As the pictures from the Mars Rover and the Mars Satellites come back in greater detail we will begin to see computer video games, which will have the Martian Surface as their backdrop. These computer video games are becoming more and more defined and realistic. NASA themselves have put together virtual reality and augmented reality settings to train astronauts and the CAVE Institute has also been gather data sets and digital pictures and video to make VR Mars experiences a reality here on Earth. Currently there are over 1.6 million digital high quality pictures of the Martian Surface which have been beamed back to Earth and this is enough to make a super Xbox 360 experience for you in your own living room your new Plasma High Definition TV.
One of the challenges now to go with that backdrop is to design realistic components, space surface vehicles astronaut suits, space habitats and devices, such as hand held communication devices that the video game characters will use. Now then this will take a little extra thought, as it is important for video programmers to stay ahead of the game. First off these astronauts will not be holding in their hands anything looking as silly as a cellular phone. Chances are they will communicate via devices on their neck which will sense the vibrational movements of their vocal cords and send them via voice activated sound or directly to a device in their fellow astronauts ear or a tiny microchip inside the ear near the ear bones, which will run off the electromagnetic induction of a miniaturized unit catching pulse and brain waves to power it up. So to be realistic as a gamming programmer you need to be thinking here.Friday, December 1, 2006
New Helicopter Design for Your Video War Games
Using Underbelly Cone with Slots Facing Up On a Helicopter to Increase Payload and Liftoff Force. Picture a helicopter model sitting on top of a funnel. The edges of the bottom of the funnel on the table has an additional lip on it which raps around the edges with a little space between it. At the rotor blades force air under the helicopter into the ground cushion below they are forces into the inside of the cone. As the pressure build under it, it forces all that energy to the helicopters C.G. (Center of gravity). This continues as the helicopter lifts up.
It will cost us about $10,000 to build a prototype of this concept. Using a RC helicopter like one of these. Which will be a smaller model of an existing helicopter. We also plan to use some of the most recent micro helicopter technology as practice versions. We figure a micro version will cost us about $15,000 or less to perfect. RC Type Prototype platform to start tests prior to wind tunnel to prove concept:
http://my.cfanet.com/~scott/rcworld/helis/...lsize/cobra.JPG
Micro-MAV Helicopter Platform starting point:
http://freeenergynews.com/Tangent/MicroAer.../chick_heli.jpg
Unfolded Cone Wing Shape:
http://www.symetrics.com/whatsnew/mav.jpg
Once the aircraft is off the ground, which requires a lot of thrust, the cone unhooks itself and spreads out into the shape of a wing similar shape to a bat. To show you the shape of the wing. Do this: Take a piece of paper and make a circle on it, six inches in diameter. Now cut that circle out. Then pick the center and make a dot, then make one cut into the center. Now fold the circle into itself to make a Yarmulke. Now fold it into a cone. This is the cone we will use. Now unfold it to the original circle. Now make another cut to the center exactly opposite of the first cut. But do not cut it all the way thru, leave half and inch to keep the circle from becoming two halves. Now fold the circle the other way but keep it flat, this is the shape the cone will become in flight. A bat shaped wing. With a little anhedral bowed into the leading edge as it sits under the helicopter.
The manufactured shape of the underbelly cone will actually be the shape of a wing, but hydraulics will fold it into the shape of a cone after landing. The wing will be used to slow decent and also to help with softer landings by adding to the ground cushion while landing.
The cone can pivot at the C.G., which can also help as the transition is made from hover to forward momentum as the collective is pulled up. Since the top of the cone pivots on the bottom of the helicopter the angle of attack in the wing configuration will also be adjustable. During rapid decent the inherent manufactured material will also be somewhat folded so the wings will curl down and will mimic wing tips of a "Swift" bird for high-speed dives. The swift can dive at up to 217 mph.
Now then as it comes in for landing the wing is used as a barrier to trap air underneath for an air cushion, for trouble free landings.
The micro helicopter could be enough to transport a hamster or mouse, even with the small six-inch rotor blades and six-inch wing when extended. We are currently making pictures, artist renderings and a design. There are many uses for this micro helicopter concept for MAV style surveillance and nano or insect size MAVs.
