Arcade Lounge

Well I finally managed to make it to the Game On exhibition at the London Science Museum. I would say that I dragged my girlfriend there, but it wasn’t as if she was difficult to convince. She soon found the system playing Bubble Bobble and that was probably the last I saw of her.

This is definitely worth taking time out to head to. As you step through the entrance, you start at the very beginning… pong, computer space and some other huge machine which signifies the beginning of an era. I intended to go back and have a proper look at that but found myself playing too much Bomberman on the Dreamcast, against kids that were barely tall enough to see over the counter.

So from Pong to Wii, the games have advanced, but maybe not the names…

(more…)

This looks fantastic…

I bet you know what I’m thinking! The dark glass top, glowing surface… and the same problem with fingerprints!

Along the same theme of interactive tables, this is the work of Thomas Gardner, “developed as part of an investigation into reactive space”. Now available to buy commercially.
Find out more… 

If the AtariAge post made you reminisce about those black blocks with blocky insides, then maybe a visit to Benjamin Heckendorn’s website and his VCSp project to see his Atari 2600 portable project.

While you are there, you should also take a look at his other work, such as the xbox 360 laptop and the Atari 800 laptop. Oh how I remember the days of Rally Speedway on my Atari 800 and 800XL.

Visit www.benheck.com… the grandmaster of retro-modding. He also has an Atari Jaguar mod, his own podcast plus a forum for mod discussion.

Security researchers (and so it appears fans of the movie War Games) at the University of Cambridge have been tampering with a chip & pin terminal in the interests of science.

It’s interesting to note that “…perfect tamper resistance only ensures that the terminal will no longer be able to communicate with the bank once opened. It does not prevent anyone from replacing most of the terminal’s hardware and presenting it to customers as legitimate, so freeley collecting card details and PINs”.

Take a look…

If you are a collector of Atari 2600 games and are near to completiton wondering what you will do next…

AtariAge, based in the US, are still creating games for your beloved Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 and more. Plus they will ship internationally.

If you are that way inclined, AtariAge have a sale on until the 15th January. They also want to buy any Atari carts you might have kicking around, so they can put them to good use (i.e. Sell them back to you with new guts).
I don’t know about you, but I’ll leave writing my own game and packing it into 8K of ROM up to the experts!

Anyway, check out the site. There’s a whole host of hardware, software and information available.