Seaman dev going iPhone with Gabo

Yutaka 'Yoot' Saito hasn't quite yet become a household name, but if you were gaming throughout the Dreamcast era you've probably at least heard of his work: he's the creator of the wonderfully grotesque Leonard Nemoy-voiced pet simulator Seaman, as well as the designer behind Maxis's SimTower (which later was released to GBA and DS as The Tower) and GameCube feudal Japan pinball/strategy game (!) Odama.

While we in the West haven't been treated to Saito's work since Odama, he has continued to rework his Seaman idea since, with a mobile phone version and a proper Seaman 2 sequel for PlayStation 2. Unlike the fishtank first, that sequel featured a Peking man with a disturbingly pert umbilical cord called Gabo, whom you communicated with as he went about his daily life (with a now more-evolved Seaman working as your companion).

Though it's fairly clear we'll never see a proper English version of Seaman 2, Saito has now revealed that he's bringing Gabo to iPhones as a low-priced app that lets you more directly poke at, pester, feed, and clean him, with what looks to feature about as much functionality as your average Tamagotchi.

His company DigiToys has uploaded a quick demonstration video of what to expect, and, after watching him mutter quietly to himself while tweaking and twisting his cord and then screaming impotently into the watery void, I have to admit I'm already forming a fast bond.

Gabo! ver1.0 [DigiToys, YouTube trailer]

More like LittleBigDeathOfInnocence, innit

I'm stuck square in between horrified and delighted to see via Alice Taylor's Wonderland blog that Sony has partnered with the UK edition of Vice -- your monthly celebration of all things debauched -- for an all-LittleBigPlanet blowout, including "Sackboy fashion shoots, fake Sackboy ads for perfume and clothing," and, most disturbingly, the usual back-cover American Apparel ad with the little Sack lying alluringly in his/her banana-colored panties.

That said, anyone willing to send a copy overseas to Offworld HQ will be our new favorite person -- I think we yanks are stuck with the (actually quite good) No Photos issue.

Fallout 3: Everybody Dance! edition

While the unofficial modders have been busy doing dire and otherwise pedestrian things with their Fallout 3 installs like hacking in child killing and more realistic gun noises (or so I've just learned from the 'related videos'), 'airshom' reminds us of why we like to let people tinker around inside their games. Be forewarned that if you haven't seen everything there is to see around the Wasteland, you might end up seeing some things you're not ready to see.

Bethesda: this is the kind of DLC we'd also pay for. We know you didn't put those party hats in there without a good reason.

An Offworld Thanksgiving: L-tryptophan edition

Xeni and I had been batting ideas back and forth earlier this week about what might go into a Thanksgiving-themed Offworld BBtv episode, and while we decided against it in the end, it still had me brainstorming about recent releases perfect for postprandial tryptophan-induced sedate-gaming. Here's a quick list of three off the top of my head, add your own in the comments below if there's something I've missed...

Fallout 3

As I recently discovered -- quite unintentionally -- Bethesda's RPG makes for perfect extreme-hangover gaming, a mindstate not too far away from a belly-full coma. Though it might sound like a slight, I take it as an asset: one of Fallout's draws is that a number of its sidequests and its exploration in general aren't the most mentally taxing. In fact, one of the things I think the game does best is let you stumble almost continually on a series of small messes that exist only for you to tidy. It became almost a mantra during that hangover head sick session: "I found a building. It was a mess. I cleaned it up. I felt satisfied. I moved on."

Animal Crossing: City Folk

Though I've never heard any of its directors or designers explicitly state it, I've got a strong hunch one of Animal Crossing's guiding principles was that of the Slow Life movement that spread across Japan in the early 'oughts, seeking to "shift from a society of mass production and mass consumption, to a society that is not hectic and does cherish our possessions and things of the heart."

It's not just the provincial setting or the townsfolk whose lives are little more than neighborly gossip (see also: basically any post-war Yasujiro Ozu movie for the real world cultural touchstones there). It's straight down to the game's interactions themselves: try and get basically any task accomplished in less than a minute and you'll be strained. The series forces you at every turn to sloooow down and settle into its signature torpor.

Soul Bubbles

Developer Mekensleep was taken to task by a number of enthusiast reviewers for a perceived lack of difficulty in its DS debut, but its underlying old-world and naturalistic environments basically demand more leisurely exploration. That's not to say that the game doesn't have its own difficulties, or that complete runs of its levels are anything approaching a cakewalk. Soul Bubbles keeps its difficulty in places for you to seek it out if you want it, but leaves you free to enjoy yourself without it, making it one of the more suitably relaxing (and unfortunately underappreciated) games for the handheld.

As for me, I'll be spending the rest of today wending my way slowly through a backlog of things I haven't yet had a chance to get to and would like to talk about in the coming weeks: Rare's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, BioShock's PS3 exclusive downloadable Challenge Rooms, and the European release of Grasshopper Manufacture's DS adventure remake Flower, Sun and Rain.

Sony's own inspired holiday sales

Like Microsoft, Sony has announced its own Black Friday digital download deals that seem pointed straight at the one true Offworld heart. PixelJunk Eden for starters, is a quintessential Offworld game. Developer Q-Games (a different Q, mind, than Rez's), after creating the more traditional DS shooter Starfox Command for Nintendo, has gone gloriously off the deep end and focused on partnering with musicians and visual artists outside the industry to create entirely new experiences. In Eden's case, that artist was Baiyon, whose organic vectors and thumping trance would form its inimitable playground, resulting in one of the most essential downloads on the PlayStation Network.

Not entirely far away is Sony's own internally produced The Last Guy. Directed by the same Denki Groove-related team that put together Baito Hell 2000, the PSP high-weirdness mini-game collection (known in the West and also available for download on PSN as Work Time Fine [W.T.F.]), the easiest way to describe The Last Guy is as Pac-Man via Nokia's Snake game all played out over Google Maps.

It might always be best known for its equally baffling promotional campaign -- which depicted the developers as a backwoods Indian team known as Hindustan Electronics -- and its unmistakably Popcorn-esque theme song, but the game itself is another true inspired Offworld cult classic.

The face of the Wii Theremin

Ken Moore's patched together custom theremin, made from a Wii-mote and a Roland JV-1080 synth, is one of my favorite hardware mods making the rounds, but the experience is -- as Ken's wife is apparently quick to add -- one better listened to than watched.

See also: Ken playing the Star Trek theme via the system.