On the larger model helicopters and actual full size human version units, the cusp of the cones slats will act like slots or slats do on Short Take Off and Landing STOL Aircraft. This concept makes a lot of sense for many reasons, we still are working through the types of materials to be used, strengths and manufactured material concepts to provide for rigid shape while flying, but bendable for cone structure yet, strong enough to support the weight of the helicopter. Luckily the vertical strength of the cone can be manufactured as the primary objective, yet the unbent material can be flexible for the wing configuration.Cloud Laser Art
A new art form in the future will be CLA. Cloud Laser Art. People can go to a place where there are laser units, sit out side in a small shielded area and draw on the clouds. It would be fun and a great form of self expression, which would make humans very happy. We know that mankind likes to use the natural environment for self expression from cave drawings to rock piles near road ways and graffiti on rock formations. The idea of drawing on clouds is much better, because the cloud eventually dissolves and like an etch-a-sketch is ready to start over. This will be similar to what happens after Ice Carvings, Ice Sculpting is alive and well in North America. We have all heard of Sand Castle building and contests, which go on around the world.
Often you will watch kids throw rocks into a glass clear pond or lake. They will throw one rock in and then another and say; “Okay, those are the eyes.” Often people star up into the clouds and try to imagine a face, shape or resemblance to something in the 3D physical world. We have often seen pictures where the clouds appear in the shape of Jesus or a face and everyone calls it a miracle. Many people gaze up at the clouds and attempt to allow their minds to find a familiar shape or form. One might call this a frame burst from the brains memory and the mind fills in the rest and a seemingly regular cloud takes on the imagination and a new meaning. An interesting sub topic could be this article on visual stimulation and the brain:
http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?showtopic=276
http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?showforum=28
People are fascinated by these coincidences. Rock formations often look like people from certain angles. The fallen “Old Man on The Mountain” was one such anomaly. Today we look to Mars and see faces in sediment and erosion features.
http://www.ascrocco.it/home/img/sf_desk/ar...o_marseface.jpg
You will have to admit this looks pretty real, so either we are not the only species which re-designs our natural surrounding or our mind automatically is filling in the blank, either way since kids, teens and adults do this and we find this interesting, it is an innate tendency and therefore a relevant idea to promote weather control research and manipulation, what better way to find research dollars than through entertainment? This is something man has done for thousands of years. Some obvious examples are the Sphinx in the Valley of the Kings, cave paintings. We have heard of some famous stone artists, who claim they can see the inner sculpture within a stone before they start, as were comments by Michael Angelo. Freeing the statue inside. Today we have the famous rock carvings of Crazy Horse, which is nearly completed.
Why not put it on a cloud also? It is possible you know? Weather control, cloud art, etc. Mother Nature often does it for us, but if we focus our energies on controlling heat and light within a cubic artificial grid of air, then we will be able to control the clouds completely.
Art is certainly interesting and our obsession with nature and art is interesting in that it seems to be an innate need of mankind to be able to control his environment and to provide some order to the complexity born out of simplicity, which we see everywhere, a concept that Steven Wolfram would most certainly agree. Los Alamos is doing just that and soon will be able to do it on a larger scale with super computers. This will entail lots of number crunching, but well worth the energy and time and money to develop. We maybe able to control not only the weather but stop Hurricanes too.
As we learn to control the weather for purposes of drought mitigation, famine and disease control, feeding peoples of the world thru abundant agriculture yields, flushing and controlling environmental pollutants or even giving us an edge on war planning, defensive barriers or safety during assaults, this technology to a lesser degree will be used as art.
Many things that come to be in the way of innovation are funded thru entertainment, war or the mother of invention (necessity). Certainly as we look at the innovations in TV (high definition), Digital Displays (plasma screens), Transportation (race cars), General Hobby Aviation (composites, ultra-lights, exploits of Dick Rutan), Virtual Reality (theme parks, animation, portable mini-simulators).
we see that entertainment can provide the money flows to increase the speed at which these things come to market and the speed at which they are adopted by the users and thus entertainment has always been a quick way or short cut to the future inventions of mankind. The list is so long in fact in the area of art and entertainment and the innovations brought forth that it might be considered the largest single factor towards the contributions to the forward progress of mankind. Necessity as previously mentioned and War and Defense being close seconds. Art should never be discounted as it is generally coupled with entertainment and imagination and let’s not forget the words of Albert Einstein on imagination.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge...”
