Texas Instruments engineer announces a competition on the venerable 1979 game platform
If you browse this site a bit, you’ll see that I’m a big fan of the Atari VCS, a fervent enough one that I’ve programmed and written about the machine. Aaron Lanterman, a Georgia Tech Electrical and Computer Engineering colleague of mine, recently told me about Joe Zbiciak, a friend of his who has written an emulator for the Atari’s… read more
What is Nintendo really attempting to do with the Wii U? From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra.
For a century and a quarter, Nintendo has devoted itself to an unspoken mission: making games safe, stripping them of their risk and indecency. The company started as a hanafuda playing card manufacturer in the late nineteeth century. Like most gambling, hanafuda was closely tied to organized crime, and the term yakuza, the Japanese word for an organized crime mafia,… read more
Father of the first exercise videogame
Fitness expert Jack LaLanne died yesterday at age 96. He’s most notable for starting the first health clubs, but anyone who lived with television in the late twentieth century couldn’t have missed LaLanne’s many programs and endorsements. Despite his fame, and despite the recent popularity of home fitness videogames like Wii Fit and EA Sports Active, few know that LaLanne… read more
Will XBLA's Game Room ever support new games for old systems?
Back when the Nintendo Wii first came out, I wrote about a hope for it, specifically for its Virtual Console feature. Here’s what I said: Without exception, the Virtual Console has been touted as a digital distribution channel for new games and “classic” games from vintage consoles. But the Virtual Console suggests an application for serious and independent games that… read more