Want to see your favorite 8-bit video games come to life in NYC? That's pretty much what's going on in this 2-minutes of old school awesomeness below. Too bad almost all of these characters are out to destroy us—it's like pixelgeddon! more ›

Donkey Kong’s new world champion was raised in NY AND he’s a plastic surgeon! Hank Chien—who made it to the “kill screen” in just 2 hours, 35 minutes, racking up 1,061,700 points—became devoted to the game after watching the documentary King of Kong. “Before then, I only played 1 game of Donkey Kong in my entire life—that was in 2006. I remember not being able to pass the first board and thinking this game stinks,” he told Examiner.com. But after training hard for over a year, the 35-year-old set the record in his home, taping the game so that officials could verify his scores. The champion admits that there were some obstacles along the way: “the holidays, work and women—oops—a woman.” Well he better brace for more obstacles, because arcade game mastery is catnip to the ladies. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] In case you managed to avoid this horrible news over the holiday weekend, on Saturday a 9-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in a Harlem housing project while playing a video game with a 25-year-old man with a history of mental illness. What's even more distressing is that the suspect, Alejandro Morales, has a history of mental illness, a lengthy rap sheet, and spent Christmas Eve pacing in a Times Square movie theater ranting about he "felt like killing someone." more ›

How many Ghostbutsters video games does the world need? Guess one more can't hurt. The NY Times has an interesting little piece on Dan Aykroyd and also reports that Atari "has approached Ghostbusters: the Video Game as a major production in its own right. In a reversal of the traditional entertainment food chain, the game, to be released June 16, will come to market even as planning for the long-awaited third Ghostbusters film remains in the earliest stages. The expectation is that the game will both revitalize and expand interest in the franchise ahead of a new movie." The company is promoting the game as having been written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, but the latter says, “The crassest way I can put it is that they couldn’t have paid us enough to give it the time and attention required to make it as funny as a feature film.” Though the Times says it is actually quite funny, and the graphics don't look half bad either—just check out this trailer. more ›

Six teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old, were arrested yesterday for mugging, attacking, attempting to carjack, and overall menacing in Nassau County. And the police say they were inspired by Grand Theft Auto IV. more ›

Grand Theft Auto gets an '80s redux (heroin for 20 bucks back then seems a little unrealistic, however). If you ever wondered what the game would have looked like on the original NES, this one's for you: more ›

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Coming up on April 29th is the latest Grand Theft Auto extravaganza. The game wreaks havoc on Liberty City, which is essentially a not-quite-gentrified New York City (though it takes place in the current year). The latest leak from the anticipated game is a city map (we spy Roosevelt Island) and a map of the subway system, which has everyone opining. How does the Rockstar Games version of our 722-mile, 468-station subway system with 22 lines hold up? more ›

A NY-based nonprofit called Breakthrough launched a video game yesterday called ICED: I Can End Deportation (also a play on the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department). more ›

For the past few years, the French game and humor site called Uzinagaz.com has been featuring an online video game which challenges players to prevent jetliners from flying into the Twin Towers. As the game progresses, the planes arrive with increasing frequency and eventually each tower collapses in a plume of digital dust. The tagline for the game, called New York Defender, says "Go beyond your powerlessness and use your mouse to fight back." more ›

So if you remember correctly, Grand Theft Auto IV, the New York City crime simulator, was supposed to be in stores by now. But between production delays and the million other great games this season to compete with, they decided to just push it back till next Spring and get it right. But just in case you've you've still got an itch for some Eastern European organized crime this holiday season, here's a brand... more ›

Ghostbusters has been in the form of a videogame ever since it hit the big screen in 1984, and since then it's been through many versions and platforms. Seems it has taken nearly 24 years to perfect it though, as it's just been announced the movie will haunt us til the end up time with a series of top-notch videogames to come.First title in what the publisher hopes will be a series of Ghostbusters games... more ›

The fourth annual DigitalLife event kicks off today at the Javits Center. Featuring over 200 exhibitors, it is easily the best preview of digital gadgetry coming to life in the fall quarter. Today saw new product releases from Palm (with the Centro - a $99 Treo follow up targeted to new smart phone users exclusive to Sprint), iRobot (new cleaning robots!) , Gateway (a sleek new all-in-one called "One"), and Microsoft (Extenders for Windows Media Center). more ›

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(directed by Zack Snyder) more ›