Is it possible that art can be the lead in to weather control? For instance drawing designs in the clouds instead of painting “I Love you Charlene” on a Hwy over pass cutting thru rural Alabama, Mississippi or Georgia in John Dear Green, would be something of value as a way of self expression. A portable laser cloud drawing device could also be mounted in a semi truck if not a fixed location site for tourists or expressionists with a few extra bucks. A semi truck mounted unit could be hired to write a computerized message on the clouds for events, parties, etc. At a fixed site people would come for miles just to sit and watch what someone would write today. You can learn a lot from cloud watching.
You can learn about life, weather, flows of nature and you can unleash your imagination. Manipulating the clouds and localized weather can be done with modern and current technologies. This concept is simple really in terms of physics. The truck moves to the center of where the cloud will be and send up ELF waves and creates a small Terminal Gradient Cloud, then drives about 2 miles away and has a design already made on the computer and approved by the buyers of the message: “Congratulations Graduating Class of West Point” or “God Bless America and our Troops” when as they de-plane or get off a ship. Great for weddings, bar mitzvah, country fair or you be the judge. In areas of big events people could pay to write their own message on the computer and the laser cuts the cloud and shades in the design or words and letters.
This is simple and not much different than the cutting of vinyl lettering by computers used by modern day sign makers. Very simple, using a 3-D program which knows the power intensity levels, based on the distance which is measured by laser which senses the moisture content in the clouds based on the distance from the device. On one side of the semi truck is a chemical laser and the other side another, when combined at exactly the right distance at very low power settings they interact in various amounts, which have been designed into the computer program coinciding with the amounts of energy and chemical needed to dissolve the cloud. Since the Lasers are chemical based even though quite low, color could also be added and chemicals normally found in atmospheric make-up, thus no harm no foul with environmentalists. This form of art is not too dissimilar to the smoke signal communication of the Native American Indians, the only difference it is done with modern technology and therefore the versatility is so much greater.
Once the design is entered into the computer on a CadCam type program or graphic art program it is sent to the laser system and it starts pulsating the lasers under extreme accuracy using sophisticated algorithms and data sets. After the system is built and configured it is ready to go and during transportation the laser heads and chemicals are stored at proper temperatures in stable tanks. And remember art is not the only use for this, for instance see some ideas below. Now you must note at the WTT we like to have a little fun and the night we discussed this at a local coffee shop in Springfield, MO we definitely were in a comedy mood with a touch of sarcasm. However these ideas will make you think and isn’t that the point of this exercise? Sure you will get a chuckle out of it also we did. The World Think Tank is a lot of fun.
A. ) For advertising things could be written in the clouds too. “Drink Coke,” “Fly Delta, but Hurry! We need the money,” “Vote for Dog Catcher, NJ Former Governor,” “CT former governor runs for Hartford County Auditor,” “Gray Davis for Public Treatment Facility Director.” We all know aerial advertising is big business, look at the Blimps, Skywriters, etc.
B.) ….For safety, things could be written in the clouds during rush hour. “Mixing Bowl” four hour wait, use different route, “HWY 1” three hour wait go back to work, you are better off there? “Free Parking on 405 to La Cienega use alternate.” Bridge out ahead. New York Toll Way Fees raised today to $24.86 please have exact change ready to prevent delays, no refunds?” Just write it in the clouds, since you will be looking up praying to your god for break in traffic for this cluster muck you have to drive in everyday? Perfect solution, with an artistic flair? But in all seriousness you can see the benefits, “Dense Fog Ahead, slow down, multi-car pile-up, freeway closed all traffic exit at mile 122.” In Montana during deer migration, “Watch out for Deer, Do Not Eat Road Kill” Public Service announcements are often put on Blimps:
C.) For big events; “Use Shuttle at Parkway for NASCAR event, Parking $5.00.” “Olympic Check Point, have ID ready.” “Democratic National Convention Ahead, Lots of parking available.” “Cody WY Nightly Rodeo, 7 PM.” But these of course are merely words on clouds, for the RNC they might want a Giant American Flag? The DNC might want a big tree with a couple of guys hugging it? You see big events can stay in the spirit of things and get out the true message. NASCAR might want a holographic design of Dale Earnhardt at the Daytona Speedway before the event. Blue Angels might wish to have a message about “Fly Navy” with a picture of an F-18 or JSF on the cloud for the crowd?
