Games and gear

Skip the eye doctor and just play 'Call of Duty'

If the ever-increasing strength of my reading glasses is any indication, all this daily staring at a computer screen is taking an exacting toll on my eyes. However, help may be on the way in the form of Halo 2, if a new study from the University of Rochester is to be believed.

The research showed that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their vision by about 20 percent. That would pretty much put me back where I was before I ditched the newspaper world to become … Read more

Nvidia responds to Vista driver dust-up

If you've followed PC-related Vista transition news, you'll know that Nvidia still doesn't have a fully functional graphics driver for its GeForce 8000-series graphics cards. The best you can do under Windows Vista is run a single GeForce 8800 with only half of its typical option settings available. Running two 8800's in SLI mode in Vista is out entirely. I find it irritating that Nvidia made a bunch of grand Vista-related promises with these next-gen cards when they were released in November, and hasn't delivered yet. My irritation is mild, though, compared to the folks … Read more

Real retro gaming on the Wii

The Wiimote, Classic Controller, and Wavebird are fine for playing Virtual Console games, but they're still missing something. Maybe it's the lack of wireless, maybe it's the stark white plastic, maybe it's the slightly awkward button placement, but these controllers just can't be the best choice for playing classic NES and Super Nintendo games.

Controller-modding company RetroZone is now selling NES and SNES controller adapters for the Nintendo Wii. One end goes into the Wii's GameCube port and the other connects to the classic rectangle or dogbone controller. You still need the original decades-old … Read more

Time and tide deconstructed

Mark Twain agreed with the proverb "Time and tide wait for no man," but pointed out that "in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide."

If only he could only see today's electric wires and water-ballasts, what would he say?

Maybe he would like the Lifetimer that Oh Gizmo noticed as a friendly addition for your boring desk.

Lifetimer lets you watch the milestones or footstones in your life approach and leave. It will track how much time is left until a birthday, Christmas, … Read more

A quieter, gentler Xbox 360

Xbox 360s might be getting a bit more quiet. According to the Xbox-scene.com forum, Microsoft has started putting new DVD drives in its Xbox 360s. The forum says that Microsoft is now using BenQ-LiteOn-Phillips VAD6038 optical drives in new 360s, rather than the Toshiba-Samsung and Hitachi-LG drives the consoles previously used.

This new drive might mean quieter gameplay on the 360. Many gamers had complaints that first-run Xbox 360s were uncomfortably loud, and this new optical drive could fix that.

Fears of a clown

Final Fantasy 6 Advance shipped yesterday, but it actually will be hitting stores today. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, or who started with Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation, FF6 (FF3M when it was released in America on the Super Nintendo) was one of the greatest entries in the entire Final Fantasy series. It had complex game mechanics that made each character uniquely useful, a truly epic story, and some of the best graphics a 16-bit system could produce.

Most importantly, Final Fantasy 6 had Kefka. Sephiroth might be popular because of his huge sword and pretty … Read more

Mii madness goes to 'The Office'

There have been plenty of sites out there showcasing how to make Miis, the little avatars for Nintendo's Wii games, for various celebrities, even turning them into Coen Brothers-inspired machinima (Miichinima?) with a re-enactment of a scene from The Big Lebowski. Now it's gone a step further into the pop-culture realm, as I learned on Best Week Ever that someone with way too much time on his/her hands has created a Flickr gallery of Miis for most of the cast members of NBC's "The Office."

CHALLENGE: First person to make an "I'm … Read more

A toilet for Inspector Gadget

Did you know the average person spends 11,862 hours out of his or her lifetime in the bathroom? That's equal to 1 year, 4 months and 5 days in what's usually a boring room, absent comforts like TiVo, video games and a stocked fridge.

Roto-Rooter is coming to the rescue! (Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing it out.) North America's largest provider of plumbing and drain-cleaning services is offering an online sweepstakes for its "Pimped Out John," a bathroom throne for the gadget junkie.

The fully loaded Kohler commode comes with a Philips 20-inch LCD … Read more

Nokia confirms N-Gage sequel

Nokia has confirmed that a successor to the N-Gage is due by early 2008. The company's FutureWatch blog indicates that developers EA and Gameloft are on board to develop for the updated N-Gage, and that other "leading publishers" will be making games as well.

Perhaps the bigger news is that the next N-Gage won't be a single device, but rather a gaming platform available on certain of its advanced Series 60 models. (Whether a future Series 60 phone will look like the Nokia concept pictured here, however, is anybody's guess.) Instead of buying games on … Read more

British pop band plays Pac-Manhattan!

Geeky, oddball music videos have been all the rage since OK Go hit it big by dancing on treadmills for their song "Here It Goes Again." Well, here's the latest addition to that trend. A similarly-named band, Britain's The Go! Team, created a music video for their song "Junior Kickstart" in which they run around the streets of New York City playing live-action Pac-Man.

The video's cool. But "Pac-Manhattan" is nothing new; the concept first surfaced as a final project by students at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program a … Read more