December 2008
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Indie Game: Derek Yu's Spelunky
There's an easy way to tell when you've got a veritable indie hit on your hands: its TIGSource forum thread goes from 0 to 34 pages in just over a week, before the game's even been properly finished. So it has gone with Derek Yu's Spelunky.
You might know Yu from his work as co-creator of the previously mentioned Aquaria, TIGSource itself, or more mischievously from his 2006 freeware gore-em-up I'm OK, a fully playable answer to Jack Thompson's 'Modest Videogame Proposal' (which I wrote up slightly more in depth at the time).
Most easily and commonly described as Spelunker meets Rogue, Yu's game retains all of the unforgiving difficulty of both (though much more forgiving than the former's trip-to-death strictness I noted before), but excels at the latter's sense of procedurally-generated loot collecting and cave crawling, just now in 8-bit sidescroller form.
In your travels downward, you will die -- you will die a lot, sometimes within seconds of entering the first level, for stupid reasons and even when you're at your most careful, but every cheap death is a necessary part of the learning process (its readme.txt implores, "Don't be afraid to die! But also don't be afraid to live!"), and the sense of accomplishment for a smart and successful run is one of the best we've seen in some time.
Yu hits all the right notes from simply its run/jump physics (not since Cave Story has it felt so joyous to just move), to its itchy-trigger-fingered shopkeeper, destructible landscape and Indy Jones boulder chases, to that burdensome sense of dread that builds with each successive bar of gold you collect, knowing how important it is that this time you make it out alive. His algorithms are able to smartly weave together endless scenarios with those building blocks for players to create their own stories in ways the code couldn't possibly have conceived.
Now thankfully natively supporting joypads (its somewhat clumsy initial keyboard configuration being the only thing hampering full-on recommendation at the time), Spelunky would have made an apt 'best indie' of 2008, but let's now call it a bar set very, very, high as we plunge into 2009.
Spelunky [TIGSource]
Brandon Boyer
Come to Big Daddy
Problem: how to raise awareness of BioShock in a traditionally first-person-shooter-averse territory? Spike/2K's answer: nevermind the footage, channel an ever so slightly perceptible Chris Cunningham influence and get to the crux of the game -- underwater city, sinister little girls.
[via Gemaga]
Brandon Boyer
Four times the DS-10
But then some game music a bit less cerebral, but no less enjoyable: ambient/electronica blog Disquiet notes this four-man half-hour Korg DS-10 live jam mp3 from Melbourne's DyLAB, which shifts in and out pretty effortlessly from well tuned thumps to utter blippy madness, and (for all the app's precise stylus-ing) must have been a sight to behold.
And because this comes up nearly every time we mention DS-10, a reminder: the software's no longer an import-only rarity; publisher Xseed has released it stateside, where you can find it at most major online retailers. Let us know if you create anything amazing.
Nintendo Korg DS-10 x 4 Jam MP3 [Disquiet, via Gus]
Previously:
Korg DS-10 + bendy straw = handheld talkbox - Offworld
Extra Hyper Korg DS-10 performance - Offworld
Brandon Boyer
They want to make an artwork out of your dreams
Any opportunity to bring the ponderous weight of a Whitney Biennial artist to the site: an overly opaque post over at Rhizome on 'Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987' sent me on an afternoon's goose chase trying to figure out just what the hell is going on here, and I think I have it:
Artist Seth Price, concerning himself with a multi-part work on music "solely as digital information: programmed, encoded, extracted, sometimes going through MIDI translation, uploaded and downloaded, finally burned to compact disc; all the while passing through numerous data compressions and file formats," devotes one chunk of that thesis to game music.
His wonderfully overwrought statement on the work (pdf) comes up with some decent musings on the nature of the beast:
Structurally, the genre presents unique limitations. A track must be energetic but not distracting, the consummate “background music”. It need not follow a standard musical trajectory, since it must be capable of looping ad infinitum, allowing players as much time as needed with a given screen or level. Because of this, many of the album tracks start abruptly or quickly peter out, their duration determined by the programmer who removed them from the circuits. For this reason, many of the tracks must be considered extracts or samples of larger and arguably infinite compositions.
And Price's end result: a lengthy megamix of 8- and 16-bit era straight-up MIDIs joltingly cut back to back.
Yes darling, but is it art? Either way, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt if only for this description of his later video piece, 'Editions': "a partial inventory of imagery: dancing cats, grated cheese, civic violence, Richard Serra, video-game audio effects and a roiling ocean."
Brandon Boyer
Paul Robertson pumps pixels for energy drink
By now you're probably well familiar with Paul Robertson's Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 and epic Kings of Power 4 Billion % (it's actually a bit criminal to stream either; check here and here for a download mirror to watch in full res), and now he's returned with, err, an energy drink commercial. It takes too long to get to the good bits, but then you never want it to end.
