Features
Long forms, experiments, and the hyped are what we like to call 'The Featured'. That and our regular featured articles.
Subcategories:
It's harder and harder to come by these days, but some haven't forgotten the sensory overload created by arcades in their heyday. In fact, Andy Hofle and his Arcade Ambience Project is reproducing the aural experience for you with games made before you were born. Now all you need to supply is the body odor. Also, buy us a beer, we're 100!
It's done! The Averaging Gradius project, which simple goal was to use multiple runs of the first stage in the NES game Gradius to compare how people play the game, is complete. Check out the article to find out what it's all about and then watch the finished video to make your own observations.
I've returned from my first arcade and pinball auction with pictures in tow. A so-called Super Auction. Super bad? Super cool? Super Mario? Find out!
This roundtable has been a long, long long time coming, and to finally be able to print it closes a very long chapter in our lives. A long, painful and pearl-ridden chapter. Ladies & germs, welcome to the three lone voices of dissent. P.S. Please note that this article does contain spoilers.
Burnout 3: Takedown had me shouting with glee, but Burnout Revenge turned me into a nervous mess.
Every year in San Jose hundreds of arcade and pinball fanatics get together for a weekend of arcade and pinball overload. I went, I played and I brought back plenty of photos. Well, most of them are photos.
In celebration of the birth of our country, here's an interview with a a cute girl who plays online games. God Bless America.
What happens when a few hundred gaming companies gather to build gi-normous themed booths, hand out free shirts, use power by the uberwatt, and hire people to wear terrible costumes? Oh yeah, and they show off games too. You get the Electronic Entertainment Expo! Duh!
And now for the exciting conclusion of mee Ronn's trip to E3!
Playing Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour was growing dull until I decided to spice things up and play a round blind! What follows is an experiment on how sound design can compliment gameplay, graphics be damned.
Hey everyone! Contributor mee Ronn went to the GDC and brought back this magnificent report and yes, there are some facts here that you will see nowhere else!
It's not every day that your local musuem sets up shop with an exhibit containing over 100 video games, all on free play! But does Game On properly cover its bases and, more importantly is it worth the $12 for parking, $9 for general admission and $5 for the actual exhibit? Or should we have just went to Chicago arcade staple Dennis' Place instead?
The international travelling video game exhibit is back in Chicago, marketed as a 2.0 revision. We put the show through its paces to decide whether it's worth another day's dime, or whether you should wait for 3.0.
Don't live in Chicago or are afraid of underground travel, unable to brave the subway or the Museum of Science & Industry's parking lot? We have you covered with a gallery of approximately 99 photos of revised video game history fun.
Over 100 images of Chicago's Game On exhibit, including color commentary. If you can't fly here and walk through the exhibit with me, it's the next best thing to going to your retro-gaming collector friend's house.
Unfortunately, due to situations and incidents beyond our control, the last of the lost drunksaling posts will not be up tonight. Instead, please enjoy
this review of TLC's gaming documentary Gameheadz specially imported from the UK, then hastily rewritten for you - our viewing audience.
"You've got to be kidding me. They're not going to make me do that." But they did.
This week Namons brings us a dual-fisted treat - two weeks of Great White North Drunksaling wrapped up in one article of gaming goodness!
It is simply instrumental.
For those that push the weight of the world, and their fears with a gigantic ball, we salute you.
It recently occurred to me that I forgot to post the image gallery to accompany the NextFest 2005 write-up. Let me rectify that.
Wired tries to reignite the World's Fair's ashes with their 2005 NextFest, causing us turn our eyes to their vision of the future of entertainment. Sadly, said vision is bleak and full of baubles, gewgaws and novelties.
Let the deliberations over the stylus & the gamepad begin.
Psychonauts has a few things to show the underdeveloped, uninspired platformers that have been riddling current generation consoles. Question is, will you and other developers take notice?
All I wanted to do was use the San Andreas camera and have some fun! Well, I certainly accomplished one of those two goals. Find out the perils of my Grand Tour article and even check out some pictures that didn't made the cut.
There's a new in-game camera in GTA San Andreas, and it gives the player a new method of play: the ability to save screenshots. And with a game like San Andreas you can bet that most of those moments will never happen again.
