketeer company had plans for a Star Wars: Episode 7, the cartoon crossover seems all the more appropriate now.
Available for download Thursday, Nov. 8, on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mac, PC, Kindle Fire, and Windows 8, watch the gameplay trailer below to see the feathered friend versions of Chewie, Han Solo, the droids, and the rest of the original trilogy characters take on treacherous space Darth-pigs.
While it's great that so many gaming advancements have been made with touchscreens, do you ever just miss the feel of simple, intuitive game controllers? On today, the 40th anniversary of video game legend Atari, we're taking a look at gear that can give your games the old school flavor of Pong. You'll love these five gaming accessories that give your play a retro edge.
Budding game designers, have I got a documentary for you! A geeky sweetheart of Sundance and SXSW, Indie Game follows the successes and struggles of the committed — sometimes obsessive — game designers behind Fez, Super Meat Boy, and Braid. The film gives insight into the creative processes the designers go through in an attempt to fight the corporate system and make their own way in the gaming industry.
If you're not a hardcore gamer, fear not. The underdog story is guaranteed to tug at our heartstrings. And lucky for us, the dynamic Canadian duo behind the film, James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot, will also be making the full film available on a ton of different outlets like iTunes, Direct Download, and Steam. Catch a glimpse of Indie Game before its June 12 debut in the trailer below.
Photo courtesy of BlinkWorks Media
To those anxiously waiting for a jaw-dropping console announcement, sorry, but E3's big three — Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony — are all about games and console-turned-TV experiences this year. Still, there's plenty of new characters and media options to get gamers excited for the coming months. With Xbox looking to take over your home media center, Nintendo staying true to last year's Wii U tease, and Sony's wizardly gaming alternative, 2012's E3 releases have a little something for everyone.
We're ready for the easy pace of Summer life that begins this month. Expect long days spent catching up on a hobby with a positively science twist, an AirPlay update on the season's soundtrack, and a camera bag as pretty as the pictures we'll be snapping. Check out our picks for making the start of Summer oh-so sweet.
Get ready to secure the ring and join the hobbit gang! A Pre-E3 announcement brings tale of Lego Lord of the Rings coming to all major gaming consoles this Fall, just in time for The Hobbit's theatrical release. The Lego series is one of our favorite game franchises, and to hear the characters actually speak this time around makes us all the more excited to walk right up to Mordor.
Play as your fellowship character of choice — from Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf(!), and Gimli to Boromir, Sam, Merry, Pippin, and, of course, Legolas — to solve puzzles while traversing the adventures of Middle Earth.
Watch the full game trailer, complete with a speaking Frodo and a Gandalf throw-down.
