There's a new Humble Indie Bundle, #4, so of course we couldn't help but mention it. Contribute what you want for a bundle of up to seven awesome DRM-free games on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux: Shank, Super Meat Boy, NightSky, Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, and Cave Story+. You can choose your contribution to go to any split of Developers, Charity, and Humble Tip, the latter of which goes to Humble Bundle Inc. itself.

Give the promo video below a watch as well, as it's pretty darn entertaining in its own right:

One of our favorite "Pay What You Want", "DRM Free", "Cross Platform", and "Helps Charity" offers, The Humble Indie Bundle, is back for the third time (though, I think they already used #3!). The games in this bundle are Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVVV, Hammerfight, and And Yet It Moves, and they work on Windows, Mac, and Linux (Steam key included!). So, head on over, name your price, and get playing!

I had recently written about what I perceive to be the false notion of console gaming holding PC gaming back (and, frankly, with a recent release like L.A. Noire and future releases like Skyrim, again, it's hard to make that argument outside of a purely superficial (audio/visual) - not contentual - standpoint). Perhaps, as this new article puts forth, it's not consoles, but tablets, that the traditional PC industry has more to worry about?

Of course, as far as I'm concerned, we're actually still at least a few years off from that happening, at least until Apple breaks the required link between their iOS devices and a computer equipped with iTunes (and that's a question of "when", not "if"). Android devices are of course close to completely breaking free of the computer tether, but there are other issues for those classes of devices to overcome first. Other tablet OS's, present and future, are probably somewhere in-between the two.

Interestingly, there's a girl here at my day job who had bought an iPad 2 about a month back and then recently got an iPhone 4, but was frustrated that there was no way to copy what was on her iPad 2 (purchases) over to the iPhone 4. You see, she considers her computer horribly outdated and really didn't want to go through iTunes on her rickety old PC! Obviously, very flawed thinking, but it's very interesting what the non-techies have in their thought processes (and in this case how she wants to basically compute outside of work exclusively on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4)... Definitely a paradigm shift of some type! In any case, it's the old argument that it's not so much computers that are being challenged, it's the limited generalized definition of what a computer is that is being challenged. Does a computer really mean that desktop or laptop many of use a good portion of the day? Sure, but that's not all it means. As an iPad 2 user - outside of the tethering restriction for the occasional iTunes sync - I can argue that my tablet is as much of a computer as most desktops and laptops, with strikingly similar functionality (and in some cases, then some).

Ultimately, I think it's clear we're all headed to a connected eco-system of devices, where a lot of stuff is in the cloud, with minimal need for local storage. You'll simply use whatever device is handy or whatever is best suited to a particular task (say a touch screen or a keyboard). We even already have brilliantly functional cloud gaming services (and of course, VOD, like Netflix), so, outside of artificial bandwidth restrictions by ISP's, there's little reason to think that the future has anything to do with increasingly more powerful traditional computers. For some of us who have been in love with technology since our earliest memories, this is a tough sell, but it's hard to argue that's not where we're headed, and perhaps it's just as hard to argue that it's even a bad a thing. I'm sure even the most hardcore among us have tired of the upgrade/incompatibility/instability cycle at some point, if only briefly.

Just like we talked about the last two "Humble Bundles", we couldn't help but mention this latest one. Pay what you want for three awesome DRM-free games on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux: Trine, Shadowgrounds: Survivor, and Shadowgrounds. Additionally, your Frozenbyte bundle includes a preorder for Splot and a prototype with source code for Jack Claw. Choose to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity at the same time. Check it out here!

[ FEB . 27 . 2011 ]
 

Greetings folks! Welcome to the February 27th, 2011 edition of Three for the Road. This week, I take a look at an eleven year old DOS based BBS door-game which has only recently been released to the public.. albeit, reworked as a single-player or local multi-player ANSImation RPG. We take a look at a minimalistic platforming game with destructible environments which turns out to be much more fun than it first appears. Finally, we take a look at a classic point-and-click style adventure game with a high attention to detail. If you're a fan of classic Sierra or LucasArts adventures then this may be just what you're looking for.

Part II of a multiple part series of videos in which I take a look at the open source Pandora handheld that has been in the making for quite some time. In this second part I take a look at N64 gameplay and MSX-gameplay. Please be sure to watch the HD version of this video! Watching it low-res/SD will take away much of the shine this system has.

Running on Linux sporting a specialized 3D GPU and a powerful ARM CPU this is the ultimate handheld gaming device in my opinion especially if you like retrogaming or open source handheld gaming without the need to hack/patch or crack into a commercially available system voiding support and warranty.

Part I of a multiple part series of videos in which I take a look at the open source Pandora handheld that has been in the making for quite some time. Please be sure to watch the HD version of this video! Watching it low-res/SD will take away much of the shine this system has.

Running on Linux sporting a specialized 3D GPU and a powerful ARM CPU this is the ultimate handheld gaming device in my opinion especially if you like retrogaming or open source handheld gaming without the need to hack/patch or crack into a commercially available system voiding support and warranty.

This system is very capable of emulation and emulating 32 and 64 bit consoles is possible and playable on this system.

Click here to read more.

And yes today the postman rang my doorbell twice and I was presented with 'Pandora's Sack' LOL

This is just a little teaser video to get you guys interested in my experiences with the Pandora.

[ DEC . 22 . 2010 ]
 
Way back in the golden age of video games, the humble racing game was nary more then a line on either side of the screen with an amorphous blob in the center to denote your "car". And you know what? It was damn fun to play.

In the ensuing years, the genre pulled itself up by it's proverbial boot straps, dusted itself off and started down the road (pun intended) to refinement... Adding better graphics, physics based handling, simulating realistic weather and track conditions and emulating the driving behavior of famous drivers.