KJH World » Games

Cal Marching Band Sends Up a Tribute to Video Games

kjh — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:00:53 +0000

The Cal marching band has obviously put in a great deal of practice into pulling off this really well choreographed tribute routine to some well known video games over the years. They start off with the very well known and obvious Pong, then Tetris and a few more including Super Mario. Of course, the music also matches the video games being portrayed. If you’ve ever played any video games and enjoy creativity in its various forms, this is worth a look.

VR Display/Head Tracking using Wiimote

kjh — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:48:07 +0000

Sometimes, technology begets technology. Hand a hacker/creative/smart person some cool technology and watch them take it apart and/or create something new out of it. In this case, researcher, CMU Ph.D. student, Johnny C. Lee, has taken a Wii remote (Wiimote) and used it to create a desktop virtual reality head tracking system. Words don’t describe this as well as the video, so watch the video already. Obviously, this is the future of video games and possibly a precursor to immersing entertainment.

Mr. Lee has described the whole project on his website as well as provided software that he wrote for downloading. The page also describes other projects he has put together using Wiimotes. I wonder how long it took for Nintendo to come knocking on his door?

One of his other cool side projects was taking photos of bottles being smashed with a hammer and capturing a frozen split-second of the action in mid-smash. Click the picture for a blown up, clear photo.

“Rock Band” Rocks

kjh — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:27:09 +0000

This weekend, I had a chance to play the latest music play-a-long video game, Rock Band, which is the natural successor to the Guitar Hero line of games. Now, don’t get me wrong, Guitar Hero is an amazing game, but Rock Band blows it away because it’s so much more fun to get a bunch of your friends together collaborating on a game. It’s also more diverse, because now you get to try to master 4 different instruments/vocals. You’ll want to keep switching up so everyone gets a chance on everything (guitar, drums, bass and vocals). You’ll soon figure out who’s good at what.

Available for Xbox 360 and Playstation (2 and 3). Make sure you get the bundle with the drums, guitar, bass and mic if you don’t already have any instruments.

By the way, for those of you non-musicians who have played Rock Band already, you know how hard the drums can be (and they say drummers are the dumbest in the band…) Take a look at this video of a drummer playing Metallica’s “…And Justice for All”. Ah, so that’s how you do it… Right, just a few years of practice and I’m so there.