The Gadgets Page

I love this comic from Wasted Talent:

She has started a new job in an industrial setting and it has an un-reality to it that makes it feel like she is playing a video game. Five years ago, I remember writing about a very similar thing. Mike and I were roller skating in the park and it all felt like a video game to me.

• Pick Me! » Reality

It was a very clear day and I felt like I was in a video game. If we could complete the half-circuit of the park, we would open up a whole bunch of other tracks. I remember feeling fascinated that the programmers included the cars passing on our left belting out the car-appropriate music. At one point, we stopped to adjust our skates and I was stunned by the details of the grass and the ants. Even the problems with blisters from my ill-fitting skates seemed like they were part of the game. “I have to earn the Kudos to get some better skates,” I thought to myself.

The idea of viewing life as a game isn’t new. Even Edgar Allan Poe had slips of reality at times when the real world felt like a dream. For me, viewing life and all of its challenges as a video game is incredibly freeing. I am able to accept failure much easier and move on. If all I have to do is press the start button to try again, failure is a lot less devastating.

I can hardly tell you how excited this trailer made me:

As soon as I saw the headline, I laughed out loud and clicked on the link. Our family has LONG enjoyed the Rock Band games. Adding the Lego version makes me hope that they will choose more pop music for the playlists.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the hard rock aspect of Rock Band. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched your mother sing “Shout at the Devil,” but my parents haven’t really been able to enjoy the game like we have. If the playlist was more karaoke oriented, then the game would be much more inclusive. Throw in a bunch of Carpenters songs and we’d be able to have a rip-roaring time with the whole family.

Oh, and I want to be able to buy a bunch of Christmas songs on Xbox Live to go with it. Is that possible? I would LOVE to be able to play Rock Band at Christmas time with the whole family. Please make that happen for me, okay?

This week, I focused on the new fitness gadgets that were showcased at the IHRSA (International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association) 2009 Conference in San Francisco. I covered them on Starling Fitness, so you can hop over there to see what we found.

• Starling Fitness » SpeedFit Speedboard Treadmill

• Starling Fitness » TreadWall

• Starling Fitness » Alter G-Trainer Anti-Gravity Treadmill

• Starling Fitness » Jacobs Ladder

• Starling Fitness » Xrkade

• Starling Fitness » TRX Suspension Trainer

Of them all, I found the Treadwall to be the most interesting. Most of these gadgets are marketed to commercial gyms, so the only way we’ll ever see them is if our local gym shells out the money for them. It sure is fun to see what the fitness world is doing, though.

The idea of putting my iPhone in the hands of a child makes me cringe, but not nearly as much as hearing them scream. There have been many times when nieces and nephews have been asked to attend adult activities with nothing to distract them or keep them busy. I love having a couple of things on my iPhone to keep them quiet.

That’s why I was so excited when Aliza Sherman made this list of iPhone apps for kids. She waded through the crapware to show me to good stuff!

• AK Tech Girl : iPhone for Kids | adn.com

All of these are iTunes links to the applications:

• Preschool Adventure – $0.99 – Six simple activities parents can do with their young toddlers and preschoolers.

• iGotchi – $1.99 – Interactive virtual pet

• Scribble – Free – Draw with color and shake to erase!

• KidsCards – $0.99 – A fun way to learn everyday words using images.

• At The Farm and At The Zoo – $0.99 each – Learn about animals and the sounds they make.

• Animal Farm Lite – Free – Fun game that plays a sound and allows you to guess the correct animal. The Lite version only has 10 animals. If you buy the original Animal Farm for $1.99, there are 42 animals.

• Flashabet – $0.99 – Number and letter flash cards. Letters and numbers are spoken when the flashcards are touched.

• Bubbles – $0.99 – Create bubbles on the screen and pop them with your finger.

• Koi Pond – $0.99 – Gaze into a pond of crystal clear water and picture bright, playful koi swimming through its shallow depths. Feed your fish and feel them nibble your fingers.

With so many things to choose from, you could keep a child busy throughout an entire church service, but with my iPhone in the hands of the toddler, what am I supposed to do?

One of my favorite video games of the 1990’s was 7th Guest. I loved the spooky music and the puzzle games. There is more than I ever knew about it on Wikipedia:

• The 7th Guest – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The game is played by wandering the mansion, solving logic puzzles and watching videos that further the story. The main antagonist, Henry Stauf, is an ever-present menace, taunting the player with clues, mocking the player as they fail his puzzles (“We’ll all be dead by the time you solve this!”), and expressing displeasure when the player succeeds (“Don’t think you’ll be so lucky next time!”).

This video explains the story of Henry Stauf, the creepy toymaker. You’re introduced to the six guests and left to wonder who the seventh guest is.

Watching this video brought back so many memories for me. Truly, one of the best parts of the game was the music. Fat Man did an amazing job of creating new creepy music that seemed to fit right into an old Victorian house.

They recently released a version of Myst for the Nintendo DS. I personally can’t wait for the DS version of 7th Guest. THAT would be a game I would LOVE to play all over again!

Update 02-13-13

To my joy, I’ve found that they have released 7th Guest for iOS, meaning iPads and iPhones:

• The 7th Guest – Trilobyte Games, LLC.

I am so happy that this game hasn’t been lost to the annuals of time!

Back in the Nineties, I played a game called 7th Guest that I LOVED. It was a haunted house mystery game with puzzles, very much like Myst. Ever since then, I have looked for games that combine a good story with simple puzzles. Trace Memory was the first game from that genre that I played on the DS and I loved it as well. It looks like I might get similar taste of fun from Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Mummy.