The city's deputy mayor of health and human services Linda Gibbs announced some details of how the cash-incentives-to-the-poor program will work yesterday. Students (whose schools participate in the program and whose families meet the critieria) would get $25/month for at least 95% elementary school attendance and 50%/month at the high school level, $600 for each of the five Regents exams passed, $300 for taking 11 high school credits a year, $50 for getting a library card and $50 for taking the PSAT. Additionally, some families will qualify for $150/month for working 30 hours a week and $600 for every 140 hours of job training. more ›

LB: We were sitting at our local bar (shout out to Rope!) and Steve mentioned in passing he had registered wiimbledon.net. Pretty cheeky, I thought, and asked if he was going to hold it for ransom. After a few beers (shout out to Six Points' Sweet Action!) and a few more beers, Wiimbledon was born. more ›

If you're looking for a good way to mimic the great NYC outdoors, check out the NY Times article about police car sirens - the Times even has a separate page with MP3s of all the different sounds. While demonstrating the different siren sounds to Times reporter Cara Buckley, Officer Spiros Komis made his work sound like he's a DJ when trying to get someone to stop speeding:

“I go through the whole mode,” he said, his fingers hovering above a dash-mounted keyboard that controls a police car’s lights and sounds. more ›

Five cars crashed during a crazy police chase on the West Shore Expressway yesterday afternoon. The whole matter started when the driver of a Toyota Camry was stopped by a Staten Island Highway Patrol officer. The driver took off and exited at Victory Boulevard, hitting a white Ford van. The Camry started to smoke, so the car's passenger got out and, according to the Staten Island Advance, went to call his mom. The passenger ended up waiting at a bus stop, where the police arrested him. more ›

As part of Adidas's new spring line of End to End sneakers for Foot Locker, the German shoe manufacturer has created an EndtoEnd Project exhibit in an empty lot on Lafayette and Houston. Adidas had different graffiti artists create designs for shoes in an East London warehouse, so in bringing the finished shoes to the states, Adidas has the artists tagging a replica of a NYC subway car! more ›

With the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer circulating a good six months before the game's release, NYC officials are giving the thumbs down. The Daily News has comments:

"It's despicable to glamorize violence in games like these, regardless of how far-fetched the setting may be," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. more ›

Well, it looks like those faithful to Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise will be able to steal cars in New York City in Grand Theft Auto IV. The newest GTA, which won't be released until mid-October is actually a sequel to GTA III, which took place in a "quasi-NYC". It wasn't enough to have Activision's game True Crime, where you could be a rogue street cop (maybe not so far from the truth), but now you can steal cars beat people up. It's almost like an updated version of Rockstar's own video game version of The Warriors. more ›

, has become known for his ability to elicit naturalistic acting performances from his handsome young actors and that style expertly employed in this new movie. Visually, the movie strives to also be low-key, though it is beautifully composed. Scenes that might have been played for massive dramatic appeal--like the murdering of four officers in a pub's back room [pictured]--are delivered with little visual or musical preface and as a result have an even more powerful impact. This should be a note to Hollywood, violence doesn't always have to have the fan fair of a video game. (Fun fact about Loach's casting process/attention to real details: Murphy, as well as other some other actors, are from County Cork where the movie was shot and thus have totally authentic accents.) more ›

Add "Do you play video games?" to the list of questions you might want to ask your surgeon. more ›

I really liked the idea of writing from the perspective of a child who was physically different from everyone around him in a very obvious way. I think children are constantly trying to figure out where they fit into their world—how to define themselves—and I wanted to explore what this struggle would be like for someone whose existence seemed to be pretty well defined from the get-go. more ›

THEATER: Adam Rapp’s Stone Cold Dead Serious is being revived at Theatre Row on the West Side. The surreally dark comedy deals with a struggling family on the outskirts of Chicago who pin their hopes on their video-game obsessed teenage son. The kid just has to put his skills on the line in a real-life fight-to-the-death video game competition. Fun fact: When Stone Cold Dead Serious was presented at Chashama in 2003, stagehands changed the scenery in ninja suits. - John Del Signore more ›

MOVIE: In their ongoing series about The Next Generation of Film, the Film Society at Lincoln Center has been bringing award winning filmmakers to the Upper West Side to discuss the behind the scenes of their work. This newest installment features Ben Affleck, the Oscar winner who seems to be on the road back from being a celeb couple punch line with his work in the recent film, , it's rude. - Karen Wilson more ›

According to the New York Times, the new new in Tokyo is spending 8 to 10 hours in a tiny cubicle, binging on media: more ›