Fully Charged: Play Mario on any screen, and the USS Enterprise-shaped office
All the recent news scraps you might've missed, pulled together to help start your day
Screentendo creates desktop Mario levels
Ever wanted to turn whatever you see on your screen into a playable Super Mario side-scrolling stage? No? Well, the tool is available now anyway, so you might as well give it a shot.
Screentendo lets you select a portion of your current screen, and then the code takes over and renders a game level based on the shape and contents of what you highlight. Granted, the chances of something like this actually generating a great, fun Mario level are incredibly slim, but as a proof of concept, it’s totally amusing and solidly impressive to boot. Click the link below for a very detailed explanation of how it works, along with download info.
[Source: Aaron Randall]
See the Star Trek-inspired building
Tired of your cubicle and bland, box-shaped office building? Take a gander at the headquarters of Chinese game developer Netdragon, which has (clearly) been designed to resemble the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. In fact, it’s officially licensed by franchise owner CBS.
That’s seemingly absurd, but probably necessary. After all, you don’t want to spend four years and 600 million yuan (about £63 million) on a building and then be hit with a copyright lawsuit. Luckily, everything is all set, and the company gets one of the coolest-looking office buildings on earth. Here’s a drone-shot video that offers a great look at the structure.
[Source: Designboom]
Waze helps to find lost kids
Waze has announced a partnership with Amber Alert Europe that will see alerts about missing and endangered children integrated into the popular mobile navigation app. When in an area where a child has been reported in danger, you’ll see an alert with a photo and relevant information.
Don’t worry about it overwhelming the experience: each pop-up only occurs once, and only if you’re stopped for more than 10 seconds while using Waze. The service is active in 20 European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, and six of the countries are just now getting Amber Alert notifications for the first time thanks to Waze.
[Source: Waze]
Mad Max game story trailer
Sometimes it’s great when a licensed film game charts its own path rather than copying the script and scenarios of the source material. In other instances, you wish it’d kept the best parts of the film in question, which is the sense we get from this new Mad Max game trailer.
The car combat looks exciting, but the narrative, characters, and world design just seem generic compared to the stark madness of Mad Max: Fury Road. But there’s still time for the open-world game to show some more personality before it drops on 1 September.
[Source: YouTube]
Read More › The 30 most anticipated games of 2015
Andrew Hayward
Freelance Writer 
