The “Duh!” news of the week

A recent study shows that men are more likely to get addicted to games than women. I think this is a surprise to substantially less than 100 people in the world.

The study looked at how the brains of 22 young gamers – half of them male, half female – reacted when playing a simple video ball game. The researchers found that men’s brains had a higher activity in the mesocorticolimbic system.

. . .

Acquiring as much territory in a computer game environment is more rewarding for men than for women, the study showed. Reiss wasn’t surprised: “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species – they’re the males.”

Might explain the jealous boyfriend thing, too, I’m guessing.

[tags]Games, Territorial, Gaming addiction[/tags]

How to solve Indiana Jones on the Atari 2600

My brother just sent me a link to a SharkBait article which references an old VHS video series from Vestron Video in 1982 that tells you how to beat a variety of Atari 2600 games.  The article has this Raiders of the Lost Ark game guide, and since I remember so well playing the game, I thought I’d put it here so I can always remember how great it was (well, always meaning until YouTube removes the video or shuts down).

If you click on that video and go to the YouTube patch, you’ll find links to other video guides, plus a number of other Atari 2600 game-related videos.  Oddly, when I look there is a link to a “worst games on the 2600” video, which suggests Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the worst games on the Atari 2600.  The video below that is the video guide for the game Superman, which actually is on my list of worst Atari 2600 games ever.

If you’d like to know more about the Raiders game shown in the video, I highly recommend Atari Age as the source for pretty much all 2600 and other Atari console information.  Click on the little Pac-Man looking icon in the top right corner of the screen to get the ROM, and then get the open source emulator Stella for running it.

[tags]Atari, 2600, Atari 2600, Emulator, Game, Gaming, Console, Raiders of the Lost Ark, YouTube, Vestron[/tags]

CryENGINE2 vs. reality

See how powerful the CryENGINE2 is, assuming you have a sufficiently powerful machine to drive this.

[gametrailers 31022]

Not as good as looking out real-world locations, but extremely impressive for a game engine.  Most of the engine driven stuff is flatter or duller than the real-world video, but I’m still looking forward to being able to run something with CryENGINE2 when I make my next system upgrade.  (via Joystiq)