My solved cube. You guys will be my witnesses,right? (Linda Holmes / NPR)

by Linda Holmes

The Rubik's Cube dates to my childhood, when it was for leaving on a desk to be fiddled with -- or, for a select few strange birds, for actually solving, sometimes very quickly. At that time, knowing how to do it was a brand of useless but very cool knowledge that seemed like it could only have come from someone else who knew the trick: if there had been an entire society of eleven-year-olds who stayed that way forever, knowing how to solve the Rubik's Cube would have been an essential element of its oral tradition.

Since most of my game-playing time these days is devoted to keeping Super Mario from getting squashed by giant bugs, I hadn't much thought about the Rubik's Cube in quite a while. Then I learned that there's a new push for it as an educational prop, and the entire point is that they tell you, right out, how to do it.

Solving cubes and settling old scores, after the jump...

Continue reading "Rubik's Cube Is Back To Teach Math And Taunt Your Inner Ten-Year-Old" >

by Marc Hirsh

After months of drooling anticipation (even by folks like me who don't even own a game system), The Beatles: Rock Band is finally here. Much of the excitement surrounding the game involves its potential to do a great many things: remind a new generation of exactly why the greatest band in rock and roll history is the greatest band in rock and roll history (something EMI's been careful to do every seven years or so since John Lennon's death), slake the thirst of gamers who've already burned through two Rock Bands and countless Guitar Heroes, provide a wish-fulfillment fantasy of a nearly pornographic nature to Beatlemaniacs, and cause players to contemplate on the simple, iconic beauty of a Rickenbacker guitar and a Hofner bass.

Maybe the most important, though, is the potential the game has, more even than the remastered versions of the Beatles albums that were also released yesterday, to foster a new appreciation for Ringo Starr.

Taking a second look at the drummer, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Rock Band': Ringo Reappraised?" >

Marvel is the golden egg, and Disney is the cake company, and if you keep reading, it will all make sense, really. (Marvel Comics, iStockphoto.com)

By Glen Weldon

On Monday, the news came down. The analyses began. Jokes were joked. Freakouts were well and truly freaked.

The news: Disney acquired Marvel Comics for $4 billion. ("Acquired," which makes it sound like Marvel's a tube of Pink Glitter lip gloss that somehow ended up in Disney's purse as it sauntered out of Hot Topic. "How'd THAT get there?")

If you need a taste of what folks in the comics industry are saying about it, you can't beat The Beat,
or Journalista! The transcript of the Disney/Marvel call to investors is worth checking out, if only to remind yourself that there are people in the world who actually say things like "vertical integration," "the wheelhouse of this distribution channel" and who - willfully! repeatedly! - use "impact" as a verb.

Meanwhile, over at the Comichron, as their name suggests, they're taking the long historical view.

Conventional wisdom soon congealed along these lines: Good for Disney, because Marvel's stable of heroes can help them reach boys age 8-18, a demographic that has thus far proven stoically resistant to the charms of Hannah Montana and High School Musical -- with, um, some exceptions (Hi, Jason! Stay fabulous, kiddo!). Good for Marvel, because Disney's got more distribution channels in their wheelhouse (sigh) than Cruella's got Dalmatian handmuffs.

After the jump: It's not about the comics. And yes, the Tastykake Analogy.

Continue reading "Why Disney's Delicious Snack Cakes Don't Threaten Marvel's Golden Eggs" >

In May 1967, The Beatles celebrated the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. They probably didn't know they'd still be making news 42 years later. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

You may have heard about a hot emerging band with a lot of irons in the fire right now -- "The Beatles," anybody? I'm pretty sure they're going to be the next big thing.

Today's Beatles news is that Disney is working out a deal for Robert Zemeckis to access Beatles tunes to remake Yellow Submarine. Not only is a movie remake planned, but there's interest in a Broadway show.

In September, The Beatles will undoubtedly make huge headlines with the release of The Beatles: Rock Band, the new video game that will allow you to play along with the band. (For a whole lot more about the game, and about the Beatles, and about why people pick on guys who like to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band, see this marvelous recent article by Daniel Radosh from New York Times Magazine.)

All that is not to mention, of course, the fact that remastered versions of their entire catalogue on CD are scheduled for release in September as well.

