California should be split into multiple entries. You can't be middle class in San Francisco for $60K a year, but you'd be fine in Bakersfield.

Exactly right. There are lots of other interesting Metroid codes which are simple patterns or words. Their password validity check was very simple.

Are you sure they weren't CFLs? (The kind that are like a spiral.) CFLs definitely have a warm-up period. For LEDs, it's actually more engineering work to make them vary in brightness than it is to have them be at one constant brightness level.

Are you sure they weren't CFLs? (The kind that are like a spiral.) CFLs definitely have a warm-up period. For LEDs,…

Don't get this one. I bought one; its interface is convoluted and it broke right away. I returned it and got the iDevices thermometer on sale for $50-ish and it was much, much better. It integrates with your phone via Bluetooth, which is way nicer than having a separate low-tech gadget with a seven-segment display…

Don't get this one. I bought one; its interface is convoluted and it broke right away. I returned it and got the…

Yeah, the entire BEMANI franchise is still alive and well in Japan. If they hadn't mismanaged it in the States so catastrophically, it'd be going strong overseas as well. Instead they let Rock Band and Guitar Hero walk all over them and bleed the rhythm-game market dry.

Speedrunning a game doesn't really mean it's short. You can speed run MGS3, a fully linear 20 hour game, in a little over an hour. I'm told you can beat Skyrim in 2 hours as well if you run straight towards the final zone and use game glitches.

Panorama Cotton looks amazing. I have seen a lot of impressive Genesis tech but this is one of the top examples of what its graphics processor could do, on par with the Genesis version of Out Run. However, I don't think it could emulate F-Zero. It can bend the track image per-scanline, to make a "curved road" effect,…

Looking at the video, it's a great tech demo, and I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to improve on it as well. The gradient on the road as it becomes more distant should be very doable with fine-grained timing (you'd need to be updating the palette on the horizontal blank while still handling the road rendering).

To be fair, Virtua Racing was only possible because they added a separate graphics chip onto the game cart. Star Fox/Stunt Race FX, exact same story. In the end of the 16 bit era, a lot of the best games started adding additional hardware inside the cart to increase the console's power. That's something we lost once…

Q: Is there a deposit? Does the Auction House take a cut of the Token seller's gold?

This is pretty much the norm for iOS. And it's hardly Square's fault. Every year Apple updates iOS and every year games designed for an earlier version break.

I don't know what your problem is, but being a dock worker sure as hell doesn't look easy to me. Most people can't do it. You need to be in extremely good shape and be willing to work hard. It's okay to have high-paying jobs that aren't for brainiacs.

You've got to be joking; I've seen a zillion ads for The Order. It's all over my Facebook, it's on Kotaku, and YouTube, and it's featured on the PSN Store. I have it preordered already so it's not like I need more hype :) I have high hopes for it.

That sounds boring.

It's been out for over a year, has pretty good reviews. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/world-e…

That's not cynical, that's exactly what Gabe should be doing. I'm sure Gabe isn't as familiar with the support tools as a real customer service agent would be. Anyway, how would you like it if the president of your company went over your head and started doing your tasks for you?

Oh my god. Those derp eyes!

There is a UI option to hide your helmet, you know :)

Of all the broken video games that we were stuck with in 2014, none were as broken as Halo's Master Chief Collection, which even now, months after release, is still broken. But it's OK! You can now sign up for a beta. For an update that may or may not fix it.

Guys! It's only 99 cents! I might be down for this.