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June 3, 2013 Andy Cush

Will Love Tear Us Apart?, a web game based on the Joy Division classic of the same name, really sucks. Goals are ill-defined, controls are constantly changing, and your reward for completing a stage is usually just a mysterious, unexplained cutscene. One level requires only that you sit and do nothing for a while in order […]

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Andy Cush

In Alamogordo, New Mexico, there’s a landfill stuffed with 14 truckloads of Atari games, consoles and other hardware. The company dumped the stuff–mostly unpopular or defective games–in 1983, and it’s been sitting there ever since. Apparently, there are literally millions of copies of 1982’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which, as you can see from the screenshot above, was not […]

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May 28, 2013 Kyle Chayka

In Minecraft, players of the labor-intensive video game’s open world gaming environment are encouraged to “build anything they can imagine,” brick by pixellated brick. It’s quite apparent that artist Jan Robert Leegte may have taken that idea to heart as the artist has painstakingly recreated Robert Smithson’s well-known earthwork Spiral Jetty in great detail.  However, much unlike Smithson’s work this […]

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May 22, 2013 Andy Cush

In You Must Escape, second place winner in this year’s Ludlum Dare (the same video game-creation contest that gave us the similarly beautiful Evoland), you’re crawling through some minimal, darkened dungeon with only your ears to guide you. Your footsteps bounce off the walls, reflecting back at you and providing hints as to where the exit is […]

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May 17, 2013 Marina Galperina

Meet “the ultimate god mode.” From Special Stage Systems, here is Ming Mecca. Essentially, it is a new hybrid analog machine — a synthesizer that allows you control, manipulate, and hack the laws and visuals of vintage video games. Watch that trailer. With the heart of a video synthesizer and the brain of a videogame console, Ming Mecca […]

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May 14, 2013 Andy Cush

Last week, we showed you Data Dealer, a free online game that allows you to play as a shady mogul, profiteering from the sale of unsuspecting customers’ private personal information. Today, you get to inhabit a similarly maligned character: the lowly customs and immigration inspector, stamping passports and deciding who gets in and who stays out. But […]

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Andy Cush

Google image search “Atari Breakout” right now. Just do it. I won’t spoil the fun for you by telling you what’s going to happen. […]

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April 17, 2013 Andy Cush

There’s a distinctly modern aesthetic preoccupation with abandoning strict narrative in favor of immersive sensory experience. Think of the films of Harmony Korine, or the drop-heavy electronic dance music that’s currently en vogue, which shuns the long, slow builds of previous genres and embraces isolated tableaux of overwhelming sound (there’s a reason Skrillex showed up […]

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April 15, 2013 Andy Cush

Paul Rivot’s grandmother is 90 years old. She lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and the advents of AM/FM radio, television, and the internet. In the above video, she tries out the extraordinarily powerful Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for the first time, and it is positively heartwarming. Rivot set the headset to […]

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April 5, 2013 Andy Cush

Evoland bills itself as a playable history of video games: It starts in 8-bit, with minimal color, limited abilities, and no sound effects, and as you progress, the game’s specs evolve along with you. The color palette gets wider, graphics get better, and your hero learns how to move in different ways and use new […]

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