The Mario Kart franchise is the rare example of a game series that reaches all ages, from grammar school play dates to dorm room tournaments and beyond. And with the April 28 release of Mario Kart 8 for the Nintendo Switch looming, Target has turned into a love letter for all things Kart.
The transformation begins at the very front of 650-plus Target stores across the United States, where the big red bollards that keep stray shopping carts in check have been turned into spherical Marios and Luigis. From there, the store doors are rigged with flashing lights as shoppers are serenaded by the Mario theme song as they enter.
The stores’ shopping carts have also undergone a makeover to look like Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach’s karts from the game. (Though Target does sell bananas, you’ll have to supply your own blue turtle shells and Bob-ombs for that authentic Kart experience.)
Target will only look like a real-world Kart track for a limited time, so if you want to feel what it’s like to race down the aisle as Princess Peach, you better head to your local store soon to see if they’re participating. And if you’re looking to ensure you land your own copy of Mario Kart 8, you can go to Target’s website to preorder a copy.
Unfortunately, if it’s a new Nintendo Switch you’re after, well, Target isn’t making any promises. While it’s not as impossible to find as the NES Classic was (when it still existed), Nintendo’s latest console isn’t immune to the company’s infamous low supply and high demand model.
“If you’re still trying to get your hands on Nintendo Switch, keep checking your local Target store,” the website states. “We’re working hard with Nintendo to keep these crazy-popular consoles flowing in to Target stores throughout the year.”
For now, your best chance to play some Kart might be in the aisles of your local Target.
Video game consoles are prone to a number of misfortunes, like Xbox 360’s “red ring of death” or more recently the Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Con and warping issues. But none have the gross-out factor of one of the PlayStation 4’s most unique issues: roach infestation.
In an article on Kotaku, writer Cecilia D’Anastasio visited Patrick Che, the co-owner of an independent console repair shop in Manhattan, who pointed out a pile of filled black garbage bags in the corner of his store. “You see those bags?” Che asked D’Anastasio. “Those are bags full of roaches. Those are all dead by now.” Though roaches can burrow into any system on the market, it’s Sony’s latest console that seems to be their ideal destination.
The problem has become so common with PS4s that Che’s shop, XCubicle, charges a $25 “roach fee” to clean the little critters out of the system’s vents and circuit boards. So what makes the PlayStation 4 such an attractive home to roaches (outside of the fact that it kinda looks like a swanky skyscraper from the right angle)? Apparently the PS4’s vents are wider than other consoles, and since they’re placed right at the bottom of the machine, it makes it easier for roaches to crawl right in if the system is placed on the floor.
When the roaches go into the system, they nest on the circuit boards, pop out babies, and, well, melt into the console’s innards. With a system that gets as hot as a PS4, melted roaches and their feces (shudder) will likely turn your console into an expensive paperweight before long. And chances are that you’ll never even know a roach was inside unless you bring it in for repair.
At XCubicle, they see at least one roach-infested PS4 per week, with other repairmen estimating that around half of all PS4 consoles they deal with have some sort of roach issue. The fix for this isn’t so simple: A repairman will have to replace the power supply, clean the system of any roach remnants, and sterilize the whole thing before getting it back to you. There’s no one way to prevent roaches from entering your system, other than keeping a clean home, putting your console high up and inaccessible, and placing it away from easy entry points. If that fails, you’ll be stuck either buying a new PlayStation 4 or bringing the system to an independent repair shop, as Sony won’t accept bug-ridden systems for repair.
We’ve all been there: A distant relative or forgotten acquaintance posts something insulting, vulgar, or just downright obnoxious on Facebook; so, without thinking, you just delete them from your “Friends” list. But what if someone had the same idea about you? Would you even notice if they got rid of you? Well, a Google Chrome extension called Who Deleted Me will tell you who has unfriended you on Facebook.
Who Deleted Me is pretty simple: After you download it, you upload your Friends list to the program, where it will log the number of people you’re friends with. From there, it will recheck your list whenever you click on the app and let you know if there have been any changes. The program will also scan your list periodically on its own to notify you if anyone has dropped you. Who Deleted Me differentiates between people who outright unfriended you and those who simply disabled their Facebook accounts.
