VIDEO: What The Heck? Nintendo PlayStation Console Brought To Life!

Description: Looking like a cross between a CD-ROM drive and a Super
Nintendo console, the Nintendo/Sony CD-ROM protoype unit was thought lost until a
chance discovery a few years ago. Proof of Sony & Nintendo's ill-fated team up in
the Sony logo in the console's lower left corner.

There's a missing link that connects Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), its successor the Nintendo 64, and its rival console the Sony Playstation: the SNES-CD, also code named the Play Station. The console was supposed to be launched as an add-on for the standard SNES, as well as a stand-alone hybrid console by Sony called the Play Station. The partnership between Nintendo and Sony crumbled, so Sony developed their own solely CD-ROM based console, the Sony PlayStation.

About two years ago, one of the original Nintendo Play Station prototypes was found after it was purchased in a bankruptcy auction of the assets from a software company. The protype was tested, and while the top-loading test cartridge of the unit worked, the CD-ROM drive didn't work, nor did the audio output. Vlogger and console model Ben Heckerdorn, aka Ben Heck, got his hands on this prototype unit in July of last year, and did a meticulous disassembly, tear-down, documentation and reassembly. He was able to get a lot of information on the inner workings of the system and was able to determine that while the Super Nintendo part of the console still worked, but the CD-ROM drive was completely self-contained and seemed to require some sort of boot disc to access the audio output or anything else on the CD. A little while later, gaming enthusiast site Retro Collect announced that an anonymous source sent them the necessary boot disc.

With the final piece of the puzzle in place, Ben Heck got to work, and with a little bit of hard work, a little bit of luck and a lot of engineering analysis, he was able to get the prototype working and even ran a homebrew game on it. Check out the whole video here:

Everything Old Is New Again: Video Through 136 Yr Old Lens

French photographer Mathieu Stern has a fascinated series called "The Weird Lens Challenge" on his youtube channel, and he recently shared what I think is his most fascinating experiment yet. He look a large-format stationary camera from the 1800s, carefully removed the iris lens, mounted it on his Sony A7II camera, and then posted the video results, which you can watch below:


How well did it work for him? Well, as Stern tells it,

"The lens is incredibly sharp for a 136 years old simple metallic lens, from my test it’s even sharper than most of my modern Canon lenses, the results are amazing … but it also gives some strange lens flares and light leaks that are pretty dreamy".

He also took some still images with the lens, which you can take a look at here.

Review: Lost Dimension (PS3)

Lost Dimension - Playstation 3 Game Review

Keep Your Friends Close, Enemies Closer To Save The World

Lost Dimension starts off with the stakes as high as they seem they can get: a cartoonishly evil villain who calls himself The End has created a tower called "The Pillar". He launches a scattered nuclear strike and the death toll is 2 billion. The End announces to that he has more nukes pointed at the rest of the world's major cities and he'll launch them in just 13 hours unless someone can scale the tower and stop him. Conventional military weapons are useless, so the world's last hope is SEALED: an 11-member team with psychic powers.

There's a twist, though: 5 of your team members are secretly traitors. Before you can proceed to each level, your group is required vote to "erase" the traitor before you can continue. If you choose wrong, not only do you erase an innocent person, but you will have to fight the traitor AND the final boss.

Sho Kasugai  uses his powers to try and weed out suspects.

The team leader, Sho Kasugai, has the power to use psychic visions to read the vibes of those he leads in battle. This means that after each battle you can get vague impressions of the chosen squad members-- with three suspects per floor. You can use Sho's "Deep Vision" ability to delve further into a squad member's mind to find out if they are innocent or not. But the "Vision Points" that grant you this ability are a precious resource, only given out after 3 of the many battles on each floor. You can only use that Deep Vision on a squad member you've taken into battle recently.

The game manage to take the issues of suspicion, teamwork and trust and weave it into the core gameplay. The higher your teammates' trust levels are with you and with each other, the more likely they are to join in assist attacks-- free additional combination attacks on a target enemy in range. How do you build up trust? By taking them into battle with you. The more battles a character fights in, the weightier the vote is during the time to choose a traitor for erasure. Talk with teammates after battle and you increase camaraderie, which can lead to to the highest level of trust and a character exclusive subquest that offers more character insight and extra points to level up your skill tree.

