Classic Gaming Expo Is Geekiest Thing in Vegas

It’s time once again to put aside your Blu-ray, drop the Dual Shock and play the games of yesteryear.
“But Chris,” you might say if we were on a first-name basis, “that’s what you do all the time.” Shut up. The point is that this weekend is the ultimate party for people like me, the Classic [...]

At Target, No More Games Behind Glass

Target’s videogame department has finally ditched the irksome glass case.
The big box retailer completed its remodel and expansion of its videogame department this year. As of June 2010, all 1740 stores in the chain have been updated to make shopping for games a little bit easier.
“In the past, game shopping could be intimidating and challenging,” [...]

Weekend Thrifting: Alice’s Intelligent Television

Sometimes things happen that make you question whether there is such a thing as a coincidence.
Case in point: Last week, I sat down for an interview with American McGee on the subject of his revived Alice. I never played the original 2000 PC game, and it is well out of print and hard to find. [...]

StarCraft II Shows Decade of Polish in Slick New Presentation

Few games live up to 11 years of anticipation, but StarCraft II’s slick upgrades mean the sequel’s got a shot.
At midnight July 27, Blizzard switched on the servers for StarCraft II. The original StarCraft, released in 1998, became an overnight success, selling 1.5 million copies in its first year on the way to more than [...]

Q&A: The Well-Wasted Life of a Podcast Impresario

Stop what you’re doing and go listen to the latest installment of the Life Well Wasted podcast. It’s 58 minutes well spent.
A Life Well Wasted is recorded and mixed by one man, Robert Ashley. He used to be a prolific game journalist, even covering such topics as World of Warcraft and Spore for Wired magazine. [...]

B&M Retailer GameStop to Purchase Flash Game Site Kongregate

GameStop announced today that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Flash game website Kongregate, making the brick-and-mortar game retailer a major provider of free online games.
Kongregate, a social gaming site that launched in 2007, delivers free games to 10 million players each month. The purchase will make Kongregate a wholly-owned subsidiary of GameStop. [...]

Play Pac-Man in HTML5

Programmer Dale Harvey has created a playable version of Pac-Man using only web standards.
To rebuild the same gameplay found in the arcade classic using browser-native code, he’s relying on local storage, HTML5 audio, Canvas and @font-face. Harvey is sharing all the code on Github as well, so you can run it locally.
Reminiscent of Google’s recent [...]

Q&A: American McGee Returns to Alice’s Nightmare Wonderland

REDWOOD CITY, California — “I’ve kind of made a habit of taking children’s fairy tales and turning them into dark, twisted content,” says game designer American McGee.
He might be understating the case a bit. As creator of American McGee’s Alice and American McGee’s Grimm, he’s best known (and pointedly parodied) for dirtying up a story [...]

Rockstar Book Canceled, New Project in the Works

The massive book of Rockstar Games’ art has been canceled and a new project is underway, publishing representatives said to Wired.com.
Alexander Galen, vice president of Distributed Art Publishers, informed Wired.com last week that plans for the comprehensive $450 tome, called Digital + Analogue: The Art and Science of Rockstar Games, had been scrapped since it [...]

RPG Battle Maps Square Off: Paper or Gaming Paper?

I’m always on the lookout for something cool to bring to the gaming table. The one thing I’m never satisfied with? My battle map.
A few months back, I put the Battle Graph Dry Erase Boards to the test and they passed with flying colors. They remain a regular feature in my Game Master [...]