Star Wars Fleet Commander and Tron Game Grid

Two very cool games designed by Arthur Nishimoto:

Developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) by MS graduate candidate Arthur Nishimoto, "Fleet Commander" explores how a real-time interactive strategy game that would typically rely on complex keyboard commands and mouse interactions be transferred into a multi-user, multi-touch environment.

TRON: Game Grid was designed specifically to be played on a 16 Megapixel LCD Multi-touch wall. The game currently only has one level, the Ring Game. The gameplay is a hybrid of the ring game and disk arena games as seen in the film TRON. The game was developed in 4 weeks throughout September 2010. The first version, containing a complete Ring Game, was completed on October 6, 2010.

Link roundup

1. Really interesting article about how hit songs are manufactured and how much it costs to do so (the amount spent on promoting the song (bribery) is by far the largest amount). Via.

2. Tron Legacy 8 bit Extended Version.

3. Tattoo with a QR code that becomes animated when viewed through a smartphone. It'll be more impressive when the tattoo is invisible unless viewed through a smartphone.

Tron, Spider-Girl

"Data Fragmentation" by Patrick Bateman (who has lots of other Tron art in his gallery):



Patrick based his illustration on this photo by Marcus Ranum:



And Marcus's gallery is full of fascinating (and many NSFW) photographs including a gallery of Spider-Girl photos:



Via.

Link roundup

1. The LA Weekly's list of the best LA-related websites.

2. Space Paranoids arcade machine paper toy.

3. I'm rereading American Gods for the first time since it came out. I'm really enjoying it and can't imagine what I didn't like the first time. But anyway, this caught my attention:

"I read some book about brains," she said. "My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do."

Link roundup

1. From LA Magazine:

My parents both worked at the park in the summer of 1959, a year into their marriage and just four years after Disneyland opened. My dad was assigned to the cars of Autopia (back then kids would frequently knock out their teeth on steering wheels)

2. Zero Punctuation reviews the 3DS (and hates it).

3. Phil Saunders has been posting lots of Tron Legacy concept art.

*Buy Disneyland posters at eBay.

Fanmade Tron video

Impressive fanmade Tron video featuring the return of Sark/Dillinger. Just like the real Tron: Legacy, the dialog is painfully clunky and goes on for way to long. Via.

*At Toycutter: Custom Tron toys.

Link roundup

1. Someone uploaded Tron: Legacy to Youtube - - the full movie as one, two-hour video. This has to be by Disney, right? It was mentioned on Reddit hours ago, and yet Disney hasn't taken it down. Or does it take much longer than I think for infringing videos to be removed?

2. Recipe for Horseradish Cream Sauce (so good with prime rib).

3. Noxzema now has two fewer ounces than it used to, but comes in the same size container - - which features a false bottom to disguise the smaller amount of product.