A #TBT to Bill Wyman’s takedown of the music fest’s inaugural year
Author Archives: Ryan Smith
Posted inArts & Culture
Stepping into an NSA agent’s shoes is just a download away
The Chicago-developed game TouchTone imparts a lesson about mass surveillance—by making you the spy.
Posted inBlogs
Chicago is a city (still) on a hot seat
Chicago’s deadly ’95 heat wave turned 20, but complex questions raised in a 2002 Reader piece on the subject remain unanswered.
Posted inBlogs
Techweek brings a taste of Silicon Valley to Chicago—for better or worse
Is the week-long tech gathering just a “tone-deaf bacchanal with the same oversunny utopianism native to the digital gods that rule Silicon Valley”?
Posted inBlogs
My friend Brandon Bostian, the Amtrak 188 engineer
The mystery of Amtrak 188 has yet to be solved—but the court of public opinion has found my friend guilty.
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best reason to hang out at an arcade bar after midnight on a school night
Killer Queen at Logan Arcade 2410 W. Fullerton 872-206-2859 loganarcade.com Even drinking the beer with the highest alcohol content at one of Chicago’s ever-growing roster of arcade bars can’t mask how poorly 1980s arcade games have aged. Asteroids is dreadfully boring, and Donkey Kong now feels more like a Sisyphean exercise in frustration than a […]
Posted inBest of Chicago
Best new college sports program
Robert Morris University’s League of Legends team rmueagles.com, @RMUeSports Some folks snickered when Robert Morris University announced the nation’s first athletic scholarship program for a PC game called League of Legends. But by breaking college athletics’ “virtual barrier,” the school is merely keeping up with times in which competitive gaming has come of age. As […]
Posted inBlogs
For the what? A ‘steampunk’ arcade bar descends upon River North
FTW attempts to give humble neighborhood arcade bars a run for their money by totally overwhelming the senses. WTF?
Posted inBlogs
Headquarters hosted a pinball tournament for masochists
Twelve contestants braved delirium and swollen ankles for the chance to win a Metallica pinball machine in the beercade’s Hands-on-a-thon.
Posted inBlogs
Lincoln’s relevance was buried at his funeral’s 150th anniversary in Springfield
History remained history at the state capital this weekend.
Posted inBlogs
Is nerd culture even a thing anymore? Scenes from C2E2 2015
Nerd culture goes mainstream at the annual comic con.
Posted inArts & Culture
Has Mortal Kombat finally gone too far?
From their Avondale studio, the creators of Mortal Kombat are thrilling and repulsing a new generation of gamers with the hyperrealistic ultraviolence of the franchise’s latest entry.
Posted inBlogs
A ‘haunted’ telephone can be all yours Saturday at the Nightingale
A couple of Art Institute grads bring together their Lynchian video game and a haunted telephone for an out-there art project.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Way of Dr. Tae
This disillusioned physics professor couldn’t fix the education system—so he fixed a Tony Hawk video game instead.