A holiday deal on Sound and Vision

Here are two reasons I like Microsoft's Black Friday Xbox Live Arcade specials: one is that they've lowered the price on Q Entertainment's HD remake of Dreamcast/PS2 rhythm/shooter Rez, which means there is essentially no excuse not to experience the game if you haven't before. Inspired by, the story goes, one of his first rave experiences (this would have been the very late 90's, mind), Sega designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi set out to create a game that could blend that light and sound and palpable pulsing rhythm as fantastically. The result was Rez, and a long series of music/puzzle games since.

The second is that it gives me an excuse to post this recent YouTube Live Genki Rockets video Q CEO Shuji Utsumi pointed to earlier today. As mentioned in the last Q-related post, Genki Rockets is Q's music property fronted by teen pop star Lumi, the first baby born in outer space who beams her j-pop disco to Earth from 30 years in the future.

Even if the style of music isn't your cup of euro-beats, there's kind of nothing not amazing about the performance, from the faceless DJ-naut on the ones and twos, to Lumi's eventual appearance on the monolithic low-res LED screen, fingers sending off glittering trails as she does her interstellar dance: all precisely the kind of synaesthetic experience that inspired Mizuguchi to create Rez in the first place.

The rest of Microsoft's sales are at Major Nelson's website.

One More Go: New York Times Crosswords

"7 DOWN (5 letters): Donkey Kong company"

The swells of the end-of-year gaming surge are still carrying me out to sea, the living room floor strewn with the wreckage of Fable 2, Resistance 2, Little Big, Mirror’s Edge, Gears Of War 2, Left 4 Dead and an unopened copy of Moto GP ‘08 I found in amongst the cookery books. The tide is showing no signs of turning, sweeping me out further and further, later and later each night. But somehow, every evening, I struggle back to shore, to my safe, sheltered, gaming harbour: BudCat’s New York Times Crosswords. Despite Valve’s millions, EA’s blanket media blitz and Sony’s increasingly unlikable promo Sackboy variants, every evening ends with me grabbing my DS and firing up an 18-month old game which opens with a inept cartoon of a vomiting cat.

But why? What could a game with no score, no story, no spectacle, and no real character beyond the vomiting cat (BudCat may well have reworked their ident since their recent acquisition by Activision) have to lure me away from the riches of this Autumn’s release list? The simple answer: clues like the one above. And yep, that’s a real clue from a real New York Times Crossword. Reading it, all you know for certain is there are only two people in this deal - you and the guy who wrote the clue - and one of you is being really, really dumb. Donkey Kong company. Five letters. Could it be a trick? Some clever crossword subtlety you’re missing?

Or has the esteemed New York Times got its Japanese heavyweights confused - all the more understandable when you allow these puzzles were compiled a good few years before the Wii comeback coup - and wants you to commit the sacrilege of inscribing ‘NAMCO’ into the spaces? And that takes you into a very satisfying game of second-guessing. Would the not-very-videogame-savvy crossword designer be more likely to have heard of Namco or Taito? Could they have asked the advice of their Sony-loving 12-year-old and been told, disparagingly ‘Ninty’?

Then: curve ball. Solving another clue gives you a terminal ‘I’. I? Weird. Unless...unless. No, can’t be. Couldn’t be. They’re not even Japanese! But yes, what fits is Atari. And suddenly, with a single, trivial oversight, the New York Times rewrites gaming history. Suddenly, instead of Pong, Nolan Bushnell unleashes a stark, monochrome rescue challenge on the world. AVOID MISSING PRINCESS FOR HIGH SCORE burns itself into the brains of a generation. A couple of sequels expand the world of this strange new hero and, keen to bring its popularity to bear on the 2600, Atari execs strong-arm Warren Robinett into populating Adventure with mushroom monsters and making the green dragon friendly.

The new franchise becomes so popular, that - at the last minute - the decision is taken to stop development on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and instead divert full resources to Mario’s Revenge, a hypnotic shooter in which the plucky plumber must shoot fireballs through a dazzling, kaleidoscopic barrier while dodging Donkey Kong’s laser-barrels.

Mario’s Revenge is such a huge hit it leads to the Great Videogame Surge of 1983. With its vast resources of cash, Atari bring forward development of its revolutionary Lynx handheld, which - thanks to the popularity of Mushroom Kingdom Games, which features goomba-skimming, piranha-plant-vaulting and dinosaur racing - outsells the Game Boy ten-to-one. Nintendo, resources depleted after losing successive court battles, drops out of the videogame industry. Atari, looking to consolidate its home entertainment empire, diverts a fraction of its massive wealth to buy television manufacturers Sony, resuscitating the failing Betamax format in the process.

And on and on we go. From one slip of a crossword compiler’s pen, I get thirty years worth of games I’ve never played, machines I’ve never touched, and crossovers I’d never imagined (who can forget when Bronson Pinchot lost out to Charles Martinet for the part of Larry Appleton’s countrified Mushroom Kingdom cousin in Perfect Strangers?). How could the combined might of Sony, EA, Microsoft and Valve ever match that? Although, if they could give me a hand with 46 DOWN (6 letters): In cubbyholes (S blank R blank) I promise I’ll get back to Albion, asap.

[Margaret Robertson is the former editor of Edge magazine and now videogame consultant. One More Go is her regular Offworld column in which she explores the attractions of the games she just can't stop going back to.]

Paddle your way through an 8-bit raid

Why we love other peoples' idle hands: they do brilliantly devlish things like take one-off April Fools gags by World of Warcraft makers Blizzard and bring them gloriously to life. But man! Is it as hard as you've heard.

The Molten Core [via Rock Paper Shotgun]

1up-Zine takes us to our Funspot

Upon further investigation this happens to be a bit old, but I'm going to fork it over anyway, for a number of reasons: a.) it was just indirectly pointed out to me by my old co-worker Simon Carless, b.) it gives me an opportunity to mention the always excellent work Raina Lee has done, and 3.) I'm hoping it'll prompt her to properly finish.

Lee is the recent author of Chronicle Books' Hit Me With Your Best Shot: The Ultimate Guide To Karaoke Domination, but prior to her empty-orchestra empire she earned her street cred with the 1up-zine, spanning three lovingly hand-crafted screenprint and xerox issues that brought an entirely different perspective to the usual print-media affairs. The writing was always personal, usually unapologetically nostalgic, and Raina gathered top class talent to do comics and art interspersed between the articles.

You can see a preview version (pdf) of her still-unfinished fourth issue, with some road-diaries of a cross-country trip to classics arcade Funspot, and a history of the joint itself from Twin Galaxies' Walter Day, who you'll all instantly recognize from his role in the fantastic King of Kong documentary.

