Okay so you’ve just spent the last three hours playing Guitar Hero on your console, but now you have to get down to business and write that paper that’s due tomorrow on your computer. But what’s that? Guitar Hero III will be released for Windows and Mac OS X?

Goodbye, productivity; we hardly knew thee.

Yup, that’s right, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will make its debut this fall as expected, but game port house Aspyr will also release a hybrid disc containing a version for Windows and (surprise!) Mac OS X.

In an interview with GameDaily BIZ, Jay Gordon of Aspyr states that that the company is “working toward a simultaneous ship with the console version.” He also notes that, “all of us in this business know that dates can slip, so we’ll let you know when we’re able to announce a ship date. We’re quite certain that you’ll see Guitar Hero III for PC/Mac in stores before the holidays.”

The Mac/PC version of Guitar Hero III will feature a guitar with USB connectivity modeled after a Gibson guitar. Details regarding system requirements and pricing has yet to come (I’ll be happy as long as it runs on a MacBook ).

Outstanding. My guitar-junkie brother will be pleased. It’s also nice seeing that Mac users won’t be left out of the Guitar Hero fun.

I am simply a cheapskate, and I hate to spend money on things that I know that I won’t use very long. Computer games are one of those things, so in the late hours of the night I scour the web for open source games. I’ve found two that are noteworthy and work on Windows and Mac OS X alike.

First we have Armagetron Advanced, a Tron-like cycle game that lets you duke it out against computer or human players. Simple and playable for hours, this game is just plain addictive. It’s almost reminiscent of the old arcade games that you would spend all your tokens on, then crawl around on the gum-covered floor to find two more, at wich point you would race back to the machine, only to find that another child is in the process of losing the $5 that his parents gave him. An interesting aspect of Armagetron is its cameras. You can adjust the camera to be a first person view, which allows you to watch a light-wall come racing towrd you at 150mph and then turn at the very last second to avoid certain doom. The feeling of motion in first person is so…
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There are two kinds of TV owners in the world: HDTV owners and everybody else. HDTV owners know how much high definition enhances the TV viewing experience. It’s so good that many HDTV owners (myself included) will watch practically anything as long as it is in HD. Daytime soaps, the 10 o’clock news, even mindless reality fare—shows one would never even consider watching previously—suddenly become riveting entertainment, solely for the fact that they are in high definition. That’s how compelling High Def is.

But what HD owners really want to watch on their expensive TV sets are movies, and lots of them. The HD movie selection on cable is meager at best, and DVD’s don’t offer the capacity to deliver movies in HD on a large scale. Enter HD DVD. This next-generation optical disc format uses a blue laser to greatly increase the capacity of a disc (DVD’s top out at 9.6GB whereas the smallest 12cm HD DVD’s start at 15GB) and next-generation video codecs to enable HD movies on a disc the same size as a regular DVD. Both HD DVD and its competitor Blu-ray Disc use the same blue laser technologies, and consequently, both require consumers to go…
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I’m sorry but words fail to describe this:

Spore video demo

The only thing I can say is that Will Wright is a genius.

Ah, yes, the holidays. Everyone is traveling, this time including me. I shal be spending the next two weeks up in cold Minnesota, near Brainerd to be exact. The coldness sounds worse to me because of where I am native: Arizona.

I will be gone from tomorrow, December 23rd, and will return on January 4th. During this time, as you may have already guessed, I will be unable to post any entries to my blog. I will try to pop something good off before my departure, but I make no promises.

Happy Holidays, and have a good New Year!