video game

Wondering what to get the video game nerd in your life this upcoming holiday season? This $226 Super Mario Bros. osechi has you covered.

Did your last trip to the barcade leave you feeling like your home bar setup was missing something? Yeah, us too. Fortunately, there is a company out there catering specifically to the Venn diagram overlap between people who like drinking and retro nerds.

Before helicopter parents bombarded today's youth with modern edutainment displayed in 1080p, one video game tricked us into learning better than all the rest: “The Oregon Trail." We all picked up some American history on the DOS-based trip from Missouri to the Willamette Valley, but mostly we just hunted bear and buffalo until we ran out of bullets. Most of us didn't even notice we could only carry 100 pounds of food back to the wagon. But was any of that realistic?

Hands up: Who still has the locations of the "Super Mario" warp zones committed to memory? We know it isn’t just us. For fans of a simpler time in video game history—a time with only two buttons to push—our friends at Vinepair have come out with a series of 8-bit wine labels. We might not have been of legal drinking age when we knocked out Mike Tyson for the first time, but we can still appreciate his pixelated visage on a bottle of Zinfandel.

Kids today—they need everything to be a video game. They use games to play sports, to learn math and now to appreciate food. A new finalist for the Electrolux Design Competition game-ifies the concept of sourcing food to give its users a better idea of where food comes from. Designed by Pan Wang, it's called Future Hunter-Gatherer. The game portion is an augmented reality—a machine projects holograms of different ingredients all over the walls.

For most people the fun comes from drinking beer, but Brewed in Chicago—a company that curates the city’s robust craft beer scene—is designing an online game called Craft Your Beer that allows players to design virtual brews. Here’s the real-life bonus: If you win, your beer is then made, bottled and distributed.

If you’ve ever dreamed of living the adventurous life of a slice of bread, well, your chance is forthcoming.

I Am Bread is apparently a real video game in the works over at Bossa Studios. According to the game’s Facebook page, the concept is simple, encompassing “the beautiful story of one slice of bread's epic and emotional journey as it embarks upon a quest to become toasted.”

OK, the term gamer is pretty fluid these days. With every cell phone now a mobile game machine and even Mom slinging the occasional bowling ball on Wii Sports, there are more gamers than ever before. But what happens when you hang out with gaming fanatics–the people who go to conventions or can hold a 30-minute conversation about mana use? Well, if defenestration from the nearest window is not an option and you don’t want to look like a noob you’ve got another choice! Find ways to introduce the following 10 major players in the electronic gaming world into the conversation.