Let's face it: staring at a desktop screen all day long isn't just tiresome, it's incredibly drab. What if you could somehow spruce up your desktop and turn it into a classic Nintendo game?
That's exactly what a gamer named Aaron Randall has done. Thanks to him, you can now turn anything on your Mac desktop into a playable level of Super Mario Bros. Because why not?
All you have to do is download Screentendo and then launch the program. That will trigger a semi-transparent window to appear, which you can move and resize to fit over any other program window. After you place Screentendo where you want, you click inside its window and the app renders a level of Super Mario Bros. based on the application underneath it.
It's obviously sheer genius, but also a little evil, considering that such a tool will probably lead to a downturn in your productivity. But who doesn't want to sneak in a level of Super Mario Bros. at work every now and then, right?
Randall goes into great detail on his blog about how he created Screentendo with a Cocoa app and a Sprite Kit. For those interested in the code itself, they can grab it here on GitHub. However, Randall warns that Screentendo is not a bug-free experience, calling the app a "proof-of-concept hack" with shortcomings.
"Image processing is currently really (really) slow - sub-blocking the image takes a long time (each sub-block is an NSImage, which is a pretty inefficient way of solving this problem, but quick to implement)," writes Randall on his blog. "The current implementation also requires a reasonably distinct contrast in the underlying image for the block detection to work. Finally, the physics is a little screwy - I didn't set out to write a Super Mario Bros emulator, just something that would work "well enough" - and as such, there are some issues with ghost vertices (particularly with vertical walls) that I didn't get round to resolving."
Regardless of its issues, though, Screentendo is a great idea that only has one really big downside: it's only available for Mac, so PC users are out of luck.
[Photo Credit: Aaron Randall]
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