Brandweekreports that Jack in the Box is trying to lure gamers into its fast food restaurants with its latest promotion. The jacksbigripoff.com website has details about the prizes, which are $5,000 game rooms.
These rooms feature: a 46-inch flat-screen HDTV; a home theater speaker system; a $1,000 GameStop shopping spree; an Ultimate Game Chair v3 recliner; an Xbox 360 Elite console. All told, the game rooms are valued at $5,000.
"Gaming has become extremely popular, especially among one of our core audience -- men 18 to 24," said Teka O'Rourke, client director of menu marketing and promotions, in a statement. "So bringing Jack in the Box and the gaming world together through Jack's Big Rip-Off is a great match."
Jack's Big Rip-off is a tongue-in-cheek name but it might make some people think entering is not worth it.
These Nike Dunk Hi SB sneakers were inspired by Pac-Man. The red, blue and yellow colors make for a colorful shoe. There was a much brighter Mrs. Pac-Man inspired Nike sneaker - see here.
There are some Tetris inspired tiles available for your kitchen and bathrooms called Tetris Tiles. Don't worry you can get them in a different colors than this. And with a box of Tetris Tiles you can create your own mosaic says Boing Boing.
I have hope for these Tetris shaped bathroom tiles though. Oh, sure, their "Mosaic" offering — a sheet of Tetris tiles already laid out in what is purported to be a polygonally pure Tetris pattern — is in fact a shameless cheat, the edges sullied by one- and two-celled space-filling abominations. But with a box of the base pieces, I don't need to rely on some designer's muffed polygon stacking skills: my 959-line Tetris personal best attests to my ability to find some configuration that would make Saint Pajitnov proud... right before my entire bathroom wall collapsed in on itself with a triumphant chiptune tromp.
There sure are a lot of Tetris products out there.
FRAG is a documentary about the pro gaming industry from independent filmmaker Cohesion Productions. The film was first showed at QuakeCon.
In short, FRAG provides an introduction to the professional video gaming, cyberathletes and eSports. It also discusses the controversy and corruption in the industry. The film also spotlights the struggles individual cyberathletes face while breaking into professional video gaming and maintaining success. You can buy the video from the film's website.
Here's a great detailed video review of the movie from Awkward Todd.
"I'm extremely proud of my team right now," said Michael O'Dell, General Manager for Birmingham Salvo. "They truly deserve the title of World Champions. We faced a lot of tough competition throughout the season, but when our backs were against the wall, every player demonstrated the skills and the poise to step up when it mattered the most. My players spent hundreds of hours practicing this season, and their hard work paid off tonight."
Teenager Chris Chike is World's Top Guitar Hero III Player
Teenager Chris Chike is the No. 1 ranked Guitar Hero III player in the world. The Guinness World Records recently awarded him with a certificate in New York City. G4TV reports that he scored 40,647 points on "Through The Fire and Flames" from DragonForce. That's 97% on "expert" says G4TV. You can see him playing in this CBS News video below.
The Red Herringreports that professional game leagues like Major League Gaming (MLG) and the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) are heading to television thanks to deals with television networks like Comcast and CBS.
The Comcast deal is a partnership with professional game league Major League Gaming (MLG) and will include distribution of a MLG television show on Comcast’s On-Demand service and also the company's GameInvasion.net web site. Comcast also opened access to GameInvasion, which was previously only available to the company’s high-speed Internet service customers. The site will also feature videos from G4 Television, GameTrailers.com, and IGN.
Yesterday, the World Series of Video Games (WSVG) unveiled its own network TV partnership, announcing a series of deals with CBS, CSTV, and HD network Voom that will bring the footage to a major U.S. network for the first time. The deal will collectively bring some 20 hours of content to U.S. viewers. The WSVG also said it is investigating international distribution for the content.
CBS coverage will include a one-hour special set to air on December 30 at 3pm. The show will feature footage of a number of professional gamers, including Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel—one of the sport's best-known U.S. competitors. Mr. Wendel has appeared in a number of mainstream media outlets and, in addition to his tournament battles, now peddles his own line of game hardware, accessories, and apparel.
Comcast did not offer details about when its initial gaming broadcast will be available, saying only that it will include footage from last month's MLG national championship in Las Vegas. The footage will initially air on NBC-owned USA Network. Earlier this year, MLG announced a partnership with USA to bring several hour-long shows to the cable network.
It is about time the pro gamers have their fifteen minutes of televised fame. The competitions also might be more exciting with the help of professional announcers.
Eight finalists have been announced for in the competition to find a new Frag Doll. The Frag Dolls are a group of blogging girl gamers sponsored by Ubisoft. Bios and photographs for the eight finalists can be found here. News.com reports that the new Frag Doll will be chosen in April after auditions and gaming competitions.