Syke Makes Life Like a Video Game! [YouTube, via TIGSource]
Brandon Boyer
Polygraph's Kakuna T-shirt casts harden
Allow me just one more fashion update for an otherwise slow pre-New Year's workday: seeing a new King of Games design made me wonder if there'd been any recent news from my other favorite jp.games-fashion outlet, POKÉMON 151, and indeed there is.
Launched officially by Pokemon developer Game Freak in June, design house Polygraph came up with four original designs (Articuno, Cubone, Hypno, and MewTwo) that were all as subtle, elegant and jaw-droppingly beautiful as a Pokemon shirt is ever going to get (dig, especially, Hypno/Sleeper's sinister silhouette).
Now I see they've updated with a new design featuring Kakuna that's giving me just as much a touch of that old, familiar design-lust.
Brandon Boyer
Look a little bit like Little Mac
Every day a new King of Games design is unleashed feels a bit like Xmas -- their latest is this just released Punch-Out!! hoodie set (perhaps in celebration of the forthcoming Wii remake), with matching fingerless gloves to boot.
I have to admit, the new design doesn't quite do it for me as much as older classics like the lush gradient of the Fantastic Adventure hoodie (that may be just because the site won't let me zoom in far enough to read the text), but it does have the benefit of actually being in-stock and available worldwide (a more recent development) -- just be prepared to spend most of your Mike Tys^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mr. Dream title bout winnings to get it.
The King of Games [via Kotaku]
Brandon Boyer
A new Hanes Beefy-T awaits
This T-shirt -- fortuitously spotted by a twitter search, and, I've just sussed out, purchased by Southampton DJ James Zabiela -- is just a few quick fixes away from being an amazing bit of site merch.
No luck finding my own, but at very least I've just learned the kanji for Offworld. [Update: Buy it here at Last Exit To Nowhere, thanks Transmission3000!]
Brandon Boyer
Who will mind the App Store when we're gone?
Flickr's 'burns1de' took a moment during his safehouse breather to spot this plaintive graffiti in Left 4 Dead, as noticed by GamOvr.
That makes a perfect segue to mention the latter site as one of my favorites of 2008: GamOvr's something akin to a well-curated tumblr/ffffound specifically for the gaming set, and an always reliable source for one-hits of niche ephemera.
Recent favorites? Sega's Fonz, more 8-bit lacework (previously covered here), this fantastic Mirror's Edge wall-scaled ad in Shibuya, and right, right, something of our own.
"I miss the internet" [via GamOvr]
Brandon Boyer
Left 4 Dead: the twits don't stand a chance
A few weeks ago I linked our followers to a mysterious twitter happening involving a certain @bill_l4d, @francis_l4d, @louis_l4d and @zoey_l4d, and now Infovore's Tom Armitage has lifted the bile-soaked, bullet-riddled veil on just what's been happening:
One of the most wonderful things in [Left 4 Dead] is the banter between the four player characters. There’s so much dense, specific scripting, and enough dialogue so that it rarely repeats. I thought it would be interesting to see if you could simulate the four players’ dialogue over Twitter, sharing some state between the bots, but also finding a way to make them communicate a little with each other...They run a scenario, they bump into boss zombies, they find stuff, they get hurt (and help each other), they get scared (and reassure each other). At the moment, there are some dialogue overlaps; my main work at the moment is adding more unique dialogue for each bot. Bill is sounding pretty good, but the rest of them need work. It takes about 2-3 hours for them to run a scenario, and it’s usually fun to watch. (And, as you can see, it makes sense to follow all four of them)...
I think my favourite aspect of it, though, is that at times, watching the bots play together is a little like magic. The first time I saw them talk to each other, cover each other whilst reloading, help each other up after a Boomer attacked, I felt a little (only a little, mind) like a proud father. They’re dumb as a sack of hammers, but they look convincing, and that was the real goal. It’s fun to watch them fight the horde amidst all my other friends on Twitter.
Tom set the game afoot again earlier today, the results of which you can see here (thanks for the handy link, Waxy) -- alongside some more personal messages that might sound familiar.
Twit 4 Dead: more silly nonsense with Twitter bots. [Infovore -- thanks twice today, Tom]
Brandon Boyer
Drinking to excess
An excellent year-end list from designer Steve Gaynor which focuses (with minor spoilers intact -- unfocus your eyes to get past the bits you might not want to see) on the top 'moments' rather than games perfectly pointed out one of Grand Theft Auto IV's greatest charms:
In both scope and fidelity, it's safe to call GTA4 an epic production. And really there was no better investment made than their decision to embrace Euphoria character physics...Nowhere is this better showcased than in the game's implementation of a drunken state: Nico and his drinking buddies stumble, lean, wobble, catch themselves, trip and fall with amazing dynamism, fully expressing a feeling of being out of control of one's own body, and providing enormous comic relief as well.
