The Insane Console History Video 2.0 from Elder-Geek on Vimeo.

It’s just a tablecloth and a piece of paper, until you pull out a Nexus One, at which point it magically becomes an arena where toy robots fire off punches.Augmented reality isn’t anything new, of course, but Qualcomm seems determined to bring it to cell phones in a big way — launching an AR game studio, sponsoring a $200,000 developer challenge, and announcing a free software development kit (which will see open beta this fall) all on the same day. The company partnered with Mattel to build the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots proof-of-concept you see above using that very SDK, and you’ll find a hilarious video of grown men pretending to have the time of their lives with it right after the break.

However, augmented reality is only half of Qualcomm’s mobile gaming plan — a rep told Pocket-lintgames like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots are only financially viable if they can work across platforms. To that end, the company also demonstrated a simple three-player peer-to-peer title, but with — get this — a Nexus One (over Bluetooth), a Nokia N900 (over WiFi) and a Dell Latitude laptop all playing the same synchronous game. To commemorate this mishmash of awesome, the company funded another video; listen to an individual with a ludicrously bad accent give you the play-by-play after the break. Oh, and find some press releases, too.

Unique indie game idea, The Unfinished Swan looks wonderful.

The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

Fat Princess: The beautifully art directed multi-player game from Santa Monica’s Titan Studios sparked a flair of controversy when it was announced. Cake retention? Nevertheless, Sony has finally released the game here in the UK. Fat Princess is priced at £11.99 on the PSN.

The premise of the game is ludicrously simple. The curvaceous royalty in question is the “flag” in a an elaborate take on the ‘Capture the Flag’ game mechanic.

Fat Princess is beautifully presented in a fairy tale style. Level designs are elaborate and detailed and the character design –with quirky upgrades and power hats– are beautifully rendered.

Windosil is a beautifully conceived, constructed and executed Flash puzzle game. The implementation of simple real world mechanics – within a strange, surreal and beguiling graphical world – makes for a a surprisingly tactile digital experience. The sound design is simple but effective. Windosill is designed, programmed and animated by Patrick Smith, of Vector Park. The objective of the game is to solve the puzzle: how to find the cube to open the door. Simpe eh? No. Tickling a giant bird in a distorted – and elasticated – spherical metal bird house, and rolling a wooden train, have never felt so satisfying… play it.

Elegant motion detection from the Natal development team. This is clearly a controlled – or pre-rolling – promotional piece, but judging by the responses from E3 crowds – as crowds watch live demonstrations of the basic motion capture function – this project is moving closer to a full implementation. I’m really not evangalising about the big-evil-Microsoft, contrary to the recent amount of related posts…

Twenty three is the magic number. The number of moves necessary to solve an arbitrary Rubik’s cube configuration has been cut down to 23 moves, according to an update on Tomas Rokicki’s homepage. This is in agreement with informal group-theoretic arguments suggesting the necessary and sufficient number of moves should be in the low 20’s.  This theory is known as the God Algorithm.

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Starting with a raft of digital marketing, web-build and film work for Graham Coxon, the time is nigh to launch a company: head, heart and feet first – curled up foetal position – into the crunch. We Are Humans.

The museum is officially opened since 27 January 2009 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the video ping-pong and the birthday of the Magnavox Odyssey 37 years ago. My dear late Grandad had this very first machine – he never beat me, I let him win, honest…*cough*.