Blog Posts by Gordon Cameron

Chances are, there's an old Nintendo Entertainment System gathering dust somewhere deep in the crevasses of your closet.  Or a Gameboy.  Or a Sega Genesis.  An Atari 2600 joystick, perhaps, or maybe a busted Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge.  What to do with these ancient plastic husks when they've outlived their time?

As it turns out, options are plentiful.  In today's world of retro-hobbyists and geek-centric e-tailers, vintage game cartridges and consoles can be converted into all sorts of nifty, crafty stuff.  You can use that old NES as the basis of a great do-it-yourself project -- or you can just let someone else do the heavy lifting, and buy a cool re-purposed game item online.

Gee whiz! A device from Sega gives a whole new meaning to the term 'streaming content.' But at an asking price of almost $1,800, you'll have to be pretty flush to afford one.

Ok, got that out of our system. Honest.

Sega's 'Toylet', a urinal-mounted game which is activated and controlled by -- you guessed it -- urination, has graduated from a Tokyo-based pilot program initiated last winter to a general market release.

Megaman 'Goes right'Why do Mario, Link, Pitfall Harry, Samus, Kirby, the Prince of Persia, Megaman, Sonic, and a thousand other video game heroes and heroines keep running from left to right, dodging fireballs, leaping over lava, bouncing off the heads of deadly foes, and braving bottomless chasms?

Well, what else are they going to do?

Google's Zerg RushWanna see something cool?  Type 'Zerg Rush' into a Google search bar and get ready to defend your search results.

Remember the classic '80s Star Wars arcade game that rendered the pulse-pounding chase down the Death Star trench in then-astounding 3D vector graphics? 'Le Chuck,' a regular on the gaming-homebrew website Arcade Controls, certainly does, and decided to bring the experience back to life — micro-style.

The product of 80 hours worth of effort, the 1:6 scale reproduction contains a fully playable version of the game (running off the 'MAME' arcade-emulation engine) and includes a hand-crafted aluminum yoke for maximum control. Luke may be able to turn off his targeting computer and rely on the Force, but we non-Jedis need all the help we can get.

When it comes to saving the planet, gamers are old hands.  Zombie apocalypses, alien invasions, dragon infestations -- you name it, we've foiled it.  But doing it for real is a bit more of a challenge.

As another Earth Day rolls around on April 22, it's time again to ponder the questions that prick our electronic consciences.  Are we gaming and gadgeting in an eco-friendly, sustainable way?  Are we making sure our old PCs and consoles don't wind up in a landfill leaking toxic chemicals into groundwater?  Is our carbon footprint closer to a ballerina or a T-Rex?  Here are a few ways you can go green while still gaming away the day.

They might not crack the Billboard charts, but video game theme songs are just as catchy as top pop tracks. From Super Mario Bros. to Skyrim, gaming's greatest themes have etched their way into pop culture, bleep by lovingly-crafted bleep.

But gamers don't just like to kick back and listen — they like to interact, often in wildly creative ways. Zelda on wineglasses? Tetris on a laser harp? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

GameStopAfraid of buying used games at GameStop and finding they're incomplete?  California law to the rescue!

As a result of the settlement to a class-action lawsuit, all California GameStop stores must put up signs warning customers that they'll have to pay extra to access 'free' DLC advertised on the boxes of used games.  Typically, such content is only free to the original purchaser.