Pre-SXSW news nibbles

This week saw our first open gaming session at the Tisch Games Center. Thanks to everyone who came out to play. After Spring Break we'll form a student-led steering committee, and all looks rosy. I'm packing to go and mess with Texas at SXSW for a week.

Quick links:
Ars Technica says that Rockstar Games and hip-hop producer Timbaland will be releasing PSP mixer game based on a loop sequencer the company developed for the Web three years ago.

Great piece at The Gamer Limit with some thoughts from futurist/genius/nutter Ray Kurzweil on the "Future of Gaming". I love Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines is a turn-of-the-century corker.

The BBC makes an old limey smile with two great stories this week. One on the particular "magical challenge" of composing for video games. Here's the best on though: the feature "Disability no barrier to gaming" opens with a biomechanics researcher at Duke University, who is also an Iraq war vet and amputee below the elbow, playing Guitar Hero.

To play the game, users wear electrodes on their residual muscles, such as those found on their chest and shoulder. The system translates the signals from the electrodes as if they were coming from the game controller, allowing players to strum along, despite not having any hands.

Dr Armiger came up with the idea after becoming a Guitar Hero fan himself. He realised that the movements used by the game were similar to those required during the hours of tedious rehabilitation needed to learn to control a prosthetic limb.

Oh, and Destructoid says that some Osaka elementary schools are requiring Nintendo DSs for every student, thanks to all the educational software released for it in Japan.