Deadpool jumps from the silver screen to the silver ball thanks to Stern Pinball

by Ryan Smith on September 14, 2018 at 12:12PM

The pinball game favors the comic-book version of Deadpool over Ryan Reynolds and the silver-screen version of the "Merc With the Mouth," as the character's called, and the cartoonish art—hand-drawn by a freelance artist who goes by the moniker Zombie Yeti—appropriately feels like it's ripped from a graphic novel. My favorite little touch is a guest appearance by Dazzler, the much-derided but beloved disco-themed superheroine.

Josh Tsui, Chicago video-game vet turned documentarian, gets his due with a ceremony and award this Saturday

by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2018 at 6:00AM

But toward the end of the 90s, the arcade industry itself declined as home gaming consoles like PlayStation 2 gained processing power, and its decline took the superstar studio along with it—Midway's arcade division closed in June 2001. "It was kind of like Blockbuster fell with the emergence of Netflix," Tsui says.

Test Drive: Lime's electric scooters are fun and easy, but are they practical for Chicago commutes?

by Ryan Smith on July 31, 2018 at 6:00AM

Video games are public enemy #1 . . . again

by Ryan Smith on June 19, 2018 at 10:05PM

That's not to discount the evidence that video game addiction is a genuine condition or that games can be hard to stop playing once you get in the zone. Hell, I personally had a hard time putting down Fortnite the other night.

Lyft to buy company that operates Divvy for $250 million, report says

by Ryan Smith on June 6, 2018 at 9:40AM

In buying Motivate, Lyft is leaping further into the urban transportation arms race by banking on docking bicycle systems to beat out the new wave of dockless bike shares. Uber—Lyft's rival—bought the dockless electric bike start-up company Jump in April, which it has since been renamed Uber Bike.

Famous feline Lil' Bub gets her own arcade game—built by Chicago’s Logan Arcade

by Ryan Smith on May 23, 2018 at 6:38AM

How Mordecai chef-owner Matthias Merges helped transform modern fine dining

by Kate Schmidt on May 17, 2018 at 6:00AM

from this million-square-foot factory into a 900-square-foot kitchen.'" Trouble was, there were no affordable, readily available immersion circulators on the market.

Apple CEO Tim Cook's undercooked plan to help underserved Chicago schools: $300 iPads; app development for all

by Ryan Smith on March 29, 2018 at 11:55AM

Rather than pushing revolution, the CEO’s message reinforced the dominant economic ideology—an extreme form of meritocracy and market supremacy—held by America’s elites. That ideology essentially sees no problem with the fact that Cook earned $102 million in 2017 (enough to purchase new iPads for nearly all of CPS's 371,000 students) while 34 percent of African-Americans in Chicago live in relative poverty, earning less than half of the local minimum wage.

The nation’s hottest entertainer right now is a suburban Chicago video-game streamer named Ninja

by Ryan Smith on March 19, 2018 at 3:10PM

This newfound popularity also means adjusting to new demands. He rescheduled an interview with the Reader during a brief break on Sunday in order to fit in other appointments, including facetiming with members of the UMBC Retrievers just before their second-round loss to Kansas State to try to inspire them to make the Sweet Sixteen.

Right-wing Twitter propaganda bots pumping up Jeanne Ives campaign for governor, study finds

by Ryan Smith on March 14, 2018 at 4:59PM

The @NinaMorton account, which has followers that include former Trump press secretary Anthony Scaramucci, stood out because it tweeted Ives-related content 2,200 times in the week that Jain analyzed. A year ago the @NinaMorton account seemed "normal," Jain noted.