"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done."¹ So the question is, what remains to be done this weekend?

Geek Out

Find an accomplice. "Accomplice: The Village" is part walking tour, part game, part theater—point being, if you like stuff with a lot of parts, you may enjoy "A:TV." The Accomplice performers send groups of urban adventurers out into lower Manhattan (i.e., "The Village") to gather clues for a shadowy mission. Trouble is, as you follow the path and solicit help from would-be accomplices, you don't know who's in on the act and who's just an innocent bystander. What's real life, and what's part of the game? It's like that Michael Douglas movie, I forget what it was called…? Oh, right, You, Me, and Dupree.

Satisfy your curiosity. What better way to celebrate the release of an anticipated Nintendo DS game than by shuffling through the aisles of the Rockefeller Center Nintendo World store as you're buffeted by a sea of puffy-jacketed Nintendo fans? You'll have that opportunity on Sunday when the store throws a release party for Professor Layton and the Curious Village from 1 to 3 p.m.

The DS has been on a hot streak lately, with The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Contra 4, and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings among the top-shelf games that have come out in recent months. Professor Layton, which at the moment scores a preliminary 80 on Metacritic, distinguishes itself by the fact that it's not yet another sequel in an ancient franchise. Fresh blood! The Nintendo World soirée will have the game on hand, plus some prize giveaways, so consider joining the hordes this Sunday. Their joy will be infectious. Then again, so will their influenza virus. Your call.

Geek In

Bust out the blockbuster blocks. In other words, get out your Legos.² Stop-motion Lego versions of popular movie trailers have become a fun sub-genre on YouTube, with varied results. My favorite recent work is a meticulous trailer for The Dark Knight, which hits just the right balance of verisimilitude and whimsy. I'd like to see the Lego technique branch out, though, into terrible movies. We've had plenty of little plastic Indiana Joneses; where's the little plastic Fool's Gold? The Lego version might even be watchable.

Play the bonus round. What bugs me about the game-show bonus round reproductions at "FLASHGames²" is that, objectively, they're not very good games. Yet I can't stop playing them. I love the programmer's attention to detail, how he got the nuances of the Caesars Challenge set just right, etc. It just bugs me, as a student of gaming, that I am enjoying games that don't have much substance without real money at stake. Is it simply my lifelong game-show fandom that makes them entertaining? Probably. But if you ever stayed home sick when you were a kid to watch Wink Martindale beat the dragon, then you'll probably have some irrational fun with these, too.

Update 7:26 p.m.: I was remiss not to include a link to a YouTube user who creates Lego versions of vintage game show episodes.

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1. According to a woman who won two Nobel Prizes (but what has she done for me lately?). ↑

2. Or "LEGO® bricks," as the Lego trademark mavens would have it. ↑