We all know that the Sony PS3 has just been released for less than a year to date, but plenty has already been written about this next gen (now current gen) console, ranging from the amazing value it packs thanks to the Blu-ray drive and technology inside to the exorbitant cost of a black and hot paperweight that pushes new technology to consumers whether they want them or not. What most of us are not prepared for would be any announcement of a new PlayStation console anytime soon, since that would be suicide for a company that is already experiencing enough troubles as it is on the gaming front.

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If you grew up during the 1980’s, then perhaps you might remember playing an 8-bit shooter called Duck Hunt. Released for the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in 1985, Duck Hunt was one of the first games to use the “NES Zapper” or light gun.

At the time, my little brother and I didn’t care how the gun worked, we just didn’t want the dog to laugh at us. Sometimes we would hold the light gun against the glass of the TV and try to cheat. 20 years later I’m more interested in learning how the game worked than preventing the dog from laughing at me.

So how does the light gun work? How exactly does Duck Hunt know what you were pointing at when you pull the trigger? According to an article on The Straight Dope, the gun isn’t shooting the TV, it’s the other way around. When you pull the light gun trigger, the entire screen blackens briefly and a white duck flashes on the screen where the duck(s) are located. If the photo sensor in the light gun detects a quick flash from dark to light, then you have a dead duck (and a non-laughing dog). Basically the TV shoots a light pulse and the “gun detects it, not the other way around.”

Finding a working NES, light gun and original Duck Hunt cartridge can be a little tricky and require some time searching around on eBay. If you’re looking for a quick fix, you can play an online Shockwave version of Duck Hunt here. You’ll have to settle for a mouse instead of a light gun, but you’ll probably have fun anyway.

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You know those big Golden Tee machines they have in bars? They’re the ones that charge a few bucks for a quick 5 minutes of entertainment/gameplay. While most people get their kicks with a game or two, some really love it and don’t want to spend the money on a full blown machine but still want to play it at home. For those people, you can get the Golden Tee (trademarked, hoo hah!) television golf game. Think of it as the poor man’s version of Golden Tee.
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Ahh, chess. What a cerebral game. I never quite caught the chess bug though, being beaten quite soundly in most of the games as I never really mastered any of the moves other than the old standby, castling. Even opponents who are many years my junior managed to read my mind as if they were the children of Jean Grey themselves, causing my king to call it quits in under 5 minutes. Mind you, we weren’t even playing speed chess so you can imagine just how I sucked. Perhaps I could have played much better in my youth had I had the advantage of training with the USB Chess Set from Brando. This USB Chess Set throws in a modern tech slant to an ancient game, featuring a roll up mat that makes it extremely portable.

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How many gamers do you know who actually have some pretty good posture? As an ex-gamer myself (I still game occasionally on my DS, but long gone are the days of pulling all nighters to complete Diablo II when it was first released or fragging into the wee hours of the morning in the Dark Zone), I’m still trying to fix my poor posture. Are games to blame for this? Not really, but most gamers don’t really care about how they sit when being immersed in a world of make believe. After all, nobody else is watching, so they could be playing with their mouths open for all they care. The Slouchpod doesn’t do anything for your posture, but instead bends itself to accommodate the highly evolved state of a gamer.

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Obviously going after the same high end gaming market in which Alienware has enjoyed such success, Classic PC maker Commodore (in name only) has announced their GX and XX gamer PCs online to the European market.

Promising the “fastest, most powerful Gaming PC money can buy,” both come with quad-core Intel processors humming along at 2.66GHz - with an 8MB Cache, an ASUS P5N32-E NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI™ motherboard, 2 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Raid 0 hard drives, and up to 2GB of Corsair™ DOMINATOR™ DDR RAM.
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Almost everything that you buy these days appears to be a multi function device, meaning that you go out to buy a phone, and come back with a camera phone, even though you may never use the camera! These products are normally designed to work in conjunction with each other, like media devices, kitchen appliances and actually almost anything that you should care to mention. However sometimes a product comes onto the market that is multi function, yet works so well it makes you think why didn’t they do that before, that can be said about the DXG Roadster digital camera.
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In 1998, the “Today” show started sending co-host Matt Lauer to far off locations like Mt. Everest and Machu Picchu, for a feature on the show called Where in the World Is Matt Lauer? But this week, American broadcasting network NBC decided to send Matt Lauer somewhere he’d never been before… a microsite. In a clever mashup of entertainment and promotion, Matt Lauer now has his own interactive Flash gaming site (followmatt.com). I blog for a site called Brand Appeal and thought this Matt Lauer microsite deserved a closer look.
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