Required Prior Search Results

News: Free Protein Folding Game Cracks HIV Molecule Riddle

Foldit is definitely a niche game. The sole gameplay mechanic is attempting to fold complex proteins into smaller and more efficient shapes following the rules of molecular physics and biology. Points are awarded based on how small one can make the protein. Online leaderboards track players' relative progress and allows them to view and manipulate other players' completed designs. It's original, certainly, but no developer is going to ship a million units of a game about molecular-level prote...

How To: A Beginner's Guide to Appreciating Bourbon Whiskey

Bourbon is the ultimate American spirit, considering the barrel-aged distilled spirit was originally produced in an area known as Bourbon County, Kentucky. To meet the legal definition of bourbon, it must be produced in the United States, must be created with at least 51% corn, and aged in new oak barrels. There are two types of bourbon whiskeys—straight and blended. Straight bourbon means that the bourbon has been aged for a minimum of 2 years, and has no other coloring or flavoring added. B...

PAX Prime: A Video Game Convention That's Actually Fun

There are a lot of fantastic video games out there. Indie Games Ichiban's bread and butter is making sure that you steer clear of the bad ones and embrace the good. But really, the biggest goal here is to help everyone have more fun. To that end, today a game is not recommended, but an event. If you like games—not just video games—but tabletop, board and even hopscotch, then PAX Prime is one of the best events you could possibly go to.

News: Is Your Dream Gaming PC Worth It?

The last week has been a trying one for me. On Sunday, there were four computers in my office, three of which were broken. The fourth was not really a computer, but more of a collection of parts that were cobbled together for the purpose of constructing a PC that would sneer derisively at the mere mention of turning down any game's ambient occlusion settings.

News: Google+ Updates Name Policy—Still No Pseudonyms

As Google+ became available to more people, it started running into issues of accounts being suspended due to names that did not sound "real". According to Google+'s community standards, names that users "commonly go by" were encouraged, but not pseudonyms. Those who were using pseudonyms in their Google+ profiles quickly found themselves suspended from using Google+.

The Aether: Welcome to Minecraft Heaven

Minecraft has been out nearly two years now. Hard to believe, isn't it? Fans of the game have been spoiled with a lot of new content over that span from its creator Notch, as well as its modders. A couple months ago, Notch tortured the Minecraft community by tweeting some screens of a "Sky Kingdom" that he was working on.

News: Police Use iPhones to ID Suspects via Face, Iris and Fingerprint Scans

Some cops already have the ability to extract data from your cell phone using handheld forensic devices, but soon police officers will have a new mobile data collection toy to play with—an Apple iPhone. Actually, it's an iPhone-based device that connects directly to the back of an iPhone, which is designed to give law enforcement an accurate and immediate identification of a suspect based on their facial features, fingerprints and even their eyes.

News: ScanMe Makes Social Networking Easy with QR Code T-Shirts

It's called a Quick Response code, but most know it simply as QR code, a matrix barcode dedicated to the world of smartphones. The information contained within the square black modules could be text, a URL, vCard, or some other kind of data. And even though mobile tagging has been around for eight years, it's just now spreading like wildfire across the globe, being incorporated into artistic portraits and wall art. And most recently... "social clothing".

News: Grand Theft Auto 4 Looks Like Gran Turismo 5 with iCEnchancer

Grand Theft Auto 4 was a landmark game. It gave yet another reboot to the already rebooted Grand Theft Auto series, arguably the most prestigious video game in the West. It has a 98 on Metacritic, making it by that measure the best game of modern times. Whatever your stance on the gameplay may be—which has received its fair share of flak in the three years since its release—the graphical steps that the team at Rockstar North took to create their fantasy replica of New York were a major step f...

How To: How Much Advertising Can a Free Game Site Have and Still Be Considered Indie?

Mediocre free Flash game websites are all too common. Many of them thrive off peddling the same few popular games to fans who have slim cause to pick one over the other. They thrive off the indifference of casual gamers and an environment that does not have to stand out to survive, only appeal to the lowest common gaming denominator with tower defense clones and brightly colored Peggle knockoffs. In that context, what Nitrome is doing seems downright commendable.

News: "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" Says: Welcome to the Pleasuredome!

The debate over whether video games can be considered art or not has intensified in recent years as games like Braid and Flow have taken the digital aesthetic experience to new heights. These new games are great examples, but there are much older ones that present compelling arguments as well. The best is a 1986 ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64/Amstrad CPC game called Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Realm of the Mad God: A Free Indie Browser Alternative to World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft has been on top of the world for seven years. No other MMO has come close to challenging its dominance of the genre, and it has generated billions of dollars for Blizzard. They have spent a lot of money adding more and more content, to the extent where the full game with all the expansion packs takes up 65 GB of hard drive space. It is a beautiful game; well balanced, and a milestone in the history of the medium.

News: 3 Unique Alternative Web Browsers for Your iOS Device

A few weeks ago I wrote about Atomic Web as the best web browser for iOS devices, and while I believe it is a superior option, Atomic Web is not the only alternative web browser you can use on your iOS device. There are three more—Dual Browser, iCabMobile, and iSwifter—that are all great options because of their unique features. Let’s check them out.