Funspot special 1up-zine PDF [via GameSetWatch]

Blip Festival '08 daytime activities sound like a blast

We don't usually copy-and-paste press releases, but I hope you'll forgive me this once; the information about all the DIY classes and demos that will be going on during the chiptunes mega-adventure-event BLIP FESTIVAL 2008 is too good not to share. Check out these daytime activities:

: • Make Your Own Visualist – electronics building workshop

• Surrealtime 2: 8-bit Demo Show

• 2A03 Workshop - Crash Course in FamiTracker with Baron Knoxburry

• Beyond Vegavox: NES albums and music on real hardware

• Screening: "Blip Festival:Reformat the Planet"

Full press release with more details after the jump. I am definitely looking forward to this.

Blip Festival 2008 information [BlipFestival.org]

[Image: Minusbaby]

Read the rest of this post....

We can fix that with data

Terminally obsessed with player statistics -- and with good reason, it being one of the top contributors to making their games as balanced and smart as they are -- Valve have published current total Achievement percentages for the first week of Left 4 Dead sessions.

What do they show? That Smokers really aren't all that bad, apparently, that it really is sort of every-Survivor-for-themselves, with only some 15 percent doing the majority of healing and pill giving (though we're happy to see that 25 percent that have healed others when they've been on the outs themselves), and that it's really quite hard to stay away from that Boomer vomit.

Left 4 Dead - Achievements [and thanks to the best-named-games-blog-on-the-internet for the entry title]

Coop does Guitar Hero

Despite being a certifiable friend of Boing Boing (having designed, if you recall, the excellent Jackhammer Jill t-shirt earlier this year), we're just as surprised as everyone to learn that he's quietly snuck four de-luxe aluminum Guitar Hero faceplates into his online store, which is giving us all kinds of wicked ideas about further artist-edition plates.

Products | Guitar Hero Faceplates | Coopstuff

Because He Could: Atari 2600 in a Sega Game Gear shell

Here's something you've never seen before: a Sega Game Gear that can run for eight hours on just two AA batteries. Mind you it's because there's no Game Gear inside, but instead the innards of an Atari 2600 that outputs to a tiny 2.5-inch LCD screen.

It's the work of one Chris Koopa, a man driven mad by a lifetime of Nintendo jibes from his peers who has vowed to create a portable game golem from the bodies of fallen foes that will finally best the DS.

Sega Game Gear Atari 2600 Portable [Technabob via Ben Heck forums]

Offworld/BBtv: Status Report edition

While we here at Offworld gather exclusive content for future editions of Offworld's BBtv transmissions, our second update is a status report, telling the wider world what we've been getting up to over the past week (including the rapid growth of our Boing Boing Steam group, as we all gather for Left 4 Dead extended plays), and a quick rundown of the new things coming to the site in the following weeks.

As usual, here's the direct MP4 link, if you prefer a downloadable rather than the Flash.

Behind the frontlines of the virtual economy mavens

Journalist Julian Dibbell, apart from being the author of the excellent My Tiny Life (which you may have noted is a permanent fixture on my bookshelf), is someone who has intimate knowledge of the virtual worlds real-money-trading underbelly, having spent a year doing it full time for his more recent book, Play Money.

So I'm happy to note that his latest feature for Wired has just arrived online, which chronicles the rise, and rise, and sudden fall of virtual economy entrepreneur Brock Pierce. Pierce was one of the co-founders of IGE, a company that rose from the murky grey market of trading virtual items and currency for real world money, to going properly legit with a massive investment from Goldman Sachs.

As Dibbell explains:

I was around when RMT as a profession was almost exclusively the province of small-timers like me and the very notion of a multinational, 500-employee virtual-items business doing over a quarter billion dollars in trades was practically unimaginable. And I was around three years later when rumors of a $60 million Goldman Sachs investment in IGE first broke and for a moment it seemed possible that Pierce had a handle on something deeper and more enduring than just a profitable business: the future maybe, not only of virtual retailing but of economic life in general.

And I am here today, admiring the views at Pierce's LA home, because I figure it's my best shot at an answer to the only question I can think of asking in the face of a story like IGE's: How did it happen?

The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire

Explain Leeroy to the fish: Offworld on Air America

There's a certain primary education process that I think a lot of us take for granted about games, and assume in other people. Case in point: yesterday, I was invited to be a guest on Air America Radio to explain precisely what it meant that Obama's new FCC transition team co-chair was a level 70 Tauren shaman.

I'd made a lot of assumptions, actually, including believing the call to be a pre-recording that would get slickly edited down to a few seconds of soundbytes (which I had all pithily prepared) to go into a longer NPR-style news clip, assumptions which were summarily shattered 10 minutes before my phone was supposed to ring when a friend wrote on the wall of my Facebooks, "So here I am, listening to Air America... 'coming up later, Brandon Boyer,'" and I realized I was about to be on live for quite a long time, facing questions I might necessarily not be up to answer.

That was somewhat relieved when host Ron Kuby led in the piece as I was on hold by rattling off facetiously sweeping generalizations of who World of Warcraft players were, and then brought me on to do some very, very basic explaining. Turns out: that's a lot more difficult when you've been immersed eyeball deep in the culture for as many years as I have and have to take it all back to square one. As in: have you ever tried to explain what exactly 'Leeroy Jenkins' is or why it's funny? I'd never had to, until I was live on national radio.

You can hear me valiantly try, though, via Kuby's archives at Air America (though from what I gather the clip ends rather abruptly after an offhand 'teamsters' analogy). Coincidentally, and it would take me another few hours for this to click, Kuby is indeed one-and-the-same the Ron Kuby you hear 'The Dude' Lebowski ask for after the Malibu chief of police beans him with a coffee mug (!). Oh, right, and, you know, also a civil rights activist and lawyer of fantastic renown.

Your game face

Currently making the rounds due to a downright impolite remix I'll leave it to you to find yourself (but suffice it to say is not one you'll want to have your work speakers turned up for), is the New York Times' video from Robbie Cooper's 'Immersion' project, which is photographing the reactions of children entranced by games (from the sound of it, Call of Duty 4). From an interview with Cooper in UK's Telegraph:

The plan is to settle on a group of 75 game-playing children - selected by a researcher to represent a cross-section of ethnic groups, income brackets and cultural backgrounds within Britain - and spend 18 months using the technique to film them reacting to different manifestations of screen warfare, be they videogames, news footage, internet videos or feature films. Cooper will then log their expressions and work with a psychologist and sociologist to interpret the results in light of the psychological profiles of the individual children.

