sukimon

Teacher Builds Atari 2600 Space Shuttle Simulator For 8th Graders:

Looking for a fun and immersive way to teach his 8th grade students about space, science instructor Chad Shumaker brought Activision’s 1984 sim Space Shuttle: A Journey into Space to his classroom…

This article brought a smile to my face for several reasons:

• using video game technology to create an engaging educational experience
• that you don’t need the latest and greatest games or hardware
• the budget was dirt-cheap

and

• the teacher took an awful game and made it fun (or less awful)

I’m curious as to how common it is for teachers to utilize old computer games  in the classroom. My guess is hardly, particularly as classic games such as Oregon Trail are now available on cellphone and Nintendo Wii.

(via GameSetWatch, The Times-Reporter)

This past weekend, I got to see King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a documentary focused on two men, Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, and their efforts to get the world record high score for the classic arcade game, Donkey Kong.

Although there was a lot of retro history and footage, especially of the Classic Videogame & Pinball Championships in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, King of Kong was surprisingly accessible to the viewer uneducated in video game lore. Love, envy, disappointment, perseverance, redemption, King of Kong had it all, and by the end of the film, everyone in the theater wanted to see how things turn out for Wiebe and Mitchell. It’s like watching an early Wrestlemania event with a side of Rudy.

Currently, King of Kong is on a limited distribution schedule, so watch this film while you can, or petition your local theater to pick it up.

King of Kong official website
FAQ on King of Kong (NOTE: contains spoilers)
Twin Galaxies – The Official Arcade Scorekeepers

Has it really been almost six months since my last post? Oui vey.

Yeah, the Sukimon crew went underground during that time, to tend to various projects (coaching high school tennis, switching jobs, looking for a new place to live, bought a car, painting a house, etc.). But now I’m back and ready to post… stuff I should have uploaded months ago. Anyways, check out the link below for now:

Atari Flashback: Imagic Documentary

IFAIK, originally posted at the fantastic AtariAge, it’s an early-1980s PBS(?) documentary on Imagic, one of the most successful game developers (the others being Atari and Activision. duh) of its time. In addition to seeing pre-release game footage of Atlantis, it’s also interesting to point out that the video was produced just before the Big Video Game Crash.

All I know is that, based on watching the documentary itself, it was on a show called, “Enterprise.” Please comment if you have any information regarding this documentary.

With a runtime of over 23 minutes, this is one of the more painful video captures I’ve ever seen, a Super Mario Brothers mod, apparently created by some masochistic Taiwanese. Hardest. SMB. Mod. Ever.

One can just watch the first couple of minutes, but for some reason I couldn’t look away, and after a while you’ll catch yourself cheering/yelling at the little mustachioed doode to make it.

• Hardest. Video. Game. Ever. (G4tv.com)
• And for those who can’t download stuff from G4, try this YouTube link.

Thanks to Knick for sending me the links to side scrolling pain.