Few songs are more sinister or invoke a deeper geek reaction than Imperial March, the musical interpretation of the domination of the Empire in Star Wars. Thanks to YouTube user sh4dowww90, we now have the song to enjoy in a format most have never heard: floppy disk drive music. Here’s how it works: It’s nothing new and it’s very simple. The sound comes from a magnetic head moved by stepper motor. To make a specific sound, head must be moved with appropriate frequency. FDD has a simple interface – the description may be found for example [ HERE ]. To move the head you need to activate the drive…

Four hours. This is the amount of time I spent playing Minecraft today. But I had only intended to load up the game to take screenshots for this very article; obviously, that didn’t go as planned. However, I managed to break away, at least long enough to write this article, but I’m already missing it. Why? What makes this game so different than any other? And why would a hardcore gamer like me even bother? Trust me when I say that I never thought a game about blocks, zombies, and building things — with no apparent objective whatsoever — could be so addictive. The concept is simple and the objective…

Dear Game Publishers, what are you thinking? For years, loyal supporters of your games have dealt with ridiculous price increases, overpriced downloadable content, and silly DRM schemes. Yet now, in these most critical times for the game industry, your idea of repaying them is to make us pay even more? Really? Furthermore — stooping to an all-time low — EA has stepped up for your industry and decided that users should be pushed (if not forced) to purchase new games only, punishing gamers who legitimately purchase used games. The idea behind this is essentially to make them pay extra money…

The tragic Kurt Cobain might have left us but this doesn’t mean Nirvana’s record label don’t continue to seek out new opportunities to make money from the artist’s legacy — now it seems Tapulous has inked a deal to bring a dedicated Nirvana game to the iPhone. Nirvana Revenge will feature 13 of the band’s songs in a new variant of the well-recognised Tap Tap Revenge game. Songs will include Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are and Heart Shaped Box plus some live numbers from a UK rock festival. The app should be available later this week for $4.99 via the App Store. There’s a Bluetooth…

Yesterday, among the challenges and inspiring messages in President Obama’s commencement address at Hampton University, was something a bit unexpected: a dig at modern technology. It was surprising because most things we’ve heard so far from this administration has been pretty pro-technology. But this is what Obama said: [Y]ou’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how…

It is, in many ways, a grand time to be a nerd or geek who is a fan of movies. The last decade has not only seen comic book heroes be the star of movies like Spider Man 1 and 2 and The Dark Knight which were actually good, we’ve also gotten grand fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter – and even a few great Sci-Fi flicks like District 9 and Star Trek. But with the release of Iron Man 2 this week – and the news that the next Batman film hits in 2012 -  I can’t be the only what wants to say “Yeesh! Enough with the comic book movies already!”. You can only milk a certain type of source material for so long until…

The year: 1961. The game: Spacewar! The objective: to kill the other enemy ship. The realization: this was the first game that truly promoted violence according to today’s standards. The takeaway: oh the humanity! After endless claims that video games are causing today’s youth to become degenerates that want nothing more than to become criminals, the same people who are arguing that video game violence is harming our youth need to take a look at Spacewar! and tell us with a straight face that this was the beginning of the end for our youth. Oh how the world was going to change. Then there was Death…

There are three rules that gamers follow when it comes to eating food and playing video games: must be fast, easy to eat and taste great. The foods we’ve found have one additional thing going for them; they are inspired by video games, and therefore taste of awesome. Nintendo Cereal System In the 1980s, Nintendo crated a cereal for fans called “Nintendo Cereal System”. The box carried two flavors, one on either side, that featured the characters from Super Mario Brothers and Zelda. Video Game Inspired Bento Meals Zelda. Super Mario Boo Ghost. Little Big Planet character. These video game inspired…

Remember Tetris? We do! We remember playing Tetris on our Game Boys for hours and hours, all while attempting the seemingly impossible challenge of organizing virtual bricks into rows while they dropped faster as time went on. Oh what fun we had. Guess what? Tetris is making a comeback, and this time it is bigger, faster, more challenging, and more in-your-face than ever before. It’s the Tetris redux — reality style — and we want to play it right now. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information about the project, but it is apparent that someone took the time to create a large Tetris-inspired…

Image by 1up.com Every now and then the question of whether video games should qualify as art or not comes to the fore. A few years ago Roger Ebert famously concluded in his book “Answer Man” that games cannot be art because there is choice involved. Why anybody would want to know what an old man with bad taste in film thinks about video games is beyond me, but there you have it. Since then many have pointed out inconsistencies in his characterization of things, chiefly, that he used plays of all things as one of his main examples, and plays are all about choice: who is going to play the characters, what is…