Blog Posts by Ben Silverman

Smell your way through games Love the smell of napalm in the morning? You might catch a whiff of exactly that the next time you hurl a fireball in World of Warcraft.

At least that's the hope of Scent Sciences Corporation, the outfit responsible for creating the ScentScape game peripheral. Due out worldwide this coming Christmas, it's designed to help immerse gamers even further into interactive experiences by blasting them with -- terrifying as it sounds -- game-oriented aromas.

Via a USB connection, this newfangled attempt at smell-o-vision packs 20 'scent wells' into a cartridge that emits odors -- such as pine, ocean and smoke -- based on feedback from the particular game you're playing. No word if that includes

Apps ahoy When Gail Davis of the U.K. town of Orpington decided to download a copy of hit iOS game Paper Glider last week, she got more than she paid for.

A lot more.

Davis' download became the 10 billionth app downloaded from the App Store, Apple announced Saturday, netting the company a proud milestone -- and netting Davis a hefty $10,000 iTunes gift for simply lucking out and
grabbing a free game at the right time.

The moment was captured by Philip Schiller, Apple's senior VP of
Worldwide Product Marketing, who gleefully gloated in a press release.

"With more than 10 billion apps downloaded in just two and a
half years -- a staggering seven billion apps in the last year alone -- the App
Store has

Love Call of Duty: Black Ops but itching for more? Somehow, Activision saw that coming. I suppose that's what happens when your game rakes in a cool billion while smashing sales records left and right.

On Tuesday, the company pulled the tarp off a new trailer for 'First Strike,' the debut downloadable content for Black Ops. Available exclusively to Xbox 360 players on February 1 (the PS3 and PC versions are coming later), the map pack contains 4 new multiplayer maps as well as a new map for the game's popular Zombie mode, which will apparently feature -- wait for it -- monkey zombies.

No, really:

Evony to the rescue Robert Chambers is a fan of the Facebook version of the online game Evony, and not just because he plays it regularly -- the 51 year-old gamer from Spokane, Washington credits the medieval-themed strategy game with saving his life.

The Spokesman-Review reports that Chambers, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, was playing Evony last Tuesday when his toaster accidentally caught fire, igniting the house. He was alone at the time, and with limited mobility due to his condition, was unable to reach a phone.

So he turned to his in-game friends.

"Help me," he wrote in the game's chat window using a customized
keyboard. "My house is on fire and I can't get out." He also included his address

Sony's NGP - Sony In a move that shocked precisely no one, Sony confirmed months of speculation by officially unveiling their next handheld video game
system at a press event in Tokyo
on Thursday.

Codenamed "NGP" for Next Generation Portable, the system packs a load of impressive technology, including two analog sticks, a 5-inch OLED touchscreen (for reference, an iPhone's
screen is 3.5 inches), a second touch pad on the back of the device, and a new flash-card media format.

Sony announced that the system will be released before the end of 2011, though no word on whether that's a worldwide date or just for Japan. No pricing details were released.

To better compete with longtime rival Nintendo's

Children of the '80s will fondly recall the "Choose Your Own Adventure" gamebooks, a series of interactive tales that let readers control the direction of the story by periodically choosing one of several plot paths. Starting with 1979's "The Cave of Time," the prolific  series captured imaginations and spawned countless clones over its impressive 20-year run, earning all sorts of pop-culture cred along the way.

And now, it's finding new life in the unlikeliest of places: Youtube.

Thanks to some incredibly creative (and seriously dedicated)
users, 'choose your path' movies are cropping up more and more frequently on
the online video megasite. Trading pages for page views, the premise is

The biggest game on the App Store is stretching its wings.

Angry Birds developer Rovio has announced a partnership with 20th Century Fox for a new Angry Birds game based on the studio's upcoming animated film, Rio. Much like the

successful 'Seasons' spinoff, the new title -- dubbed Angry Birds Rio -- will

be a full 45-level standalone release and is due out in March for smartphones

and tablets.

In the game, the original Angry Birds are kidnapped and

whisked away to Rio, where they must help save the two macau stars of the

feature film by -- what else -- lobbing themselves at giant structures. Their new enemy? An evil white parrot! No seriously, behold his evilness:

See? EVIL.

The Rio

The Many Careers of Mario

Times are tough and jobs are scarce -- unless you're a video
game icon. You might know Mario as a portly plumber, but the hardest-working mascot
in video games has worn all sorts of hats over his 30-year career. And for our
sake, we hope he never retires. Check out some of his coolest jobs.