Showing posts with label XBOX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label XBOX. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
Well, I can't use that excuse anymore....
According to THIS article, I cannot tell my kids to stop playing video games because it will hurt their eyes. I guess instead I should start playing them more! If I could only get my kids to let me get on the XBOX, I could cancel me eye doctor appointments. I hate going to the eye doctor. They stick things on your eyes!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Leave it to WETA!!!
For those of you familiar with the video game HALO, but haven't seen the XBOX magazine article, then get ready to wet your pants! There is a real Warthog on the roads! (New Zealand roads, but who cares...) Apparently it was made by WETA, the special effects production company that soared to fame with the Lord of the Rings movies. The Warthog is a real running vehicle that is made to be completely off road and totally able to do some of the things the warthogs of the video game does. It can even do a crab crawl... driving sideways! Every detail is there, even the fact that you can barely see through the front windshield. XBOX magazine has a great write up about it, but I can't find the article online. Maybe a more intense search will turn something up. Speaking as a fanboy like me, there is now one more thing in the world to wish for...
Monday, May 12, 2008
Another Video Game turned film... in this case... COOL!!
For most of you who do not have an XBOX 360 or have ever played this game, this will pretty much fall flat, but for those of you who do, it will make you pretty excited to hear this... BIOSHOCK the video game, is coming to the big screen. I have been playing this game for the last few months now and it is a very well done game, winning all kinds of awards and lots of praise from gamers everywhere. The game is hard to describe but basically you are a normal dude that by chance ends up in an art deco underwater environment that was supposed to be a free will sort of place but ended up going really bad... and to survive you are forced, for the most part, to decide whether or not you enhance yourself physically to make youself stronger and able to use special powers and you have a number of moral decisions, like helping or hurting little "sisters" in order to get further in the game. It is a very deep game and very nerve wracking and often, quite creepy. Anyway, it is a big seller and the guy who made "Pirates" is picking it up. I copied the story from Yahoo and posted it below. This could be a really cool movie, especially when fans are involved in the making.
Later!
Fri May 9, 2:51 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Take-Two Interactive Software Inc said on Friday that "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski will make a movie version of "BioShock," its hit video game about an underwater utopia gone disastrously wrong.
The movie will be made by Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal owned by General Electric Co, and John Logan, the screenwriter behind "Gladiator" and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," was in talks to pen the script, Take-Two said.
"Gore is an avid video gamer and true fan of 'BioShock'. That was extremely important to us in deciding to move forward with this project," Christoph Hartmann, president of Take-Two's 2K Games label, said in a statement.
Take-Two did not disclose financial terms of the deal or other details, such as when the film would be released. The company is the target of a $2 billion takeover bid by rival game publisher Electronic Arts Inc.
Released last August for Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 game console, "BioShock" won praise for its complex story, haunting art deco atmosphere and creepy characters such as Big Daddies and Little Sisters.
"BioShock" has sold more than 2 million copies and Take-Two is working on a sequel.
The "BioShock" movie deal is the latest sign of the growing importance of video games in popular culture.
Earlier this week, Take-Two said its "Grand Theft Auto 4" criminal action game racked up more than $500 million in global sales in its first week.
That handily topped Hollywood's biggest film debut, Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which pulled in $406 million in global box office receipts in its first six days.
Microsoft made headlines when it signed "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson to produce a movie adaptation of its hit "Halo" video game, but the project was put on hold in 2006 when financial backers Universal and 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp pulled out of the deal.
Reuters/Nielsen
Later!
Fri May 9, 2:51 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Take-Two Interactive Software Inc said on Friday that "Pirates of the Caribbean" director Gore Verbinski will make a movie version of "BioShock," its hit video game about an underwater utopia gone disastrously wrong.
The movie will be made by Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal owned by General Electric Co, and John Logan, the screenwriter behind "Gladiator" and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," was in talks to pen the script, Take-Two said.
"Gore is an avid video gamer and true fan of 'BioShock'. That was extremely important to us in deciding to move forward with this project," Christoph Hartmann, president of Take-Two's 2K Games label, said in a statement.
Take-Two did not disclose financial terms of the deal or other details, such as when the film would be released. The company is the target of a $2 billion takeover bid by rival game publisher Electronic Arts Inc.
Released last August for Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 game console, "BioShock" won praise for its complex story, haunting art deco atmosphere and creepy characters such as Big Daddies and Little Sisters.
"BioShock" has sold more than 2 million copies and Take-Two is working on a sequel.
The "BioShock" movie deal is the latest sign of the growing importance of video games in popular culture.
Earlier this week, Take-Two said its "Grand Theft Auto 4" criminal action game racked up more than $500 million in global sales in its first week.
That handily topped Hollywood's biggest film debut, Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," which pulled in $406 million in global box office receipts in its first six days.
Microsoft made headlines when it signed "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson to produce a movie adaptation of its hit "Halo" video game, but the project was put on hold in 2006 when financial backers Universal and 20th Century Fox, a unit of News Corp pulled out of the deal.
Reuters/Nielsen
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Selling a Memory...
