David Kudrev
Image source: Code Retard
Good morning everybody, I hope you all had a chance to absorb Mike’s article about Mother 2 (aka Earthbound) and it’s anti-piracy countermeasures inclusive. Darn sneaky developers back in the day! ;) Alright on to today’s post;
Ever heard of the Smithsonian institute? Pretty big deal if you live in the United States of America. It’s pretty much a huge museum and research complex for historical American achievements in history. Next year in March, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, they’re hosting an exhibition all about the art of video games. March 16 till September 30th to be exact! So if you do live in the US (in particular it’s capital city Washington DC), and appreciate art in video games from the past, present and future? Check it out!
To many, that video above is just Ms. Pac-Man, but to a few others who are programmers? Well.. If there’s one thing to compete in when it comes to video games as a player, is video games against another player, but what if it was AI vs AI? Well at the Congress of Evolutionary Computation, each year there’s a competition on, where coders are pitted to create (in JAVA Language), AI to control either Pac-Man or the Ghosts to see who wins, including competitions like survival, points that ghosts make, and/or Pac-Man makes. More information and guidelines at Pacman-VS-Ghosts.net
Okay, I just tried this game out for five minutes in a virtual machine running XP and I’ve got to say, this is pretty damn good fun! Rockin soundtrack from RushJet1 in this as well. 8-Bit Killer is a FREE DOWNLOAD, as it pays homage to 8-bit graphics and music into a sweet packaged 1st person shooter set in the post apocalyptic times. It only works in Windows by the way, do be sure to play it any way you can!
And finally, here’s one way to add a bit of life to the Virtual Boy. Oh come now, friends, even though it was a flop to Nintendo’s eyes, admittedly, it made a historical impact in Video Game history, like it or not, and headaches or not. This bloke made an awesome looking Arcade cabinet for a Virtual Boy. As the guy states in the video, at least it has a stand that you don’t need to lean down for as it has an adjustable height rail. What’s most awesome about this thing, is that it’s dedicated to a very important individual; Gunpei Yokoi: Creator of the Game Boy, Game & Watch handhelds, and of course the Virtual Boy.
On a lighter note, here’s Keith Apicary stacking into things whilst wearing a Virtual Boy head unit. Enjoy! XD