If you have been unfriended, know that you’re not alone. In his research on the subject, Christopher Sibona—a PhD student at the University of Colorado Denver when he released his study—found that, “The most common type of friend who is unfriended is the high school friend (18.6 percent), followed by other (uncategorized), friend of a friend, and work friend.”
“High school friends are unfriended for making online posts that are polarizing and for posting too frequently about unimportant topics,” Sibona concluded. “Work-related friends are commonly unfriended for engaging in disliked offline behavior and are not typically unfriended for their posting behavior.” Sibona’s study on Facebook behavior also revealed that the person who originally sent the friend request is more likely the one to be deleted.
There has been an uptick in similar apps in recent years, including Who Unfriended Me?, which is available on Google Play, and a rival service on the App Store. You can also download like-minded services to track your Twitter followers.
Remember, though, none of these programs are approved by either Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media platform you’re monitoring. In fact, Facebook urges people to stay away from any add-on that doesn’t go through their Application Programming Interface, or API. If a program doesn’t use Facebook’s API, that means it’s not adhering to the company’s privacy policy or its terms of service agreement. So be careful, and maybe cut down on all of the political posts and photos of your dinner if you want to avoid deletion.
Beating one of those old, deceptively hard NES games is an impressive enough accomplishment for most people, but one fan had bigger aspirations than that. Much bigger. Over the past three years, Piotr Delgado Kusielczuk—who goes by the Twitch handle “The Mexican Runner“—set out to complete all 714 games ever released on the NES. The journey started on Kusielczuk’s Twitch channel on May 28, 2014 and came to an end nearly three years later on February 26, 2017.
The whole thing kicked off with the 1990 game Whomp ‘Em, which Kusielczuko finished in two hours and 11 minutes, and it ended with a Super Mario Bros. 3 run that he completed in an hour and 43 minutes (Kusielczuk chose it because he says it’s the best game on the system).
Watch live video from TheMexicanRunner on www.twitch.tvIn between, Kusielczuk finished each and every game to ever be released on the system, including the 679 titles released in the United States and the other 35 PAL exclusives, according to Engadget. The whole endeavor clocked in at 3435 hours, but it was helped along by the fact that Kusielczuk is a known speed-runner.
Speed-running is a video game trend where players attempt to complete a game in record time, with no attention paid to gameplay goals or other accomplishments. Times are often aided through glitches found in the game, which can significantly cut down on the length. The problem with NES games is that many of them—like Tetris—don’t have traditional endings; they just keep going and going. For those titles, Kusielczuk played until there was simply nothing left to do and the game started going in a loop. That means he could beat a game like Battletoads in less than a half hour, but something more nebulous like Miracle Piano Teaching System took an astounding 91 hours.
Watch live video from TheMexicanRunner on www.twitch.tvIt’s assumed that Kusielczuk is the first person to play and beat all 714 NES games, and he is definitely the first person to document it in such a public way. Don’t look for Kusielczuk to follow suit with an SNES run, though. On his site, he said, “NES has probably the hardest game library of any other console, so it wouldn’t be that challenging to me.” That’s the type of boasting you earn after 3400 hours with a controller in your hand.
With the 40th anniversary of Star Wars just a few months away, you can expect a merchandising push to go along with it. A big one. Hasbro is getting in on the action with the release of a line of 6-inch retro toys that are modeled after the original line of Kenner action figures from 1978.
These Black Series toys include the likes of Luke Skywalker (as both a farm boy and an X-Wing pilot), Darth Vader, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and pretty much everyone else from A New Hope (even the Tusken Raiders, a.k.a. the Sand People, are getting a plastic counterpart). The packaging is also going retro with a design that calls back to the original Kenner boxes from the franchise’s first action figure line.
For those who really know their Star Wars action figure lore, Hasbro is even going so far as to recreate the infamous Early Bird Certificate toy box from 1977 as part of what’s called the Legacy Set. Each individual action figure will retail for $19.99, while the Legacy Set, which includes Darth Vader and background diorama, will go for $39.99.
