Category: Video Games

As exciting and nostalgic as chiptune music can be, it's also a difficult genre to translate into live performance. Usually created with trackers and software sequencers, chiptunes are not easily played on traditional instruments. A new organ dubbed 'The Chipophone', though, helps 8-bit artists compose and perform in a more visceral manner, and may provide a new palate of sounds for musicians of ...

Built around the tenets of storytelling and puzzle-solving, the adventure-game genre has evolved quite a bit over time. Beginning with its origins in text-based, graphic-less interactive fiction, adventure games soon became a dominant force in PC gaming during the '80s and '90s. At the time, the games had the unique ability to convey stories in more detailed and expressive ways than other ...

As our country becomes more obese and more tightly fastened to the couch, Nintendo's Wii, with the 'Wii Fit' system in particular, has positioned itself to be the artery-cleaner of choice for the shut-in gamer. A researcher from Ohio State University recently helped to cement that image -- claiming that the Wii Fit exercise regimen is far safer than its real-life counterparts. According to ...

Whether you love or hate 'FarmVille' and its Facebook-game brethren, you can't deny their reach or their influence on how we play today. Enter video game designer and critic Ian Bogost and his new Facebook app 'Cow Clicker,' a meta-game that pares down social networking lifestyle entertainments to the root of their essential mechanics. According to Bogost, "You get a cow. You can click on it. In ...

According to Joystiq, six Dutch gamers set a new Guinness World Record after playing 'Red Dead Redemption' last weekend for 50 hours straight. For their show of endurance, the men each received $1,300, a Twistdock connector for the PlayStation 3, their names etched in the Guinness Book and probably some slight bladder or kidney damage along with a dose of carpal-tunnel syndrome. The men began the ...

Not only is Tiger Woods struggling on the golf course (he hasn't won a major tournament this year), but he's struggling in the video game market, too. According to The New York Times, 'Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11,' which was released in June, experienced a 32-percent drop in first-month sales compared to last year's version of the game. (In case you've been living under a rock for the last year, it ...

As far we understand it, an object goes through five rough stages in its lengthy lifetime. First, it's shiny and new, sitting on a store shelf. Then, it's just junk. A little later, it's vintage, then antique, and -- finally -- an invaluable link to another time. Typically, it seems, it takes quite a while to get from Stage 1 to Stage 5. (We're hoping that rusted-out '83 Mustang in our yard will ...

To begin with, yes, Kmart stores still exist in some places [Ed. Note: Actually, part of the same building as the Switched office's in New York, to be exact], even though we can't remember the last time we shopped at one. So, in an effort to maintain relevant, the retail store is petitioning gamers for help. According to the MyKmart blog, Kmart will tape your video game reviews to display cases ...

In the biggest digital migration since folks moved down on the farm, millions of "pioneers" have hitched their covered wagons and moved West in search of new online lives. According to USA Today, since its June 9th launch, 20 million gamers have played 'FrontierVille.' Now, that number pales in comparison to Zynga's other most popular social-networking game -- 'FarmVille,' with its 62 million ...

One 'Games on the Go' column was hardly enough to express our love for the pixel. Luckily for us, there's a bonanza of blockiness currently happening in gaming. United by a nostalgic affection for the simple (yet, oh so expressive) graphics of a bygone era, game developers have been producing a heap of gems that recall the video games of old. For those who painfully remember the clumsy controls ...

As far as agriculture goes, FarmVille's pretty environmentally friendly. After all, everything "grown" on a computer screen is about as local as it gets. And the only thing a user could possibly waste, besides money, is an entire social life. Soon, however, the game's agrarian community will have a whole new way to raise pretend plants... and hemorrhage even more cash. As the New York Times ...

For those who have been waiting for a game to come along to put the games-as-art debate to rest, wait no longer. 'P0nd' has arrived. The game has created quite a frenzy of excitement over the past few days (so much so, the game's overloaded website has been temporarily taken down), and with good reason. Very rarely has a game been able to convey so much meaning so elegantly. Players control a ...

Last month, Sony released the first 3-D games for its Playstation 3 console. Now, according to Joystiq, a firmware update to be released in September will allow the PS3 to play 3-D Blu-ray movies. It should be stated, though, that for now the only 3-D Blu-ray title on the market is the kids' film 'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,' and gamers probably won't be snatching those up. But, as more ...

If we distill 99-percent of games to their core, we're left with one crucial imperative: shoot stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. The shoot-em-up genre (lovingly shortened to 'SHMUP' by aficionados) traces its roots all the way back to 1962, with the creation of 'Spacewar!,' an outer-space combat game for the PDP-1 computer. Following those humble origins, the genre exploded with the advent of ...

We're suckers here for 'Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots,' and, really, who isn't? Before we were plunking down hundreds of quarters on 'Street Fighter II' or 'Mortal Kombat,' we were making little plastic bots launch haymakers at each other, trying to literally knock their blocks off. But kids these days aren't content to play with plastic figures and board games anymore, so 'Rock'Em Sock'Em' must update ...