The Greatest Star Wars Game You'll Never Play

If you've ever wanted to command a fleet of Star Destroyers as they bring freedom to the Galaxy by blowing up Rebel fighters, or take the role of an entree-based Rebel Commander and skillfully guide your fleet into yet another trap, this is the video game for you. Except it isn't, because you'll never get to play it.

Arthur Nishimoto's Fleet Commander was developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and runs on a 20-feet wide 16 megapixel LCD multi-touch wall.

The exceedingly kick ass looking multiplayer game, "explores how a real-time interactive strategy game that would typically rely on complex keyboard commands and mouse interactions be transferred into a multi-user, multi-touch environment."

Fleet Commander is able to use all of the Star Wars ships and sounds because it was made for a student project, which means none of us will ever get to play it.

Enjoy.

Via Topless Robot (via Kotaku).

X-Wing Soapbox Derby Car

The Papier Boy has done the impossible, twice. Sort of. Firstly, he's made papier-mâché sort of cool. Secondly, he's delivered Earth it's first working X-Wing. Sort of. In that it doesn't fly, or shoot missiles at Death Star exhaust ports, but it does move and have a spinning, bleeping R2-D2 built in.

It's actually an X-Wing Soapbox Derby Car built for the 2011 Nazareth Adult Soapbox Derby for around $75, which really gives you a strong indication of the sort of funding the Rebellion are working with these days. Here's how it was done.

On behalf of all of us here in the Galactic Empire, we'd like to say well done, Papier Boy. Now we can definitely check the "Rebel Sympathizer" box for Earth and get the ball rolling on the whole planetary destruction thing.

In the alternative, if somebody would just build a Soapbox Derby TIE Fighter to shoot the X-Wing down, it would really help free us up to blow up other evil planets.

via Laughing Squid.