The New York Times - Video Library - Immersion

Guitar Center survey shows guitar game players buying real guitars

Guitar Hero and Rock Band creators Harmonix were founded on the hopes that they could inspire a league of new musicians through software, so presumably they'll be happy to hear the results of a new Guitar Center survey which showed the following:

· Of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band players that do not currently play a musical instrument, two-thirds (67%) indicated that they are likely to begin playing a real instrument in the next two years.

· Nearly three out of four (72%) musicians who play games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have spent more time playing their real instrument(s) since they began playing these games.

· Eight out of 10 (81%) of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band players that have been inspired to play an instrument because of the games would like to receive a musical instrument as a gift this winter holiday season.

· Sales of gear for first-timers at Guitar Center has surged along with the peak in sales for Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In the holiday selling season in the last quarter of 2007, Guitar Center saw a +20.7% jump in comparable store sales for beginner-level electric guitar & amplifiers. This surge grew even stronger through the first nine months of 2008, when Guitar Center's cumulative comparable store sales for the category increased +26.9%.

arealguitar [Guitar Center]

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Champion Hyper Plus Remixes

Our favorite part of Capcom's HD enhanced and remade Super Street Fighter II Turbo Remix release about to go live on the PlayStation Network today? In keeping with its recent track record of solid bonus material for its retro revivals (speaking here mainly of Mega Man 9's faux-NES cart CD case), Capcom's put together a very well curated mix of hip-hop/DJ artists doing Street Fighter based songs, which it will be releasing for free alongside the game.

Particularly, the appearance of DJ Qbert (whom you can preview via the project's MySpace page) doing the scratch-happy comic book cut-up narratives that are his trademark does us proud.

LittleBigWatch: Play with Kandinsky

I've been following KirbyKid's delightfully obscure blog for some time, where he's been showing an almost troubling level of dedication to deconstructing the gameplay of everything from Super Mario Bros. to Treasure's excellent roll-your-own DS shooter Bangai-O Spirits (check his critical-glossary for an extrapolated glimpse into the madness).

It was with some interest, then, that I noted his most recent entry, in which he explains how he put LittleBigPlanet's level editor through its paces by attempting to bring a Kandinsky painting to life, garnished with a layer of generative and improvisational music:

# I looked to paintings like the one above for inspiration. I also looked at Kandinsky's paintings from his "Improvisation" series.

# Another idea from the list is for a level that uses musical sounds to create a harmonizing melody. As the player moves closer to the end of the level and as the player platforms more boldly, the generated music would sound more cohesive while matching with the player's platforming tempo and prowess.

# I decided to combine these two ideas harmonizing around the concept of improvisation. The abstract, non structured, freedom of the Kandinsky paintings (form) will influence a similar freewheeling, intersecting style of platforming. And the musical, positional sound design will blend with these two ideas to create a circular, playful flow throughout the level that moves the player in any and all directions.

Having taken the level for a spin, I can comfortably say that Jimi Hendrix's song structures make for a happier Guitar Hero level than Kandinsky's art makes for a platformer -- its shapes too chaotic to make for pleasing play -- but I sincerely applaud the attempt to break LittleBigPlanet from its traditional bonds and do something entirely unique, and will be eagerly watching further efforts.

Critical-Gaming Network - Blog - Improvisation #1 [Critical-Gaming Network]

Ben Marra's view from Vice City

Newsweek's N'Gai Croal comments on (recent i am 8-bit contributor) Ben Marra's GTA:Vice City inspired sketch, "Illustrations like this make us wish for the videogame equivalent of The Criterion Collection," which just about sums it up perfectly.

Benjamin Marra [via EGO...trip]

Rolito unleashes new Patapon toy

With the release of Sony's second installment of rhythm/strategy game Patapon due in Japan in just days, Rolito -- the French designer who lent his "delicious vectorial poison" to the game -- has shown off his latest related toy, a new pop-art patterned Bearbrick from Medicom.

While it lacks the contrast and visual punch of his first Bearbrick, this one has the added benefit of actually being released to the public (the first being doled out by Sony and others as promotional items), albeit as part of a blindbox series. December will also see the release of a cell strap set of individual Patapon 'ultra detail' figures (I'm partial to the lackluster second and the grimacing fourth).

Patapon x Medicom (3) [Rolito]

The irony being no-one even reads them anymore

Excellent eBay cool-hunting blog gamesniped recently linked to an auction for an original PDP-11 manual for seminal text adventure Zork, autographed by creators Mark Blank, Dave Lebling and Joel Berez, along with an original business card from developer Infocom.

Its final price? $2,348.31. The funniest part? Gamesniped's ultra dry warning before their link: "Now, before you see the price on this auction, you should know that there is a very active collecting scene dedicated to Infocom games." [via Waxy]

The Wasteland gets a little wider

The most devastating part of reaching the level 20 cap in Fallout 3 is losing that Paper Planes-like cash register ka-ching that punctuates each kill and discovery, but there's always been something alluring about the way your Pip-boy experience meter continues on to 21 that lets you know that you're not quite done just yet.

Which is true: Bethesda have announced the first round of downloadable content for the 360 and PC games, which will be spread throughout the first three months of next year, starting with "Operation: Anchorage" in January, which will let you "enter a military simulation and fight in one of the greatest battles of the Fallout universe – the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from its Chinese Communist invaders."

Next will come "The Pitt," a "journey to the industrial raider town called The Pitt, located in the remains of Pittsburgh," and finally, the first round of content that will extend the main quest, "Broken Steel," in March, in which you'll "join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all."

December will also see the release of the G.E.C.K., the "official editor for Fallout 3," which will open up the game to the modding community, which I believe means I'm going to have to start the game anew there to reap the rewards, and I'm honestly not sure I mind.

Fallout 3 [Bethesda, photo courtesy Duncan Harris's postcard-pretty set of images]

Flashbang opening the Minotaur China Shop

One of the most charming things about indie developers Flashbang is their no-nonsense approach to both game design and game titles. Both Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and Jetpack Brontosaurs deliver exactly what they say on the tin, and both extremely adeptly, using 3D browser plugin Unity for a near console-like experience (obligatory achievements and all) from the comfort of the web.

Following a brief diversion to the iPhone, Flashbang says its latest 3D browser game -- Minotaur China Shop -- is nearly ready for beta testing, and again looks from the above trailer to be -- brilliantly -- exactly what it sounds like.

