Artist Benjamin Butwin created this detailed Metroid diorama, perfectly capturing the pixelated aesthetic of the classic 8-bit videogame in blocky Lego form.

(via Offworld)

Industrial Designer Tai Chiem has created some very cool concepts for the next-generation of video game consoles. From top to bottom, the Xbox 720, PlayStation 4, and PSP 2. Take a look at his portfolio.

(Via Kotaku)

Artist Satre Stuelke scans everyday objects, like this PlayStation 3 controller, using medical imaging equipment and posts the wonderfully ethereal results at Radiology Art.

via Kotaku

I could stare at these all day long.

Artist Jack Cooper creates beautiful “Mechanical Fractals” that I would love to be able to drop into the Mirror’s Edge engine and explore.

Fractal Recursions via  Dark Roasted Blend

From 1999-2000 I interned at Gamesmania.com where I reviewed games and was published for the first time. It was the golden era before the dot com bubble burst and working in that energetic downtown Toronto loft space was a dream job, the benchmark against which all that followed would fail spectacularly.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my dream of developing videogames was born there. As I surfed the cusp of the industry amidst the camraderie of fellow gamers, I discovered what I wanted to do with my life.

GamesMania as I knew it doesn’t exist anymore, and my reviews have been lost to such depths of the Internet as even the WayBack Machine cannot penetrate. I would have both loved and been terrified to share them with you.

I missed the PlayStation 2 era. When it launched in North America in October 2000 I was on hiatus from gaming, focused on finishing high school and playing shows with my pop-punk band. Later devotion to Halo would bias me toward the Xbox and Xbox 360, and on my University student budget another console wasn’t in the cards.

Around 2004 I decided to pursue a career in game development and set the goal for myself to play every major game release. Seeing as I’d barely scratched the surface of the previous generation’s dominant console, I resolved to catch up with the PS2 library when I had the time.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. My buddy Ryan from work agrees to lend me his PS2 and FFXII to play over a long weekend. When I get to his place I discover that he has an EPIC game collection including almost every PS2-era JRPG and some rare Japanese imports. We wade through like four feet of games as he puts together a package of thirty for me to borrow.

Looks like this is going to be the year I catch up.

The title of my Notorious movie post reminded me of the rap graphs that made the rounds last year. I absolutely lost it when I saw this one, which dispelled my long-held belief that math is never funny. That one’s for my bro Zack. You know he’s chillin’.

I love it when a film that you’re anticipating drops off your radar and resurfaces a week before it’s released. That’s what just happened to me with Notorious, the upcoming biopic of Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G. that hits theaters this Friday. I’m not especially well versed in rap music but I was hooked on Biggie’s flow the moment I first heard it, and I still throw Ready to Die into rotation every summer. The trailer doesn’t reveal whether the film trends toward glorifying the iconography of gangster rap or an insightful look into the life of the artist; here’s hoping for the latter.

My recent psychic distress over the changes at 1UP was somewhat mitigated today by a blog post written by network director Sam Kennedy. Looking back on the days since the news broke that 1UP was being acquired by UGO, I’m amazed at my own reaction: I actually grieved for the loss of… what? An online news portal?

For someone so well-connected to the emerging social web, I’ve only ever really understood “community” from academic and architectural perspectives. I like to think I’m tuned in to changing social dynamics, and I’ve developed community-focused web projects, but I hadn’t emotionally attached to a community until I discovered 1UP through their podcasts on the iTunes Music Store.

There’s something about the medium of podcasts that engenders intimacy. Through the conversational tempo of audio podcasts the listener is socialized into the group, like they’re on the periphery of a conversation with friends. I got to know the personalities at 1UP and bought in to their community: I started reading the site, then the forums, created a “my1UP” profile, and regularly bought Electronic Gaming Monthly at newsstands.

I didn’t think of my behaviour as loyalty to the 1UP brand; I thought of it as supporting the people who created the content that I enjoyed so much. Now that so many of them have been fired from the network, my desire to engage with the 1UP culture is minimal. As a web developer and content creator I know I need to intuitively understand community, but it was a hard lesson to learn.

I bought the final issue of EGM at a newsstand yesterday, but I’ve decided not to open it for now. Whatever 1UP transforms into in the future, I’ll value it as a relic and a symbol of what might have been.

Massive firings took place at the 1up network today following the company’s sale to UGO, and to be honest I think I’m in shock. The podcasts that they produced were my favourite media, period. I’ll be following the crew wherever they land next, and in the meantime I’ll be mailing out the oldest scotch I can get my hands on.

Click to view Karen Chu's flickr photoset of classic 1up Show art