Ubisoft is hoping that it will inform and entertain both groups with its search for a new Frag Doll, the company's sponsored roster of hard-core gamers, who all happen to possess two X chromosomes.
As such, the company announced Tuesday night its eight finalists in an eight-month-long national search for a new Frag Doll.
Among them are Nin9tyNin9, a "Halo 2" and "Quake 3" fan from Phoenix, and PerfectDark, a killer "Ghost Recon 2" player from Brooklyn.
After a weekend of auditions and competitive game play at Ubisoft's San Francisco offices in early April, the company will name its final choice.
The article also says that GameTrailers.com will be filming the auditions to produce a web-based reality-series. No word on win this show will be available, however.
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, the leading professional gamer in prize money and endorsement deals, is now designing a new gaming mouse called the Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse. IT News Online reports that the mouse will be available in early 2006.
Creative has announced the Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse, the gaming mouse co-developed for competitive PC gaming with professional gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. The Creative Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse will be available in early 2006 for an estimated street price of $69.99.
Creative will also release the Fatal1ty 1010 Mouse for casual gamers, featuring a 1600 cpi HD-Optix Engine in early 2006 for an estimated street price of $49.99.
"With the Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse, I hope to help gamers fulfill their dreams of competing at the professional level. But if they think they can beat me, they should know that I'll be using this mouse too," said Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel. "I had a vision of a mouse designed specifically for gaming, with every feature I would need to compete at the highest level. The Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse, which I designed with Creative, realizes my vision and provides me the edge I need as a champion."
Here are the specs for the new mouse from the press release.
The 2400cpi HD-Optix laser engine offers up to 6X the resolution of standard optical mice, and the 5.8 megapixel sensor report rate allows it to work flawlessly on virtually any surface and to track up to 15G's of acceleration, to guarantee that even the shortest or widest hand and arm movements are tracked with the utmost precision;
The custom G-Weight modular weight system allows users to replace weight modules in a central chamber that is easily accessible from the top of the chassis, providing a superior center of balance for the mouse. Five weight modules are included with the mouse, ranging from Light Caliber for extra agility and endurance, to Heavy Caliber for extra precision and sniping;
Rapid-Res One-Click Hardware CPI resolution change button allows the user to instantly change between 400, 800 and 1600 CPI with the touch of a button, and includes a color LED readout for instant visual representation of the current resolution;
Exclusive SpeedWire zero-oxygen copper wiring and tangle-proof coating and a gold-plated USB plug enable the fastest signal transfer to the PC;
Zero-resistance Teflon feet provide smooth performance on any surface;
An ultra-comfortable mouse chassis, rubberized grip points, a premium red and black finish, and an illuminated "Fatal1ty" symbol ensures that the Creative Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse looks as deadly as the performance it delivers.
Who knew a mouse could have so many specs? The Raw Feed wants one and asks "BTW, does anyone know if gold makes the bits go faster?" and also links to a few other sources covering the new mouse which was announced at CES in Las Vegas.
The International Herald Tribunereports that Johnathan Wendel, also known as Fatal1ty, dominated this year's Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) World Finals and defeated Sander "fnatic.Vo0" Kaasjager in the finals. Wendel has earned over $800,000 this year from tournaments winnings and licensing deals according to the IHT article at the old age of 24.
Wendel, the better-known competitor, did what his fans have come to expect and dominated Kaasjager in four straight matches.
"There's a reason why they call him Fatal1ty," one spectator explained as Wendel dispatched Kaasjager in a hail of rockets.
Unlike the other competitors, many of whom still attend college or high school, Wendel plays full time and has acquired superstar status in the computer gaming community that he has turned into a business.
This year Wendel has earned about $600,000 in licensing fees and another $231,000 in tournament winnings. In trying to turn video gaming into a sustainable, professional venture, he and his licenser, Auravision, of Woodland Hills, California, have spent $50,000 helping other gamers attend gaming events around the globe.
Fatal1ty currently has a video running of his win on his website. He has been mentioned in numerous articles including Businessweek and the cover of the L.A. Times. In January he will also be featured on sixty minutes. Fatal1ty offers a list of tips on his site about how to be a pro gamer that is worth reading.
Brice Mellen, a blind 17-year-old high-school student living in Nebraska, proves that you need more than sight to excel at video games. The BBC reports that Mellen can easily defeat gamers with perfect vision in video games like Mortal Combat.
"I can't say that I'm a superpro," he said, working the controller like an extension of his body. "I can be beat."
Those bold enough to challenge him weren't so lucky. One by one, while playing "Soul Calibur 2," their video characters were killed without mercy by Mellen's on-screen alter ego.
"I'm getting bored," Mellen said in jest as he won game after game.