D.) For the People; Perhaps a Smog alert warning to warn people in Los Angeles due to a temperature inversion that day. In NY during Labor Day, perhaps a “High Terror Alert” in red? During the election, “Do Not Forget to Vote Today” in Florida with a reminder of how to press the right button in the computerized voting machines? On the beaches in San Diego, Fort Lauderdale, the Keys, Santa Monica, “Solar Flair Today, Use Sun Screen.” After Hurricane Charley, “USAA and State Farm go to MLK Jr. High School GYM,” “Relief assistance: FEMA and Salvation Army at Civic Center Auditorium.” “New Mobile Homes For Sale; Tornado Magnet IV Custom Deluxe on sale, financing available, OAC.” “Asteroid to Hit Earth Tomorrow, Run.”
E.) For National Security; Border Patrol, “You are being tracked by automated aircraft, turn back or you could be shot or killed” In Spanish of course. For USMC, “Dear Iranian Insurgents, give up or you will be killed in 12 seconds.” For US Navy, “This is a blockade, turn around now or you will be sunk.” For US Army Recruiting; “Keep America Green, Join the Army.” DHS; “Today’s Threat Level is Green.” Psych Wars: “This is Allah, you have been bad, go home and do not return.”
Cloud Laser art could do all these things much cheaper and safer from the ground and also such a new idea would gather much interest and the word of mouth of any message or image would travel quickly. CLA or Cloud Laser Art is possible and fairly easy to do, we currently have the technologies to do this, and it makes sense. This is the ultimate in self-expression and can be used for entertainment, safety, homeland security, big events and even advertising if used in good taste.
Cloud Sculpting is the next logical progression of this idea, where you could make a cloud in the shape of a dog, cat or a dolphin. Perhaps you might want to make a UFO out of the clouds to see how many people call in during the annual UFO conference in Las Vegas? Think of the PR for the city, such a publicity stunt would certainly draw a crowd.
Although they might rather have you inside the casinos spending your money than out on the street corner looking up in the sky just in time to get hit by a middle-eastern taxi cab, shuttle bus or limo driver? In this age of International Terrorism perhaps we ought to all pay attention to what’s happening in front of us and leave the cloud watching for recreational times?
Top 10 Dumbest Game Titles
You may not agree with the order in which they are in, that's personal preference.
But you have to agree that these are some pretty stupid game names.
1. "This Is Football"
Trust me, it is. Really.
2. "The Thing"
Where you shoot at the what-sits with the um stuff.
3. "Sweet 16 Licensed To Drive"
Unfortunately Mary-Kate and Ashley miss the true legal significance of this birthday
4. "Go Go Golf"
This is like calling Gran Turismo 3 ''Zoom Zoom Cars'.
5. "WWE Shut Your Mouth"
They should have included 'You Lycra Wearing Macho Meathead Freak' on the end but they forgot.
6. "Rugby"
It surrrrrre is.
7. "F1 Championship Season 2000"
Has a championship in which you race the 2000 season, in F1.
8. "Speed Freaks"
A game full of freaks that are on speed. Don't bother playing this game, just go downtown and you'll find the guys who inspired this game. Both kinds that is...
9. "Gitaroo Man"
Maybe the Japanese guys who made this game invest in a slightly higher quality English translator, as obversely it wasn't working too good.
10. "Z"
Zed ... or Zee? The most basic game name ever and most people will say it wrong!
