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TOSY and Justin Bieber announce mRobo: we go hands-on, dance-off (video)
Beethoven's Fifth. Michelangelo's Pietà. Plato's Republic. Cornerstones of human civilization, to be sure, but they all pale in comparison to what we saw today at CES: TOSY's new mRobo robot, inspired by none other than the Cultural Colossus of our time, Justin Bieber. The Vietnamese manufacturer and pubescent Prince have just taken the wraps off their latest collaboration: a petite, portable speaker-robot that dances -- nay, transcends -- just like his only slightly larger progenitor counterpart. When in speaker mode, the mRobo weighs in at just 3.3 pounds, stands a little under eight inches tall, and boasts 2GB of internal memory. Its integrated speaker pumps out the jams at bass levels of 40Hz, but the real magic happens once the music starts playing, automatically prompting the system to transform into an 18-inch tall robot and start dancing. Unfortunately, the bot is still in prototype mode, but it's expected to retail for about $200 when it launches during the fall of 2012.Today, though, we were lucky enough to get a sneak peak of the mRobo, courtesy of a mic'd-up Messiah with sweepy bangs and a leather jacket. Upon taking the stage to roars of applause and Jelly Bean sunshowers, Bieber went on to do a brief demo of the bot, displaying its ability to sync its dance moves to whatever tunes blare out of its abdomen speaker -- in this case, Billie Jean. The mRobo looked admittedly clumsy at times, and was especially awkward when onstage with the teen phenom, but, as TOSY repeatedly reminded us, it's still in prototype phase. (Bieber, for his part, did a good job of looking completely awestruck throughout much of the experience.) Before descending from his bubblegum pulpit, Bieber reminded his acolytes to "follow your dreams." Ours, at least, have just been realized. Follow yours past the break, straight to our hands-on video.Mat Smith contracted Bieber Fever from this report.
Baby Chun-Li imparts an important lesson
Photographed by Capcom staffers at last weekend's Anime Expo in Los Angeles, this baby dressed like Chun Li offers a little something we can all learn from.That lesson, of course, is that this is the last age at which cosplay is morally acceptable. Now go home, wash the gel out of your hair spikes, write it in your adorable NERV diary, and never, ever, forget it.
Wisdom Audio packs a new SCS subwoofer in its CEDIA baggage
Wisdom Audio is going to use CEDIA to debut its new Sage Series SCS "suitcase" subwoofer. Despite the fact that the press release shreds any secrecy, it sounds like something right out of Connery-era Q's lab -- the little beast packs a 300-Watt amp and dual 5x7.5-inch woofers into a modest 37x22x6-inch package that can crank out 22Hz bass. How was it that Bond took his martinis again? Don't be fooled by the "suitcase" nickname, take the 300-Watt amp as a clue that this design isn't about portable audio. Rather, the svelte (by subwoofer standards) profile and selectable porting of the SCS will allow integrators to put the sub into creative places when it ships later this year for $4,000.
Breakfast topic: Why didn't you tell me...?
Every time we log into WoW, we find ourselves greeted with trivial, non-helpful bits of information. We learn quite a bit on our own and sometimes from helpful players. These little gems do little to actually help learn the nuances of the game. There have been countless times I've been taken by surprise, causing wasted time and sometimes costly repair bills. Here are some of the things I had to learn on my own, the hard way, that I wish someone would have told me:* You don't have to wait for a portal, summon, or level 74 to get to Dalaran. Battle ports* work just fine, but you do have to get connecting flight points to make it useful.* If you wait until 74 to go to Dalaran, don't run there to get the flight point. There is a quest that takes you there. If you do run to the Crystal Song Forest to get there you, will find yourself looking forlornly at a teleportation device that is no help to you at all.* On the subject of teleportation, If you're Horde, you should really save the Goblin Transponder that you use to port from Booty Bay to Gnomeregan. It can help for raiding Ironforge.* Beware of the Animal Blood debuff in Borean Tundra. You will be killed on sight if you go into the D.E.H.T.A. Encampment if you have that debuff. It took me two deaths to figure out why I couldn't turn my quests in.* I'm relatively new to tanking, until about a month ago I clicked to set my marks. I had no idea that you can hotkey your lucky charms.I'm sure there are still many nuances of the game I still don't know. Share your wisdom, what's something you wish you'd been told?
Making/Money: The Wisdom of MMO Banking
Does it seem strange to save up to buy a house in a game? We are in an era where the real world economies of some nations are paralyzed by debts incurred from home purchases. Yet in games where there is player housing there is a surprising lack of player debt. MMOGs offer a simplified financial system seemingly impervious to the ills of modern society. What could we as a gaming society learn about real-world finance and money management from the way we act in game?
Attribute systems have -10 to Intelligence
As a gamer who was holding a controller long before I'd ever even heard of a D20, the attribute systems that seem to be standard in the world of RPGs were always a little foreign and foreboding. The idea of Strength and Dexterity were easy enough to grasp, but what the heck did Constitution mean? And for that matter, what's the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence? Even as an adult, the attribute system in a game like World of Warcraft is a bit strange to me. They give general descriptions on the website and in the game's manual, but when you start throwing in things like crit chances, the five second rule, and attack power, it all becomes a dense, tangled mess.On his blog, Brian Green ponders whether such a system can't be simplified in a way that would encourage a deeper understanding for players who don't take their games so seriously that they've got their gear progression mapped out in Excel. His first suggestion is to sweep away derived stats, or more accurately, JUST have derived stats, and ignore the base stats that influence them. Seems reasonable enough, if a bit more long-winded. His second suggestion is to take away the level curve, making stats behave the same regardless of the player level. It's an interesting idea in the abstract, but one wonders whether developers, and indeed the players they're developing these games for, are ready to put in such a radically different system.
The wisdom of experience
Keen wrote a great piece over on Keen and Graev's Gaming blog that really caught my attention. Obviously Keen has been "around the block" like I have and has his share of regrets just like the rest of us who have been chained to the MMOG genre for any length of time. He reaches back to some of the past games he's played and talks about some of the mistakes he's made that he won't ever repeat. I'll make you read the article to find out his other two, but his first one is no not take an officer position in a guild on impulse and to give it a lot of thought. I couldn't agree more. More than a few of the twenty odd guilds I've been in over the course of my MMOG experience have crumbled because of mediocre or semi-committed leadership, or leadership that wasn't united in focus and direction. Regrets are not something that need to stay chained to us that keep us from meeting our potential. Identifying our regrets help us to improve ourselves. What are your biggest regrets in World of Warcraft or in other games you've played in the past? What are you doing to ensure you don't make those mistakes again?
Virtually Overlooked: Spiritual Warfare
Welcome to our weekly feature, Virtually Overlooked, wherein we talk about games that aren't on the Virtual Console yet, but should be. Call it a retro-speculative. Saying that Spiritual Warfare is the best game Wisdom Tree ever made doesn't really encourage anyone to give it a look. Wisdom Tree doesn't exactly have a reputation for excellence, and most unlicensed NES games in general were spectacularly bad. So, to put a finer point on our meaning, here's a controversial statement: Spiritual Warfare is mostly not terrible.
