When I was growing up, the most reliable toys were the ones you could make yourself: paper airplanes. It didn't matter how much money you had in your pocket, because all you needed was a sheet of paper to have a few minutes of amateur flying fun. There were books you could buy that featured sleek, complex designs from engineers who wanted to take the paper plane to higher levels, but anyone who had basic paper-folding skills could produce at least one type of paper plane to throw around until it became to damaged to go anywhere. Of course, if you wanted a battery-powered flying toy, paper planes just couldn't compete ... until now.
Meet Power Up Toys. A while back, Power Up was selling "Electric Paper Airplane Conversion Kits" that consisted of a durable, lightweight and rechargeable propeller that you could attach to a paper plane to make it fly for longer distances. I've seen the first two versions of this kit for sale on a number of sites, and I've also seen video footage of Power Up modified paper planes posted on YouTube. However, with the success of the previous conversion kits, Power Up Toys is taking it to the next level with the Power Up 3.0 kit, the kit that will allow you to convert a paper plane that can be controlled remotely through a smartphone.
The Power Up 3.0 kit started as a Kickstarter campaign that reached its initial funding goal of $50,000 within hours of its initial launch. With its baseline goal met, the Kickstarter campaign continues to this day to fund more options that can be added to Power Up 3.0's main remote control feature. These options include:
Remote controller software for multiple smartphone platforms;
Multi-control 3.0 kits that will allow you to mount more than one 3.0 kit to a paper plane but control all of them simultaneously with just one smartphone controller;
A "dogfight" feature that will allow users to have a mid-air battle between two 3.0 modified planes; and
A pin camera attached to the 3.0 battery/Bluetooth receiver that can record footage of flights.
As someone who spent his youth wishing for paper planes that could fly greater distances, I think that Power Up 3.0 looks like hours of fun. Go to the official Power Up Toys site and the Power Up 3.0 Kickstarter page for more information about putting more power into your paper planes. See the Power Up 3.0 kit promo video in the window below.
While I consider myself to be a gamer, I only play video games that fit within my disposable income budget, a budget that has been quite modest as of late. Thus, I have only been gaming within my financial means, playing discount or used games on a Nintendo Wii console that I bought a few years ago and playing older games on my PC. I've tried to play newer PC games, but my computer has an integrated graphics card that causes newer games to stutter; thus, I can’t play new PC titles until I can afford a new PC, and that won’t be for a while.
With my current financial limitations, I can only watch what’s currently happening in the video game industry from the sidelines. Nintendo’s latest system, the Wii U, isn't selling nearly as well as its predecessor, and the upcoming next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft are causing concern among the gaming community due to their new restrictive features. For example, Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One will require an Internet connection and a user account to play games--even single player games--which will limit the opportunities for gamers to share titles with their friends.
Another tidbit I've read is that the development costs for high-end titles for the game consoles are skyrocketing, while development costs for video games that are available for cell phones and tablets are cheaper and in turn are earning more revenue. In fact, the reason I've heard as to why the Wii U offered so few launch titles is that Nintendo management underestimated the cost and resources involved to make games for its new system and thus had to focus what it had available on the production of a handful of titles just to meet the scheduled launch date. The general consensus among many writers who cover the game industry is that the newer consoles are aiming to offer more than just games (e.g., Blu-ray disc playback capabilities and high-def TV viewing features) in order to convince consumers to buy them; in other words, in order to keep up with the new digital entertainment landscape, gaming consoles have to be more than just gaming consoles.
Being a gamer whose first home console was an Atari 2600, this has been fascinating to watch. In previous console wars, competing console companies only had to worry about each other because no other devices could do what their consoles could. Now, consoles have competition coming from the Internet, cell phones and digital tablets, mediums that can provide entertaining and addictive games at a fraction of the cost for a home console game. If this trend continues, home consoles could disappear altogether and high-end video games that are based on expansive virtual worlds and complicated game play mechanics could become limited to PCs and PC-based gaming services such as Steam. This reminds me of what happened to home video rental businesses such as Blockbuster in recent years: What used to be brick-and-mortar businesses have been replaced by online services and vending machines, venues that are cheaper to provide and sustain.
It should also be noted that many of the video games that are being offered in the alternate venues of the Internet, cell phones and tablets are following the design aesthetic of video games that used to populate the video game arcades of the 80s: simple, colorful and addictive instead of complex, detailed and immersive. I remember a time when arcade video games provided the quality standard that the home consoles aimed to emulate; now, the home consoles are being beaten by games that would have fit perfectly in an 80s-era arcade.
While video games will never go away as long as digital entertainment remains a profitable industry, I am disappointed to see the gaming consoles disappear. I am very satisfied with the gaming experiences I've had with the Wii and its motion-based controls such as the Wiimote and the Balance Board. Sure, many Wii games failed to creatively utilize the console's unique controls and instead only provided the notoriously irritating “Wii waggle” as a control system, and Nintendo itself provided limited support for its upgraded MotionPlus feature. Nevertheless, when Wii titles did something genuinely innovative with the hardware provided--titles such as Wii Sports Resort and Red Steel 2--the experience was rewarding and memorable. The Wii’s unique control system breathed new life into older games such as Bully, Resident Evil 4 and Okami, and it provided opportunities for video gaming to enter the realm of physical fitness with titles such as Wii Fit.
