Game! Website Articles - January 24, 2011
US 3DS price, Wii teaches math, vintage camera app.
Nintendo announces US price of 3DS and games #
March 27 is the due date for the glasses-free 3D handheld, so if you’re looking to buy one at launch – in the US, at least – you can expect to shell out a hefty $249 for the unit alone, and between $39.99 and $49.99 for every game thereafter. For a handheld, the price is high but not unheard of; the PSP retailed for the same price when it was first out in stores in 2005.
Converted into pesos at Php44.5 to a dollar puts the 3DS at around Php11,100. The games run from Php1,775 and Php2,200 using the same exchange rate, which is about the price of current PSP games (and some PC/console games for that matter). Whether or not the local stores stick to this price remains to be seen; when the PSP was brought into our shores, some establishments were gutsy enough to run them at Php15,000 – Php20,000 each, an unreasonably high tag for early adopters.
Wii + Math = Funducation #
A fourth-grade math teacher has found a way to motivate kids into learning math, a typically deadpan class filled with as much fun as a can of beans. Thanks to a $300 grant offered by the Millville Board of Education, Robert Drewnowski hired a Nintendo Wii to be his new teaching assistant.
“We use it as an incentive in math,” Drewnowski said. “If the kids do all their work, they can play with the Wii. If you bring stuff like this in, it gets kids who never pay attention to pay attention. I want the kids to know they can have fun while they’re learning.”
Not only does the console provide a clear and needed motivator for his students, it also provides dynamic teaching material for Drewnowski to use during class. Wii Sports, Robert’s game of choice, outputs scores and other statistics which students are assigned to record. When playtime is over, work begins again as the numbers are plotted into and analyzed through different graphs and charts. The students also learn how to compute for the averages and gameplay statistics of their classmates.
“Three hundred dollars doesn’t sound like much, but it can go a long way if it’s used the right way,” Drewnowski said.
Source: The Daily Journal
Record ’80s-style video for $2 and an iOS device #
In an age where megapixels are (unfortunately) on the rise and sensor size is (ideally) all the rage, the yearning for good old 8mm film is understandable. “8mm Vintage Camera” provides the means to dumb down that expensive, high tech little camera embedded in your iPhone/iTouch into something straight out of yesteryear.
The app provides options for changing between five different lenses (clear, flickering frame, spotlight, light leak, and color fringing), five types of film (1920, 70s, Sakura, Xpro, and Siena), and toggling the “jitter,” which is up/down displacement of frames in simulation of actual 8mm projectors. These settings don’t have to be preset prior to recording; they can be changed on the fly resulting in some very interesting effects.
If your device has both a rear and front-facing camera, the app allows you to choose which one to use for recording. There’s apparently no processing overhead while using the app, so it feels just as snappy as if recording video using the iOS’s built-in software. Just about the only thing the app doesn’t do in relation to 8mm film is to shoot stills. Hipstamatic, another $2 app, can do this for you if you’re so inclined to visit nostalgia avenue.
Source: Lifehacker