Archive for December 2007

Everyone’s favorite Soviet block video game has been brought to life using a roomful of people, taking on the roll of the various colored geometric shapes from the game. The stop-motion video by Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond of NotSoNoisy creative agency is the latest in his series of video game inspired clips, which first gained popularity with Human Space Invaders and Human Pong, and more recently, Human Pole Position.

It seems that every few weeks, the Korean tech market reveals some new all-in-one gadget that makes me drool. The latest and greatest PMP (personal media player) to come out of the East Asian nation features just about everything you’d ever want in a portable electronic device.

Here’s a fun way to play some of your favorite 16-bit console oldies whenever the whim strikes. This new portable plays a selection of games from the classic SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) console. AtGames Mega Drive Portable is loaded up with a twenty licensed classic (and some not-so-classic) titles from the late 80s console.

This set of fun Pac-Man pillows features the likenesses of Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, the ghosts from the classic 1980s arcade game. But flip them over, and you’ll get some of those frantic blue ghosts on the run as if you just chomped down on a big old power pill.

This gorgeous new watch from Seiko Japan uses a series of spinning aluminum discs to display the current time. Unlike some of the more cryptic modern watches coming out of Japan these days, the Seiko Discus is actually quite easy to read.

These may look like your typical cheap schlock shop knock-offs of popular gadgets, but they’re much more devious than that. You see, while they may bear a slight resemblance to a certain portable gaming system, media player and a dime-store pocket laser, they’re actually practical jokes that deliver a nasty shock.

Check out these awesome vector art variations on classic arcade game characters. Game enthusiast Philipp Lenssen took partial screenshots from famous arcade games and ran them through VectorMagic, a nifty online bitmap-to-vector conversion tool, then enlarged them to exaggerate the line-art effect.

Nowadays, you can find many classic Genesis and NES games on Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console, but nothing beats popping any cartridge you find lying around into a system that’s designed specifically to play those old school titles.

Remember the oh-so-cool RGBy Desk I showed you a few weeks back? The desk uses color sensors and tons of RGB LEDs to change colors to match items placed on top of it. But it was a one-of-a-kind piece that would probably cost thousands of dollars even if you could buy one.

If you’ve ever visited the LEGO Store in downtown Chicago, you might have come across a life-size R2-D2 made from thousands of snap-together plastic blocks. While I thought that was impressive, this mammoth LEGO droid measures in at a whopping 8-feet tall.

This humanoid robot holds a pen in its hand and can draw an image of any person who stands in front of it. Created by robotic researcher Sylvain Calinon, the robot recognizes when there’s a face in its field of view, then snaps a digital photo and extracts the major characteristics of their visage.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to play either of the Brain Age games on the Nintendo DS, you might want to check out this gadget from Japan’s SegaToys. Thanks to my limited knowledge of the Japanese language, I’m not 100% sure what the Brain Checker does, but it sure looks like it could be fun.

Design virtuoso Philippe Starck continues to crank out some beautifully minimal timepieces, and these are no exception. The Starck Palindrome series offers up a design so clean that it doesn’t even look like it has a minute hand at first glance.

Now that the year is almost done, I thought it might be nice to reflect on the biggest stories of the year in case you missed any of them. There are some really great tidbits in here, so be sure to check them out if you haven’t already done so.

I don’t know why, but I really can’t resist anything with those fun-loving Space Invaders on them. Case in point, these new water bottles featuring those classic arcade critters. I’m really not sure what the connection is between space aliens and bottled H20, but what was the last time Japanese video game schwag made much sense?

For just a few brief moments each day, this clock looks like an ordinary cube, but most of the time it transforms to form star-like geometric patterns. The Time Cube carves off one corner of its 6-sided box to form a series of layered triangles which rotate to tell the current time.