Results tagged “nintendo”

By Gordon Elgart

For those of you into gaming, or at least like to blow off some steam with your Wii (tee hee), we found out through Gamingbits.com that San Francisco will be one of the sites of the US Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tournaments. Fanboys and fangirls, commence with your tears of joy.

We already decided to only leave the house for essentials this weekend, like liquor and toothpaste, so we were thrilled to stumble upon one last 'best of' list for 2007. Craftster, the hub for all things handmade has compiled the most comprehensive list of the best craft projects from 2007. A bonus of this forum-based site is that most crafters post step-by-step instructions and photos for making the projects they list. We're bookmarking this for a little DIY inspiration in 2008.

Meet the biker of the year.

According to Game Informer Online, Nintendo of America may be relocating -- and one of the rumoured destination cities is right here in San Francisco. More employment opportunities are always good, especially establsihed companies that can bring some economic stability -- not to mention fun aspects like more local video-game testing opportunities.

We've held out this long, and we're only gonna make this jokes once, but this summer, watch out for... Drinks on a plane! (We'll now run across the street and demand of the priest an appropriately harsh prescription for penance.) But don't worry, technology and, to a lesser extent, the Bush and Blair administrations, are here to protect you. With biometric terrorist detectors, other tech that's been around for generations, and the latest in arbitrary and invasive search and profiling trends. When of course, your laptop from Apple or Dell could pose just as much of a threat. All the while, organized crime may just avoid the lines at the gate by telecommuting -- we can't wait until infesting MySpace hipsters with extortionware and bullying World of Warcrafters out of their gold gets a mention on The Sopranos.

We in the labs like to make fun of San Francisco, but if there's one good thing about SF, it's that it's not LA. The videogame trade show E3 is going on this week down in the City of Miserable Angels, and we're very happy to be skipping this year and not having to deal with the smog and money and sweat and desperation.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is so close you can almost taste the LA smog and the tangy sweat of desperation. In honor of that, this week's round-up is all videogame-related news.

Tech news you should be interested in this week:

We were just kicking back to watch our new Mac mini-based PVR announced at last month's MacWorld Expo, until we realized that it doesn't exist. This isn't meant as just an accusation of ThinkSecret.com's "sources," just a cautionary tale: there's the truth, there's what rumor sites confirm will happen, and every once in a while, they're the same thing.

I'm opening my Christmas gift from SFist now: the opportunity to write without the editorial "we" and with opinions I don't have to disguise with any pretense of objectivity (or being entirely San Francisco- or technology-related). Here are my picks for the best of 2005 and what I'm looking forward to in 2006:

Ah, is there no more universal gesture for our youth than sticking in a cartridge, getting a flashing grey screen, then pulling the cartridge back out and repeatedly blowing into it until Contra finally agrees to boot up? Modern gamers might seem a bit insular and antisocial at times, cooped up in the house with their polygon counts and tethered to wifi for FFXI; but the monthly meetings of the Bay Area 8-Bitters Fun Club, a social group for kids who still carry a giddy torch for old NES, are lively and engaging. We stopped by their September meetup, at Rockin' Java on Haight Street, to catch a glimpse of their impressive collection of carts and to attempt getting through a single level of 1943.

We seem to recall Laurie Anderson pwning similar tech in the 80s, but The Lab (that nifty art/performance space in the Mission) is going to be showcasing some cutting-edge audio performance equipment that feels like it's straight out of a sci-fi novel. Michael Waisvisz and Robert van Heumen of STEIM (an Amsterdammish audio-performance-concocting center) demonstrate LiSa X and JunXion, software that creates "a sound field in the computer, where the performer can record and manipulate multiple sound streams on the fly," and "supports gestural input," and can turn basically any input device into a musical instrument. Sounds like they're breeding "TRON" with "Rez," minus the personal vibrator.