Hasbro’s 40th anniversary Star Wars figures will be in stores this spring.
Tucked away in an unassuming field in the town of Croaker, Virginia, sits perhaps the greatest presidential monument you’ve never heard of. That’s because this private farm is home to 43 presidential busts that were originally crafted to be the centerpiece of Presidents Park, an open-air museum in Williamsburg, Virginia that would rival anything found in Washington D.C. Today, though, they sit as crumbling colossi waiting for a new home.
The park was originally conceived by Houston artist David Adickes, who was struck by the idea after visiting Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. He teamed with investor Everette “Haley” Newman to turn this idea into a lasting monument for these larger-than-life politicians. When it opened in 2004, Presidents Park featured a sculpture garden with every Commander in Chief from George Washington to George W. Bush, all meticulously crafted by Adickes and his team of sculptors. The busts ranged from 18 to 20 feet tall and weighed in at around 22,000 pounds.
Unfortunately, the $10 million experiment that was Virginia’s Presidents Park wasn’t long for this world; it was shut down in 2010 due to lack of visitors. Though it was located in Williamsburg, Virginia, it wasn’t near the tourist-friendly colonial section. Instead it was located adjacent to a highway, obscured by woods and a motel, which left these 20-foot presidential heads as nothing more than an obscure curiosity. Money got so tight toward the end that they couldn’t afford the $60,000 to add a bust of Barack Obama to the roster.
After the park was shut down and the land auctioned off, Howard Hankins, who helped build the park, had the heads moved to his family’s farm in Croaker—even though Newman originally just wanted to destroy them. It took nearly a week to move all 43 busts to their new location, and due to their immense size and weight, the move didn’t exactly go smoothly. Cracked heads and damaged noses were just some of the maladies suffered during the $50,000 relocation. The most notable damage was inflicted upon Abraham Lincoln, who now sports a not-too-subtle gaping hole in the back of his head. That’s in addition to the dilapidated state the busts were in before the move, including a lightning strike that claimed half of Ronald Reagan’s face and severe weathering from years of neglect.
Though they’ve been at their new home since 2012, there are still no specific plans for the heads. Weather and nature have now taken a considerable toll on the busts—some frogs apparently call James Buchanan “home” now—and a GoFundMe campaign by the Hankins family to repair the statues and move them to a new museum has earned a paltry $841 of its $500,000 goal in 12 months.
Still, Hankins is keeping his dream of a new museum alive, telling PBS, “It’s amazing, the history of it all, I want to preserve all I can and share it.” Until Hankins can find a permanent home for these statues, tourists looking for an obscure site to see should know that there are 240 years of American history peeling and cracking in a field in Croaker, Virginia.
It’s a Super Bowl tradition as recognizable as catchy commercials, lengthy halftime shows, and mounds of leftover guacamole, but how did the famous “I’m going to Disney World” and “I’m going to Disneyland” slogans make their way to (almost) every big game since 1987?
The idea for the slogan itself can be credited to Jane Eisner, the wife of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. In 2015, he recountedthe story behind the tagline to Sports Illustrated:
“In January 1987, we were launching Disneyland’s Star Tours, an attraction based on Star Wars. After the ribbon-cutting ceremony, my wife, Jane, and I had dinner with George Lucas, as well as Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who had just become the first people to fly around the world without stopping. It was late and the conversation hit a lull as we waited for our food. So I asked Dick and Jeana, ‘Well, now that you’ve accomplished the pinnacle of your aspirations, what could you possibly do next?’ Rutan responded, without hesitation, ‘I’m going to Disneyland.’ And of course I go, ‘Wow, that’s cool! You made the right choice.’ But my wife interjects: ‘You know, that’s a good slogan.'”