Here is a video showing you game play and other screen shots from the game:

Sherlock Holmes won’t be available until late May, so there is plenty of time for us to think about it before it arrives. It comes from a long line of great games, so I hope it lives up to its heritage.

The clutter in my house from my Rock Band accessories drives me a little batty. I have put my cedar chest in the living room to cut down on the guitars lying around, but there is no hiding the plastic drum kit, or so I thought.

When it comes to ingenious designs, I have to tip my hat to the AK Rock Box. It looks like an ordinary footstool, but when it is opened, out come the drums with extra storage for the guitars, foot pedal and microphone.

This photo doesn’t show the true awesomeness of this product. This video is full of kids unable to speak professionally, but they show off the ottoman to its fullest.

Seeing this video gives me full comprehension of the size of the ottoman. It’s pretty dang big and would take up most of my tiny living room, but if I could tuck it in the corner where my cedar chest is, then it wouldn’t be an issue at all.

Here is a commercial for the ottoman, but it’s not much better than Taylor, Allison & Reid.

Suddenly, tucking the drums in the corner and hoping no one notices them doesn’t seem as good of an option as the AK Rock Box. It sure is an enticing way to hide the Rock Band clutter in the house.

The most worrisome thing for me about Guitar Hero: World Tour was whether it would work with my Rock Band gear. I didn’t want to have to buy a whole new set of plastic drums and guitars just to play the game. It was such a worry for me that I didn’t even consider buying the game. I didn’t do the research to see if it would work. I just ignored the game.

Bad move on my part…

My sister Stacey and her husband weren’t so shy. They bought the game and tried to use it with their Rock Band gear and had no problems. I don’t think it even occurred to them that there might be a hardware problem. so they have had weeks of fun with the game without one bit of worries. They invited us over to their house last weekend to play and I was surprised that Guitar Hero: World Tour works so well with the Rock Band drums and guitars. Honestly, you can’t blame me for thinking they wouldn’t work. Look how DIFFERENT the drums look:

While we played, I especially liked the difference between the two games. The singing is MUCH more sensitive, which gave me crappier scores, but it also added a challenge. The only problem is that Guitar Hero has some inaccurate programming for the songs, so I end up singing a boring and watered down version of the vocal track instead of what the vocals are REALLY doing. Maybe if I played on the most difficult mode, it would add those trills and vocal changes back in.

There are some problems with the game play, namely, there is no explanation on what I’m supposed to do. It took me several songs until I realized that I needed to press the A button to use Star Power (in Rock Band, you activate it by singing in particular rest areas).

There is also a spot where the vocal track is replaced by waves. As far as I could tell, I was supposed to sing as much as I could in those spots to earn points. It seemed to give me more points if I sang the chorus again or at least stayed in tune with the song. If I tried to make my voice go up and down like the waves, that didn’t seem to give me many points. I did best when I just sang some more of the chorus over and over.

There are also mysterious hand sections. It seemed like I should be shouting at the crowd during that time, but it didn’t give me points for doing that. It didn’t take away points, either. I thought maybe I was supposed to be silent and let the “audience” sing, but that didn’t seem to affect my score either. I still haven’t learned what to do with the hand sections, and the directions that came with the game are USELESS in that respect.

On the whole, we LOVED our evening playing Guitar Hero: World Tour. The next day, Mike and I went to the store to buy our own copy so I can practice singing the songs. I knew hardly any of them, so I want to get REALLY good so we can really kick butt the next time we play with Stacey and Dan!

The folks at Cinemassacre.com share a video of their NES collection. Warning, there is some explicit language making fun of the games, so if these are sacred games from your childhood, then you might want to skip this one.

I was an Atari girl, but seeing all these old cartridges reminded me of those old 8 bit games. I played Adventure for so long that I can STILL negotiate those mazes. Here’s an excellent review explaining everything you need to know about Adventure and showing exactly HOW frustrating a game it could be.

My parents bought a Fun Fountain for Stacey and I when I was in fifth grade. We LOVED that toy!

What this print ad doesn’t show in enough detail is the clown hat. It was made out of a HEAVY plastic and was completely unattached to the fountain. If you interrupted the water flow, it would fall and painfully knock you on the head. I remember trying to catch the hat on my head so many times and just ending up with bump after bump on my noggin.

The object of the game was to run through the fountain WITHOUT making the hat fall. If you were quick enough, you could do it. Seeing this ad, however, makes me understand just how little water pressure we had. We could have never gotten that hat to go that high at our house in West Valley.

The Wham-O Fun Fountain was truly a toy for all seasons. From late spring until early fall, the Fun Fountain could be used as a water toy. In the colder months, the hat was the perfect dress-up toy. Somewhere, we have a photo of Stacey wearing that clown hat. Long after we stopped enjoying playing in the fountain, we held onto the hat.

Here is a commercial from Wham-O for the Fun Fountain:

Watching this commercial doesn’t really show you how fun it was to play with the Fun Fountain. I was WAY better than that. Firstly, it was usually just me and Stacey, so we didn’t have to wait very long four our chance to run through the fountain. Secondly, there was always the risk of that hat falling on our heads, so it was more exciting than the commercial showed. Finally, the hat also sprayed water out the top while it turned, so even when it wasn’t your turn, you were usually getting splashed anyway.

Thanks, Wham-O for making one of the funnest water toys of my childhood!

Photo Via: Plaid Stallions : Rambling and Reflections on 70’s pop culture: Wham-O Fun Fountain!