All of Flashbang's works available on their portal Blurst are based on playful physicality -- Splume's physics-enhanced Puzzle Bobble-alike play, Velociraptor's vehicles, Jetpack's jetpack, and Minotaur's precariously placed racks of valuables.

Plus, huge bonus points to Flashbang for scoring Minotaur's trailer with blip-maker E*vax, one half of the excellent duo Ratatat and a perennial Offworld favorite.

Minotaur China Shop, Twitter Reminder [Blurst via IndieGames]

Rock Band, EyeToy added to UK's National Videogame Archive

I've done a bad job at mentioning this thus far, but, prompted by the most recent news via GamesIndustry, I note that new submission videos have been uploaded for the UK's National Videogame Archive. First announced in September, the founders explain:

The National Videogame Archive is a joint project between the National Media Museum and Nottingham Trent University, which aims to celebrate that culture and preserve that history for researchers, developers, game fans and the public...

The Archive is working to preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts. This means treating videogames as more than inert, digital code: at the heart of the National Videogames Archive is the determination to document the full life of games, from protoypes and early sketches, through box-art, advertising and media coverage, to mods, fanart and community activities.

At the Save the Videogame site, you can see celebrity submissions from a number of noteworthy developers, including Jon 'Lego Star Wars' Smith, Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet team, and Uncharted's Richard Lamarchand. As GamesIndustry points out, both Sony and Harmonix have announced new hardware submissions, with prototype versions of the EyeToy and Rock Band guitar.

Save the Videogame [National Videogame Archive]

Space Invaders about to Get Even on WiiWare

It's been a harrowing past two weeks waking up to the Monday morning press-release deluge and realizing that, no, it's still not the week that the U.S. gets Space Invaders Get Even, after its European WiiWare debut. Square Enix was kind enough, though, to cut the tension and announce that December 1st will be, err.. SI-day.

Why the excitement? Long overdue (30 years!) for some payback, Get Even, as the name suggests, finally breaks from the past and this time justly plays from the vantage point of the fluorescent invaders themselves, wreaking havok on the world and the defense forces it's assembled, and serves as a fantastic light hearted and comic-book-colorful counterpoint to the slickly retro-futuristic DS/PSP/Xbox Live Arcade's Space Invaders Extreme.

Mechner talks film, game, graphic novel storytelling

Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner has uploaded an opinion column recently published in Game Informer magazine, detailing how he's varied his approaches in creating games, movies, and graphic novels based on his same property.

As much a filmmaker as a gamemaker by trade (having filmed a documentary on the controversial buy-out and razing of Los Angeles Mexican American neighborhood Chavez Ravine, and wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Jerry Bruckheimer/Disney-produced Sands of Time film), Mechner has an innate sense and talks well on letting each medium do what it does best, rather than shoehorning content from one medium to another.

Take note, too, if you haven't already, of Mechner's "old journals," where he's reprinting hand-written diaries from the time when he was just getting his start in the industry, featuring guest appearances by a little known game coming out of Russia called Tetris, and early rotoscope reference video of the Prince's animations.

jordanmechner.com » Blog Archive » Game to movie to graphic novel

de_vangogh: Counterstrike goes "The Starry Night"

There's the mere existence of a Counterstrike level based upon Vincent van Gogh's psychotically hallucinogenic masterpiece, "The Starry Night." Each surface and skybox is taken from the texture of oils the mutilated maniac slathered upon canvas, and that itself is something to be cherished, whether pompously or out of glee.

But then you wonder what van Gogh would have thought, glimpsing the future of his painting in a fever dream as he lay sweating in his asylum cell overlooking the Rhone. A bunny-hopped battle between masked pre-pubescent terrorists, firing uzis and shrieking smack talk at each other in the swirling sanitarium of his delirium. And that's what is awesome: a vision of "Starry Night" more insane than van Gogh himself could ever hope to be.

Download Starry Night CS Here [Nipper Maps via Fidgit]

The gamer-in-chief

Tom Armitage has updated his site with his recent GameCity festival talk on what it means to have our first generation entering public life who've grown up playing games. Waxing on how that familiarity might inform their approach to resource scarcity, the complexity of an ever more -- and data-rich -- connected world, and 'an end to colocation', Armitage says:

So what does a future run by gamers look like? Well, if they can handle complexity, and they’ve stocked up all the magic item chests ready for when scarcity hits, and they’ve failed enough times at the low-stakes games that they know they can make it at the high-stakes ones, and if our environment is one carefully planned out for effective growth rather than rammed together for efficiency, and if they understand how to handle the ever-more complex forms of communications necessary to deal with the large, distributed teams of people necessary to understand complexity - and if they can create a world that supplies and consumes the data necessary to make smart, informed, decisions - then they might just make it awesome...

And even if we don’t get that, maybe a fraction of that will trickle through, that’s still a start. Games are wonderful things, and people who get games are wonderful people, but they don’t just have to make more games, you know. You could change the world.

The ideas here share a happy overlap with the Superstruct ARG being run by Jane McGonigal and the Institute for the Future. McGonigal has been tirelessly championing the idea of bringing more game-like interactions to all aspects of everyday life to make it more engaging and generally increase happiness.

Specifically, Superstruct itself is her attempt to do just that as it relates to future public policy debates: the game that attempts to "chronicle the world of 2019--and imagine how we might solve the problems we'll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential."

The talk is also, of course, prescient following news that Obama's FCC transition team co-chair is a dedicated World of Warcraft player.

If Gamers Ran The World [Infovore]

Welcome to your Doom in a browser

Ported directly to Flash 10 thanks to Adobe's Alchemy, which allows coders to compile C and C++ into their Actionscript creations, Doom may now be shot up in the browser.

Author "Mike" from Newsgrounds offers few clues as to how he went about it, but it works well enough: it's like having a 133Mhz Pentium all over again!

Though it includes only the shareware portion of the game, it's high time Flash, given its ubiquity, started making progress on the pretty-pictures front—anyone familiar with the Unity browser plug-in knows that there's no technical reason browser games can't serve up high-performance visuals.

Doom in a browser [Newsgrounds via RPS]

Hand Circus's Rolando rolling ever nearer

Currently just about everybody's most anticipated iPhone game, publisher ngmoco has released the latest trailer for developer Hand Circus's candy-colored tilt-and-touch platformer Rolando, highlighting a new pop-up book style world selection screen and a new December release date.

Ngmoco have boldly claimed that their company charter is to become the "first party" of iPhone games. Following on the release of their low-cost/high-quality Maze Finger and Topple, and with Dr. Awesome and Dropship on the way, there's serious potential behind that posture.