Need more? "Why The Beatles Broke Up" is the cover story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

There's even some speculation that the Beatles' records could finally be coming to iTunes, but that still looks like wishful thinking as much as anything.

There tends to be a certain ebb and flow to interest in The Beatles, but this does seem like an interesting little uptick. I don't think there's any question that Guitar Hero has wildly increased the familiarity younger kids have with hair bands (I base this in part on my nephews' shockingly advanced knowledge of "Rock And Roll All Nite"); I'll be curious to watch for an increase in the visibility of Beatles tunes among ten-year-olds.

In Wii Sports Resort, you can try your hand at 12 new minigames that improve significantly on the original Wii Sports. (Nintendo)

by Glenn McDonald

After much anticipation, Nintendo has finally shipped Wii Sports Resort, the follow-up to the Wii Sports title that's bundled with the Wii console. As an added bonus, Wii Sports Resort comes with the newest Wii hardware peripheral -- the Wii MotionPlus, an add-on that greatly improves the game's motion sensitive controls. As such, Sports Resort is a blockbuster game release, the equivalent of a summer tentpole movie, designed for maximum market penetration.

Good thing it's good.

The minigames, the new accessory, and the possible drawback, after the jump...

Continue reading "Wii Sports Resort: Socialize, Buzz The Putting Green, And Squelch Aggression" >

by Linda Holmes

I really wasn't sure where to put this video in which several test subjects voluntarily play the new Grey's Anatomy game for the Wii. Television? Games? Unrelenting horror?

Just...I'm going to let them explain it as they go, because if I told you how weird it is, you wouldn't believe me anyway. Take it away, College Humor.

(Hat-tip to Best Week Ever.)

The Rubik's Cube: At the 2007 Rubik's Cube World Championships, gold medalist Anssi Vanhala solved the cube with his feet. We have an easier way. Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Glenn McDonald

Everyone has a weakness, and mine is spatial thinking. Also, bad Italian horror films. And exotic beef jerky. But these are stories for another time -- let's get back to spatial thinking. I really am terrible at it, a pattern that has shown up in standardized tests since I was six years old. As such, the ubiquitous Rubik's Cube has forever been a thorn in my side.

Once again, technology has come to the rescue. CubeCheater is a new iPhone app that will solve your Rubik's Cube puzzle for you, in 20 moves or less. The genius of it is that all you have to do is take a picture of your unsolved Rubik's cube with the iPhone itself. The app then analyzes the image, crunches the numbers, and provides a step-by-step solution via the 3D interface.

See CubeCheater in action, after the jump...

Continue reading "Better Cheating Through Technology (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rubik's Cube Again)" >

by Linda Holmes

I don't consider myself a fan of NASCAR. I don't currently own a car, as a matter of fact. My entire history of traffic tickets consists of one incident more than ten years ago in which I changed lanes without signaling while "speeding" in a "construction zone" where there was no construction. (But I'm totally over it.) I have never been at fault for an accident, except for one time when I hit one of my parents' cars with the other one in the driveway when I was in high school.

All of this does nothing to reduce my enjoyment of being a completely dangerous, bomb-throwing, car-crashing, joyfully destructive menace in the ad-soaked but still very enjoyable NASCAR Kart Racing, my latest Wii acquisition.

I had absolutely no confidence that I would even be able to figure out how not to immediately blow myself up every time I started driving, but I got the hang of it fairly quickly once I figured out where the accelerator was.

There were a few bumps along the way.

The bumps, after the jump...

Continue reading "NASCAR Kart Racing: Unleash Your Inner Menace" >

Movie romances: Mash them up; watch them spin. iStockphoto.com

 

by Glenn McDonald

The object:

The blurbs below combine the titles of two or more well-known movies. Can you guess the new mash-up movie title?

Example:

Michael J. Fox stars as a time-traveling teenager in this second installment of George Lucas' original space opera trilogy.
Answer: The Empire Strikes Back to the Future

NOTE:
At least one of the movies in each blurb is a famous cinematic love story. Remember that films can be mashed up phonetically as well, e.g. "Nosferatu Kill a Mockingbird"

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. Smug as you may rightly feel if you know them all, please post one answer per comment, just to make sure the most skilled among you doesn't grab all the glory. Feel free to elaborate in the comments, also, about details of the resulting mashed-up movie. How would it end? What would be the crucial plot points?

