First and foremost, apologies for the headline. If you can find it in your heart to forgive us, we're sure that the video above will tickle your fancy for gaming peripheral-themed furniture. We're not sure how much we'd pay for a custom-built, gigantic, functioning Nintendo Entertainment System controller (or a boxed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3, for that matter) that doubles for a coffee table with a removable glass overlay, but we could be convinced to skip a few months' rent should this epic furnitroller show up at our local Targét. Our landlord would certainly forgive us when we invite him over for an exhilarating round of comically oversized Bible Adventures.

We'll admit that when approached with the subject of art in video games, Midway is not the first company that comes to mind. Not to say that their games are not art, as we sidestep that land mine and save the explosion for another day, but Midway's titles have never come across as particularly driven by aesthetic style, making us all the more curious as to the contents of Midway's newly released art book, The Art of Midway: Before Pixels and Polygons.

A 160-page collection of concept art for some of Midway's top titles, the book is said to include 200 illustrations covering such games as The Suffering and Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, to the more recently shipped Stranglehold. And of course you can bet there will be quite a few doodles from the Mortal Kombat franchise as well, with Baraka's toothy grin featured on the book's cover. However, what's more interesting to us are the unpublished works said to be included in the book from Midway artists such as Stephan Martinière, Vince Proce, Ben Olson, and Bruno Werneck. Our coffee table has been looking a bit barren lately, and this book would fit quite nicely next to the sweat ring and stack of back issues of People.

HP showed off another research and development project, Misto, at its recent game media event. Misto is basically a coffee table with a touch-sensitive display rigged underneath its glass. That's not to say it's not impressive for a coffee table or a display; we've just seen similar projects, and other creative, homebrew game tables.

Misto's demos relied on a few simple applications to prove its touch sensitivity. I moved puzzle pieces around the screen. I browsed through photos. I looked at houses I couldn't afford; Misto is currently in-use with at least one realtor although not available for general consumers.

While a coffee table interface would be fun for certain games, Misto's current version misses big by only recognizing one touch at a time. Sure, there are technical reasons why it and many other devices can't juggle multiple users. But for the table to have the social gaming applications HP mentioned, that untouchability is a major oversight. If Misto ever makes it to market -- perhaps for virtual/actual Settlers of Catan or other social board games -- it needs to accept two or more touches at a time before we want one.