Vern Graner and Rick Abbott of The Robot Group built an inkjet printer for ping pong balls:
Why print on boring old paper, when you can get your message across on some nice bouncy ping pong balls? The appropriately named PingPongPrinter can print dot-matrix messages directly onto the spherical surface of ping pong balls.
Builders Vern Graner and Rick Abbott of The Robot Group used a Parallax inkjet print head kit and the EFX-TEK Prop-2 controller board to bring their wondrous creation to life. As each ball leaves the hopper, it’s loaded onto a rotating platform, and sprayed with tiny ink droplets.
The best part: the balls it prints are used as ammunition for the group’s other dastardly invention, the pneumatic, ping pong ball firing PONGINATOR!
Check out technabob blog for the video clip of the PingPongPrinter in action and the awesome giant PONGINATOR: Link
Comments (1)
Also, here's a Scrabble game that broke three North American records.
(Tactics and diplomacy also factor in)
For a good overview of all kinds of boardgames I recommend www.boardgamegeek.com It is the biggest boardgame database I know of with tons of gaming related things.
And for a really good introduction to "new" boardgames I recommend "Settlers of Catan". It's a game you can play with all kinds of people. If you like a really good mostly strategic game, give "Puerto Rico" a try or "Caylus". But these are more for "real" gamers than for the occasional one.
Oh, I like new board games too! I just started with these. I'm Stacy, not Alex, though :)
For a good "new" game my friends and I have had very good luck with Apple to Apples.
REALLY give one of the "new" "german-style" board games a try. Settlers of Catan is a great game and I know several people who didn't really enjoy board games but ended up loving Settlers. Puerto Rico is perhaps a bit hardcore along those lines, but once you do get used to the idea of those kinds of games, Puerto Rico's almost complete lack of randomness and huge number of valid strategies makes it one of the best games ever made.
PS: any game that thinks there are 96 two letter words in the english language is pure and utter crap :)
Thanks for your awesome list. It takes me back. Though I echo what others have said: it's time to update the collection. Wits and Wagers is a GREAT party game. For Sale and Razzia! are fun, too. Settlers of Catan beats the pants off Monopoly (and I'm a former competitive Monopoly player--Illinois is the most landed-on, but St. James is second-most). Bohnanza is the most fun you can have playing cards with your clothes on (but no one says you have to).
I'd love to see a post about your game group tackling some of the post-1960s games!
If the post made in the wrong section, please move