Frivolous Fridays: Mobile Gaming

Frivolous Fridays are the Orbit bloggers’ excuse to post about fun things we care a lot about that may not necessarily have serious implications for politics or social justice. Although any day is a good day to write about our passions outside of social issues, we sometimes have a hard time giving ourselves permission to do that. This is our way of encouraging each other to take a break from serious topics and have some fun.

I am lurving the mobile gaming these days.

I dabble in some PC and console gaming, but I really hit my stride with easy to transport world-building games, collecting games and daily challenges – games that I can carry with me, and check in on periodically…say…over my morning coffee, in line at the post office or over lunch at work.

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Frivolous Fridays: Mobile Gaming
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Skeptech Game-A-Thon Is Now

Amy Roth, Rebecca Watson, Jason Thibeault, Chelsea Du Fresne and Brendan Murphy are currently Google Hangout-ing and killing things in Torchlight II. Ostensibly  to raise money for SkepTech, the incredibly awesome student-organized free-to-attend skeptic conference that’s happening on April 4-6th, but also because killing video game bad guys is just good clean fun.

I’ve attended Skep-Tech – and presented! – and it’s a stellar, well-attended conference. This year they’re bringing in Ian Cromwell, Heina Dadabhoy, Tim Farley, Jesse Galef, Debbie Goddard, Kate Greene, Jessica Kirsner, Hemant Mehta, David Tamayo and Rebecca Watson as speakers and panelists. Head on over to the Skep-Tech website for more details about presentations, panels and speaker bios.

Aaaaand:

A screenshot of Torchlight II with the text "Click here to watch the live gaming and to donate to Skep-Tech"

Skeptech Game-A-Thon Is Now

JT and JTs Videogameathonapalooza!

The first game system I played was the Atari 2600. I have memories of playing E.T., Berzerk, Pitfall, Asteroid, Space-Invaders, Frogger and DigDug.  I still remember the pain of Atari Thumb.

Breakout was my favorite game for a long time.

Remember this bad boy? And unlike some of the other games, this one used the paddle rather than the joystick controller.

After Atari my parents picked us up a Nintendo (NES), and then we upgraded to Super Nintendo when I was in Junior High. I was a HUGE Mario fan. We conquered Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3. I even got the cheat guide for Super Mario 3 so I could find all of the hidden flutes, learn the trick behind scoring five 1-ups at the end of every three levels, and memorize the grids of the memory cards bonus levels.

My other favorite game was Trog! Frickin’ green Trogs were the worst. This was the heyday of my video gaming; we played Duck Hunt, California Games, TMNT, Contra Force, Legend of Zelda, MegaMan, Kid Icarus, Paperboy, Donkey Kong, Tennis and Q*bert. My mom kicked all of our asses in Dr. Mario and Tetris, and my dad and I liked to play one of the casino games, Bases Loaded and Black Bass. The Nintendo was downstairs in our unfinished basement, so often times we would drag over the space heater and play Nintendo while we did laundry.

I completely missed Sega and didn’t pick up a console again until Thanksgiving 2011 when I bought a WII. I rock the new Mario Kart, the Hubby and I like to hunt each other down in Goldeneye 007, and I’m smitten with this one diving game called Endless Ocean. But one of the first things I did when I plugged in the system was download the old SNES Super Mario Bros and Dr. Mario.

Ah memories.

And do you know what starts in, like, NOW? Jason Thibeault and JT Eberhard’s 24 hour Gamers For Godlessness Gameathonapalooza! They’re going to be playing all sorts of retro videogames. For CHARITY.

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

GO HERE TO START WATCHING THE LIVESTREAM

What’s a gameathonapalooza? I’ll let JT explain:

Jason Thibeault from the Lousy Canuck blog and I are going to be playing retro games for 24 straight freaking hours on Saturday!  We’ll be live-streaming our lovely faces along with our games.  We’ll be talking about all kinds of interesting stuff from atheism to politics to gaming history, and we’ll be taking call-ins, email questions, etc.  We’re doing this to raise money for Camp Quest and theWomen in Secularism conference.

 They’ve got all sorts of crazy challenges, stunts and guests – including me at 10pm EST – set up for today and tomorrow.12PM EST today through 12pm EST tomorrow (Sunday). Check out this post by JT for some last minute updates. It’s also the thread for comments, questions and challenges at Chez WWJTD. Click that link/visit that blog post at lot, because JT’s donating all of the money from hits to that post to the cause.

The hashtag for the event is #GDLS

See you over there!

JT and JTs Videogameathonapalooza!

This Weekend? Game On!

I might head over to Shakopee for the opening weekend of the Renaissance Festival – fun!  I love the atmosphere at RenFair – all of the costumes and the themed artisans…do want!  What do you guys have planned?  Summer is slipping away, people!  Get out there and have some fun!  I know you’ve got plans.

Sorry for another day of relatively fluffy content.  I have a couple of draft blogs that I’m working on and very excited to get out…but there’s just been no time to knock ’em out!  So today I’m happy to share a geeky gamer video from The Guild folks called Game On – A Bollywood-themed Gamer’s Anthem.  It was released in July or August, so it’s old by interwebby dating, but relatively new by non-nerd clocks.  If you’re new to The Guild, you may wish to check out the stellar “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” – it’s also hilarious.  Well, for non-nerds it will hopefully be amusing, gamer geeks will find it pretty funny, and fans of The Guild will find it hilarious.

This Weekend? Game On!