Official mashup answers will be posted shortly, so check back.

1. You can see the tragedy coming a mile away when Gary Oldman falls for Emma Roberts' plucky teen sleuth.
2. Kevin Spacey won the Oscar for this role, in which his middle-aged suburban Dad scandalously pursues the animated but provincial Belle.
3. Director Spike Lee vents his rage over Katrina with a story of gay cowboys, for some reason.
4. Roger Moore's 007 meets his match when he tries to seduce the beguiling Lucy Honeychurch.
5. Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, John Cusack and Ione Skye form a bizarre love rectangle in this 1936 classic.

Don't be a Helo: Tahmoh Penikett was at a loss to explain why the Dollhouse crew was at NY Comic-Con. Fox

By Laurel Maury

I walked something like 200 feet into New York Comic-Con without seeing a single comic book.

Booths for video games, regular books, Dungeons and Dragons, sure. Toys, everywhere. But this year, the four-year-old NY Comic-Con seemed to be about everything but comic books.

What did go on? Well, Joss Whedon's new TV show, Dollhouse, premiered its first episode on Sunday. Japanese pop idol Sho Sakurai turned up to promote a movie; British It Girl Peaches Geldof wandered the convention floor with a film crew, courtesy of Nylon magazine.

The panel for the British sci-fi show Torchwood was mobbed. Booths sold T-shirts, corsets, vinyl dolls, messenger bags (really cool ones from Gamma-Go), even doorbells.

But it was increasingly clear that big "cons," as comic book conventions are called, are no longer the comic book geek's natural habitat -- they're places to see and be seen, where Hollywood and the gaming industry try to get products into the hands of early adopters.

Joss Whedon, Tahmoh Penikett, and The New York Times on pimping it Comic-Con style, after the jump ...

Continue reading "New York Comic-Con: Where Were All The Comics?" >

by Linda Holmes

(Above: One of the Wii's most famous hazards. I don't know if I believe this video, exactly, but I believe you can make this mistake.)

The thing about an absorbing game is that you lose your mind.

I recently built a home for a Sim lady (I know; I appreciate the classics, which is another way of saying I am Ye Olde-Fashioned Game Personne), only to have a burglar break in at midnight and steal the furniture. It was very upsetting. Fortunately, I learned something about the triumph of the human spirit when, in spite of having no couch, dresser, television, or chairs, my Sim lady went into her living room and turned on the music (yes, the Sim burglar dragged out the dresser but left the boom box) and began dancing. Around her empty apartment. Poignant, right?

I later discovered that she was even braver than I thought, because I had built her shower outside on the upstairs deck of her house without even realizing it. (These are the hazards of playing with invisible walls.) It turns out she has been taking showers outdoors, facing the neighbors, for quite a while. Surprisingly, this has done nothing to help her make friends.

The Wii and the things you might say to it when no one is listening, after the jump...

Continue reading "Most Embarrassing Things I Hypothetically Imagine People Might Say Out Loud To No One During The First 24 Hours Of Wii Ownership" >

Steven Johnson is best known to me for the book Everything Bad Is Good For You, in which he argues that video games and television are making us smarter, not dumber. (Check out his 2005 Fresh Air interview here.) He's recently been guest-blogging at the very popular Boing Boing, where today, he talked about how boring he found old-school board games when he played them with his kids.

Battleship, he argues, is mostly guessing followed by very simple pattern-following; Candy Land contains absolutely no decision-making at all. (In the Candy Land commercial above, they seem to stress that you don't have to know anything to play Candy Land, so he may be missing the point.) What's great about the post is the spirited, largely respectful discussion it spawned in the comments about games, kids, nostalgia, and whether the purpose of Candy Land is mostly to teach you how to play a game at all -- we're not born knowing how to take turns, after all.

It turned into a neat little chat, definitely worth checking out if you're interested in games for kids, or even if you're not.

The Super Bowl: It's already over! Look! It's happening right now! Electronic Arts

 

by Glenn McDonald

Another great example of better living through technology: As they do every year, videogame industry titan EA Sports today announced the winner of the Super Bowl as predicted by their flagship football simulation game, Madden NFL 09.