Rodney Alan Greenblat organizing Zen temple fundraiser

Parappa, UmJammer Lammy and Major Minor artist Rodney Alan Greenblat -- now often going by his newly bestowed Buddhist name Musho -- is coordinating a December 13th holiday market for his New York City Zen temple, The Village Zendo, including a table of his own prints, postcards, posters, and "a few unreleased product items too, including some funky little ceramic flower vases made in Japan."

Greenblat's own web store has a preview of much of that artwork, as well as a slew of import only and original Parappa and UnJammer goods, and fantastic Buddhist statuary done in his inimitable style.

Hello Zen! holiday market 2008 [Village Zendo NYC]

KodyKoala's Mushroom Kingdom customs

Sitting (quite uncomfortably) somewhere between Japan's Tom of Finland-esque muscle-bound Nintendo parody comics and dollar-store action figure knockoffs, the most disturbing part of 'KodyKoala's "custom Mario figures" might not be Toad's icy gaze or Peach's frozen grimace (which Kody calls 'just right'), but Mario's left hand just seconds away from clutching at her skirt.

KodyKoala's Custom Mario Figures [via theBBPS]

A new look at DS space opera Infinite Line

Though there's a lot to be said for the cheeky sexuality of Bayonetta and the slapstick ultra-violence of Mad World, of all the games Japan based collective Platinum Games announced earlier this year, DS space epic Infinite Line had me at hello.

It wasn't just the promise of vast, free space exploration shrunk down to palm size, or the fact that you could decorate your warships with lipstick kisses (though both helped), it was designer's Hifumi Kouno's assertion that "in playing through the story, across vast space, the player will discover what it means to be human in this vast emptiness."

While we wait for more detail on quite how Kouno can affirm our essential humanity, thanks to Tiny Cartridge we have the first English version of Infinite Line's happily perplexing anime intro short.

Infinite Space DS short fansub (DATS) [YouTube, via Tiny Cartridge]

NoVVember: A month of Gradius' Vic Vipers in LEGO

A friendly challenge among LEGO builders on Flickr called "NoVVember" brings us these intersections of bricks and Gradius — the double-V stands for "Vic Viper".

Top Views of Vic Vipers [Flickr via Brothers Brick]

NCsoft bringing Tabula Rasa to a close

Following earlier word that creator Richard Garriott was leaving the company to pursue presumably more directly space-related interests after an inspiring visit aboard the International Space Station, NCsoft has announced that his epic sci-fi MMO will soon be shuttered as well:

Last November we launched what we hoped would be a ground breaking sci-fi MMO. In many ways, we think we've achieved that goal. Tabula Rasa has some unique features that make it fun and very different from every other MMO out there. Unfortunately, the fact is that the game hasn't performed as expected. The development team has worked hard to improve the game since launch, but the game never achieved the player population we hoped for.

So it is with regret that we must announce that Tabula Rasa will end live service on February 28, 2009.

Message from the Tabula Rasa Team [NCsoft]

Passage's Jason Rohrer and emotional game experiences

Esquire profiles Jason Rohrer, creator of Passage. That little game, playable in just five minutes, provides one of the most emotionally affecting experiences of any game yet. Rohrer is apparently consulting at EA now to help developed "LMNO", another Spielberg-backed game project:

And if this new breed of emotional game can also rake in the cash, well, all the better. Under way right now is a high-stakes race to create the Citizen Kane of video games: an "AAA" title (the industry's equivalent of a big-budget summer movie) that also pushes the needle forward artistically. The best current contender is a project code-named LMNO, part of Stephen Spielberg's development deal with Electronic Arts, which has been described as North by Northwest meets E.T. Your character in the game will be a spy who encounters a mysterious, sexy woman. How much help she offers will be dependent upon how well you cultivate her as your partner and guide. Essentially, LMNO aims to be the first major video game whose action will not pivot on jumping puzzles or twitch-reflex fusillades but on a nuanced relationship.

Brandon adds: Little is still known about LMNO (apart from the above information and this small preview shot [higher def version coming when I can remember where I've squirreled it away]), but it promises to be one of EA's most interesting projects, having again brought together designers Randy Smith and Doug Church. Smith and Church are veterans of developer Looking Glass, a studio still talked about primarily in hushed reverent tones, and had their hands in some of PC gaming's finest, most notably Thief, System Shock, and Deus Ex. The fact that they've brought Rohrer on board as consultant gives it even further potential as a thought provoking title that'll light the art/intellectual-gamer set ablaze.

At Gamasutra, Persuasive Games' Ian Bogost has just written his own breakdown of Between, the game Rohrer created for Esquire to accompany the writeup, and has coined a new term -- 'disjunctive multiplayer' -- in the process.

The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls [Esquire.com via Waxy]

Would You Like To Play A Game? Left 4 Dead Edition

Boing Boing Gadgets had originally opened up the floor to doing community gaming sessions well before Offworld had launched, but now that it has, I'd like to kick off an official regular weekend group-play feature. Seeing as how it's just dropped and is by all means terribly smart and perfect for actually gaming together, this week's Would You Like To Play A Game?.. err, game will be Valve's Left 4 Dead.

Here's how to play:

Steam: Join the Boing Boing Steam Group to play with us or other Boing Boing readers.

Xbox Live: While we work on getting Xbox Live Gamertags linked off of Boing Boing profile pages, you can leave your own via the comments below. Mine is brandonnn (as with Steam), and the 360 is likely where I'll actually be fighting back the zombie onslaught. BBG's Joel is Joelev, and BBG's Rob and John still may not have fully joined the console era yet. In the meantime, you can check that earlier post for other community IDs.

Just please remember, what we're trying to do is not startle the Witch.

The Offworld Launch Week Unicorn Chaser

We're wrapping up the first week here at Offworld, and I should thank everyone that's commented, written, and left overwhelmingly positive notes about the launch here, and say that if you need me, you'll know where to find me, as again captured via BBtv. It's just how I do, you know?

(BBtv) Unicorn Chaser, Friday Review: Offworld.com Dirty Dancing Death Dwarf

Bringing Gamma home to you

As you can see from Infinite Ammo's video above, Kokoromi's Gamma3D looks to have gone off without a hitch, with a reported 400 some odd people in attendence, and, as promised, the collective have posted all of the games to their website for your approval -- including Offworld's previously mentioned super HYPERCUBE, and Paper Moon, the excellent planar-platformer from Infinite Ammo themselves (whose lead designer previously worked with Bit Blot on the recently noted Aquaria).