This article isn't endorsing Silent Hill 4 in any manner, but it is the embodiment of my Silent Hill 4 gaming experience. For the record, I agree whole heartedly with Mr. Riley's Silent Hill 4 review.
We're celebrating the coming month of February by releasing our 2003 gaming retrospective! Old and new contributors examine some of the best, worst, most disappointing and other moments in gaming within the last year! Come, read & contribute! Or suffer. Yes, suffer indeed.
Unlike some publications out there, we can show some restraint and print our annual retrospective after the year in question has actually ended. Like last year's look back, we examine a wide range of gaming experiences that affected us over the past 52 weeks, while keeping one eye on the future!
In our third annual retrospective, we reminisce over our favorite, most unpleasant and most memorable gaming experiences and find the year 2005 to have been relatively lackluster. Read along to find out why, and just who is responsible for our ennui.
Don't be fooled by the name, Trace Memory is an engaging and cohesive rumination on the nature of memory and remembrance.
While flipping through some old gaming magazines recently, I realized quite a few games have been missing for some time. To solve this mystery, I donned my thinking cap, pipe and a flask and started out on a trek to find out the status of five games that had potential, but have not been heard from in many moons.
A review of the Discovery documentary Inside the Xbox? "You're talking crazy," you say. Nope. Tivo knows exactly what I wants and when I want to watch it - much to your benefit! Okay, it wasn't Tivo - it was my remote control. And I had nothing better to do on a Friday night. It's a sad life.
Again, incriminating circumstances prevent us from posting a Chicago-Style Drunksaling article for Wednesday. Instead, I spent my time watching X-Play - Tech TV's revision of the videogame show Extended Play. Then I dished in these hi-tech input boxes for what I felt was a reasonable amount of time, stirred appropriately and pressed submit. A new (in the loosest sense) Drunksaling will be posted later this week.
Drunksaling
Continuing the garage saling adventures that Gus and Geoff started from the now-defunct drunkgamers.com, we sort through the detritus of the nation's garages to find gaming antiquities.
Unitdaisy and I took a long deserved weekend off from drunksaling last weekend. To compensate for our laziness we're opening the curtain on our process and my surliness. Enjoy, and we'll have a new drunksaling for your gawking pleasure later this week.
Since Chicago likes to mimic Antartica for six months out of the year, we've decided to unveil some old Chi-Style Drunksaling articles that we used to post on the old Drunkgamer.com forums. It's like taking a trip back in time (minus the dinosaurs and plague)!
This week we deviate a bit from our regular Chi-Style DG Forum post by bringing you a Chi-Style Drunksaling entry that was actually featured on the Drunkgamers site! Yes, we were so proud of ourselves in those days. Too bad pride is fleeting.
Hey, look - Week #2 from .. well, over a year and a half ago! This drunksaling took place on June 2nd, 2002 and started to establish some of the practices we follow religiously today. Like not finding any games. Damn. Sorry about that.
Check it out - the third in our Chi-Style DG Forum posts! This one is quite special and close to our hearts because it was the first trip out where we actually found game-related objects worth waking up at 7am for!
The fourth in our Drunkgamer's Forum Drunksaling posts - I remember this week pretty well, as it was hellish and focused on what sucked the most: walking through the abysmal heat while hungover. Damn swamp summers.
So, we're up to the fifth in our Drunkgamers Forum Drunksaling weeks and this week ...wasn't amazing. All we found was porn and a Super Scope. Oh well, maybe next week will be better.
In this blast from the past, we find out why I'm usually behind the lens in these reports. Oh, and we found some games and voice-emulating goodness.
August in Chicago is a very, very fine time to go garage saling. Especially if you hook up with strangers over the Internet for free retro gaming stuff!
This Drunksaling week is actually a two-in-one. And it's NSFW (Not Safe For Work). With that kind of lead-in, you must be thinking we found some magnificent stuff! I'll give you a hint - we did not find an original copy of Softporn or Leisure Suit Larry I.
And we're starting to near the final lap of the Drunkgamer Forum Drunksaling articles, as well as the end of our 2002 Drunksaling articles. And this week, in retrospect, was a damn sight for sore eyes.
