Results tagged “videogame”

While Homer's trip to the third dimension freaked us out, we're tickled by Mario's appearance in the streets of real-life Chicago!

Chicago-based Pitchfork, ye olde guardian of all things indie rock and general critical force to be reckoned with, is launching Pitchfork.tv on April 7. When we first saw the press release hit our inbox, we admit our initial reaction was one of great skeptical cynicism. Recently Pitchfork gave a rather naked endorsement to a video game that they just happened to choose the soundtrack for, so the move in to territory dangerously similar to MTV-land seemed like another step towards the ramp at the edge of the shark tank.

We know it's everywhere, but we can't not include it--it's the awesomest link of the day! Your Star Wars Guide to the Presidential Candidates. We also love "Obi-Ron Paul-obi." But maybe you prefer candidates as video game systems. [via]

In a move sure to send ripples throughout the video game community, Electronic Arts, aka EA, is shuttering its Chicago office effective immediately. In case that leaves you scratching your head, EA is responsible for such gaming franchises as Madden NFL, The Sims, The Orange Box, and the upcoming Rock Band. The now former studio was located at 215 W. Ohio. According to EA Games president Frank Gibeau, shutting down the Chicago branch was “the...

Have you noticed the photos and merchandise featuring a green metal soldier throughout the city? At your local 7-Eleven there are Slurpee cups featuring the same soldier carrying a flag, there is a strange red-orange new flavor of Mountain Dew called Game Fuel, there is a commercial with a elderly man talking about the great battle where "Master Chief" saved his life, and there's another where "Master Chief" seemingly comes alive in the middle of a massive diorama. There are books, comics, web "machinima," toys, and even an article in Time Magazine. This is Halo.

Seattlest watches as a S.L.U.T. is born and Seattle Flickr users go nuts over a local art installation. A restaurant critic demands a Diner's Bill of Rights over a gnat next to her drink, and, in lieu of a Portlandist, Seattlest debates with itself over the identity of the Northwest's crown jewel. Seattlest also joins the guys from Fantagraphics for an ill-fated gun party in the woods. Bostonist got a crash course in what not...

The Bears may not have won the Super Bowl this year, but maybe fans can take some pride in being the home to the most perfectly fast man in the NFL, ever. The essential football video game, Madden '08, will feature the Bear's All-Pro Devin Hester as the first player to ever receive a perfect 100 in the speed category (maybe in any category, but we can't find any support for that). Deion Sanders,...

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,...

Remember when G-Rod made it a crime to sell violent or sexually explicit games to minors in the state of Illinois? Bad move, Illinois still owes the video games industry $520,000 in legal fees for writing unconstitutional laws, and the judges say we have to pay, even though we don’t want to. Chicagoist imagines the time Illinois politicians spent dreaming up, researching, writing, and defending the restrictive legislation could easily add another $500,000 to the...

We’ve heard of East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop feuds, but how does the Second City figure in? Apparently, the latest feud involves Chicago’s Nice Peter, who combine improv with rock, versus 50 Cent. Now, we’re not giving a huge amount of credence to this “feud” because we don’t really believe that 50 Cent has actually heard the song that’s causing the ruckus — “50 Cent is a Pussy” off the latest Nice Peter live...

Besides appointing Tammy Duckworth to the state Department of Veteran's Affairs, Rod Blagojevich has made the news again recently for some other, not-so-sexy reasons lately, too. Blago gave the boot to two East Coast law firms that had made large donations to the Governor. A third firm had been removed from the state's list of preferred law firms in May. The Sun-Times is reporting that the preferred list kept by the state (which is a...

We find oddball things to on the weekend very intriguing. We have some normal and some not so normal events for you today. Chiefly, we are referencing going to a bar to watch 40 people compete in a guitar video game at a bar. As always feel free to add more events in the comments section.