Gamma3D Game Downloads [Kokoromi Collective]

The origin of Bioforge Plus

Feeling a certain affinity having just relocated to Austin, and because I've gone a week without going too terribly retro, I feel inclined to note that former Origin Systems director Jeff Morris has captured and uploaded the original intro cinema (featuring what sounds to be a fantastic Mike 'MST3K' Nelson impersonator) for the long-since-canceled Bioforge Plus add-on.

Morris' YouTube channel is actually a treasure trove of Origin material, with various Wing Commander, Bioforge, and Ultima series ephemera, including an in-costume interview with Lord British himself in full regalia.

As friends-of-Offworld RockPaperShotgun previously mentioned, a terabyte of Origin material landed in the offices of EA Mythic this past summer and was quickly cataloged by ardent fans, quite possibly including the Bioforge Plus source itself. The Artful Gamer blog has more on what's been unearthed so far.

Games That Weren’t » Bioforge Plus intro on YouTube [via GameSetWatch]

Online multiplayer coming to new Aurora Feint

Investor news site VentureBeat has a very lengthy preview on the online multiplayer online features coming to Aurora Feint II, the sequel to the Puzzle Quest meets Tetris Attack iPhone game, which sounds like it's coming together nicely:

One person plays a level of the game (which is, at its heart, a puzzle game) and when he or she is done, sends that data to the game’s servers. As a competitor, you can then download this data (which includes not only scores but also a play-by-play of how the player made his or her moves), and put it into your game, creating a sort of “ghost” competitor...

But what’s cool is that you can actually manipulate the opposing player’s score by making certain moves at the right time. This may seem a bit odd since the other person has already played, but using weapons, you can alter their game and work toward a victory.

Where the first hit was free, Feint's developers are banking on the hope that fans of the original will return for this $10 update, which greatly extends its social networking features.

Aurora Feint II: The Arena brings asynchronous online multi-player gaming to the iPhone [VentureBeat]

Into the mind of the Meijin

Takahashi Meijin is one of those gaming figures who you might have heard of on the periphery but never fully wrapped your mind around -- he was semi recognizably the face of Hudson's Adventure Island series, and indeed has served as the company's spokesman for the past two decades. More amazingly, though, he was the star of Game King, Japan's rough equivalent to 80's NES advermovie The Wizard.

As you can see in this montage, which is self-parodying to the point of near postmodern, the program saw Meijin training for a national Star Soldier championship by honing his famous '16 shot' skills -- the ability to press a NES controller button 16 times a second -- by vibrating tabletops to bring tea-sets closer and, amazingly, exploding a watermelon with just a structure-weakening flick of his hummingbird-flutter fingertip.

All that is prelude to a hat tip toward 1up's Ray Barnholt, who has landed the most extensive English language interview with Takahashi we'll see in some time. In it, he explains how he came to Hudson, his thoughts on the East/West hardcore/casual divide, and confirms that he essentially invented the Turbo-Grafx 16's sliding turbo switches, but, delightfully, kept them limited to 8- and 15-shots a second so no one could steal his crown.

Master Higgins Speaks [1up.com]

WIGI shows off celebrity auction wares

Via some fortuitous Facebook linking we note that tomorrow marks the kick off Women In Games International's celebrity auction, which will run through Sunday the 29th. The list of items up for bid, which you can preview on Bonnie Ruberg's Flickr set, includes items like two legitimately wicked Shepard Fairey designed Civilization Revolution posters signed by Sid Meier, a Bioshock guide signed by Ken Levine, more Witcher, Mass Effect, Gears of War and Halo merch than you've ever seen in one place, and, our favorite: an Electronic Arts watch and keyring so vintage they still use its old 'EOA' square-circle-triangle logo.

The Writers Cabal Blog has more info on finding the appropriate eBay link.

Rez, Lumines dev making N-Gage games?

File this one under wait and see, but when Shuji Utsumi speaks, I listen. Formerly variously VP at Sony Computer Entertainment, Sega and Disney, Utsumi is now CEO of Q Entertainment, the developer behind Lumines, Every Extend Extra and Xbox Live Arcade's Rez revival -- in general, one of the top studios driving music and games closer together outside of Rock Band and Phase creator Harmonix.

So it was with some interest that I noted via his blog that he'd just returned from a quick 'Roman Holiday' to visit the Nokia Games Summit, where he appeared on stage (above) to tell the audience that mobile media would soon be the "center of the media, replacing TV," and, more interestingly, how happy he was to see Nokia working closely with content creators in the area.

Sitting to Utsumi's left is not, as it would appear on first glance, Mythbuster Adam Savage, but instead (you later can hear him referred to in the video) former Eurythmic Dave Stewart (!).

Utsumi notes in his post that Stewart was impressed when he showed off another of Q's music properties, Genki Rockets, who are, in Q's own words, "a music group which vocal is 17 years old girl, Lumi, a first baby born in outer space and has never been to the earth" (and is, in fact, beaming her pop videos to us from 30 years in the future).

So what brings Q and a Eurythmic together? After doing a little further digging, we can see that Stewart attended the games summit as part of the company's "Artists' Advisory Council," where he is helping to introduce "up-and-coming singer Cindy Gomez through [Digital Legends' already-announced N-Gage game Dance Fabulous] with brand new songs including the theme song, 'Street Dancing.'"

But after more digging, we can see that while the studio isn't currently listed, in July of this year Q Entertainment did indeed show up on Nokia's 'Our Developers' list.

So, like I say, file this one under wait and see until we get solid word from an official source -- it could be as simple as Q porting Lumines to the device, as they have to PSP, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC (via Steam) -- but either way, along with the mind-boggling but excellent N-Gage/PC strategy game Reset Generation and the intriguing looking Yamake, Nokia appear to be gathering a solid team beneath their wing.

CERN scientists divert Nihilanth threat

We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Reddit community for supplying scientists at the Large Hadron Collider with their very own crowbar to hold down Earth's fort -- so far as we can tell, that interdimensional rift hasn't yet been torn open so wide that we've been affected on this side of the ocean. From the photo series sent over from CERN labs, though, that's only due to the heroic effort of CERN's very own Swiss Gordon Freeman.

the crowbar arrived at CERN, Freeman received it, world saved [Reddit]

The case for used games

This one passed us by earlier in the week but is still worthy of note: as a number of publishers trend toward curbing used game sales by offering one-time-use download codes for certain value adds (see: the extra 20 songs included in Rock Band 2 for new purchases), Civilization and Spore designer Soren Johnson makes an equally strong case for used sales. Some salient points:

Used game sales are the primary method by which the retail games market is segmented. For quite a few gamers, especially younger ones, used games are their only option for buying games instead of renting them. Keeping these price-sensitive consumers - who will often be tomorrow’s full-price customers - in the retail system and away from piracy is a good thing all around.

