Dennis van Weeren - from the Netherlands - has managed to recreate a Commodore Amiga 500 on a FPGA. All the necessary software - excluding Kickstart - with all the documentation is presented in Open Source Format on his website.

Plasma Pong: PONG with fluid dynamics!Have you seen PlasmaPong yet? If not, waste no more time. It's a super cool remake of the classic game PONG with integrated fluid dynamics. It's somewhat like playing PONG underwater, although you have two "attacks" you can make with the mouse buttons. It's a stunning game visually, and the music is quite nice as well. There's even a Mac version!

BTW, I was able to get to level 10 on my first try. My bro-in-law has reached level 12 so far. Make sure to report back if you're able to get further in the game!

Any kid with an Advent calendar knows there's few days remaining before Christmas, Although I'm sure most really don't need that calendar to remind them, and there's enough of them that think the few are still to many (Patience, children, patience.) Nintendo has a nice twist on the Advent calendar. They call it Mission in Snowdriftland. Why not count down the days with a classic style 2D side-scrolling platformer? Quite fun. Not simple. And the teeth won't be rotted out from getting the candy behind each door. Here there's a new level to play each day as Christmas approaches. So since I'm a bit tardy in this posting, there's currently plenty of available levels for sinking your teeth into.

I was picking up the kids' Christmas pictures (aka our Christmas cards) at JCPenney the other day, when I came across the Midway Arcade. The baby fell asleep in the stroller, and this arcade machine intrigued me more than shopping for Christmas presents. (Giving is cool, it's the shopping part that can be a nuisance.) Anyway the last player had been playing Defender, so I tried that out first. The controls were stiff, but the old games are much better played with a joystick than with your corporate-issue Sony Playstation controller. I tried Wizard of Wor next. I hadn't played that one since my Atari 800XL days, so that was a real treat, untril I got treated to a beat down after about three levels. Nowhere near "The Arena" (level 8), but they say those reflexes slow down with age, so I guess its downhill afte age 11.

Sony's PSPFor $20, Electronic Arts plans to release the following games on one UMD disc for the PSP: B.O.B., Road Rash II, Budokan, Road Rash III, Desert Strike, Syndicate, Jungle Strike, Ultima: The Black Gate, Haunting Starring Polterguy, Virtual Pinball, Mutant League Football, Wing Commander, Road Rash, and Wing Commander: Secret Missions.

The Philips Entertaible Digital Board Gaming Surface: Photo from PC Magazine onlinePC Magazine, reporting on news from the Internationale Funkausstellung, a consumer electronics show in Berlin, revealed that Philips will show off the Entertaible, a digital board-gaming surface, on Friday.

We've of course recently seen over the past several years the rise of virtual physical games, if you want to call them that, mostly in "arcades" (if even those can be called that anymore). Essentially these games take real world concepts like shuffleboard or bowling, and use partial physical items, like paddles or pucks, that are utilized on a flat, virtual surface, and interact with an impact sensor at the end of the table to make something happen on the video screen, preferably accurately reflecting what would happen if it were an all physical setup. There's also been quite a bit of controversy in the pinball world, where these virtual machines take the form factor of traditional pinball machines, but do the majority of their work via a video screen. This allows for infinitely configurable tables, but is it still really pinball, or more akin to what we play on our computers and videogame systems? In any case, the revolution, if you want to call it that, has been well under way.

Zaxxon for the Apple II: Is it really a bad thing that this version of the game is not arcade perfect?It used to be that home videogame or computer translations of arcade games were judged on how closely they mimicked the source material. This included how many levels were brought over - memory constraints often meant that one or more stages were left on the cutting room floor (Donkey Kong translations were rarely complete, for instance) - how accurate the graphics and animation were (did Pac-Man look like Pac-Man?), whether or not the sound captured the intended spirit (did Asteroids provide enough of a bass effect?), and how well the controls matched up (like angling the joystick for Q*bert), among many other areas.