Using each team's projected roster, and up-to-date player statistics, EA pitted the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals in a Super Bowl simulation game. Pittsburgh fans will be happy to hear that the Steelers pulled out the victory by a final score of 28-24, giving the team an unprecedented sixth Super Bowl title, and their second championship in four years.

The stats breakdown, and what this means for a regular person, after the jump...

Continue reading "Super Bowl Winner Revealed!" >

Fallout 3: Unsettling images of the destroyed landmarks of Washington, D.C. are only part of the story of how this game gets into your head. Bethesda Softworks

 

by Glenn McDonald

Tour around the various online and print videogame publications, and you'll come across a game that's making all the Best of '08 lists. That game is Fallout 3 -- a post-apocalyptic RPG in which the player roams the radioactive core of Washington, DC in the wake of worldwide nuclear war. A nice theme to explore as we switch administrations.

Fallout 3 is state-of-the-art game design, and I can say this with confidence because (a) I've followed the industry professionally for many years, and (b) the game has completely devoured my free and not-so-free time for the last month or so.

I would also contend that the game is the final winning argument -- if one still needs to be made -- for videogames as art. Not everyone agrees about this. Film critic Roger Ebert has been sparring with the gamer community for a few years now on this; whether videogames should be considered alongside literature and film from a critical point of view.

An argument for Fallout as art, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Fallout 3': The Art Of The Game" >

Perhaps extra power bars next time?: Bing Crosby, as he appeared in White Christmas. And yes, we are being a little tricky. Keystone/Getty Images

 

by Glenn McDonald

The object: The "movie blurbs" below are mashups: They're invented descriptions of what you'd get if you smashed two or more well-known movies together. From the blurb, can you guess the new mash-up movie's title?

Example: Michael J. Fox stars as a time-traveling teenager in this second installment of George Lucas' space-opera trilogy.

Answer: The Empire Strikes Back to the Future

NOTE: In this round, at least one of the movies in each blurb is a generally agreed-upon "holiday classic." And remember, films can be mashed up phonetically — e.g. Nosferatu Kill a Mockingbird.

Go to it, have fun, and post your answers below. (First-time players, be forewarned: Answers may indeed be posted below — don't scroll down unless you want to cheat.)

+++

1. Irving Berlin's 1942 classic takes a tragic turn when Bing Crosby starves to death in the Alaskan wilderness.

2. Linus is emotionally scarred for life when Lucy, Schroeder and the gang join the Griswolds for the holidays.

3. Sam Jackson triples the trouble in his nascent action franchise, co-starring Steve Martin and John Candy.

4. Billy Bob Thornton's curmudgeonly Saint Nick gets his arms chopped off in director Alejandro Jodorowsky's transgressive cult classic.

5. Madcap holiday hijinks ensue when Jack Skellington terrorizes frazzled parents Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis.

6. A drunken Stanley Kowalski insists he's the real Santa Claus in Tennessee Williams' perennial holiday favorite.

7. Jimmy Stewart gets a glimpse of what his life would be like if he were in a whimsical, postmodern movie about an oceanographer.

8. All poor Ralphie wants from his parents is a Red Ryder BB gun, but he must first endure the interminable ennui of Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer's marriage.

9. Director Uwe Boll's universally detested videogame adaptation finds an 8-year-old Bob Dylan fending off the hapless burglars trying to rob his family's house. (three films)

10. Codirected by Jodie Foster and Werner Herzog, this deeply weird Christmas tale stars Anna Paquin, a flight of geese, and Michael J. Fox as a plucky little mouse trying to escape a Laotian prisoner camp. (four films)

The answers, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Movie Blurb Game: Holiday Classics Edition" >

A quick oldie-but-goodie for those who have never played: Guess The Dictator Or Sit-com Character. Surprise yourself with the small number of questions required to guess that you are an obscure character! Analyze your life by answering as yourself and seeing which character you most resemble!

This game has been kicking around for years, so it's been honed pretty carefully...except for spelling. So consider yourself warned.

by Trey Graham

Just a quick hit to make sure you've seen this post over on the Vox Politics blog: The Obama campaign is buying ad space in ... video games?