“Music Box: You can make Hammer Brothers and others fall asleep on the map.”¹

Geek Out

Go beyond chiptunes. Nintendo’s humble Game Boy was one of the most successful and longest-lived platforms in video game history, and it’s now enjoying a second life as the darling of techno musicians looking to manipulate that 8-bit sound. Visual and audio art produced with Game Boys, Commodore 64s, and other re-appropriated computer junk are featured in this weekend’s Blip Festival 2008. At this event, it’s not about the games; it’s about these odd little machines and the crazy low-res art they can produce. The DJs and VJs will be performing through the weekend; here’s the schedule and ticket info.

Geek In

You don’t know Buzz. You might remember an ingenious series of quiz-show games from the CD-ROM era called You Don’t Know Jack. These pitch-perfect titles were enormous fun to play with a couple of friends, and I’ve long mourned their absence from the scene. The Buzz! series, as I found over the Thanksgiving weekend, recaptures some of that YDKJ spirit, with a good sense of humor and a wide range of subject matter. Buzz! even does a couple things better than You Don’t Know Jack. First, it rewards the leader while never making the person in last place feel left out. Everybody feels like they’re in it until the end. Second, it uses actual big red buzzers that you slap to ring in. Sweet. If you don’t have a group of four, you can play online versus other in the “Sofa vs. Sofa” mode.

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1. According to the Super Mario Bros. 3 instruction manual. ↑