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How Mario the Plumber Became Super MarioHave you ever wondered how a humble Italian plumber just minding his own business became Super Mario? Some are born to greatness, while others have greatness thrust upon them. Mario was already a good guy, the type who will always help someone in need. But then a gorilla kidnapped a princess, and Mario's life took a sharp turn. The reluctant hero. Not only is it a great story, it's also a break from the trope of high adventure for the elites who have spare time, and those lowly but handsome characters who are later revealed to be secretly born of royalty or genetically gifted with the Force. We all like to think that if a short round guy with a pronounced accent can save the princess, any of us can be heroes. Except maybe Luigi.

Man Hooks 444 Video Game Consoles into One TVGreatness is available to all of us, if we pursue it with single-minded discipline and hope. Ibrahim Al-Nasser of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, knows this because he has acquired a Guinness World Record for the largest number of video game consoles hooked into a single monitor.Al-Nasser uses multiple switch boxes to select from among the 444 consoles. It's necessary for him to keep an Excel sheet filled with the connections so that he can select the console of his choice. His favorite of all time is the classic Super Nintendo because he is, apparently, an old-school gamer.-via Dave Barry

When You Enter Video Game TownWe are all used to the way new adventures, new places, and new environments are introduced in video games. Everything is a puzzle to be unlocked, everyone has information you might need to tuck away for later, and every once in a great while, you might find that something you thought was important to remember turned out to be just a distraction. It's like the exposition part of a movie, where we meet all the characters, but we don't know who will end up being important to the unfolding plot (and that's why I have to go back and "pay more attention" to the beginning sometimes). It's all a setup! Alasdair Beckett-King recreates this eerie feeling of being the stranger in a strange world by playing all the parts, as one does. The kicker is that you don't know what role you play in this drama. That's all I'm going to say about this one.

Opening an Italian Restaurant in Fallout 4's Hangman's AlleyLook, you can complete your mission or you can dabble in gentrification. The latter is a testament to Fallout 4's allure in that you can do both if you spent enough time at it. Hangman's Alley is the most skeevy settlement in the game, and it could use a facelift. The game's world-building tools make that possible, and the results can be worth sharing. The place to do that is the subreddit Fallout 4 Settlement Building. Redditor JackVitae went to great lengths to turn the workshop area into Graviano's Italian Eatery, and the details are just so, down to the tomatoes waiting to be chopped. Take a look at it from all angles.

Video Games Have Long Been Accessible to People With Disabilities Modern technology opens up whole new worlds to those who play video games, and that includes people who depend on modern technology to be a part of the real world as well at those fantasy worlds in video games. And it's been that way a lot longer than you may know. Almost from the beginning, people with disabilities have been participating in video games up to the professional and tournament level. However, that's not because of the early efforts of the video game manufacturers. The players came first, and the accessibility technology followed. Rob Marince was 17 years old when he became paralyzed from the neck down in 1977. His brother Gary put his heart and soul into finding a way for Rob to play video games, and invented an interface that was controlled by his mouth. Gary made his invention available to others, and with a bit of publicity, game developers became interested in accessibility features. Now games come with whole spectrum of features that bring accessibility to people with a wide variety of disabilities. Read how all that happened at the Conversation.-via Geeks Are Sexy (Image credit: Rocky Stoutenburgh) 

The Nuttiest 1980s TV Ads for Video GamesForty years ago, we had to be sold on game consoles and video games, and ad agencies went all out to court the teens and tweens of Generation X. The console wars pitted NES against the Sega Master System, Game Boy, and Atari. Games like Pitfall, Donkey Kong, Jr. and Centipede were introduced to kids who weren't allowed in arcades. And the ads were all loud, colorful, and in your face. Remember when Phil Hartman tried to get you to play Ice Hockey on the Atari 2600? When Mike Tyson battled himself on multiple screens? And that kid playing Pitfall grew up to be Jack Black? And Mario Bros. wasn't even super? Den of Geek unearthed 15 video game TV commercials from the '80s for you to wallow in nostalgia over. They even ranked them, by what parameters it's hard to say. If you are too young to recall these TV ads, they can give you a little insight into the insane world your parents knew.