Lawrence Bonk

Photo of Lawrence Bonk
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Location
Minneapolis, Minnesota
School
Florida State University
Expertise
Gaming consoles, Music tech, Smart home devices
  • Lawrence created and ran a gaming page called Sidescroller for Metro newspaper that ran for a decade.
  • He once sat down for an interview with legendary drum machine creator, Roger Linn.
  • While covering the launch of the Wii U, Lawrence found himself playing a game of Mario Bros. with the creator himself, Shigeru Miyamoto, who laughed maniacally as he won.

Experience

Lawrence has been covering news in the tech field for almost two decades, with bylines at publications like Huffington Post, Forbes and Rolling Stone. As a tech writer, he is especially fond of researching and reporting on the latest gadget releases, how to transform a living space into a smart home, and comparing new gaming consoles to tried and true classics. He's also knows an obscene amount about the technology that inspired the world of Star Trek. When he is not writing, Lawrence can be found tooling around in DAWs like Logic Pro and testing out new music gear for fun.

Education

Lawrence attended Florida State University and earned his bachelor's degree in creative writing, with a minor in history.

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Stories By Lawrence Bonk

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    Entertainment
    Entertainment By Lawrence Bonk

    A brief history of do-it-yourself Mario

    Nintendo's Mario Maker – launching early next year – may be the company's first official foray into do-it-yourself level editing but, as many people know, would-be game designers have been using unofficial channels to do just that for close to two decades using Nintendo's most popular brand. The end result? A fan community like no other, filled with passionate people from all over the globe, all working toward one common goal – creating an absolute boatload of deviously designed Mario levels. Of course, long before there were dedicated toolsets, there was the humble game ROM. In addition to allowing people to finally brag about beating Ghosts N' Goblins, NES game ROMs had/have the added bonus of being fairly easy to manipulate. What better title to screw around with than the original Super Mario Bros.? It didn't have too many sprites and, oh yeah, there's that whole "pretty much defined video games for an entire generation" thing. So the ROM-smiths went to work. It was simple stuff at first, like getting rid of Mario's mustache or even his clothes. Naked Italian plumbers soon gave way to stoned Italian plumbers. Most of the notable hacks of this early era were simple one-offs created for shock value, like Super Bud Brothers, which replaced some of the game's bushes and character sprites with weed leaves, and the disgusting Super KKK Brothers in which, well, you can probably guess its horrific gimmick.

    By Lawrence Bonk Read More
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