The combat superficially resembles Valkyrie Profile-- combat is turn based, with circles measuring out your movement, your attack range and the enemy's range. In addition to ranged weapons and melee weapon attacks, each character has a unique set of psychic powers, both active and passive, that let you do everything from copy an ability to ignoring terrain height to turning enemies against each other. And when a traitor is erased, they leave behind "Materia"-- special items that let you assign your fallen comrades' abilities to others; this is also the only way to unlock special skills for each character. With so much flexibility in the battle system, abilities and combo setups, the combat is rock solid and fun to play, with all sorts of stackable strategies available to develop.

The story does start off like a typical "band together to save the world" quest, and the addition of a secret traitor in each section adds an extra level of tension to clearing each floor. Each character is broadly characterized, but display distinct personalities and issues that link the social aspects with the powers used in combat. Not only does this strengthen the character development in the story, it gives you a real punch in the gut if a character you like turns out to be a traitor. And the traitor is going to be different from floor to floor and from playthrough to playthrough. I don't just mean your playthrough would be different than mine. After you beat the game, you get a sort of "bad ending" and are then told that you must reach complete camaraderie with EVERY character to get the true ending, something impossible to do on one playthrough.

Whether this extends replay value or just artificially wastes your time depends on which side of the coin you fall on. I actually had to play through 3 times to max out all my friendships because one of the first-floor traitors in the second playthrough was one of the characters I hadn't gotten to max out friendship the first time around and you can't do character subquests until the 3rd floor. Lost Dimension really, REALLY makes you earn that happy ending! On subsequent playthroughs the dead-simple deep vision minigame gets a little repetitive. Some variety would have been nice. While the characters are strongly developed, the world building is pretty thin, leaving a lot of details to be filled in by reading game lore in standalone documents (confusingly categorized under "Tips"), which can leave you confused on character motivations for betrayal unless you track down some optional documents on the 2nd playthrough. Another issue I have to warn you about is that there was one battle on my first playthough (the "Alarm" battle) and one battle on my second playthrough (the first battle intro on the second floor) that consistently crashes or hangs, locking the console up too. Save often.

If you download this game from the PSN Store this week (either the Vita or PS3 version) you can also download $20 worth of free DLC for the game, from alternate costumes to mission packs. And while there are a few bumps in the climb upwards to save the world, the satisfying combat, intrigue and social dynamics system make Lost Dimension a worthwhile journey.


This review is based on the Playstation 3 version. The review was compensated with a download code for this game provided by Atlus.

5 Shocking But Real Medical Conditions Linked To Video Games (Retro Repost)

Note: This article was originally published as part of my time as an Associated Content Featured Contributor to the Video Games Section. Associated Content was later bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Voices. Yahoo Voices shut down in July of 2014. This article is being republished here on The Code, backdated to its original date of publication to remain as a record of my writing.

From your parents scolding you not to play video games so close to the television, to opinion and editorial pieces in newspapers across the country calling video games the next harbinger of a violent society, video games are blamed for a host of maladies, both social and physical. Video game players might be forgiven as dismissing old wives' tales, or ignoring talking-head pundits blustering about video games. When medical experts begin to weigh in with conditions they have seen in patients, it might do well for even the most hardcore gamer to sit up and take notice. Here are 5 shocking but true medical conditions that have been linked to playing video games.

5. Acute Wiiitis 

Dr. Julio Bonis, a practitioner of family medicine in Madrid, diagnosed and named a muscle injury he called "Acute wiiitis" in June 2007. He first noticed the condition, pronounced "wee-eye-tiss", when he awoke after a playing a few rounds of the Wii Tennis game the night before. While the injury was similar to the strain tennis players are at risk of, appropriately named "Tennis Elbow", his injury was in the wrist and forearm area. He noted that his colleagues had made similar observations or complaints of injury and muscle fatigue after playing Wii Sports. Luckily, the treatment, as outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine was fairly simple: take ibuprofen for one week, and abstain completely from playing any Wii video games.

