Category: Video Games

With concussions becoming a focal point in sports medicine, doctors and trainers are searching for new ways to diagnose these dangerous injuries. According to The Washington Post, for the past year, athletic trainers at the University of Maryland and Ohio State University have been using Wii Fit to test the balance of football players in order to more accurately diagnose concussions. To begin, ...

In a radical new study, South Korean psychiatrists at Chung Ang University, College of Medicine, claim to have reduced participants' desire to spend hours online playing 'Starcraft' by dosing them with antidepressants. According to Wired UK, 11 participants in the study took doses of Bupropion, which also reduces the desire to smoke, over a six-week period. These participants were chosen because ...

You might not know this, but Peter Molyneux is a genius (well, according to Managing Editor Leila Brillson, since they are best friends). The man behind 'Black & White' and the 'Fable' series isn't content to hand gamers a controller, and tell them to mash buttons until the baddies are gone. He wants you to empathize with the characters, engage emotionally with the game, and consider the ...

Electronic voting machines are notoriously buggy and hackable. Even the manufacturers of DRE (direct recording electronic) voting talliers have admitted so much. Some states have even gone as far as to ban the touchscreen devices. While they may not be great at recording votes (or leaving a paper trail), it turns out their outdated PC-like innards are perfect for playing retro arcade games. This ...

It may not be Halloween yet, but that doesn't mean we can't spend some time haunting and hunting amongst the monsters and the freaks. This week, we'll find out why sandworms are the new zombies (and why zombies aren't quite played out yet), we'll try to survive on desert islands (without the aid of any soccer ball companions), we'll turn slack-jawed yokels into canned food, and we'll delve into ...

The University of Florida is not the first college to offer a course in 'StarCraft,' but it is the first to offer one that at least pretends to have some intellectual value beyond boosting your APM (actions per minute) rate. EME2040, or 21st Century Skills in 'StarCraft' is being taught by Nate Poling, and uses the blockbuster real-time strategy game as a tool for teaching lessons about time ...

We've always wanted to try yanking a tablecloth off a table without destroying all of the fancy place settings. Leave it to our experimental friends from the east to tap into our strangest wants. According to Arcade Heroes, a new Japanese arcade game called 'The Tablecloth Hour' requires players to pull an actual piece of fabric, which yanks a virtual tablecloth from an onscreen table. ...

Our favorite online games are the simple ones with a high-replay value (e.g., 'Canabalt'). It doesn't hurt if they're free, either. The latest title to drag down our productivity is a 2-D side-scroller called 'Solipskier' that asks gamers to guide a stick-figure skier down the slopes -- while drawing those said slopes. Like we said, it isn't a complex game, with the simple objective to navigate ...

Here's a cute little timewaster for Gmail fans: 'Galactic Inbox.' The premise is simple: You control a mighty winged Gmail envelope tasked with disposing an onslaught of baddies, including cans of what we presume are a major brand of luncheon meat. You blast your way until you meet the boss, a birdcage with spiked balls for arms holding other Gmail envelopes hostage. Your goal, obviously, is to ...

Just a few dozen miles north of the Switched headquarters, in Beacon, New York, lies the Retro Arcade Museum, a storefront on the corner of Main and Schenk Streets loaded with the sorts of vintage arcade goodies that would make even the most steel-willed nerd weep. But an archaic law, one that is more widespread than you might believe, has caused the life's work of Fred Bobrow to be shut down, at ...

The fantasy genre has always held particular sway over various corners of geek culture. (In fact, some might say that J.R.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy gave birth to what we consider fandom today.) Ancient lands populated by fearsome beasts, wizards, warriors and mystical objects have provided fertile landscapes of escapism for countless books, movies, and, of course, video games. ...

Although, for a time, the video game industry valiantly staved off the recession while other enterprises suffered, console game sales did eventually stagnate before precipitously dropping. Online gaming currently thrives, though, particularly with enormously popular titles like Zynga's 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars.' Other services like Xbox Live, which reportedly generates billions in revenue, ...

Billy Mitchell, the ostensible villain of 'King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters' and recently usurped 'Donkey Kong' champion, doesn't like to lose. Despite the fact that he did lose the latter title to Steve Wiebe in 2006, he eventually regained the world championship, and retained it for three years. Then, in March of this year, a dude named Hank Chien muscled out Mitchell with 1,061,700 points, ...

If you're looking for a way to blow off work (or recover from that marathon session of 'StarCraft II'), there's now a sequel to everybody's favorite meta-flash game, and, yes, it has even more possible achievements than the original. 'Achievement Unlocked 2' stars everybody's favorite blue elephant as it runs, jumps, dies, stands still, avoids death by spikes, collects coins and performs other ...

With a massive, controllable robotic arm, many unprecedented and momentous tasks become achievable. Such an appendage could perform difficult rescue missions, extraordinary construction tasks and urgent emergency responses. But, its greatest perk might be the reactive, mid-air environment it can contribute to incredibly awesome gaming sessions. Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biological ...