I’m convinced that devising new and creative ways to play games are just as vital to the video gaming experience as the production of quality titles, and I don’t see how anything other than a dedicated game console can provide new systems of play. Likewise, I’m hoping that Nintendo can turn things around with the Wii U and turn it into something other than a larger version of its handheld 3DS system. Yet while I would hate to see console-based attempts to make video gaming something more than just sitting in front of a screen with a controller go by the wayside, I don’t know how this can be avoided until game production and sales costs go down.
This is fantastic news for geek parents who are introducing their kids to classic video games, so I had to post it here. It was written by game designer Mike Mika and published in Wired magazine, and the article's title says it all: "Why I Hacked Donkey Kong for My Daughter". As Mika writes:
"My daughter ... jumps at the chance to play games with her old man. She’s only 3, but she’s always exhibited a keen interest in games. ... (O)ut of all of the older games, she most enjoys playing Donkey Kong. Maybe it was because it was the first game we really played together, or the fact that she watched the King of Kong documentary with me one afternoon from start to finish. Maybe it’s because Mario looks just like her Grandpa. Whatever the case, we’ve been playing Donkey Kong together for a while. She’s not very good at it, but insists on playing it over and over again until she finally hands me the joystick in total frustration. ... Finally, one day after work, she asked to play Donkey Kong, only this time she raised a pretty innocent and simple question: 'How can I play as the girl? I want to save Mario!'"
So what did Mika do? He hacked Donkey Kong and changed it so that Pauline, the female character in the game, is now saving Mario. So what did his daughter think of it? According to Mika:
"Just like clockwork, she woke up and sat on my lap asking to play Donkey Kong. Only this time, she could play as Pauline. She was excited! But for all she knew, I just figured out how to get Pauline to work. And that was fine. I wasn’t expecting it to change her life. We played for a bit. And some more. And again later. You know what? She really did seem to enjoy the game more. For whatever reason, she was more motivated to play as Pauline than as Mario."
My geek hat is off to you, Mr. Mika. Anything that gets kids of both genders into playing video games and appreciating the classics is a good thing in my opinion, and the fact that you went the extra distance for your daughter is an example that all geek parents should follow. Game on!
Being a child of the late 70s and early 80s, I remember falling into a state of slack-jawed awe when video games began to play their own soundtracks. Not just music cues that would play every now and then, but actual soundtracks that would play a music track throughout a level and then switch to a different track on another level, and so on--almost like a movie or a TV show. Mind you, these early video soundtracks were very simple in their arrangement but back during the heyday of coin-op arcades and early home gaming consoles, the arrival of 8-bit music soundtracks hinted at the successive waves of increased technological sophistication that were inevitably on their way in video gaming entertainment. Thankfully, even though video game soundtracks have since moved on to include compositions played by full orchestras, 8-bit music has stayed alive to create an underground music genre of its own.
I recently discovered that 8-bit music, otherwise known as "chipmusic" or "chiptunes", is still being composed and distributed by artists who specialize in electronic dance music. According to Wikipedia, 8-bit music "is synthesized electronic music often produced with the sound chips of vintage computers, video game consoles, and arcade machines, as well as with other methods such as emulation. In the early 1980s, personal computers became less expensive and more accessible than they had previously been. This led to a proliferation of outdated personal computers and game consoles that had been abandoned by consumers as they upgraded to newer machines. They were in low demand by consumers as a whole, and not difficult to find, making them a highly accessible and affordable method of creating sound or art. ... (I)n its modern form, the terms 'chip music', and 'chiptune' refer to music made by the sound chips found within early gaming systems and microcomputers."
I've been listening to 8-bit music tracks on YouTube and even though some of the tracks sound like the simple compositions played on 80s-era coin-ops, the best 8-bit music utilizes the full range of sounds that the technology provides to create complex and unique music. Read on for a small selection of few tracks that I recommend for those who wish to hear the 8-bit musical sounds from decades past taken to a completely new level. Naturally, there are many 8-bit covers of popular rock hits available on YouTube, but most of them sound like what these songs would've been like if they had been used as background tracks for a Nintendo Entertainment System game. The most impressive covers are the ones that apply an inspired selection of 8-bit sounds to the original composition in order to create something that sounds both fresh and familiar. Here are two examples of such creativity at work:
The Pixies, "Where is My Mind":
Weezer, "Just Like Buddy Holly":
Where 8-bit music maintains its ongoing livelihood is through musicians who continue to find new ways to apply 8-bit sounds to modern musical tastes, musicians such as 8-Bit Weapon and 4mat:
Anamanaguchi, "Blackout City"
8-Bit Weapon, "Bit and Run":
4mat, "Chipmusic is Dead":
The examples that I listed above are just a few of the chiptunes that I've found so far. There are plenty of other examples of 8-bit music and artists around the Web.