[...]

Many factors come into play when a consumer decides if a specific game purchase is worth the money, and one of those factors is the perceived value from selling it back as a used game. In other words, people will pay more for a new game because they know they can get some of that money back when they trade it in at the local Gamestop. Importantly, this perceived value exists whether the consumer actually sells the game or keeps it. Wizards of the Coast has long admitted that the existence of the secondary market for Magic cards has long helped buoy the primary market because buyers perceive that the cards have monetary value.

His caveat, though, is that in order to maintain that perceived value of traditional retail games, digital download services (which it would seem we're all growing much more comfortable with) have to lower their own prices in turn. Hit the link below for the full argument and following lengthy conversation in the comments.

DESIGNER NOTES » Blog Archive » The Case for Used Games

The bike hero that wasn't

By now you've probably seen the viral Bike Hero video recently linked via our gadget loving bretheren, and by now you've probably sussed out that it was indeed a highly staged hoax, from the same agency behind Marc Ecko's alleged Air Force graffiti-bomb, and that might have left you feeling a bit cold.

Friend of Offworld, interesting-web-thing-maker, and keen link-smith Tom Armitage at Infovore sums up the disappointment nicely:

Why don’t marketers and advertisers understand that, sometimes, the target audience for this kind of thing will like it just as much if it’s honest about being advertising? It’s a lovely piece of footage, and it ties into the garage-band, DIY ethos well; it’s a good fit for the Guitar Hero brand. As it is, I’m disappointed because I now know this wasn’t the product of hard-working fans, wanting to promote a product they love; it was the product of a lot of time/effort from people with money to spend on time/effort.

As a long-time appreciator and equal-part promoter of smart -- but transparent -- advertising, I couldn't agree more.

Infovore » Bike Hero-gate

By pressing down a special key it plays a little melody

There's a fantastic meta-game the Nintendo elite like to play with every game scored by long-time company composer Kazumi Totaka, who is oft-noted as the not entirely coincidental spitting image of Animal Crossing's K.K. Slider (the dog's Japanese name, Totakeke, being a bastardization of Totaka's name).

Totaka has notoriously been hiding a vaguely arabesque 19-note melody in each game he's worked on, from import-only original Game Boy game X (notably created by now-PixelJunk Monsters/Eden studio head Dylan Cuthbert) through more recent DS and GameCube games.

And so, after only days of searching, the song -- known simply as Totaka's Song -- has been discovered in the Wii's new Animal Crossing title, City Folk. Sitting idle in Kapp'n's opening-scene bus for enough time will net you the whistled reward.

More on the phenomenon can be found via YouTube user 'PhilBond's three part series exhaustively cataloging the appearances.

Animal Crossing City Folk- Kapp'n Whistles Totaka's Song [YouTube, via Tiny Cartridge]

Obama's new Tauran Shaman of staff

Over at the Mother Boing, Xeni notes that Obama's just-appointed FCC transition team co-chair Kevin Werbach has been recognized as verifiable "virtual worlds nut" and World of Warcraft Level 70 Tauren Shaman Supernovan Jenkins, along with a breakdown of just what that affiliation means:

What does this tell us about him, as a person, as a gamer, as a government official? I will attempt to translate all the dorkese.

1. - CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Every player in WoW belongs to one of two warring factions, Alliance or Horde. Werbach is Horde. Children often choose to be Alliance because they perceive them as "the good guys", but students of history (both ours and Azeroth's) recognize that Alliance culture is based on medieval European culture and Horde culture is based on the indigenous cultures that were supplanted by the West.

Werbach is a Tauren (a minotaur), which basically makes him a Native Kalimdorian. The Tauren revere nature, living in wigwams near giant totem poles. As a Shaman (see below), he could also have chosen a troll (blue-skinned Jamaican-like monster) or an orc (green-skinned Klingon-like monster), so there must be something about the cow-man that appeals to his liberal guilt.

Warcraft Identity of Obama's FCC Transition Team Co-Chair Revealed, Analyzed

Weapon of Choice, the game that crash-landed from 1992

While there hasn't been nearly enough time since the New Xbox Experience update landed to fully dig into all of the new community games it has also brought with it, one game has jumped out ahead of the pack both in terms of sales (it's currently, according to the new dashboard's sorting options, the most popular community title) and in wider recognition over the past few days.

That game is Weapon of Choice, which seems to exemplify precisely what Microsoft's community games campaign was set up to do: giving passionate one-person teams their platform for indie success. Industry news site Gamasutra talked with that one person, Nathan Fouts (who recently gave up his position at Resistance: Fall of Man creator Insomniac to form his startup, Mommy's Best Games) where he admitted that his game wasn't up to snuff to be accepted into the Xbox Live Arcade program proper, but perfectly fit the community game mantra.

Weapon of Choice is, at heart, a game you've played before -- again and again and again, especially if you had your roots in early computer games -- a bombastic and testosterone-drenched side-scrolling shooter with a ludicrous sci-fi storyline, blaring guitar riffs and multiple-screen-filling bosses. It's so filled with the vitality of a singular vision, though -- Fouts pulled in help with music and scriptwriting, but otherwise took the reins on all its art, programming and sound effects -- that it's hard to escape its auteur, throwback charm.

That's not to say that it hasn't brought anything new to the table: apart from handling as fluidly as a 16-bit shooter should on modern hardware, Fouts packed a few very smart gameplay aces up his sleeve. The first is 'death brushing,' a ubiquitous 'bullet-time' trick that zooms in on and slows down the action when you're very near death (as you will be, often -- Choice's screens are chaotic with over and undersized alien enemies all squelching and squeezing various fluids and particles from themselves at any given moment), allowing you to make narrow and stylish escapes.

For those moments where death brushing hadn't worked out as well as you'd hoped, once you've died the game calls up a 'vengeance missile,' which, before you've called your next character into play, gives you a one shot first-person-bullseye-targeted chance to eliminate whatever it was that'd brought you down before.

Finally, the game gives you the chance to rescue that downed character that you've just replaced by slinging them -- or other downed operatives you've find on the field -- over your shoulder and carrying them to end-of-level safety, bringing about tough choices about who you decide to leave behind. It's not until you've depleted your stock of rescued characters that the game is truly over.

It's no surprise that, according to t