Blind since birth when his optic nerve didn't connect because of Leber's disease, Mellen honed his video game skills over the years through patient and not-so-patient playing, memorizing key joystick operations and moves in certain games, asking lots of questions and paying particular attention to audio cues. He worked his way up from games such as "Space Invaders" and "Asteroid," onto the modern combat games.
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, a well-known professional PC gamer who has been featured recently in Time and ESPN Magazine, won first place, and his 10th major championship, worth $15,000, at the US stop of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) World Tour. The Cyberathlete Extreme Summer Championships 2005 was held at the Gaylord Texan Resort near Dallas, Texas from July 6 through July 10. The event attracted over 7,000 gamers from 60 countries. The US stop was the fifth of ten stops on the CPL World Tour, which culminates with the $500,000 World Tour Championship Finals to be contested this November in New York City.
"I'm so happy to make the breakthrough and win a major championship playing Painkiller," says Wendel. "The hard work and intense training schedule paid off by beating a very tough, International field."
Fatal1ty now holds 10 Major Championship titles, doing so while competing in 5 different games - an achievement held by no other gamer. Adding to his professional career totals, Fatal1ty has now finished in the top three an amazing 52 times, with 39 first place finishes while competing in 57 pro tournaments. This is his first major championship playing the game "Painkiller."
More about the CPL Extreme Summer Championships 2005 can be found here. Fatal1ty's website can be found here.
King Tuur of the Netherlands has battled his way to the top of a double elimination ladder, and ultimately crowned Xbox Live Halo 2 World Champion. Tuur triumphed over 50,000 Halo 2 players worldwide in Xbox Live's first ever Global Halo 2 Tournament. The final match came down to players from Japan and the Netherlands competing for the overall Grand Champion title. Tuur walks away with some nice prizes. It's good to be the King:
For winning the regional championship in the Netherlands, King Tuur received the following prizes:
A half-size Master Chief Statue
Personalized Xbox Live Halo 2 Championship sweatshirt and Regional Champion Plaque
A Samsung Camcorder
For winning the Xbox Live "Halo 2" World Championship, King Tuur received the following prizes:
A 50' Samsung Flat Screen DLP HDTV
A Samsung DVD Player/Recorder
A Personalized Xbox Live Halo 2 Global Champion Trophy featuring a gold Halo 2 game disc
Doris Self, of Fort Lauderdale, eats, drinks and sleeps Q*Bert,
the classic video game from the early 1980s, practicing day and night.
And, if she breaks the Q*bert record, she'll be history's oldest video
game world champion. [Note: Yahoo has an online Q*Bert game here for
those who miss the old favorite]
"I was the Q*bert champion in 1984 with a score of 1,112,300 points,"
remembers Doris Self. "At that time, I was the oldest video game champ in
the world at 58 years old, a fact verified by Twin Galaxies' scorekeeper
Walter Day. It's still listed in Twin Galaxies' Official Video Game and Pinball Book of World Records, the gaming industry's official book of records."
Though Doris' score was bested in 1985, she still retained the status
of "oldest" champion until 2003 when John Lawton, 72, of New Hampshire,
captured the Depthcharge title.
"I was sad when I lost the title I had held for twenty years," said
Doris. "Then I got a call from gaming legend Billy Mitchell, who offered
to loan me a Q*bert machine to practice on and win back my title. Billy
made me promise that I would give up poker and practice Q*bert everyday."
In the early 1980s Billy Mitchell was the most successful video gamer listed in the U.S. edition of the Guinness Book of World Records and was proclaimed
the "Player-of-the-Century" at the 1999 Tokyo Game Show.
Thanks to Mitchell's support, Doris is ready for her big day of truth,
which comes the weekend of June 2-5, when she joins an annual gathering
of classic gamers at Funspot in Weirs Beach, NH, to go for world records.
"My scores will be verified in person by Twin Galaxies' Walter Day and
I must not fail," she vows.
GameRiot, which bills itself as the world's largest traveling videogame party, launched its fourth national tour this spring. GameRiot has appeared in over 60 cities, with over 225,000 attendees to date. The video game festival offers gamers the chance to play new and unreleased console and PC video game titles.
Gamers will be also able to test their skills in competitions for cash prizes and, at certain tour stops, go head-to-head against pro gamers in the world. Future cities hosting GameRiot events include Houston Orlando, Charlotte, Boston and West Palm Beach. Part of GameRiot's schedule includes a joint appearance with the touring event
Hot Import Nights, where people come to show off
their modified cars. Matthew Ringel, Executive Producer of GameRiot and President of Games Media Properties, said, "GameRiot has proven to be a tremendous success thanks to the dedication of gamers everywhere. We are thrilled about working with Hot Import Nights, Extreme Thing and Sunfest this spring as these events draw large crowds of gamers and provide an entertainment setting that perfectly complements the high-adrenaline environment of GameRiot."
