Fun & Games

In the Build your Own Arcade Controls Message forums there are tons of great ideas suggestions and how-tos- here’s on on flush mounting a Trackball. Frosty says “Basically, I set my router depth to match the depth of the top of the mounting plate (about 1/8″ of an inch), and routed the outline of the plate. When dropped into the recess, it sat flush with the top of the CP. The artwork was placed on the panel and mounting plate (covering it) and then Lexan on top of it“. Link.

Neat DIY-comment about the new Xbox 360. Henshaw expects the new faceplates to include game-themes and plenty of home grown versions. “There will be different colors, game-themed face plates, a lot of people making their own face plate with fabrics,” said Henshaw, who is growing a Chia plant on his 360’s faceplate. “What we found is that people tend to like electronics that allows them to be entertained the way they want to be entertained and people love the kind of device that allows them to make it a reflection of their own personality.” Link.

If you experimented with turning your PSP in to a web browser using the old Wipeout Pure trick, then here’s something else to try. PSP Hacks Forums show access files on the UMD or the Memory Stick from HTML. Perhaps this could be useful for some type of kiosk application…Link.

Here’s a LED pong game played right on the breadboard. The LED dot matrix is driven with time multiplexing. The columns are displayed one by one in rapid succession, giving the illusion that they are all lit at the same time. Source code and some photos to get your started. Link.

GBADev has an annual competition to create home brewed GameBoy games. Instead of giving out cash and flash cartridges the aim is to manufacture a batch of 500 cartridges with the top entries (a “multi-cart”) complete with cart sticker, manual and box. The cartridges will be manufactured by an “independent party” (not Nintendo). The cartridges are in, you can order them now. The games look great. Link.

Lots of things to put on your PSP. Here are official PSP versions of comics formatted for the PSP from Variance press (High and Lonesome, Last Orders and Semantics). Next up- Star Charts resized just for the PSP from the Mag-7 Star Atlas project, love this! And lastly, pimp out your PSP case- I hope someone makes a template and kit to do this. Link. Thanks Eric!

GameSpy has a great article about Spore and the new way to think about games. Will Wright, creator of SimCity and The Sims talks about his latest game where you become a cosmic creator. Here’s a great quote…“At the same time, what he calls the “value to gamers” levels off after a while. A game with 22,000 animations isn’t twice as good as a game with 11,000 animations. But fortunately, Wright learned another lesson from The Sims: People love to make their own content. They love to customize their experience…Putting two and two together, Wright concluded that there had to be some way where users could create content, instead of armies of developers, and a way to make a game craft itself around the user’s contribution”. I need this game.