10-2. "Final Fantasy X-2"
Sorry, couldn’t miss this one out. For making a mockery of Roman Numerals. Look out for the sequel 'Super Final Fantasy X-2-7-4 Turbo Ultimate Gold Limited Edition.
Reviving Old Computer Games
Remember the good old days of gaming, when there were only 5 pixels in the protagonist and your imagination could turn them into a heroic figure of Schwarzenegger proportions? When the enemies and the heroes were distinguished by colour and you only needed one button on the joystick? Well times have changed and technology has moved on. Pulling my old Commodore 64 or Atari out of the back of the cupboard and setting them up often takes more time than the nostalgic pang lasts. I’ve also noticed that some of my old disks are starting to age and become corrupted. Enter the Internet.
The wonderfully technologically gifted and giving Internet populace is out in force in their attempts to preserve the older side of gaming. Remakes and Emulators for almost any old machine can be found around the Internet. Emulators act as a layer between old software and new hardware allowing modern PCs to run programs that such hardware was never meant to see. Commodore 64, Amiga, NES, Master System, Arcade Machines and more have all been emulated and the necessary programs placed online for download, usually for free.
Emulation is not a new idea. I had a hardware emulator for the VIC20 that plugged into the back of my Commodore 64 and allowed the use of the older VIC20 cartridges with the new hardware (I never actually owned a VIC20 or any programs for it but that’s another issue). Emulator popularity has been fading in and out for many years, only coming into many people’s attention with the release of Bleem!, a Playstation emulator for PC that was released while the PSOne still held a dominant share of the video game market. Bleemcast (a Playstation emulator for the Sega Dreamcast) soon followed causing one of the more interesting video game legal battles as Sony fought to have the emulator shut down. However, the emulators have a strong following and very active user base.
Emulators are easy to find and download. Simply search for the system you want and add the word emulator to the end (e.g. “SNES Emulator”) and you’ll probably come up with a lot of hits. Be slightly wary as some emulator sites will either be false links or may contain pornographic ads. Setting the emulators up to run is usually fairly straightforward and there’s a fair chance that you’ll be able to find some documentation and help. Some of the newer systems require a BIOS image to be installed with the emulator. This is to get around the legal issues raised by Sony in the Bleem! legal battles by requiring you to be in possession of a Playstation BIOS (and hence, presumably, a Playstation) in order to play the games on your computer. Making a BIOS image to load into your computer will most likely be beyond your technical expertise, but a quick check of your console’s case will reveal the file you need to get and then it’s as simple as searching the internet for a BIOS image that matches the BIOS you already own.
Of interest are the PC emulators now available. Windows no longer has very good support for older DOS-based games so there are a few emulators out there now to emulate the DOS environment. DOSBox is probably the best known of the crop. There are also game-specific emulators such as ScummVM ) or DOOM Legacy that focus specifically on certain games and hence are able to improve the experience for those particular titles.
Once you have yourself an emulator you’ll need to get yourself some programs to run with it. These programs are called ‘ROMs’ and are images of the original storage device that the program came on (be it a cartridge, tape, floppy or other). The process of creating a ROM is probably far too technical for the vast majority of computer users so you’re probably going to have to find a ‘backup’ from somewhere to download. This is where the venture gets slightly foggy. Basically the deal is that you can only have a program ROM if you own the original program. So if you have boxes of old Amiga disks, NES cartridges, or other old gaming programs stored away somewhere, you’re in luck, otherwise you’re treading on legally shifty ground. While it can easily be argued that the downloading of a 1987 computer game is of no real consequence to the company that has in all likelihood closed down, copyright doesn’t actually expire for 50 years and computer games just haven’t been around that long.
Online ‘emulation’ is a new area now being explored. The idea is that you simply play the game in your browser through a Java applet or Flash application. These might not always strictly be emulated programs but many remakes are feature perfect with the originals. The graphics, sounds, and game play remain intact. One excellent place to look for online games is Every Video Game (http://www.everyvideogame.com). While the site does not in fact contain ‘every video game’ it does have a very large list of old games from the arcades, GameBoy, NES, and Master System all playable through your browser.