The Video Gamers League (VGL), has opened registration for the first season of competition in the National VGL Video Gaming Tournament, a console game tournament. Halo 2 is the official game for the first season, which will include 112 tournaments that will take place in Scion dealerships across the nation. The VGL will offer both team and FFA (free for all) tournaments. The FFA tournaments are free to enter. Official winners will advance to one of six regional tournaments, which will take place in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas,
Orlando, San Francisco, and Chicago. Winners of the regional tournaments will
advance to the national championship, where top finishers will receive cash
and prizes and the grand champion will win a 2005 Scion xB. The VGL
was established by Jeff Gross in 1999. The very first VGL event was held November 20-21, 1999 and featured tournaments for Playstation, Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast.
PMS Clan, a community of girl gamers, launches their first official pro-tournament season this weekend at MLG Houston in Texas, USA. Counting over 150 girls across the USA and Europe, PMS community has grown fast since its launch at the beginning of XBOX Live. With the addition of a large PS2 team and brand new PC division in 2004, they are now the first and largest multi-platform female gaming clan.
PMS Clan was born from the camaraderie of finding other girl
gamers in a very male-dominated online gaming market. Their mission
is to provide a fun and positive environment to other female gamers, while
maintaining competitiveness, fairness, and respect in online gaming.
PMS Clan will be entering four teams into the MLG Houston event this weekend (12th & 13th March).
"This year we expect to reach new heights in PMS. With the launch of our
multi-platform girls, we expect to take the gaming circuits by storm in 2005."
said Amber Dalton (known as Athena Twin PMS), one of the twin sisters who
co-founded the PMS community).
Now that electronic gaming and sports games have become popular to
have electronic gaming sports leagues and star players it makes sense
that virtual game commentators would emerge as well. Marcus DJWheat Graham, who provides play-by-play commentary for gaming tournaments, told the BBC: "Just as a golf enthusiast might
follow every move or match of Tiger Woods, many gaming enthusiasts
follow their favourite teams or players." Commentators are
already covering competitions for the Team Sportscast Network and
Global Gaming League. If you want to be an e-sports commentator you
will need to have a deep understand and superior knowledge of the
moves, skills and layout of the game involved.
The BBC has an interesting article about Jonathan Wendel who is considered the best PC gamer in the world. Wendel, who goes by the gaming handle Fatal1ty, is called the "golden boy" star of first person shooter (FPS) games in the article. The BBC says Fatal1ty wants a new kind of sports star to emerge known as e-sportsmen or e-sportswomen. Fatal1ty is the only gamer to win six CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League) championships and is Doom 3's first world champion. The BBC says he also has an endorsement deal with Creative Labs for gaming accessories and a contract with Abit for Fatal1ty mother boards and video cards. So, in that sense he is very much like a professional atheletes with revenues from both game winnings and endorsements. His "golden boy" image comes from the fact that he has stayed away from alcohol, smoking and drugs. He also stays athletic playing non-virtual sports, so he could be a good role-model for kids.
It is still a rare occurrence, but some gamers are starting to reap decent monetary rewards from their countless hours of game play. A recent article by New York Times writer Eric A. Taub looks at a few gamers that are getting paid for their performance. These players include twenty year-old Matt Leto of Allen, Texas, who recently won $20,000 at the Halo world finals in San Francisco for the second straight year and Johnathan Wendel who has won over $300,000 from gaming awards and endorsements. The number of gamers collecting enough prize and endorsement money to making a living will greatly increase as the number of gaming awards and endorsements climb
over the next several years. Hank Jeong, president of World Cyber
Games in Seoul, told Times journalist Taub that there area
already 1,000 kids in Korea that make a living playing video games.
There are already several gaming leagues emerging like The Global Gaming League, Cyberathlete Professional League and Major League Gaming.
There are some Tetris inspired tiles available for your kitchen and bathrooms called 
The Red Herring 
Eight finalists have been announced for in the competition to find a new Frag Doll. The 
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, the leading professional gamer in prize money and endorsement deals, is now designing a new gaming mouse called the Fatal1ty 2020 Mouse. IT News Online 
The International Herald Tribune 
Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, a well-known professional PC gamer who has been featured recently in Time and ESPN Magazine, won first place, and his 10th major championship, worth $15,000, at the US stop of the 
Doris Self, of Fort Lauderdale, eats, drinks and sleeps Q*Bert,
the classic video game from the early 1980s, practicing day and night.
And, if she breaks the Q*bert record, she'll be history's oldest video
game world champion. [Note: Yahoo has an online Q*Bert game 
