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Do you remember getting mail? Not email. Not bills. Not letters from credit card companies enthusiastically informing you that you’ve been “pre-approved!” Actual mail—a letter, a note, or a card. You know, when someone wrote you a message, adhered a stamp to it, and placed it in a mailbox, just to let you know they were thinking of you? Chances are you don’t receive this sort of mail nearly as often as you once did, likely due to the influx […]

Continue Reading about A Penny for Your Thoughts: The Golden Age of Postcards Published on:
October 25, 2011

Ashton, my five-year-old son, loves playing video games on his Nintendo Wii. His favorites include Disney Epic Mickey, Hot Wheels: Beat That!, and Wii Sports Resort; he plays the New Super Mario Bros. Wii the most. I’m also a huge fan of the game, and we often team up as Mario and Luigi in the game’s multiplayer mode to save Princess Peach from Bowser and company.

Like most children his age, Ashton enjoys diverse activities. He plays cars with his Hot […]

Continue Reading about My Son’s Video Game Art and Level Design Published on:
October 21, 2011

Zombies, witches, vampires, monsters, and other blood curdling creatures invaded pop culture centuries ago. While I’m not big on gory thrills, I am a fan of other ghoulish delights. I fill each October calendar day with some Halloween activity. With video game titles like Little Red Riding Hood’s Zombie BBQ and A Vampyre Story, I have plenty of action to fill my free-time.
Count Dracula, a vampire, sorcerer, and Transylvanian nobleman, radiates confidence that even Napoleon would covet. In his 1897 […]

Continue Reading about Video Games for Halloween Published on:
October 14, 2011

Back to school can mean a lot of things. For some of us, the start of school remains inextricably linked to freshly-sharpened yellow Ticonderoga pencils and a new box of Crayola crayons. Even decades after my elementary school days, the aroma of a box of crayons transports me to preparations for returning to class as summer vacation winds down. I can almost recapture the semi-panicky feeling of wondering who my new teacher would be and whether I’d be able to […]

Continue Reading about The Wheels on the Bus Published on:
October 11, 2011

One of my favorite games in ICHEG’s collection is Atari’s 1976 arcade classic Breakout, an elegant, one-player elaboration of Pong. Players move a paddle side-to-side to keep a bouncing ball in play long enough to knock down multicolored layers of bricks. A tone sounds each time a ball strikes a brick. The ball speeds up with each successive layer of bricks, making it harder and harder to hit. Breakout is a seductive game, easy to learn, difficult to master.
Steve Jobs, […]

Continue Reading about Steve Jobs, Breakout Pioneer Published on:
October 7, 2011

I’ve spent a lot of time in the car this summer. And for much of that time, my six-year-old son has been my constant companion. When I was a kid, getting ready to travel involved books, crayons, paper, and a snack in a Ziploc bag. Today, we travel with a mobile electronics store. By the end of a trip, the backseat is littered with my iPod and headphones, a mobile video player with an assortment of SpongeBob and Scooby Doo […]

Continue Reading about Are We There Yet? Published on:
October 4, 2011

With so many video games to choose from, I often have trouble deciding how to get the most bang for my buck.
Sometimes I compare how much I spend on a game to the amount of time I expect to play it.  I wonder if other gamers do the same? Games like Kingdom Hearts, Okami, and Dragon Age: Origins may easily take 50 to 60 hours just to beat the initial storyline, to say nothing of any side-quests on which a […]

Continue Reading about How Long Is a Good Video Game? Published on:
September 30, 2011

I recently joined countless others around the country and jumped on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (U.S. WNT) bandwagon. In fact, almost everyone I encountered during the team’s amazing FIFA World Cup run seemed to be aware of the its international success. Even before the Semifinals, the U.S. WNT had already gone head-to-head against the highly rated Brazilian team in the Quarterfinals. A game-tying “header” in the 11th hour by none other than Rochester, New York’s own Abby Wambach […]

Continue Reading about U.S. Women’s Soccer and Abby Mania: One Fan’s Perspective Published on:
September 27, 2011

On September 4th, the video game industry lost a true pioneer. Bill Kunkel, founder of Electronic Games magazine and longtime video game journalist, passed away at the age of 61.
Kunkel began his career writing comic books and covering the wrestling industry, but he made his greatest impact as a journalist chronicling, celebrating, and critiquing video games. Over the years he worked on numerous publications, designed games and taught about them, and in 1981 cofounded, with Arnie Katz and Joyce Wetzel, […]

Continue Reading about Bill Kunkel, 1950-2011: Video Game Journalism Pioneer Published on:
September 16, 2011