News: Cryptic Comet Wants You! to Start Reading Game Manuals Again

For a long time, video games manuals were serious business. Especially for strategy games and RPGs on the PC, the manuals would often run to a hundred or more full-color pages in length. They explained in vivid and well-written detail the history of the game world and every facet of the gameplay system. There were pages upon pages of appendices explaining the statistics of every unit, faction, and terrain type. They were majestic, and I would spend an hour or more poring over each one before ...

TVs Are for Old People: A Guide to Handheld Consoles

Advancements in technology usually lead to the miniaturization of old technologies, and video games are no exception. Since at least 1990, game hardware manufacturers and enterprising DIY electronics enthusiasts have poured their efforts into making full-size video game consoles smaller, even handheld. And for good reason—who would have ever played a black and white Game Boy if they could have had an actual NES in their pocket?

News: Goodbye Takahashi Meijin, World's Fastest Button-Presser

Pressing the button on a video game controller quickly is like running the 100 meter dash. Both require dedication and a precise exercise regime. There is also an odd quality about both in which the range between the very best and complete neophyte is tiny. Sprinter Usain Bolt holds the record in the 100 meter run at 9.58 seconds, only three seconds faster than I ran in freshmen high school track. And yet there are thousands of sprinters from a hundred years of Olympic competition in between ...

News: Pirates! Possibly the Purest RPG Ever

I love role-playing games. They tell great stories, require intense strategy, and make minimal demands of my tyrannosaurus-like hand-eye coordination. The idea of an RPG experience, at least on paper, is to allow users to play the role of a character. However, real people do not gain generic experience points for killing things, nor do they pause for each other during combat or have the ability to carry hundreds of potion bottles without slowing down. These can be fun gameplay mechanics, but ...

News: Virtualization Using KVM

Introduction to KVM KVM is a free and open-source Kernel-based Virtual Machine using the Linux kernel for virualization and is very similiar to a hypervisor like Xen or VMware's ESXi. It is based on Qemu, a processor emulator. Any virtual machine created on or working on KVM can work on Qemu also, but with a great reduction in speed.

Outland: A Polarizing Experience

Sticking with our theme of XBLA games with uninspiring names, we have Outland. This game shares its name with an unrelated sci-fi cult film from 1981, unrelated comic strip from the '90s, and unrelated region in World of Warcraft. Didn't exactly try hard to build name recognition. Other than that, Finnish developer Housemarque has created the best 2D platformer I've seen in years.

News: Dust Off Those Old Nintendo Cartridges, Hyperkin Is Here!

Do you remember when video games came on tiny chips in plastic cartridges? When the CD and 3D graphics just meant ugly games with long load times? Before epic cinematics, spoken dialog, or cordless controllers? Do you still have all of your old games and lament that the consoles, cords, and controllers required to play them have either been stolen by exes or broken while moving apartments?

How To: Fold Wet Origami

Sounds like an anomaly, right? When I was a kid folding frogs, my mother gave me origami paper that was most certainly dry. But the works below by Vietnamese-American artist Giang Dinh were folded with one *wet* piece of paper. It's a technique called "Wet-Folding", invented by the great Japanese origami master Akira Yushizawa (pictured right).

News: Of Coyotes and Chickens

In my earlier post about long-term strategies I promised I’d ask some of my neighbors who do what I call factory chicken farming (Let 1000 Chickens Bloom) if the coyotes that have shown up will change the way they play the game. The one guy who replied in any detail said that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, but he thought that he was losing 50 chickens each time he harvested them pressing “Collect Bonus” using a coop.

How To: Install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on Your PC

This tutorial will walk you through the steps required to install the Ubuntu 9.10 operating system (Karmic Koala) on your computer. I have a Suzuki Kuiper 1411 HKS notebook computer with 2.1 GHz Intel Dual Core processor, 4GB RAM and 320GB hard drive. It has a dedicated 256MB Nvdia GeForce 9300M GS graphics card and 1270++MB of VRAM in SLI mode.

How To: How The Internet Works

Sure, you go online to email and shop and do research. But have you ever been curious about how the internet actually works? Don't worry, you don't need a degree in computer science to get a handle on how your info gets from point A to point B. Learning the basics of the internet will give you a whole new appreciation for all those emails and chat messages that seem to magically appear. Get ready, because we're about to enter the wonderful world of digital data!

News: Groundhog 102

30 January 2011 Zynga’s new Groundhog Mission in FrontierVille allows two groundhogs to show up on your homestead at once. They’re very hard to kill; it takes at least 20 clicks to clobber each one.

Abstinence: The Video Game

There is an abstinence game being created by the University of Central Florida with $400k+ of taxpayer money. The game is directed at middle school girls to help them handle and cope with sexual advances.

News: The Da Vinci Kata

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -Leonardo da VinciLearning a kata requires that you go through several stages. First you have to learn the basic pattern and the techniques. Then you have to perfect what you've learned. Then you have to deconstruct what you've learned and perfected in order to truly understand what the kata is teaching you vis a vis close quarter engagement.