Of course, this wasn't the first time playing games for a Nintendo console had sparked diagnosis of an injury. If one looks back a few generations to the heyday of the Nintendo Entertainment System, one will find doctors talking about a malaise affecting hardcore gamers of the 1980s called...

4. Nintendinitis

First discussed by Dr. Brazington in the May 17th 1990 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Nintendinitis (also called “Nintendo Thumb”) is a repetitive strain injury caused by overuse of the directional pad on the NES controller. The main symptoms of Nintendinitis are blistering, swelling and acute numbness of the digits. The extremity most commonly afflicted with Nintendinitis was the thumb, but any finger used to operate an NES controller was diagnosed as at risk for the affliction. Nintendinitis can also be a precursor to other repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. The recommended treatment for Nintendinitis was usually a short regimen of anti-inflammatory medication, an over the counter pain reliever and strict time limits on the length of video game play sessions.

Nintendo isn’t the only video game console manufacturer to have its own ailment. The Sony Playstation alarmed some dentists with one malady dubbed…

3. Playstation Lip

First noted in the June 10th, 2000 issue of the British Dental Journal, “Playstation Lip” had two dentists, R. L. M. Inglis and R. R. Welbury quite concerned. They noted two separate patients that came to their office with severe lower lip trauma. When further questioned, the patients admitted to intensely chewing and sucking on their lower lips while concentrating on playing Playstation games. Other symptoms included jaw muscle fatigue and bleeding of the inside of the lower lip.

While the usual treatment recommended for Playstation Lip is a matter of relaxation techniques and learning to modify one’s beahavoir when concentrating, in these patients’ case the lowerlip trauma was so severe that they required to use of soft splints and mouthguard-like shields for the gums. Of course, while the conditions outlined so far are injurious but not life threatening, there can be more severe consequences.

2. Video Game Induced Epileptiform Seizures

The first case of an epileptiform seizure that was linked to playing video games was reported in 1981. Over the past 30 decades, hundreds of cases of eliptiform seizures triggered by video games were reported. Further study has shown that the risk of seizures are not for younger children with photosensitive epilepsy (where seizures are triggered by light), but also in children and adolescents with epilepsy that are not photosensitive at all. This increased risk is why most video game published place warnings about an epilepsy risk in video game manuals, and sometimes in the video games or console startup sequences themselves.

There currently is no known cure for photosensitive epileptic seizures, so most of the treament methods treat symptoms, along with a healthy dose of risk prevention. The most important steps for prevention of these seizures when playing video games: take a 15 minute break every hour, play in a well-lighted area, and to make sure you’re at least 6 to ten feet away from the television when playing video games.

One curious case went even further than the possibility of triggering seizures, when a teenager came down with a case of…

1. Traumatic Mental Detachment

In late 2008, 13 year old Lorenzo Amato was found by his father, curled up in a state of shock, and appearing as if in a stupor. Lorenzo did not talk, respond to questions, or even seem to know where he was. When he was rushed to the emergency room, doctors thought Lorenzo might have suffered a stroke or aneurysm. Later, they determined that this had happened after a marathon session in front of the Playstation. Antonio Buccoliero, a local politician, told reports that “…once [the doctors] understood that this was a strange kind of mental detachment connected to his PlayStation,” they were able to successfully treat Lorenzo. Lorenzo later told reporters that he asked his father to throw out his Playstation, saying “If I even think about it I want to throw up.”

While these conditions are strange but true, the key to continuing to enjoy playing video games without tying your muscles up in knots, harming your lips, or placing yourself at risk for light-induced seizures and eyestrain is moderation. According to the Mayo Clinic, taking breaks after every half hour, stopping when you get tired or feel fatigued, and resting your eyes if you feel sore, dizzy or nauseous will go a long way towards making sure you enjoy your favorite video games without taxing your body.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0616721120070606

http://www.sportsscientists.com/2008/01/computer-games-continued.html

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/12/16579

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2330022

http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/173_11_041200/koh/koh.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14706041

http://iospress.metapress.com/content/nlw6et6ub0r13tmj/

http://www.qj.net/qjnet/playstation-3/playstation-addict-diagnosed-with-mental-detachment.html

http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge-newspaper-2009/mar-13c.html