For those of you who, like Chicagoist, are fans of anything that plugs into the wall (Lamps! Woo!), here are a few Chicago-related technology stories we saw this morning. McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner told attendees of a technology consumer forum at the Palmer House Hilton that the company is trying to make its restaurants more interactive. We thought walking up the counter prior to ordering, receiving and consuming food was pretty interactive already. In fact,...

We're always slightly terrified to drive down through Lower Wacker. No matter how fast we're going, it always feels too fast, or we worry that some delivery truck is going to pop out of a hidden ramp and bash into us. It's like a video game. Well add another obstacle to that: two blocks of the Amazing Chicago Underground Tunnel of Death near Madison Street were shut down overnight when a water main broke and flooded it. Chicagoist isn't sure how many of its readers regularly venture down into the bowels of the West Loop, but if you have to today, plan ahead.

What would Batman Returns have looked like if it were filmed in Milwaukee? Would High Fidelity still resonate with you if it had been filmed in Madison? Do the Blues Brothers have the same soul if they’re from Oshkosh? We may be about to find out, as Wisconsin hasn't been keeping its eyes on its own paper and just totally copied off of us. Screen Magazine, a periodical we turn to for the lowdown on...

The Bears have been on the golf course for almost three weeks now and the Pittsburgh Steelers are off to Disneyland. Football fans fresh off their Super Bowl feast are prepared to hibernate until the 2006 season. That is unless you choose to become a Chicago Rush Arena Football fan. Chicagoist had put little credence in the Arena Football League (AFL) until recently. We first took notice of the sport when the Arena Football League...

.. or at least they go less than they used to? Or something? Wait, what's going on here? 9 out of the 10 largest museums in the city saw a decline in visitors last year, but one had a huge leap. The Museum of Science & Industry saw a 34% increase in attendance. People must have really liked that video game exhibit they had last year!

The national media seems preoccupied with the story of family media watchdog groups accusing one of our local game developers of promoting cannibalism among minors:

"Our society already restricts children’s access to things like tobacco, alcohol and pornography because we know they pose a serious risk to child health and development. We should do the same for what is one of the fastest-growing threats to children in this modern age: violent and sexually explicit video games."

The study (read it here in PDF) compared two groups. One group of 75 played the game "Asheron’s Call 2" for an average of 56 hour over a one-month period. The control group consisted of 138 participants that did not play the game. All participants were then asked about their beliefs regarding aggression and whether they'd recently had a serious argument with a friend or significant other. "Asheron's Call 2" is an online role-playing game that contains a large amount of fantasy violence. As Dimitri Williams, one of the authors of the study, admits, "This game featured fantasy violence, while others featuring outer space or even everyday urban violence may yield different outcomes."

Well, he finally did it. He signed his law banning the sale of violent and sexy video games to minors. But not without uttering, what sounds to us like, quite a contradictory quote:

Yep, we've decided to add the nickname to our lexicon, but not without a proper nod to its originator. We were particularly partial to "Gov. BJ", but "Gov. Gonad" is just irresistible to us boors. So anyway, moving on...

With all the Lollapalooza hullabaloo yesterday (the Sun-Times and the Trib pick up the story today), we missed the chance to put our two cents into an argument that Richard Roeper started. It’s an argument guaranteed to inflame any barroom in the city when you include just three little words: “...of all time.”

We're kind of into video games here at Chicagoist. Now don't get us wrong—we're totally embarrassed by it (especially when we're at the video store trying to pick a game to rent and a looker walks by). We're known to buy a new game, play it too much and then smash it with a hammer because we can't resist the temptation to play it all the time. Once we even lit our PS2 on fire, extinguished the fire and threw the melted console's carcass out our window into the courtyard because it had taken over our lives. Yea, yea, yea, we could have sold it or given it to a needy child, but we wanted revenge. Then a couple of months later we bought another one. That one still sits oh-so-close to the edge of fiery destruction near our TV (slyly whisked out of sight whenever possible love-interests stop by).