Use a Record Player

Nope, it’s not the McDonalds menu, but close enough. Jim Blackhurst has mapped 11 million deaths onto a 3-dimensional point cloud for video game Just Cause 2. The result is an amazing virtual heat map of a world where every white dot represents a death on impact: The millions ...more

The 2010 World Cup is upon us and there isn't much that hasn't been said already. All the leagues around the world are finished and champions have been crowned. The media has covered every angle imaginable. Or have they? Or should they? Is this about the sport anymore? What wi ...more

As the users and potential BF3 buyers enjoyed the astounding effects of the next Battlefield installment, one of Infiniti Ward's creative strategist Robert Bowling tweeted that building a new game engine for CoD Modern Warfare 3 would be "counter productive." I bet it would! ...more

Coulibaly Koman Single-handedly Destroys American Dream Koman's horrible call in the 88th minute cost the US the win. At first, we thought it was an offsides call, but FIFA has recorded it a foul on Edu. If we don't make it out of the group on account of his negligence, I wi ...more

Great controls are the most important and difficult part of game design. Games with vector graphics and non-existent stories are classics because their creators managed to create a system where using buttons to control a shape on a screen was intuitive and fun. This is the tra ...more

Via Sports Game News By the time you finish reading this, you’ll agree with me on the thought that a coach will always be at the center of change. How to coach soccer is a feeling that is innate in a coach and he or she is a natural in it. But, a coach still needs to learn an ...more

Flash video. It's what all smartphone users have been waiting for. Why has it taken sooo long? And why is Apple still resistant? Here's the scoop, via Wired: "Adobe is releasing Flash Player 10.1 for mobile phones and desktops today. And it is piggy-backing on Google’s fast ...more

UPDATE: New York Giants WON! Super Bowl XLVI has concluded. The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21 to 17. If you missed the big game, there doesn't seem to be a full replay of all the action, but you can visit NBC.com or NFL.com to get information and video high ...more

This week's roundup features three games that I've either never bothered to play, was unable to play due to PC technical limitations, or haven't played because they've just been released. None of these three games cost more than $15. Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony I ne ...more

Nope, this isn't a flash game version of SCRABBLE. There's already one of those (and a multitude of imitations) for the Apple iPhone, iPod, and Facebook. This is an electronic game, and it's not a "handheld" game like the SCRABBLE Pocket Pogo Touch Screen Game (pictured right) ...more

Video game ranking site VGChartz reports that Mike Leyde, a 56-year old steel contractor from Riverside, California, has broken Bejeweled 2's scoreboard with a score of 2,147,783,647. Brian Fiete, co-creator of Bejeweled, is shocked: "The highest score the game is capable of ...more

At GDC 2011 this past March, three of the world's best game designers participated in a contest called Game Design Challenge. Each presented their vision for a game that fit the prompt "Bigger than Jesus: games as religion" before an audience, with applause to determine the wi ...more

When you don't have anyone to play with in the flesh, nothing beats a round of competitive online Scrabble. If you're constantly on the move, the Scrabble app developed by Electronic Arts (EA) for Android and iOS mobile devices is probably your favorite way to play. But let's ...more

There's nothing better than playing a game of Scrabble, feeling the smooth wooden tiles in your hand and savoring the heavy fumes of cardboard, cheap wood and plastic as you rearrange the letters on your rack into the perfect word. You try to keep a straight face while you wat ...more

So what's all the fuss about World of Warcraft? I guess the first question would be 'is there a fuss?' and the simple answer is Yes there is, very much so. World of Warcraft now has over 12 million subscribers, it is by far the most popular MMORPG (massively multiplayer onli ...more

What separates Metro 2033 from other FPS games? Life. There are underground towns, markets, children, music, and so much background chatter than sometimes you can't single out a particular conversation. Most FPS, especially American shooters, are streamlined for Adventure and ...more

One of the coolest things about Twitter is the fact that you can get direct access to some of your favorite celebrities, and have one-on-one conversations with them in less than 140 characters. With Google+, you can have the same advantage, but you don't need to feel constrict ...more

Blizzard Entertainment is considered one of the most successful game developers in the world. Ever since the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (their debut Warcraft game) in 1994, they've set sales records and created genre-defining games with remarkable consistency. But the ...more

Death is tough for the living, and those who mourn do all sorts of odd things to cope with it. Some keep mementos, some build towering statues, others create memorial paintings or write sad songs, all of which are healthy in moderation. Honoring the dead has been around for so ...more

A look at Aquaria Last week I made a post about the Humble Indie Bundle (http://www.wolfire.com/humble). It's a small online charaty drive where you could buy five indie games for any price you wanted. The charity drive itself was an incredible success. It raised over one mill ...more

