Blog Posts by Mike Smith

(Credit: BNPS)Normally, the tale of a chess game ends with the capture of a king.

The story of this unique piece of gaming history, however, starts with the execution of one.

Chess enthusiast King Charles I of England, to be precise, who went to see the executioner in January of 1649 after being found guilty of high treason. When he went to meet his maker, he took with him two treasured possessions: his Bible, and this amber chessboard, which this week sold at a London auction for a record £601,250 -- almost $970,000.

The world's tallest Lego Tower in Prague (Getty Images)Building the biggest Lego tower has been an obsession for fans of the timeless toy for generations, but how high could you build it before the brick at the bottom collapses under the strain?

BBC Radio's statistics show More or Less asked Britain's Open University's Engineering Department. Armed with a hydraulic press, the department's staff set about finding out.

"It's an exciting thing to do because it's an entirely new question and new questions are always interesting," Dr Ian Johnston said to the BBC. We're guessing they're even more interesting when you get to fool aournd with industrial-strength heavy machinery and Lego bricks, but we certainly can't fault his spirit of scientific endeavor.

Buy toys, store toys, sell toys, make money.

Easy, right? It sure sounds like it, and if you love buying toys anyway, it's a tempting formula. But if it were that easy, everyone would be getting rich off their childhood memories.

Sad to say, all too many of yesterday's collectibles just didn't turn out to be the investments we hoped. For every first-edition Superman comic (worth a cool $2.2 million today), there's a veritable avalanche of once-collectible knickknacks that have brutally dropped in value. So if you still have an attic, basement, or garage packed with boxes of any of these, we cautiously suggest it might be time to rethink.

You've seen the headlines, no doubt: Unsuspecting homeowner is cleaning out the garage, attic, or storage building, stumbles across a dusty box of old video games, and discovers a goldmine of valuable rarities that nets them tens of thousands of dollars.

Easy money, right? Not so fast. The odds of you accidentally owning a game worth anywhere over $1,000 are obscenely low. The world's most expensive games are either decades-old esoterica, little-known relics from the NES or Atari 2600 era that were created in extremely limited quantities, or bizarre import titles that you've probably never even heard of.

But what about more modest -- and far more common -- finds? It turns out there's a handful of relatively well-known games from the last few generations of consoles that fetch surprisingly high prices on the enthusiast market. Here's a few that you may actually own:

(Credit: Getty Images)You're heading out for a doctor's appointment, long flight, dull social engagement, or other event packed with potential for serious boredom. You have to take the kids -- and you know they're going to get antsy. What do you do?

Once upon a time, the only solution would be to bog yourself down with books, crayons, card games, and other activities. But it's not 1980 anymore, and if you're carrying an iOS device, you're already halfway to the perfect solution. All you need to do is stock your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch with this collection of hit kid-friendly apps, and you'll have enough to keep them busy for hours.

Pokemon Black/White version 2 (Credit: Nintendo)Though nobody saw Pokemon's success coming when the first game hit unsuspecting streets in 1996, in retrospect it shouldn't have been too hard to predict. Tapping into kids' timeless love of building collections, playing with cute critters, swapping things with friends, and fighting each other, it was an immediate hit.

Not much has changed. The latest pair of Nintendo DS games, Pokemon Black and White Versions 2, launch this weekend, and they're all but guaranteed to be best-sellers, too. Pikachu might be a cuddly little guy, but he pulls in quite a profit -- over 200 million Pokemon games have been sold so far, putting the series second only to Mario as video games' biggest earner.

It's not just a sales juggernaut, though -- the Pokemon pan-media powerhouse is also a treasure-trove of trivia. Here are a few Pokefacts you might have overlooked.

Celebrity endorsements are one of the oldest tricks in the marketing handbook. Whether it's George Forman lucrative grills, Sly Stallone's low-cal pudding, or Katy Perry's lousy potato chips, famous faces on everyday products are a shortcut to consumer trust, confidence, and subsequent massive sales success.

That's the idea, anyhow. Too often it's just a way to paper over a product that nobody would buy if it wasn't for a celeb grinning on the box -- and video games are no exception. A veritable galaxy of stars have lent their names to games over the years, and to absolutely nobody's surprise, most of them have been terrible.  Check out ten of the worst.

Tic Tac Toe isn't exactly the pinnacle of pencil-and-paper gaming. It might be quick to learn, but its strategy is minimal, the outcome is all too predictably a draw, and if you're older than about eight you've probably had enough of it years ago.

Until now. A new twist on the old routine hit the App Store earlier this week that introduces a bigger board, an extra symbol (a "Y" to join the classic "O" and "X,") and, most interestingly, a third player.