A few weeks back, I found The Old Robots site while surfing around the 'net and boy, did I hit the mother load when it comes to robot trivia.
The Old Robots site is an easy-to-navigate archive of all sorts of robots that were produced during the mid-to-late twentieth century (as well as a few from the early twenty-first century, such as the Robosapien robots by WooWee). While a large portion of the site is devoted to toy robots, it also lists a few robots built for industrial, agricultural, medical and military uses. Furthermore, the site features a variety of downloadable manuals, articles, posters and box art for the robots, and it even has its own YouTube channel that displays video footage of some of the robots in action. If there's a more thorough, comprehensive reference site out there devoted to robots across a wide range of areas, from practical robots to toy robots to movie and TV robots, I have yet to find it.
To clarify, when I mention "toy robots" in the context of The Old Robots site, I'm talking about toy robots that are (for the most part) both battery-powered and interactive in some way; thus, don't expect to find robots from toy lines such as Transformers, Zoids or Shogun Warriors on this site. However, Old Robots has a six-page section devoted to Robo Force by Ideal, one of the less popular robot toy lines from the 80s that was neither battery-powered nor interactive. I'm not sure why the site devotes such space to these toys, although I suspect that it's probably because that Robo Force was the only robot toy line from that time that tried to branch out into both do-it-yourself toy robot assembly kits through Ideal's Erector sets and actual home-use robotics with a two-foot tall, programmable Maxx Steel robot.
Friends and family keep asking me if I have gotten one of those huge flat screen TVs yet, but it hasn't happened so far. This is mostly because the Mrs. and I don't have the money for it right now and probably won't for some time to come. However, it is also due to the fact that when it comes to video playback equipment, I don't think big these days--instead, I think portable.
You see, I spend a lot of time on public transportation every day as part of my job, and it's been this way for the last few years. So when I heard a while back that software was available to compress video files from DVDs into smaller files that could be played back on my cell phone, I immediately picked up the software and started shrinking movies to pass the time while I travel. This was years before DVD and Blu-ray sets included smaller "Digital Copies" of movies, and before cell phone content providers started offering downloadable movie and TV shows. However, even with those options, many obstacles still exist: Pre-compressed downloadable video files only exist for certain phone brands such as iPhone and Windows Mobile devices--leaving other cell phones and compact video devices with nothing--and I’ve found the Digital Copies to be too weighed down with burdensome access control technologies to be usable for the cell phones I’ve had.
While compressed video content might become more available for a wider variety of small playback devices as time goes on, I'm still quite content with the set up I have had going for over five years now. Read on to see what I've learned about meeting the movie and TV needs for horror/sci-fi geeks on the go. The video compression software package that has worked best for me is called DVD Catalyst 4. DVD Catalyst was first released in 2004 under the name Pocket DVD, and it has been modified regularly ever since to keep up with the latest cell phone technology and user needs. Such devotion to detail shows in the finished product: It's very flexible in terms of cell phone compatibility, and it has worked with just about every cell phone and cell phone-based video file playback software package I've had. As long as I have a set of headphones handy and a well-charged phone battery, I usually have something to watch no matter where I go. When I was just a wee lad, I would often fantasize about having a portable TV set with me to pass the time on long car trips. At such a young age, I couldn't have imagined anything like the portable video player that I have now; such a capability has made my cell phones the best toys I've ever owned.
Of course, this kind of a portable video playback format has its own particular set of requirements. After you get DVD Catalyst set up on your PC, each DVD you shrink requires time for the compression process to happen. I usually insert a DVD into my computer, set up DVD Catalyst, and then leave to do something else while the computer compresses the video file(s). Unfortunately, some video file formats (such as Amazon and iTunes movie downloads) include digital rights management (DRM) technology. Such formats require activation, which prevents them from use on non-supported devices and conversion with software such as DVD Catalyst.
The good news, though, is that DVD Catalyst allows you to shrink your movie and TV DVDs, as well as many kinds of digital video file formats such as DIVX and MKV. While some portable content providers only provide new and popular movies and TV shows, DVD Catalyst allows you to make just about any video that's available on DVD ready for portable viewing, including the extra features videos that are found on many deluxe DVD sets. I’ve found that very few things are too obscure or too old for DVD Catalyst: It works well with the many titles I’ve rented from Netflix, and I’ve even used it to compress video that I recorded from TV onto a recordable DVD. For any difficulties that I’ve encountered, DVD Catalyst’s customer support has always been very responsive to every question that I have sent to them so I’m never stuck with an unusable compressed video file.
Being a film buff with limited free time, this kind of portable viewing option has been a real treasure. It's the only way that I've been able to stay on top of the latest DVD releases and to see movies and TV shows that I missed during their initial run. In fact, many of the movies and TV shows that I've mentioned on this blog were those that I first saw (or saw for the second or third time) on my cell phone.
Click here to learn more about the DVD Catalyst software package and which options are right for you. Enjoy!