Some of the old games have even been remade and updated for this modern world we now live in. Try doing a search for remakes of a game title you particularly enjoyed and you may be surprised at what you find. There are games that have been updated to be 3D, such as some old favourites of mine: Pac man and while these might not always be brilliant games or remakes in their own right, the thought and effort put in often leads to an enjoyable diversion. There are also more traditional versions of games that have just updated the code as well as possibly the graphics so that they can still be run.
So if you’re feeling nostalgic or just can’t get the hang of these new-fangled games that require you to push fifty buttons in a precise configuration just to jump, you may like to check out the emulation and remake scene. It’s surprisingly entertaining to go back in time to when games were simple yet fun.
The Future of Video Games
I’ve recently been thinking about where video games could be going in the future. I’m hoping to work in the game industry one day after I’ve finished university study and I’ve been wondering about it a lot. What do I want to see happen in the future? Well I may not have too many answers right now, but I have come up with a few ideas that I think may come into ‘play’ in the not too distant future.
Firstly forget Virtual Reality, as we know it. They’ve tried VR goggles and they made a lot of people sick in doing so. It’s probably never going to work very well in its current form. They’re still around and you can still buy them but they really don’t seem to be taking off. It will probably take a lot to get people totally immersed and involved in a new form of game play. It’s threatening to lose touch with the outside world and the people around you aren’t going to appreciate it much either. The Sci-fi neural implants are also both a long way off and not likely to be accepted by a majority of the general populace without some severe marketing and luck. I for one am not planning on going through brain surgery just to have a computer attached to my head. In fact I never want anyone to able to plug into my brain.
A technology that was brought to my attention by a zealous presenter at the local ‘Science and Technology Centre’ (a sort of science museum aimed at making science fun for children and juvenile adults such as yours truly) is that of ‘Augmented Reality’. Augmented Reality is essentially the overlaying of virtual elements onto the real world, such as a pair of transparent glasses that can display certain elements over the top of what is actually there. I agree with the presenter in that this could indeed have some awesome potential. Forget all the socially beneficial applications such as workmen being able to view underground pipes before digging, think about it from a games point of view. This technology could provide gamers with the ability to run around looking like complete idiots shooting at things that aren’t actually there and that no one else can see, kind of like in the film ‘They Live!’ The upside to this is that it would be a lot of fun. A group of people from the University of South Australia created the ‘ARQuake’ project, http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/, merging the classic shooter Quake with this Augmented Reality technology. Again, this technology may not ever become overly popular, but it would be entertaining to play with.
Technology has driven the games industry for a long time with new games always trying to keep one step ahead of the competition. It started way back at the dawn of technology and it continues to this day. 2D graphics gave way to 3D and 3D is becoming ever better. Graphics are starting to lose the ability to impress like they once did. The step between Quake 2 and 3 was amazing, but DOOM 3 while being visually very impressive isn’t leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors in the same way new games used to be. 2D graphics encountered a similar problem; there comes a point where you just can’t do much more with graphics technology. It is this that turns graphics from striving for technological achievement to becoming art. It is my hope that we will start turning away from tech demos and return to game play and making great entertainment. Games such as Zelda: The Wind Waker or The Sims that strive to show greater depth of character through simplifying the game enough to portray emotions will hopefully become more common (and more fun… but that’s just one person’s view…). Technology plays a certain part in the conveying of emotions and story but it’s quite hard to focus on everything at once. When technology is easier and less essential to game sales we’ll hopefully see an increase in games that cast a lasting impression.
Somewhat unfortunately the rise of the ‘Casual Gamer’ will probably lead to more simplistic games being released. While personally I would love to see depth of story and characters, there are a significant number of players out there who want to pick up a game for twenty minutes or so, have a bit of fun, and then put it down until another time. These gamers are generally less interested in the latest greatest technology and more interested in a ‘fast food’ kind of entertainment that satisfies the moment, despite the lack of quality or the lasting effects. Hopefully the two game types can co-exist peacefully although recently it has been seen that some developers are cutting down on some of the planned depth of a title in order to accommodate the more casual gamer.