Around this time, the NFL playoffs were well underway, with the New York Giants and Denver Broncos set to face each other at Super Bowl XXI. What better time to unveil this new marketing slogan than at the biggest TV event of the year? Once Eisner decided on a time and place to debut the phrase, the teams’ two quarterbacks, Phil Simms and John Elway, both received identical offers: $75,000 for the winner to say “I’m going to Disney World” and “I’m going to Disneyland” to a Disney camera as they ran off the field after the game. This would then be used in a commercial with Disney World or Disneyland being shown depending on where it aired. (This is then oftentimes followed by an actual trip to a Disney park within the next few days, where the spokesperson takes part in a parade in his team’s honor).
Simms was hesitant at first, but once he heard Elway agreed to it, he was on board. The NFL also signed off on Disney’s plan, so now it was up to the company to find a way to get their cameras on the field before all-out madness could erupt. Tom Elrod, Disney’s president of marketing and entertainment in 1987, told Sports Illustrated:
“We wanted it to be authentic, but that meant being the first camera on the field, in the most frenetic environment you could possibly imagine. We’d be competing with broadcast crews and journalists and hangers-on and teammates, just to have some guy look into a camera and say, ‘I’m going to Disney World.’ It’s wild if you think about it. That first year, I don’t think anyone thought that was achievable.”
It’s a good thing the reluctant Simms changed his tune about Disney’s offer, because his Giants beat Elway’s Broncos 39-20. Not only was Simms awarded his first Super Bowl win and the game’s MVP award, he also got a cool $75,000 for uttering two simple sentences (though he had to say both sentences three times each, just to be sure).
The tradition has carried on ever since, except in 2005 for Super Bowl XXXIX and in 2016 for Super Bowl 50, when no commercials aired (though Super Bowl 50’s winning quarterback, Peyton Manning, went to Disneyland anyway).
The slogan now extends beyond football, having been uttered by everyone from NBA players to Olympians and American Idol contestants. And even if they don’t wind up in a commercial, chances are a championship team will still be greeted by a Disney park parade, like the one thrown for the Chicago Cubs in 2016.
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In 1966, two football leagues were vying for gridiron dominance: the venerable NFL and the sport’s newcomer, the AFL. On June 8, 1966, the two leagues announced their plans to merge, rather than compete over players and a split fanbase. This meant a new championship game had to be conceived that would show which was the dominant league every year. Today we know it as the Super Bowl—one of the most polished, extravagant events of the entire year. But on January 15, 1967, when the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game took place, it was something bordering on a disaster, with television mishaps, a dispute over the name, and thousands of empty seats marring the very first Super Bowl Sunday. To see how the big game nearly fell apart, here are eight facts about the first Super Bowl.
1. IT WAS ONLY CASUALLY KNOWN AS THE SUPER BOWL AT FIRST.
In 1966, meetings were going on about the first-ever championship game between the NFL and the upstart AFL set to be played in January of that next year. In addition to talking about location and logistics, the big question on everyone’s mind was what to call it. Though Pete Rozelle, the NFL’s commissioner at the time, suggested names like The Big One and The Pro Bowl (which was the same name as the NFL’s own all-star game), it was eventually decided that the game would be called … the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.
A name like that just doesn’t create much buzz, though, and the newly merged league needed something punchier. Then Lamar Hunt, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, recalled a toy his children played with, a Super Ball, which led to his idea: the Super Bowl.
The name picked up support from fans and the media, but Rozelle hated it, viewing the word “Super” as too informal. By the time the game began, the tickets read “AFL-NFL World Championship Game,” but people were still offhandedly referring to it as the Super Bowl. By the fourth year, the league caved and finally printed Super Bowl on the game’s tickets. For Super Bowl V, the Roman numerals made their debut and stayed there every year except Super Bowl 50 in 2016. (The first three championship games have also been officially renamed Super Bowls retroactively.)
2. THE GAME WAS AIRED ON TWO DIFFERENT NETWORKS.
Since the first Super Bowl involved two completely different organizations, there was a bit of an issue televising the game. NBC had the rights to air AFL games, while CBS was the longtime rights holder for the NFL product. Neither station was going to miss out on its respective league’s championship game, so the first Super Bowl was the only one to be simulcast on two different networks. Rival networks also meant rival announcing teams: CBS used their familiar roster of play-by-play man Ray Scott in the first half, Jack Whitaker in the second half, and Frank Gifford doing color commentary for the entire game. Curt Gowdy and Paul Christman led the voices for NBC.
