PlayStation believe the best games are played as a group. That’s why they’ve set up Game Runners – an experimental project where PlayStation, members of the public and young people from diverse backgrounds come together to create social games.

The project has been developed by PlayStation and Hide & Seek with a team of 8 initial Game Runners who PlayStation have picked to train as game designers and work to make the games relevant.

For those of you down in London this Friday (8th) here are 4 reasons why you should come down to the final Game Runners event:

1. Play a monster sized version of Blocks

2. Between 5.30-6pm you can win a PS3 and PlayStation Move start up kit

3. Watch End of the Line graffiti artists.

4. The whole event is presented by urban street dance queen Kimberlee Jay

Friday 8th October 12 noon – 8.30pm. Elys Yard, The Old Truman Brewery,Hanbury Street London E1. Be there!

Yeah, that was all from the press release. But hey. Giant games are actually pretty cool. Giant Jenga is ace. Why not Blocks?

Hopefully soon we’ll have giant Katamari!

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Built by some enterprising and generally awesome people at Team Hassenplug Monster Chess contains over 100,000 LEGO® pieces, plays chess automatically and features animated chess pieces.

It’s actually even better than the monster chess aboard the Millennium Falcon. That’s saying something.

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Back in the dark days of ElectricSpectre we used to do a weekly thing called ‘Horros Ov Nature’ which were, umm,horrible nature type things.

Even though the new improved ES is more of a video game blog than a place where we drop links to picture of Cthulhu, we think we need to bring it back.

So – stare upon a disembodied snake head still trying to kill all those around it. Sleep well.

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Reviewing this gig could be a problem. In fact, I’m not sure if I’m even reviewing it on the right blog. Yes, it was a gig, but it was also the launch of a new car, and featured some pretty kickass tech, so perhaps it should be over at Electric Spectre. So it is. But it’s on Downtuned too. I’m just confusing myself.

So Chevrolet are launching a new car. If it was something like a Camero or a Nova we might expect their launch party to be held in a strip bar and feature entertainment from Monster Magnet, the Drive By Truckers, the Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders and a fountain of Malt Liquor. Unfortunately we don’t live in a cartoon version of the 70s. Cars are now economical, safe and don’t come with bucket seats, four tracks and NOS as standard. Shame really. So instead we  have The Mystery Jets, Nick Grimshaw and a nail bar.

The Mystery Jets, to me, are another identikit, landfill indie band, and Nick Grimshaw can fall on a spike for all I care. But for some reason, I had a really good time. Why? Free booze, fun toys to play with a good organisation.

Some bright Spark (Eh? See what I did there.) had set up a life size screen displaying the Spark  and a ‘virtual’ spraycan. This was coupled with a nice, easy to use graffiti program allowing us to spray paint the car. The cool thing was that this was projected onto a real Spark.

This meant me and Interceptor spent far too much time trying to recreate the Mirthmobile from Wayne’s World, the Batmobile and Ecto One as well as some very obscure 2000AD referencing graffiti.

We then decided to crash a photo of some models being taken in the car by getting in the back and asking how much it was for “South of the River”. We’re dicks. Sorry.

The DJ booth was pretty cool too – a Spark on it’s side with it’s wheels being used as the turntables.

So – I’m sure the Mystery Jets fulfilled their contractual obligations and played their music, and Grimshaw played some records. But I wasn’t looking.

You can check out pictures from the gig here – including some car graffiti – You can probably spot ours….

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Let me set the scene that will be familiar to anyone who sometimes geeks at home: several days ago I was well and truly up against it. Non Geekiness was looming from every angle, and to compound matters, I was struggling to keep focused. I knew that hard work and concentration were the only things that would ensure all my geeking was done on time, and to a high standard. To do this it would be necessary to build a massive fort in my living room using all of my furniture.

The results were immediately obvious. Within the isolated confines of my Geekfort I was able to get everything done with a minimum of fuss, crippling lower-back pain allowing. I knew then that I had to share my discovery with the world. Luckily when building my Geekfort I had been blessed with good sense and foresight, and had documented every step. Several joyless hours with Windows Movie Maker later, and I was ready to share the wealth of my knowledge:

Send us your – fort videos!

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This is just awesome.

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I am sorry for the terrible TERRIBLE pun in the title. But I could not resist.

The pun is there for a reason. Nintendo are soon to be putting out Pokémon HeartGold Version and Pokémon SoulSilver Version (26th of March is the European release date) and to celebrate the release they’ve gone and done an art.

Nintendo have got in contact with VICE (because if you want to promote 90’s childrens phenomenon in a cool way, who else would you use?) and asked seven of their favourite artists to reinvent those strange little Japanese creatures – creating the Pokémon inspired artworks.

You can check out the reimaginings of Your favourite battling creatures here – http://www.viceland.com/repokemon/ and if you want to check out the pictures in the flesh (paint?) get on down to Blackall Studios in Shoreditch to gaze at the combination of high art and tiny monsters. And if you want to get your hands on the game, but don’t fancy paying or crime, you can enter a dirt simple competition on site too to win them and some other ace stuff.

I would quite like to see an exhibition of Pokedads too…

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This is Nikola Tesla’s letterhead circa 1900.

It is the coolest letterhead ever.

That is all.

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The makers of the best trainers in the world Nike (No, I’m not being paid to say that – I genuinely love Nike, and turn a blind eye to whatever sweatshop tactics they may use because, goddamn they’re cool shoes.) and cooler than thou magazine / film company / site Vice have teamed up to bring us a new geolocation app that allows users to find out the coolest spots in a variety of cities. – Nike True City.

It’s essentially a Google Maps mash up, showing the locations of a variety of restaurants, clubs, shops and general cool shit. Some of the things on there are pretty obvious. Yes the Natural History museum is impossibly awesome, but we all knew that when we were five. Luckily there are some genuine gems on there that would really go unnoticed. I’ve discovered that there is a proper (Not Yo, or anything like that, but PROPER) Sushi restaurant in walking distance from my house. Which is quite likely to get a visit. So, thanks Nike!

Well worth a download (It’s free, so no excuses) especially if you’re going to be jetting off to any of the other five cites featured on the app. It’s like having a polite, mute hipster in your pocket, giving you advice. Nice one.

Check out a video of the app here

And download it here

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The results were immediately obvious. Within the isolated confines of my Boozefort I was able to get everything done with a minimum of fuss, crippling lower-back pain allowing. I knew then that I had to share my discovery with the world. Luckily when building my Boozefort I had been blessed with good sense and foresight, and had documented every step. Several joyless hours with Windows Movie Maker later, and I was ready to share the wealth of my knowledge:

I hope you all have fun constructing your own fortresses of solitude.

Send us your -fort videos!

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