Levon Helm... The longtime drummer for The Band , Levon Helm wore many musical hats throughout his long career, including multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer, impressario, studio ...more

If you follow indie games at all, you've probably heard of Bastion. During its development, it took home numerous Best in Show prizes from E3 and other game conventions while building up an incredible amount of buzz in the games press. Part of what is intriguing about Bastion ...more

In Google definitions a macro is defined as "a single computer instruction that results in a series of instructions in machine language". Basically a macro is a programming script that tells the computer what to do. You can tell a computer (via a macro) to move a mouse, click, ...more

Story, Characters, and Structure Note: The first half of this review is spoiler free. There are spoiler warnings once you approach the later parts of the review. If you’re curious of the game but don’t want to be spoiled, just read the first half. For those of you that have f ...more

It's been a long time. The console HD gaming era started with the 360's release in 2005. Until now, the only true kart game to be released till this year was, believe it or not, Burger King's Pocketbike Racer released in November 2006. Five years of HD console gaming and that ...more

OSPD1 In 1978, the first SCRABBLE Dictionary was conceived and published by Merriam-Webster, with the help of the National Scrabble Association (NSA). The idea was to include any word that was found in one of the five major dictionaries at the time: Merriam-Webster's Collegi ...more

It could be said that the World Cup really starts during the knock-out stages. What was going on for the last couple of weeks was more like the "World's Soccer Fair." At least I'd like to think of it this way after watching games like Slovenia vs. Algeria, New Zealand vs. Slov ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

If you're a frequenter of Null Byte, I bet you have at least some interest in information security. Furthermore, you have a hobby that if applied in certain ways, will get you arrested. I've received quite a few messages from the community here about federal cybercrime law and ...more

Last week, I demonstrated how to go a little deeper into your Google+ profiles, photos, and introduced cross-posting. This week, I'm highlighting a bunch of different unofficial resources that have sprung up that will help improve your Google+ experience, and give you the late ...more

Thanks to the advent of smartphones and mobile apps, Scrabble has spread like wildfire across the globe, whether it be Scrabble or one of its many popular word game spinoffs, such as Words with Friends, WordWise and Kalimat. There have been over one million Scrabble sets sold ...more

The holiday season is here, and if you didn't already pick up a SCRABBLE set during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, then you still have time to buy the perfect gift for your lexical-minded friend. There's sure to be deals out there over the next couple of weeks, you just need to ...more

What happened to please and thank you? When did asking someone to come look at your build degenerate into COME NOW or FOLLOW or sending out teleport requests to any and all currently on the server without asking? Phillip Chan, a yahoo network contributor wrote this back in 20 ...more

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it's awesome that you can now download music from the iTunes Store that's free of DRM (digital rights management) limitations. That was always my biggest problem with buying music from iTunes. Paying a buck for a song that I can only ...more

If you're running iOS 10 or lower, there is no built-in way to make a screen recording on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch directly from the device, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way to record your screen at all. Occasionally, there will be an app in the iOS App Store tha ...more

"Dueling Banjos" - we've all heard it, we've all seen it - that famous scene from Deliverance where a young inbred banjo player outplays the guitar with incredible speed and accuracy. However, compared to Todd Taylor, that's nothing. Grammy nominated banjo player Todd Taylor ...more

Unruly customers. Crazy exes. Horrible bosses. When you need proof of insanity or just want it for your records, recording a phone call is a must. Problem is, it's not the easiest thing to do on an iPhone — but it's completely possible. Even though there are plenty of legit r ...more

When a friend asks me what screen recording software is best to use, I always say the same thing—you don't need any! Even though it's been around since 2009, many Mac owners do not realize that they have a powerful screen recording software built right into OS X. You can reco ...more

Mobile gaming has exploded in recent years, with experts predicting 2.4 billion global mobile players by the end of 2019. It already accounts for 47% of the worldwide gaming market, besting console and PC. No wonder we've seen the rise of gaming smartphones, a class of phones ...more

Introduction So today and yesterday I was playing with TNT (as we all do at one point or another) and I was curious about a few things. From this curiosity, I went on to discover some of the science behind some things you may or may not have known. While I was conducting thi ...more

Introduction So, today and yesterday I was playing with TNT (as we all do at one point or another) and was curious about a few things. From this curiosity, I went onto discover some of the science behind some things you may or may not have known. While I was conducting this ...more

Native screen recording, one of the hottest features that Apple included in iOS 11 and later, is easily started from the optional Control Center toggle on your iPhone. From there, you can stop recording from the same place or from the red status bar or bubble. It's a very conv ...more