Gaming...banks? Saving money is a game, so hey, why not. There's an article I wrote in the latest issue of Wired about Japanese piggy banks that incorporate gaming elements.

The Jinsei Bank ("Life" Bank), Ikemen Bank ("Cool Guy" Bank) and BANKQUEST. The neat thing about doing the piece is that I actually "played" through all the banks. Had to get a huge stack of bills changed — "Jinsei Bank" can hold about a thousand bucks!

Be sure to click through the gallery to get the blow-by-blow gameplay account.

This Little Piggy Bank Became a Videogame [Wired]

Wired has a nice feature up on Ultima Richard Garriott and his cosmonaut training in Russia's Star City. Written by Masters of Doom author David Krushner, here's a sample:

It's one thing to adjust to life in Star City--but quite another to endure the confounding, confining, and sometimes just plain goofy training regimen. The first challenge is the language. Garriott is an autodidact wunderkind who persuaded his high school teachers that learning Basic code counted as fulfiling his foreign-language requirement. He won't be as fortunate at Star City. All of the instructions, instrumentation, and communications in space will be in Russian. So, for four hours a day, Garriott and Halik slave over fat, dusty language books in class, then tote them back to the Prophy to study more at night.

Great stuff. Click below to check out the full piece.

Going to Space? [Wired]

With console warring between Nintendo and Sega a thing of the past, Sega now relegated to a software only existence — robot girlfriends and indoor astronomy gizmos not included — you'd think that those Genesis era wounds would have healed. Perhaps without meaning to, famed Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto may have split them open again.

When asked about maintaining quality control at Nintendo, Miyamoto says the key is in avoiding Sega-style design. He tells Wired, "I'm always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we've created. Often we're in development and I'll say, 'Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario.'" Ouch.

In Miyamoto's defence, he may have been talking about Sega's last decade or so of existence. And that's totally fair.

15th Anniversary: Revenge of the Wii [Wired via NeoGAF]

This month's Wired has a look at MMO Arden: The World of William Shakespeare. Armed with a $US 250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant, Indiana University profession Ted Castronova and his students created the MMO, which as the professor points out, was "no fun" and "failed." Castronova and his team and working on the game's sequel. He's learned from his experience and offers up these five tips on making academic games that don't suck:

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Xbox Live is all fine and good, but there is no substitute for a couple of friends sacked out on the couch together, playing a video game together in person. The industry shift towards social gaming isn't something new - it's the return of something old - that feeling that older gamers like me used to get when standing around an arcade machine back in the day. Wired's Clive Thompson explores the trend in his latest column, which looks at how much a guy sitting next to you can change the gaming experience, using Army of Two as his example.

I hang out with other gamers all the time, but it's mostly in multiplayer online play, using headsets. It's social, sure. But as any psychologist will tell you, hanging out in real life allows for even richer styles of communication to emerge. In face-to-face mode, we're better at picking up the little nuances -- frustration, glee, sarcasm, subvocalised ranting, body language -- that build team cohesion, and allow us to game with a positively Vulcan level of mind meld.

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Back in August, I went to see the filming of Fuji TV's reality program Game Center CX. Saw the show filmed and spent the day with the crew and show's star, comedian Shinya Arino. For those not familiar with the show's premise, it's simple: Arino tries to complete vintage video games. These "challenges" are usually done in the span of a day. He's filmed playing straight through, and out of that a show is edited together. Arino is affable and pleasant — hence, the show's appeal. Watching him die over and over and over again makes you want to cheer him on. What happens when he can't finish a game? Arino says:

I don't throw a fit and smash my controller... Since the staff cheers me on, I hate it when I mess up. Like when I die, I can sense the mood in the room change, and I feel awful... When I get home, I just kinda sit there, zone out and wonder why I couldn't beat that game.

Oh boy am I excited for Portal. But also a little... concerned. See, my brain's a fragile thing, doesn't really like crazy puzzles. And looking at how the whole portal gun thing works, my noggin hurts just thinking about how I'm supposed to be thinking while playing the game. Down is up, left is down, up is not really, up... oh, it's all so confusing. Luckily, Wired have stepped up with a handy, graphic guide to the game, which I'm printing, cutting out and sticking on my fridge door right now.

Unlock the Doors of Deception in Mind-Warping Puzzler Portal [Wired]

The October issue of Wired mag has a nice succinct nerd encyclopedia that does a fine job of defining things in a single sentence. Game-wise, this is what they've got on the seventh generation consoles:

Wii. A motion-sensing controller, simple games, and a low price make this the top 7th-genner.

Xbox 360. Brilliantly conceived online-community features give this box sizzle.

PS3. Stellar specs can't make up for the high price and late release — a missed opportunity.

After reading Chris Kohler's review of Postal, Uwe Bowl was less than happy. So after their brief email flirtation, Kohler asked for a follow-up wrestling match interview and Bowl obliged.

Wired:...you want people to accept that this is what you're doing with this movie, that you're going to take taboo subjects and satirise them, but when I sort of take a subject like your movie and end up making a satirical or a funny article about that, I don't have the right to do that? Only you have the right...

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