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Showing posts from May, 2016

Adventures in Portable 3D Entertainment, Continued: Finding the Right 3D Blu-ray Ripper Software

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Last month, I posted an article about how I was able to convert my Kindle Fire into a portable viewer of 3D video content. At that point, I could watch side-by-side (SBS) 3D content from YouTube but I had yet to figure out how I could convert my collection of 3D Blu-rays into SBS 3D files that I could play back on the Fire. What I found out was that while such a goal is possible, it was trickier to accomplish than I thought it would be. Read on ... For those of you who want to stop reading now, the software system to get to convert 3D Blu-ray discs into SBS 3D files is DVDFab 9 . This is the ONLY software that I found that can actually do this. I should know, because I had to sift through dozens of software systems that claimed to do the same thing but couldn't do it at all. As anyone who understands 3D entertainment knows, a stereoscopic image has to have one image for the left eye and another image for the right eye in order for the viewer's brain to think that it is see

Get Your 8-Bit Kaiju on in Smashy City

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You know the old saying: If at first you do succeed, shamelessly exploit it until it stops making money. I previously reviewed a video game called Smashy Road , a fun experience in 8-bit car racing chaos for smart phones and tablets. Now, just a few weeks later, I found another game that's extremely similar to the look and feel of Smashy Road : Smashy City by Ace Viral . Read on for my complete review. In Smashy City , players select a giant monster to attack an endless cityscape, and the monster keeps going until enough tanks, missiles and attack choppers bring it down. The game begins with a giant ape that looks a lot like King Kong, and players unlock a variety of other monsters as they rack up points or make in-game purchases by using real money. If Smashy Road and the classic arcade coin-op Rampage had a child, it would be called Smashy City . Then again, Smashy Road recycles many of the ideas that were already present in Crossy Road , so all we need at this point is a gam

For (Belated) Star Wars Day: The Emperor's Throne Room (in Lego Form) from Kenner's Star Wars Micro Collection Line (UPDATED)

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It's no secret that Lego bricks have become the go-to medium for many geeks who want to build detailed replicas of characters, vehicles and environments from their favorite fantasy and sci-fi franchises. However, few geeks use Lego to build replicas of franchise toys that were planned by toy companies but never made it past the prototype stage. On the other hand, there's BaronSat (a.k.a. Eric Duron), who designs Lego kits for franchises that are both licensed and not licensed by Lego. For Star Wars, he has already provided instructions for Lego-scale replicas of toys that were made by Kenner during the original trilogy, toys such as the Imperial Troop Transporter , the Imperial Attack Base , and the Death Star World sets from Kenner's short-lived Micro Collection line. His latest kit is based on the unreleased part of the Death Star World: the Emperor's Throne Room from Return of the Jedi . The story behind this toy is that after Kenner released its initial wave of Mi

Coming in October 2016: The Art Of Atari by Robert V. Conte and Tim Lapetino

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As I've said before on this blog, I consider myself to be very fortunate to have lived through the early years of video games. I remember a time when the distribution cycle of a video game title would begin in coin-op arcades and continue through ports to PCs and home consoles. Now, the Internet, PCs, home consoles and portable media devices rule most of the video game world, while the few surviving coin-op arcades feature titles that will (probably) never appear in any other medium. The same is true about how the video games appear: Most current games are so beautifully designed that they largely sell themselves through clips of game play footage. Yet when video games had nothing but blocky graphics and clunky sounds to offer, they needed a little extra help to convince people to play them. In honor of the artwork produced during early years of video game advertising, Dynamite Entertainment is publishing The Art of Atari by Robert V. Conte and Tim Lapetino. According to the boo