Category: Video Games

A young professional athlete isn't the first image that pops into our heads when we think of video game addicts. But, according to the Seattle Seahawks official website, defensive tackle Quinn Pitcock left his former team, the Indianapolis Colts, because he was depressed and addicted to video games. Pitcock was so depressed that he felt like he couldn't face another year in the NFL, so he quit in ...

To a certain extent, racing games take after one another in concept, so it would seem that true innovation would be difficult to find in a car game. But not for Designer Malte Jehmlich, whose game 'Racer' fuses an arcade booth, a remote-control car outfitted with an onboard camera, and a track constructed of old refrigerator boxes. All in all, it's an augmented reality version of a game you ...

Cooperstown, New York and Ottumwa, Iowa will soon share an unbreakable bond -- as cities that host a hall of fame. According to USA Today, the International Video Game Hall of Fame will induct its first class of 29 members this weekend. The honored include the classic arcade game 'Pac-Man,' 'Mario' creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the Xbox design team, video game record holders Billy Mitchell and Steve ...

For many, the original 'Super Mario Bros.' is the quintessential video game. Not only did it help the NES to usher in a new era of home consoles, but it also popularized a genre that would come to dominate gaming for decades: the platformer. Platformers arguably originated with 'Donkey Kong,' which also starred the plumber-protagonist Mario, and challenged gamers to leap over hazards, climb ...

Foldit may seem like a relatively straightforward game, but the scientific theory behind it is anything but. Created by Washington University's Seth Cooper, the game requires players to deconstruct the complex, three-dimensional structures of various proteins -- a task typically left to biochemistry PhD students or researchers. Foldit, though, allows even novices to enter the world of protein ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/08/04/the-farmville-ruse-how-zyngas-creation-ruins-gaming-and-stea/'; FarmVille is a very smart game. It was developed by Zynga, the company founded by serial entrepreneur Mark Pincus, which is on track to pull in $500-million dollars in revenue this year. As of July, FarmVille was hosting the digital homesteads of 61 million users. But you probably ...

'Super Mario' mods and DIY 'Mario' projects serve as an infinite source of entertainment. No matter how incredible those frequent creations may be, though, they haven't, until now, required "could result in pain, serious injury or death" advisories (which automatically let you know that something is awesome). A crew of nerds from Waterloo Labs has devised a hands-free method of maneuvering ...

After more than 12 years -- a lifetime in video game terms -- the long-awaited 'StarCraft' sequel, 'Wings of Liberty,' has finally arrived. The initial impressions are very good, if not very surprising. What's here is familiar without being mundane, thanks to countless small tweaks, along with an entirely new graphics engine and more spit and polish than those classic cars in the original ...

Musician Arman Bohn has created his newest music video with a decidedly fun piece of technology: the Nintendo DSi. To create the video for his song "Brain Games," Bohn drew images in the DSi's 'Flipnote Studio' program, and then exported them to 'After Effects' for editing and animation. In the video, anthropomorphic letters and numbers cavort as they watch Bohn perform on a TV monitor, ...

Music is all around us. It drifts in and out of our lives, piped into elevators, blasted through the stereo systems of passing cars, and idly played on our MP3 players as we go about our day. But how engaged are we with it? For something as remarkable as music, it can easily become another part of the auditory static of the everyday. While some people may take for granted the music in video ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/07/29/abstinence-avatar-game-teaches-kids-how-to-avoid-sex-winning/'; Now, this is exactly what we've been yearning for: a video game that teaches us how to be abstinent. With avatars. Because real gamers usually have dates galore, right? Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created just such a game, in the hopes of encouraging kids to ...

Michael Jackson is dead. And his family, apparently, wants to keep it that way -- even in the world of iPhone games. According to MTV, Jackson estate lawyers recently forced gaming company PopCap to change a character in one of its iPhone apps, 'Plants vs. Zombies,' because said character bore a striking resemblance to the King of Pop. From now on, the Dancing Zombie character will no longer be ...

What's the next frontier of investigative crime fighting? If you ask Michael Nesbitt, it may be sitting right in your living room. Nesbitt, a security consultant at Trustwave, is scheduled to give a presentation at the upcoming DEFCON security conference, where he'll explain how any unassuming video game system can, when examined closely, help investigators solve crimes. As Security Watch reports, ...

Nintendo, of course, pioneered light gun gaming with the epochal 'Duck Hunt' and the somewhat forgettable Super Scope. In the '90s, though, Sony adapted the addictive 'Time Crisis' arcade series for the PlayStation, giving birth to a new generation of light guns and gaming. That franchise and its Guncon armament remain with the PlayStation 3, but the advent of Move technology has quickly ...

'Snake,' the classic game installed on many early cell phones and, most memorably, the TI-83+ calculator, has made a jump to a new platform: YouTube. The recently discovered Easter Egg lets you play 'Snake' on a paused or buffering video by simply tapping (or holding) left. Just load up your favorite video on YouTube.com (the trick doesn't work on embedded video) to try it out. Details are slim ...