It turns out the competition between the two networks for ratings superiority was just as intense as the helmet-rattling game played on the field. Tensions were so high leading up to game day that a fence had to be built in between the CBS and NBC production trucks to keep everyone separate. The more familiar NFL broadcast team over on CBS won the ratings war that day, beating NBC’s feed by just a bit over 2 million viewers.
3. THE GAME DIDN’T COME CLOSE TO A SELLOUT.
The cheapest price for a Super Bowl 51 ticket is currently hovering around $2000, but frankly, you could probably charge people double that and the game would be a guaranteed sellout. The first Super Bowl, however, didn’t quite have that same cachet behind it. With tickets averaging around $12, the AFL-NFL World Championship Game couldn’t manage to sell out the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1967. It’s still the only Super Bowl not to fill up its venue.
Despite blacking the game out on TV stations within 75 miles of the Coliseum to get fans to the stadium rather than watching at home, about a third of the stadium’s seats were empty. Some fans balked at the steep $12 ticket prices, while others were so incensed at the blackout that they stayed away out of protest. Whatever the reason, the sight of tens of thousands of empty seats for what was supposed to be the most important game in both leagues’ history was not what Rozelle had in mind when the Super Bowl was conceived.
4. DIFFERENT BALLS AND DIFFERENT RULES WERE USED FOR THE GAME.
Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
The overall product between the AFL and NFL weren’t that different, but there were a few hiccups when making the rules fair for both teams. The AFL’s two-point conversion rule, which it used for the entirety of its existence, was barred from the game, allowing only the traditional point-after field goal instead. When the AFL and NFL later merged, the two-point conversion was banished altogether until 1994, when it was reinstated league-wide.
The other big change for the game was the ball itself. The AFL used a ball made by Spalding, which was slightly longer, narrower, and had a tackier surface than the NFL’s ball, which was created by Wilson. To make each team feel at home, their own league’s ball would be used whenever they were on offense.
5. THE SECOND HALF KICKOFF HAD TO BE REDONE BECAUSE CAMERAS MISSED IT.
When the second half of Super Bowl I began, everyone was ready for the kickoff: players, refs, and the production crew. Well, one production crew was ready, anyway. It turns out NBC missed the opening kickoff of the second half because the network was too busy airing an interview with Bob Hope. The kickoff had to be redone for the sake of nearly half the TV audience; even worse, some poor soul probably had to break the news to Packers coach Vince Lombardi.
6. THE HALFTIME SHOW INCLUDED TWO DUDES IN JETPACKS.
Forget your Bruno Mars and Beyoncé performances; Super Bowl I’s halftime show was an affront to gravity itself as two men in what can only be described as jetpacks (though technically they were called “rocket belts”) flew around the field to give people a glimpse at what the future of slightly above-ground travel would look like. Very little video exists of the spectacle today, but this performance was later revisited at the halftime show for Super Bowl XIX, when jetpacks made their long-awaited return to gridiron absurdity.
In addition to airborne theatrics, the inaugural show also included some marching bands and the release of hundreds of pigeons into the air—one of which dropped a present right on the typewriter of a young Brent Musburger.
7. THE ORIGINAL BROADCAST FOOTAGE IS CURRENTLY IN LEGAL LIMBO.
Unlike today, where games are DVR’ed, saved, edited into YouTube clips, and preserved for all eternity, there is no complete copy of the broadcast edition of Super Bowl I. In 2005, a man from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, found a copy of the CBS broadcast in his attic, which had been recorded by his father on two-inch quadruplex tapes. However, the halftime show and parts of the third quarter are missing. The footage has been digitally restored and is currently locked in a vault at The Paley Center for Media in Manhattan. To this day, it hasn’t been shown to the public as Troy Haupt, the tape’s owner, is in legal limbo with the NFL over the exact worth of the footage.
