Army Sets Up Office of Video Games

Add Computer Programmer to the list of positions that the Army will be recruiting to fill in the near future. The Army recently opened an Office of Gaming, which will solely charged with developing simulators for the troops. The Army was an early adopter using simulators for training and has spun out some really cutting edge tech through DARPA. More recently the Army has received buzz for the America's Army game. However, they have never had a department dedicated to game development.

Is this a good idea? While I admit they are plenty of good uses for sims in military settings, given the inability of the government to do anything quickly, efficiently, or high tech - wouldn't it be better to outsource this?

Read the full story at Wired.

Dreamcast 2 on the Horizon?

Videogamer.com is reporting that SEGA has recently filed an application to protect the Dreamcast trademark.

Now the cynic in me says so what? Companies protect their IP. Why wouldn't a company that poured millions of dollars into developing a brand spend a few grand extra to protect it? However, the reason the blog-o-sphere is worked up is because the new trademark app submitted on Aug. 13, 2007 states that the trademark relates to

"Home video game machines; player-operated electronic controllers for electronic video game machines, video game interactive controller, namely, hand held pads, and floor pads or mats, joysticks for video games, computer cursor control devices, namely, computer mouse, flash memory cards, video game software, computer game programs."

Not a whole lot earth-shattering, except the original Dreamcast never had a floor pad or flash memory cards. What do you thing? Legit possibility of Dreamcast 2 or much ado about nothing?

Read the whole story and trademark application here.

Bringing Old Systems Back to Life In Style

Ben Heckendorn is somewhat of a phenom in geek circles for the insane custom video game consoles he has been turning out over the past few years. He has recently converted some of the newer systems like the Wii and XBOX360 into laptops for (somewhat) portable play.

My personal favorites are the portable NES and and the PS2 portables. Yeah the systems Ben mods aren't as small as say a PSP or Nintendo DS, but they also have the entire motherboard of the original system and take full size cartridges or disks.

If you have an old system and about $500 lying around he will mod your system into a working portable version too.

Head on over to his site and check out the masterpieces as well as his step by step instructions for some of the rigs.