Phoenix Blog

Benjamin Leatherman

These peeps have got a serious case of Pac-Man Fever. See more pictures from the game in our slideshow.

For us, the streets of downtown Phoenix are an urban death maze of scalding asphalt, never-ending construction, and anger-inducing bonehead drivers that we attempt to maneuver through as quickly as possible during our daily commute.

But to Linzi Juliano, our city's central core were the perfect setting the perfect setting for a game of "Urban Pac-Man," a real-life version of the infamous 1980s quarter-muncher writ large. This past Saturday, the 25-year-old doctorate student and a group of her friends transformed the streets and sidewalks of Copper Square into the meatspace representation of that classic glowing blue virtual maze.

Juliano is something of a gaming geek (her masters thesis at NYU even covered the sociopolitical complacency of World of Warcraft players during the 2004 presidential election and Iraq War) who heard about similar urban Pac-Man events that were held in NYC and Paris and was inspired to organize a Phoenix version.

Z-Trip: Coming soon to your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

We've got some stellar news for anyone who's a fan of local-DJ-made-good Zach Sciacca (a.k.a. Z-Trip): Thanks to the joystick Jedi at Activision and its developer FreeStyleGames, the 38-year-old superstar turntablist (and former Valley resident) will be a playable character in the upcoming DJ Hero video game, which is set for release in October. 

Read on for more info on the game and his involvement, as well as some footage of the game itself.

By Jonathan McNamara

The games of the Nintendo Experience Mobile Tour. See more shots in our Nintendo Experience Mobile Tour slide show.

I want to be one of the converted.

I want to be the kind of Nintendo fan that happily shrieks at the chance to play mini games. I wish that I didn’t mind waiting three months between releases for another game worth playing. I’d like to embrace casual gaming as a new video game direction, but after visiting the Nintendo Experience Mobile Tour I know that I can not.

As I pulled into a large parking lot North of Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, I saw it gleaming in the distance: a thiry-foot trailer on its annual journey across to United States to share the joys of video gaming with the masses. The Nintendo Experience Mobile Tour seemed like a godsend to an over-worked journalist on a Friday afternoon.

Yet inside the gleaming vehicle I found only disappointment.