Fun With Spot

Game After

A cultural study of video game afterlife, whether as emulation or artifact, in an archival box or at the bottom of a landfill. We purchase video games to play them, not to save them. What happens to video games when they are out of date, broken, nonfunctional, or obsolete? Should a game be considered an “ex-game” if it exists only as emulation, as an artifact in museum displays, in an archival box, or at the bottom of a landfill? In Game After, Raiford Guins focuses on video games not as hermetically sealed within time capsules of the past but on their material remains: how and where video games persist in the present. Guins meticulously investigates the complex life cycles of video games, to show how their meanings, uses, and values shift in an afterlife of disposal, ruins and remains, museums, archives, and private collections. Guins looks closely at video games as museum objects, discussing the recontextualization of the Pong and Brown Box prototypes and engaging with curatorial and archival practices across a range of cultural institutions; aging coin-op arcade cabinets; the documentation role of game cartridge artwork and packaging; the journey of a game from flawed product to trash to memorialized relic, as seen in the history of Atari's infamous E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial; and conservation, restoration, and re-creation stories told by experts including Van Burnham, Gene Lewin, and Peter Takacs. The afterlife of video games—whether behind glass in display cases or recreated as an iPad app—offers a new way to explore the diverse topography of game history.

Encyclopædia

Mental Maths Strategies

Mental Maths is the maths we do in our heads without the use of calcu lators and without writing down the calculation. Mental Maths strategies are the 'tricks' we use to do Maths in our heads. There are different w ays of finding the answer to any Mental Maths problem, and such strategi es are the focus of this series. Even though calculators and computers p lay an enormous role in the modern world, we still need to go back to th e basics % we do need to know how to check that the sales assistant at the counter is giving us the right change! Mental Maths has become more important than ever and new primary Maths syllabuses in Australia are re flecting this. For example, NSW has placed an emphasis on Mental Maths i n its primary syllabus, and even the Year 10 School Certificate examinat ion has a compulsory non-calculator section. Features of this boo k include: 32 double-page units of Mentals are included % 8 units for each school term each unit is divided into four set s (A,B,C and D) of 20 questions each each numbered question cov ers particular Maths topics throughout the book: for example, Question 1 always covers addition, while Question 20 always covers geometry a special 'eHelp' section,, at the front of the book gives different strategies and explanations to help students solve Mentals problems. Th ese are also numbered so they link to the question numbers in each Menta ls unit a eFun Spot,, unit, containing fun activities, and a eRevision,, unit are included at the end of each 8 units extra practice,, sections which reinforce particular strategies appear in the lower part of each page. Answers to all questions are in a lift-out sect ion in the centre of the book