I Art You

Researchers in England have finished work on the first ever video game museum/archive. Although the industry is only 46 years old the researchers want to make sure they avoid losing historic artifacts by not acting early enough to preserve them. Besides games the museum will include game artwork, advertisements, and other relevant artifacts.

The archive was formed by academics at Nottingham Trent University, in cooperation with the National Media Museum in Bradford. The archive will, in fact, be located at the National Media Museum, and managed by Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play. Interestingly, along with games and consoles, the archive will also include a wide swath of game-related media, such as advertising campaigns, artwork, and “the communities that sustain them”

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Part two of the big week in tech travel news. This post has a much more gamer friendly feel to it.

1) North Korean Arcade?

Uk Resistance had a big story on a North Korean arcade that was picked up by Gizmodo. Some mysterious person by the name of Justin. I have never heard of anything like this in North Korea. The photos of the decrepit arcade and game names do seem to suggest that this arcade is indeed North Korean.

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2008/09/inside-north-korean-arcade.html

http://gizmodo.com/5055198/north-korean-arcades-are-incredibly-sad

2) Soviet Arcade Museum I imagine there would be a deccent amount of cross over between the North Korean and Soviet machines, they even could have been made in the same factory! The Soviet arcade museum has been open for awhile now, but given the info on the arcade it seems relevent today. http://www.15kop.ru/index_en.htm

3) Buyers Guide to Anime FIgurines io9 had a great post on buying figurines in Tokyo. A great tutorial for those on thier way to the land of the rising sun. Where to buy figurines in Akiba: - Robots: Tsukumo Robot Kingdom, Tsukumo Pasoko Honten 3F, 1-9-7 Soto Kanda, Chiyoda-ku Phone: 03-3251-0987 3 minute walk from Akihabara Station. - Manufactured figurine sets: Asobit Character City, 1-2-9 Soto Kanda, Chiyoka-ku. Phone: 03-3257-2590 - Fan-made figurines: Radio Kaikan, one minute walk from the Akihabara Electric Town exit.

http://io9.com/5055031/how-to-buy-figurines-in-tokyo-an-illustrated-guide

Japanese gaming company Sega has partnered with Japans cosmetics giant Shieseido to create a new game for the Nintendo DS. The “Project Beauty” game will allow girls (…perhaps some boys too..) to scan a picture of themselves into the DS where they can then see how different colors and styles of make up would look on them. It also provides beauty tips and advice on applying makeup. It is not clear what age group the game is targeting it looks to be meant for a younger audience that is just starting to experiment with make up. Although that will not stop it from being a ton of fun for older girls too. Project beauty has a November 27th, 2008 release date and will hopfully be available in both Japanese and English.

A Japanese company has officially begun working on a game for the Nintendo Wii involving stripping. Much like the Wii fit aims to get you into shape, the Wii strip aims to make you a good stripper. It does not seem like a natural product expansion for family friendly Nintendo, but the company working on the game seems to think they will be able to have it approved. I am just wondering how they will ship a long white smooth pole with the game and whether or not the Wii remotes vibration technology will be included.

I am very excited for the upcoming release of Wii Fit, for the Nintendo Wii game console. Wii Fit is a fitness game for the Wii, the game comes with a white fitness board. The board can sense different pressure on different areas of the board. So it can count your doing push ups or step ups on the board while a fitness session/game is running on screen. The game can also track your fitness progression over time.

There is also a decent number of mini games included in the Wii Fit set up. There is a soccer game where you try to head butt the ball while the Wii Fit board senses you movement from one side to the other.

It looks like another hit, it will most likely be the Wii’s most popular game after Wii sports that was included with each console. The game will be available this summer and cost $90.

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Well maybe games designed for economists are not for everyone, but I am an economist and I absolutely love playing games online that require knowledge of economics. There have been a wide range of educational games made to supplement economics lessons. A great source for these games is Econ Ed Link, although not every single thing is an econ game by searching the site it is possible to find some. My favorite game is Jack & The Bean Stock which tests young economists knowledge of free trade.

The games are simple and sometimes have very poor designs, but they where not designed for profit. Some economics teacher somewhere poured a lot of hard work into making learning economics a little more fun.

High Snobiety is reporting that Bathing Ape and Nintendo have gotten together to create a limited edition and no doubt ultra exclusive BAPE Nintendo DS. The BAPE DS will feature the Baby Milo and Mario characters plaster all over the system. The DS will be available in both gold and white.

So its come to this, BAPE is the new Hello Kitty. Usually limited edition collaborations like these are stylish the masses turn green with envy over those who have them. Personally I would rather take a plain Nintendo DS or even a Darth Vader PSP over this half assed attempt at style. Slapping a bunch a couple iconic characters and some stars all over a DS will no doubt be a limited edition, limited to only a few foolish people who would purchase this crap.

Gamer Help Lists The Most Controversial Games…that no one cares about anymore. The list has some of the usual suspects on it such as the original Grand Theft Auto, but there are also some shockers such as Atari’s Custards Revenge that if played ’successfully’ ends in the rape of a poor native woman tied to a pole. I had the chance to play a few of the games including Micheal Jackson Moonwalker and I was always extremely disturbed that you run around as MJ saving a lot of small children from closets and car boots.

The most controversial games of the day were …

1) Custer’s Revenge

2) Grand Theft Auto

3) Night Trap

4) The Mortal Combat Series

5) Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker

6) Manhunt/Manhunt 2

7) The Guy Game

Yahoo! Games recently had a very interesting and entertaining article on video game myths and urban legends that have developed since pong. The article briefly describes each myth and at the end reveals whether or not there is any truth to it. The video game myths are,

1) Nintendo’s classic arcade game Donkey Kong was a mistranslation. Should it Have been Monkey Kong? False

2) Saddam Hussein purchased thousands of Playstation 2s to build military supercomputers. False

3) Sony first developed the Playstation for Nintendo. True

4) Million of Atari games are buried in the New Mexico desert. True

5) In the early 80’s, the military released a subversive arcade game that caused its players to suffer terrible nightmares, nausea and amnesia. Unknown/No

6) A man died by playing video games nonstop. True