Growing up, I loved the Sierra On-Line video games. They were the first adventure games I played that had graphics. Oh, the graphics they had! Sixteen colors! (Assuming you had an IBM PCjr or a Tandy 1000, like me.) And the music! Blippy bloopy music! Plus instant-death and read-the-designer’s-mind puzzles!
Look, it was the ’80s. We [...]
If you paid attention to the internet at all yesterday, you probably saw people complaining about the proposed US bills SOPA and PIPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act are designed to help content creators fight piracy.
Oh, sure, there’s been a lot of whining from the usual suspects about how [...]
While I was deep in preparation for Dragon*Con this year, artist Katie Cook had a flash of insight: what if Bruce Wayne actually thought he was a bat, aided and abetted by Alfred? It all started with a tweet.
#bbpBox_103272093067657216 a { text-decoration:none; color:#308094; }#bbpBox_103272093067657216 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }I have an idea for a batman story [...]
The first time I heard U2 was 1986. A friend let me borrow “The Unforgettable Fire” on cassette tape. I fell in love with “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and was pretty much hooked.
This is my view from the 27th row last night:
The show was UN. BELIEV. ABLE.
It was made better by getting to [...]
(This essay, needless to say, is going to spoil Portal 2 like the recent tornado and subsequent power outage did to the food in my refrigerator. Don’t read if you haven’t played the game.)
Almost four years ago, Valve released Portal, a little game stuck in The Orange Box alongside much more eagerly awaited games like [...]
The trailer for the game Dead Island is striking both in content and presentation. The trailer’s focus on a young girl turned into a zombie has sparked debate, so of course I have to weigh in!
Be warned: the trailer is gory and disturbing.
The trailer is for a game but it functions like a film [...]
Are you ready to have your skull opened up, your brains scooped out, and your cranial cavity filled with awesome? Then take a look at the following collection of the most awesome action sequences involving a robot ever committed to film.
Those are scenes from Enthiran, a 2010 Tamil SF movie about a robot who, of [...]
Fiasco bills itself as “A Game of Powerful Ambition & Poor Impulse Control”. It’s a one-shot role-playing game that helps three to five players tell a neo-noir story along the lines of the Coen Brothers’ movie Fargo, Jackie Brown, Bad Santa, and Out of Sight. It requires no game master, takes about three hours to [...]
There can be a joy in reading negative reviews where the reviewer appears to have seen some Earth-Two version of the novel, movie, or game in question. Charlie Stross recently revisited Amazon one-star reviews of classic books. One of my favorites is from Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons”:
It is long and boring. [...]
Earlier this week I finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I was struck by how much the character of Sokka reminded me of Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both Sokka and Xander are comedy sidekicks who, over the course of the series, evolved into a more serious role. They were normal guys in [...]
