A French man made a huge mistake yesterday, when he attempted to retrieve his mobile phone from a train's toilet and became stuck up to his shoulder (don't text and pee, kids).
"Firefighters took more than an hour to free the man, before lifting him from the train on a stretcher with the entire toilet still stuck to his arm." The ordeal left the man both pungent and penitent, as the train was delayed over two hours.
If it were my mobile in a public toilet, I think I'd just write it off as a total loss, but this determined technophile found out the hard way that perseverance does not always deliver a desirable outcome.
Never one to shirk from innovation, Nintendo launched the Virtual Boy in the mid-nineties to compete with the already-saturated home virtual reality market:
It was a smash success - who doesn't remember the virtual boy from their childhood? The ubiquitous game console that everyone seemed to have - and if you didn't you could pretty much forget about sitting with the cool kids at lunch. Fond memories of pressing your face into the soft foam eye pads and preparing to be blown away with eye-searingly red 3D graphics from beyond your wildest dreams! In homage to the technological feat that was an at-home virtual reality simulator, we at Internets Was Yes have prepared for your reading pleasure a definitive list of the top ten Virtual Boy games of all time! So dig the Virtual Boy out from under that dusty Sega Master System in the back of your closet and take a trip down virtual memory lane. And keep in mind - these advanced graphics cannot be appreciated on a TV or LCD screen.
The Ten Best Virtual Boy Games of All Time:
#10 - 3-D Tetris What can you say about Tetris that hasn't already been said? It's Tetris. It's awesome. But this was 3-D (That's right, three hyphen dee, old-skool style) Tetris - it took everything you loved about the old 2-D Tetris and added a whole new dimension. Challenging and consistently replayable, 3-D Tetris gets the #10 spot on our list.
#9 - Teleroboxer Ah, Teleroboxer. For all of us dreamers who hoped one day we could transcend this mortal coil, have our consciousness placed into a mechanized robotic shell, and compete in a robot boxing league. In perhaps the only game of its kind, Teleroboxer offered us the chance to live this dream with stunning realism through the Virtual Boy's advanced VR technology. You could almost feel the cold fist of your opponent as you sparred against the best Teleroboxers in the world. To ignore the impact this game had on boxing games Virtual Boy market is impossible, giving Teleroboxer its solid #9 placement.
#8 - Galactic Pinball With actual pinball machines becoming more and more rare as digital entertainment boomed, the good people at Nintendo sought to introduce an entire generation to the glories of Pinball. Virtual Boy was a perfect vehicle for this endeavor, and Galactic Pinball gave the player the excitement of playing in space. While the physics engine wasn't perfect, being the only Pinball game to grace the Virtual Boy, it easily deserves the #8 spot.
#7 - Mario Tennis Coming bundled with the Virtual Boy, this was the game that everybody had to have, literally. It was an experience like no other (unless, of course, you are part of the Pudgy Plumber Tennis League), creating a veritable cadre of virtual John McEnroes the world over. I can remember a real sense of competition the first time that Mario served a blazing red ace right past my outstretched racket. Solid gameplay and a variety of playable characters made Mario Tennis the gold standard of tennis simulations for Virtual Boy owners.
#6 - Vertical Force A vertical scrolling shooter in the vein of R-Type failed to capitalize on the 3-D nature of the Virtual Boy, but still provided amazing gameplay depth for a 2-D game and had an incredible amount of replay value. A must-play for fans of the genre, it won us over with its action-packed gameplay and tight controls.
#5 - Panic Bomber Another masterful puzzle game from Nintendo. They took classic Bomberman and added top-down Puzzle Bobble-style gameplay to create an addicting mind-bender that kept you coming back for more. Even when my eyes were bleeding from the cutting edge graphics, I just kept telling myself "Just one more game". After I got out of Panic Bomber rehab in '97, my sponsor had me get rid of my copy, but I'll never forget what an amazing game it was.
#4 - Mario Clash Combining classic 2-D platforming and 3-D shell-throwing action, Mario Clash was the closest thing to a side-scrolling Mario release for the Virtual Boy. But Mario gameplay is the status quo for a reason, making Clash an instant classic in an already strong lineup of games for the system.
#3 - Nester's Funky Bowling Over fifteen years before Wii Bowling came along, Nester's was the only game in town for high-def 3-D bowling simulation. Nester's Funky Bowling is in the top three for its strong showing of bowling physics, but they even went one step better and made the bowling funky. This was the only time in videogame history that you could funk-ify your bowling experience, and let's be honest - it worked.
#2 - Golf A game so good it didn't need a fancy title. Golf is what it was called and golf is what it delivered. I'll let the screen shot do the talking here - it was as close to being a Blue-Green colorblind golfer as you could get, and improved the genre with its truly 3-D styles.
#1 - 3-D Tetris Cut down in its prime, the Virtual Boy only saw nine games released over its short lifespan. Because of this, after much contention between the Internets Was Yes editors, we decided to give the #1 spot to the same game as #10: 3-D Tetris has become the meter stick by which all puzzle games must be measured, and we'd be lying if we said that we weren't still powering up the good ol' Virtual Boy for another round of tetris long after we'd eBayed the rest of our games. You can't beat this masterpiece of logic and quick thinking for sheer replayability, and for that it has received the coveted title of #1 Virtual Boy Game.