Today I sold a memory for $50. And I only had the slightest of guilty pangs about it. The item I sold was an early 1980's video game console called the Magnavox Odyssey 2 gaming console. It was the direct competitor to the Atari game console and in many ways, the Beta Max to the Atari's VHS. It was never a big seller, nor very popular, but like Beta tapes and the players, was better in quality and durability than VHS. I remember getting our Odyssey game as a Christmas gift from my parents. My uncle Bob was a Magnavox salesman and he got a good deal for them, but I shiver when I think how much they had to pay for it at the time. (More proof that either my parents really loved my younger brother and I or that we were really spoiled)
Anyway, we played the crap out of that game and obtained all kinds of game cartridges for it. The cartridges were these huge 4x3 inch cases that looked more like a Sci-Fi component than anything else, and it plugged into this large, sleek, silver and black keyboard that looked like something off of Star Trek. I loved it! It was so much cooler looking than the simple Atari box with it's single red button. I knew of only one other kid who had the Odyssey game so trading games was kind of tough. Everyone else had Atari!
This game console provided us with countless hours of fun at our house. Our friends would come over and we would spend hours in my room playing it. (I had a 13" color TV that I bought!) We especially loved playing it when the snow was so deep we had no school and it was so cold no amount of clothing was going to keep us warm....
That sparks another memory if I might be allowed to digress a bit... During those cold winter days of gaming on the Odyssey, I remember how often my friends would come over but they always had to keep their winter coats on while in the upstairs of my parents house. You see, there was no direct heat upstairs other than a really, really inefficient space heater. Temps during the winter rarely got above 55 degrees in the 2nd floor of the house, so a coat was a neccesity. Maybe that is the reason I like to have my own home so cool in the winter. I can attribute it to my formative years. My wife would attribute it to me being cheap and unwilling to pay for a heating bill! But anyway, on with the sale of a memory....
We would play the games, laughing, yelling, cursing, and hitting each other for hours at time. (Yes, I said hitting. It was a primitive form of affection where I came from, much like calling each other *only* by their last names.) These games, looking back at them now, are so simplistic compared to the games on XBOX or Playstation. But you know what, they were fun. And at times, very challenging! Alot of great memories were hooked up to that game.
I broke the old Odyssey game out a few years ago and hooked it up and decided to play it for a while. It still worked as it always did and the familiar and endearing "buulureep!" noise it made when you pressed start was like hearing from an old friend again. I showed my XBOX partner, (my son) the game and at first he was skeptical that an 8 bit video image game could be fun, but he was surprised at how fun it really was. He played a number of the games and liked them, but in the end, XBOX graphics and challenges had spoiled him for more modern fare. But at least he tried it!
The Odyssey game is gone now, sitting in a store in Champaign that specializes in retro audio/visual stuff. I hope he enjoys it, or that someone else buys it and get some good use out of it. It was collecting dust at my house and I guess I would rather have the cash than the item. I guess I still have the memories,(and now, so do you...) but sometimes, possessing the thing that made the memories can make those memories more tangible. Oh well. If need be, I can always buy it back or get on one Ebay. But I doubt it. Right now I am happy with the memory and the cash, and besides, I've got to save up for an XBOX 360!
Game on!
Later!
Anyway, we played the crap out of that game and obtained all kinds of game cartridges for it. The cartridges were these huge 4x3 inch cases that looked more like a Sci-Fi component than anything else, and it plugged into this large, sleek, silver and black keyboard that looked like something off of Star Trek. I loved it! It was so much cooler looking than the simple Atari box with it's single red button. I knew of only one other kid who had the Odyssey game so trading games was kind of tough. Everyone else had Atari!
This game console provided us with countless hours of fun at our house. Our friends would come over and we would spend hours in my room playing it. (I had a 13" color TV that I bought!) We especially loved playing it when the snow was so deep we had no school and it was so cold no amount of clothing was going to keep us warm....
That sparks another memory if I might be allowed to digress a bit... During those cold winter days of gaming on the Odyssey, I remember how often my friends would come over but they always had to keep their winter coats on while in the upstairs of my parents house. You see, there was no direct heat upstairs other than a really, really inefficient space heater. Temps during the winter rarely got above 55 degrees in the 2nd floor of the house, so a coat was a neccesity. Maybe that is the reason I like to have my own home so cool in the winter. I can attribute it to my formative years. My wife would attribute it to me being cheap and unwilling to pay for a heating bill! But anyway, on with the sale of a memory....
We would play the games, laughing, yelling, cursing, and hitting each other for hours at time. (Yes, I said hitting. It was a primitive form of affection where I came from, much like calling each other *only* by their last names.) These games, looking back at them now, are so simplistic compared to the games on XBOX or Playstation. But you know what, they were fun. And at times, very challenging! Alot of great memories were hooked up to that game.
I broke the old Odyssey game out a few years ago and hooked it up and decided to play it for a while. It still worked as it always did and the familiar and endearing "buulureep!" noise it made when you pressed start was like hearing from an old friend again. I showed my XBOX partner, (my son) the game and at first he was skeptical that an 8 bit video image game could be fun, but he was surprised at how fun it really was. He played a number of the games and liked them, but in the end, XBOX graphics and challenges had spoiled him for more modern fare. But at least he tried it!
The Odyssey game is gone now, sitting in a store in Champaign that specializes in retro audio/visual stuff. I hope he enjoys it, or that someone else buys it and get some good use out of it. It was collecting dust at my house and I guess I would rather have the cash than the item. I guess I still have the memories,(and now, so do you...) but sometimes, possessing the thing that made the memories can make those memories more tangible. Oh well. If need be, I can always buy it back or get on one Ebay. But I doubt it. Right now I am happy with the memory and the cash, and besides, I've got to save up for an XBOX 360!
Game on!
Later!
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