It's been a long time since unitdaisy and I have hit the streets, searching for a few gaming deals and that comfortable feeling named nostalgia. Join us in our journey for retro gaming and the satisfaction of finding a fantastic piece of gaming antiquity. A cheap one, preferably.
Ah, the first drunksaling of the season always renews the spirits. At least until you actually make it to the first sale.
Two Chi-town Drunksaling reports in the span of a month! Blame the weather. In fact, I'm going to blame the weather for the results of this drunksaling. And this impending weekend too!
Thanks to this weekend and some social niceties, we're the envy of all our friends. Peek inside for a look at one of the best electronic deals we've ever found, and a none-too-common console!
Whenever there are a scant number of garage sales we spend the day investigating local thrift stores for some quality gaming goods. This outing proved to extraordinarily fruitful, and included something to play in a Sega console, a Sega console or two, and something to tote Sega hardware with. We like Sega.
Kicking off thenewsite retrospective week, unitdaisy and I learn from our previous mistakes by taking a look back at some of the highlights, and depressing lows we encountered garagesaling last year.
Looking for new Chicago-Style Drunksaling articles? Sucker. But we have one you haven't seen before.
The second lost chi-town drunksaling. Vegans, Top Gun and singing cats - just in time for the holidays! Oh, and maybe some games - though I'm not promising anything.
Oh, you are going to be so jealous when you read this you are going to schvitz.
Thanks to the constant severe weather warnings that have flooded Chicago over the past few weeks (in fact, there is one in effect right now!), our second week of Chi-Style Drunksaling was put on hold. But have no fear as Namons made the rounds way up north for us!
I'm not sure how he does it, but Namons manages to find all sorts of gaming treasure each week he steps outside. I'm starting to think his weeks are rigged!
A wise man once said, "He who hesitates, is lost..." It is with this mentality that I approach every week of Great White Northern Drunksaling. This concludes our foreshadowing. Read on!
In the hallowed tradition of the now defunct (or is that de-Fink-ed?) drunkgamers.com and Chi-style Drunksaling here at The New Gamer I am proud to present... Ben: "Loo coo coo coo coo coo coo!!!" Craig: "Loo coo coo coo coo...
Contributor Namons brought us a little present this week! Turns out, he was inspired enough our Chi-Style Drunksaling to go ahead and document his own! And he found better stuff than we normally do. I think I know whose identity I'll be stealing soon.
This week Namons brings us a dual-fisted treat - two weeks of Great White North Drunksaling wrapped up in one article of gaming goodness!
On some days Chicago is a beautiful city full of sun, love and life. Unfortunately none of those days ever occur when we venture outside, as the skies prefer to shower us with hail and lightning bolts. Stubbornly, we managed to find a few goodies that weren't thoroughly soaked with grimy midwest water.
You thought we quit, didn't you? There were a surprising amount of garage sales this past weekend that kept us hopping around the city (and plenty of pictures - those on dial-up might want to be careful). Did we strike gold for what may be the last big sale before 2004? Check and see..
We've been waiting for a sale of this magnitude for close to a year now. And it finally arrived: old-school gaming nirvana.
This week isn't as grandious as last, but a few items found helped to fill the void in our souls. In this edition, I also reenact my Friday night out for your enjoyment.
This week unitdaisy ran away from home. The last I saw of her, she was chasing an escaped zoo monkey down the street. The following morning she phoned me from Phoenix, AZ in a confused and bewildered state. Unfortunately, this meant finding a fill in for Chi-Style Drunksaling.
A super guest star edition!
After short hiatus, we're back with a whimper. Feel free to mock unitdaisy and me as we get sunburned, shafted by sellers and return with little to show for it. Enjoy!
We're quickly coming up to the half-way mark of this year's garagesaling adventures. Let's hope the rest of the year isn't as flat as this week.
We finally remembered that we write for a website and aren't pro-bowlers. I gotta say though that the National Bowling Association was none too pleased by unitdaisy's request to install bumpers in her lane. Anywhoo, enjoy this week's drunksaling episode.
Summer days are for the lazy and this week we encapsulate the spirit of the season by skipping half our marked sales. Go us!