Looking for a way to finally be free of the confines of dry land, but fear the life of a pirate or cruise ship activity coordinator isn't for you? Well, thanks to the good folks at Freedom Ship, (no, not that kind of freedom ship) you can soon live on the high seas, without all the risk of scurvy!
The Freedom Ship is being designed to be a completely self-sustaining community (as long as they can keep getting durable goods and materials from the mainland, that is) for you and your family to live within. On a boat. Circling the globe, port-to-port:
From Freedom Ship's website:
The Freedom Ship Project's Primary Objectives:
Provide a unique, traveling residential community, combining the amenities of a modern city with those of the finest resorts, in an attractive, stimulating, and secure environment.
Create a vigorous commercial community whose privately owned and operated on board enterprises will sell their products and services worldwide.
Establish the world's largest duty-free retail shopping mall and bring it to markets around the world with a steady and substantial stream of resident and visiting customers.
Develop the standard in education (US grades K through 12) for the entire world.
Provide the residents and crew with the finest healthcare facilities and plans possible.
So basically they're making a giant mall. That you can live in. And if you get sick of shopping, don't worry; they have a hospital. But wait, there's more:
"Attractive artwork and creative architecture would grace the ship. Parks and promenades would boast waterfalls, ponds, and extensive landscaping. Most levels would feature large saltwater aquariums. The shopping mall, one of the world's largest, would also be one of its most beautiful. Portions would be dedicated to individual countries, featuring culturally characteristic architectures. The planned 100-foot-wide main deck would lead to a marina at the stern. Over 200 acres of open area are planned for recreation and relaxation."
That's right. It will be a giant tacky mall.
I imagine life on Freedom Ship would would be somewhere between living in Bluthton and Sea Britain.
Oh, except Freedom Ship isn't a joke.
I was unable to find any information on how Freedom Ship will be powered, but unless there's been some fantastic advances in engine technology I'm unaware of, it's going to be either gas or coal. Very environmentally friendly, Freedom Ship.
Moreover, the designers of the ship seem to have been scammed out of most of their venture capitol when the man they put in charge of their money handed it over to someone in exchange for some magic beans, ahem, I mean a Peruvian Gold Certificate. While they battle that one out in Florida's court system, the whole project's on hold.
If, after all this, you're interested in becoming a resident of this future set-piece for horror movies (Event Horizon at Sea?) you can get in touch with Freedom Ship for potential resident information here.
Imense.com ought to be giving the folks in charge of Google Image Search a panic attack.
Instead of just searching the names of photos, Imense Photo Search looks inside the photo. This provides some amazing results, as you can ask for very specific images.
Because we can search "inside" the picture, you can also do queries such as "group of 5 ", "beach sunset", "red dawn over the mountains", "green centre purple background " etc., and Imense will find relevant images that match your description, even where the pictures had not been appropriately tagged by a person.
I tested these searches out. I tried "group of 5" and came up with many options, one of which is the skydivers. I also tried out "green centre (they are British) with a purple background" and found the nice flower image shown. I am really happy with the images my searches found, and I think this is the result of some amazing programming.
Right now, Imense.com is in beta testing, so it only has about 5 million images to search from. Oh wait, that is a lot! These images are split into two categories, you can choose to search from amateur images that are found on the web, or you can search for images taken by professional affiliates of the website.
Another great feature about Imense.com is that it gives you a "Scratch Pad" where you can click, drag, and store the photos that you want to keep and use for a later date. This is some amazing search and image technology, I highly recommend that you check it out.
It's no secret that Macintosh products have been moving front and center of the computing landscape: They're hip! They're trendy! They don't get viruses! They increase your social capital! And they have an admittedly effective "I'm a Mac" ads that have been plaguing Microsoft since they began airing:
Oh, wait. Macs only have a 21% market share. That means that a vast majority of the remaining 79% of the market is Windows (or Unix)-based. Is Microsoft really hurting so bad that they need to hire Jerry Seinfeld for a barely-intelligible and quickly-canceled ad campaign? To mitigate this failure to capture 110% of the computing market, Microsoft has created anew and very original series of ads:
"The TV campaign, called 'Pride', shows people from all walks of life who all state 'I'm a PC'." (Guardian UK)
Finally, the closeted PC users of the world can proudly say that they are PCs. We are not concerned with being 'uncool' or wearing corrective optics! Sure, we might be a humble fish monger (0:59 on the first ad), but we will no longer abide the derision from you Mac users. You with your cool haircuts and your elitist soy lattes and your sleeve tattoos and your pure-as-undriven-snow colored laptops. There are literally dozens of us PC users. Dozens! We will not be silent. We will not be afraid.
UPDATES WAS YES!: The Seinfeld/Gates ads are, apparently, not canceled.
A French man made a huge mistake yesterday, when he attempted to retrieve his mobile phone from a train's toilet and became stuck up to his shoulder (don't text and pee, kids).