As technology pushes forwards boundaries are slowly being broken down between systems. We saw the Bleemcast a few years back enabling the running of Playstation games on the Dreamcast, and the PC is able to run almost anything given the right emulation software. Consoles are able to emulate other consoles and new consoles are being announced that promise the ability to play PC games. The Xbox 2 is reported to have a model in planning that comes in a PC case and with the ability to run both PC software and Xbox software. Macs can emulate Windows software and vice-versa. We’ll probably start seeing less of a distinction between consoles and PCs as the price of technology continues to drop and consoles continue to become more and more powerful and able to compete with the more expensive computers. Ideally we’ll see a single platform come into prominence so that everything can be run without purchasing a copious number of different machines, although that does have a downside in that it can establish a monopoly for one particular company.
The technology price drop and increase in power has also lead to more powerful hand-held machines than before. Real games, not just simple toys are now available for the portable market. The advent of PDAs and mobile phones with the ability to play games raises awareness of portable gaming and new competitors are starting to get in on the field that was once primarily dominated by Nintendo’s GameBoy. There is a new product, the gp32, that can run many different emulators and hence, many different system’s games (including some PC games).
I can’t say for sure what’s going to happen but these are just a few ideas that I’ve had recently. Hopefully the games industry will continue to strive towards new heights with new and interesting game play, stories, characters and ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next few years.
Solitaire RULES Half Life DROOLS
It's a popularity contest.
Solitaire is hip, cool, and way more popular than Half Life 2. Don't believe me right? Well, the numbers don't lie. According to two of the biggest search tracking tools on the web (Wordtracker and Overture) more people are looking to play Solitaire then Half Life 2. Almost twice as many. Wordtracker says that every day 5,031 people searched for Solitaire, while only 3,610 looked for Half Life 2. Overture says 3,095 searched for Solitaire, while only 1,180 searched for Half Life 2. And these days, Half Life 2 is in its prime. It's having its 15 minutes of fame. Within 6 more months, when all the buzz has worn down, Half Lifes numbers will drop. After those same 6 months, Solitaire will be just as popular as ever. It's a classic; it never goes out of style. It's retro, old school, and bleeding edge all at the same time.
Save your money.
Ya gotta read the fine print folks. Flip that pretty shrink-wrapped box of Half Life 2 over, and take a peek at the little letters. You know, the ones with all the tech speak, that only the 14 year old in the family understands. Don't bother trying to read it; I'll translate for ya. It says, "Not only will you have to shell out 59.95 for this glitzy box in your hands, but prepare to cough up another $150-$ $200 (plus installation) to upgrade that pathetic outdated machine you have at home". Yea right. Is there a big "L" burned into my forehead? I'm willing to bet however, that if you can read this article, your PC has all the juice it needs to run the biggest baddest version of Solitaire ever created.
You'll never be bored.
If your looking to expand your Solitaire experience head on over to your favorite search engine, type in Solitaire, and hit enter. Google finds about 6.8 million sites. Pick one, and have a blast. I'm sure you can find one that's way cooler than the one that came with your windows machine. Now, how many variations of Half Life 2 are there to choose from? Umm I believe the title suggests there are 2. Not much choice there.
You don't have to train with the circus contortionist.
You'll really need to get your fingers limbered and loose for all the crazy keyboard commands, combinations, and permutations you'll need to master for Half Life 2. The original Half Life had 49 different keyboard / mouse control combinations to play the game. I suspect that version 2 has even more. Last time I checked, the version of Solitaire installed with Windows, only needed 2. Point . . . and . . . click. Once again, if you're reading this article (and obviously you are), I think you've got all the training you need for Solitaire. Ever seen a deck of playing cards before? Ok then, your trained!
Slingo, Platypus, Breakout, Tetris, Zuma, Magic Vines, etc, etc, etc.
If Solitaire doesn't get you all worked up, then look around a little. Don't just settle for the latest hype from today’s headlines. There are thousands of fun, easy to learn game gems out there, just waiting to be discovered by someone like you. They never get old, they’re always fun. Plus, you can download them right now, and be playing in minutes. They're great games, they don't need to be hyped. So, what are you waiting for, stop reading, come on in, and play play play!