8. THE NFL TRIED—AND FAILED—TO SHOW THE GAME IN SOME FORM IN 2016.
Perhaps as a way to show Haupt that they didn’t need his tapes, the NFL Network released a version of the game cobbled together not from CBS or NBC footage, but from video edited together from its then-nascent NFL Films division. With the game’s radio call played over it, every play from the game was aired in 2016, albeit not how it was originally seen in 1967. Unfortunately, the game also featured some questionable running commentary from the NFL Network’s current analysts during the entire broadcast. The re-broadcast was such as disaster that the NFL Network had to re-re-broadcast it without the intrusive commentary from its own analysts.
It’s hard to imagine that anything literally hanging from utility poles across Manhattan could be considered “hidden,” but throughout the borough, about 18 miles of translucent wire stretches around the skyline, and most people have likely never noticed. It’s called an eruv (plural eruvin), and its existence is thanks to the Jewish Sabbath.
On the Sabbath, which is viewed as a day of rest, observant Jewish people aren’t allowed to carry anything—books, groceries, even children—in public places (doing so is considered “work”). The eruv encircles much of Manhattan, acting as a symbolic boundary that turns the very public streets of the city into a private space, much like one’s own home. This allows people to freely communicate and socialize on the Sabbath—and carry whatever they please—without having to worry about breaking Jewish law.
Along with everything else in New York City, the eruv isn’t cheap. It costs a group of Orthodox synagogues $100,000 a year to maintain the wires, which are inspected by a rabbi every Thursday before dawn to confirm they are all still attached. While wires do occasionally fall, the overall eruv has survived events such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Hurricane Sandy. When eruv wires do break, it can cause enough of a stir to make news. Most notably, in 2011 a wire broke near the United Nations building, which caused a problem when repair crews couldn’t get past security to fix it. The issue was eventually resolved, but not before a good deal of panic set in.
Manhattan has had an eruv in one form or another since the early 20th century, but the present-day incarnation began on the Upper West Side in 1994. It has since expanded from 126th Street to Houston Street, and its exact locations can now be viewed on Google Maps (and an intermittently updated Twitter feed). The city does have some rules in place regarding the eruv: The wires can only be a quarter-inch thick, and they must be hung at least 15 feet off the ground.
New York City isn’t the only metropolis in the U.S. with an eruv. They can also be seen (or not seen) in St. Louis, Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, and numerous other cities across the country. Rabbi Adam Mintz, co-president of the Manhattan eruv, talks more about it in the video below, courtesy of Business Insider:
With virtual and augmented reality being introduced across television, sports, and video games, it’s only natural that the technology would be implemented for movies as well. As part of the marketing campaign for the upcoming sci-fi film Marjorie Prime, actor Jon Hamm will be recreated as a hologram at this month’s Sundance Film Festival. The hologram—a.k.a. #Holohamm—will debut at the after-party for the film’s festival premiere on January 23.
The hologram was created by 8i, a technology start-up that boasts, “Our proprietary technology transforms video from an array of cameras into a photo-realistic 3D hologram of a human that can be viewed from any angle, on any device for virtual, augmented or mixed reality.” The hologram is based on Hamm’s character from the movie, Walter Prime, who is also a hologram. Attendees will watch a demonstration of the hologram Hamm, who exists as a “VR experience and in mixed reality on a mobile device.”
“It is amazing to experience the future in the here and now,” Marjorie Prime producer Uri Singer said in a press release. “When we first started working on the movie, the script dictated that the holograms would be portrayed as a futuristic reality. Making an actual hologram, not only on film but one that can be experienced with VR/AR, attests to how present the future has become.”
Marjorie Prime is directed by Michael Almereyda and also stars Geena Davis, Lois Smith, and Tim Robbins. The movie is based on Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated play of the same name. Here’s how Passage Pictures describes the film:
“’Marjorie Prime’ follows 86-year-old Marjorie (Lois Smith) who spends her final, ailing days with a computerized version of her deceased husband, Walter (Hamm). With the intent to recount their life together, Marjorie’s ‘Prime’ relies on the information from her and her kin to develop a more complex understanding of his history. As their interactions deepen, the family begins to develop ever diverging recounts of their lives, drawn into the chance to reconstruct the often painful past.”
