e448 — Bricks (Falling and Cars) | Games At Work dot Biz

building facade reminiscent of Tetris bricks — Photo by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash

Published 8 January 2024

Michael, Andy and Michael are back together to record the first episode of 2024 – and have a fantastic show on keyboard keys, a VR trackball for your feet, bricks in the form of a bricked car, the game of Tetris, the LEGO version of a Polaroid camera and a whole lot more.

This episode starts with the new Copilot keyboard key for Windows computers, which on the surface (not the Surface) sounds like a small change, but one with significant ripple effects through the computer supply chain. Check out the show notes below for a humorous Mastodon take on this, as well as Andy’s custom escape key.

Switching from keyboard input mechanisms to trackballs, the cohosts check out an innovation from Sony designed to provide VR navigation in small physical spaces. This reminded the team of the Virtuix Omni One which provides the ability to walk and run in a 4 foot diameter space.

Changing gears to the automotive world, the cohosts discuss the potential for cars to become incapacitated due to software update problems, as one redditor shared. With over the air (OTA) updates applied away from home, there is a possibility that an update causes problems operating the vehicle. Also in the automotive space, there is a story about a Toyota engineer that designed a fake manual transmission for electric vehicles to add the experience of rowing through the gears back into driving.

A listener link focuses on the story of an Oklahoma teenager who beat the NES edition of Tetris. This is an incredible feat that required amazing control. Have a listen to the soothing 8bit tones of the game music from the link in the shownotes below.

The team wraps up the episode with a couple of follow on notes from the last episode – a Star Wars role playing game, and the probable Games at Work bump for Dave the Diver selling over 3 million copies worldwide. Michael M learned that it was available for the Switch and bought a copy, so there’s at least a +1 for the Games at Work impact right there.

Have you bought a copy of Dave the Diver? Would you drive a “manual transmission” EV? Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @gamesatwork_biz (our home for now) and let us know!