For as much as it was a technical achievement, it was an acting one as well: Niko's drunken dialogue diversion back into old-country pidgin English made him so much more complete and sympathetic a character, particularly his cab-hailing "yellow carrrr!"
Read the rest of Gaynor's list for more excellent momentous choices from Yakuza 2, Rock Band 2, and No More Heroes.
MOTY 08 [Fullbright]
Brandon Boyer
To an UGH-MECK future
Very much enjoyed this recent column by Chris 'Save the Robot' Dahlen on a future of "user-generated, machine-mediated content" in games. Given the examples we've seen of the 90-9-1 rule falling short in games like LittleBigPlanet (his implication being that there's a lot of thumb-twiddling waiting for that top 10 percent to create and share), Dahlen suggests a number of mediated ways to pull recognizably personal content into games:
Ever since Twitter exploded, people have written many programs to parse and analyze and psychoanalyze what people are typing. How about just porting it into a game? In The World Ends With You, players can “scan” the thoughts of the people around them. The canned text written for the game is good, but I’d love to eavesdrop real-time in real Twitter feeds.- So many games include bathrooms. Why can’t we all write on the walls?
- I’m a sucker for a good Flickr mash-up. If you throw in a few tags and search for photos marked “interesting,” you get fascinating results - for example, my favorite one, Snapp Radio: an Internet DJ plays a song; Snapp Radio looks up the tags for that song on Last.fm; it uses those tags to find relevant photos on Flickr. Sometimes you get photos of the band, but in one case, I was listening to a Clash song and saw street riots, pictures of George Bush, and awful mismatched furniture - the colors “clashed.” It’s a bit of a parlor trick, but I’d love to see more games use pics this way, for a collage effect or just for a headtrip. I understand Little Big Planet will be able to import your pics by right about now. But I’d love to integrate with Flickr as well. Surprise me.
User-Generated, Machine-Mediated Content [Save the Robot]
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 6: LittleBigMetalGear turned out brilliant
One quick final recap to say that, away from the constant iPhoning, one of my two other holiday concessions was a few hours making my way through Media Molecule's 'Metal Gear Solid Premium Level Pack,' which, put plainly, is an essential download for the game.
As much a clearly loving tribute as a collaboration, the levels inside are some of the most inspired the game has seen to date -- both officially and from the community (although that's somewhat an unfair comparison with the community's IP restrictions).
Between the spot on extension of the Paintinator gun (turning the platformer into a surprisingly adept bullet-hell dual-analog shooter), the secret meta-lightgun-game behind the pack's first intro level (you'll know it when you discover it), and its final showdown: if this is what we can expect from the future of the LittleBigPlatform, we're in very good hands.
Previously:
LittleBigWatch: Media Molecule Adds Metal Gear - Offworld
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 5: Wind Waker Unplugged
If we hadn't already had Keita Takahashi's fantastic Noby Noby Boy holiday greeting, this would've made a great replacement: 23 year old (and himself curiously Hyrulian looking) Fredrik Larsson doing a multi-instrumental version of Legend of Zelda's Wind Waker theme.
There's not much to do here but watch and gawp at his "quick christmas experiment" -- he's similarly blasé about his Mega Man 9 rock medley, though at least he admits that one took him four times as long.
YouTube - Wind Waker Unplugged [Thanks, Tom!]
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 4: Raptor Copter hit the iPhone
As is probably clear by now, my holiday break was surprisingly (and happily -- one less device and one less charger in the luggage) dominated by the iPhone, and Flashbang's Raptor Copter made up a good part of that. Copter promises nothing more than it delivers: a time-limited high-score trial to snare and package as many raptors as possible, with bonus points for stylish acrobatics.
Its tilt-control (with an additional thumb slider for altitude) combined with Unity's physics engine make it one of the most satisfying side-scrolling experiences on the platform, and while I'm easily lost to the tug of its one-more-go quickrounds, I'm just as lost in its all-time high score table. Seriously, people, I'm struggling to break even 75k and you're up in the millions? Someone really needs to share video of whatever high-wire magic devilry you're working, because there's clearly a massive gap in my technique.
Previously:
Riding the iPhone's Raptor Copter - Offworld
Raptor Copter Released! [Blurst, iTunes link]
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 3: Crayon Physics about to hit the iPhone
Though still not the platform it needs to come to, in another surprise holiday move, Hudson announced that Kloonigames' Crayon Physics Deluxe (which was also just finally released on PC for those that pre-ordered) will be coming to the iPhone in a matter of weeks.
From the video above, the game does look significantly less fiddly than I might've imagined despite the lack of stylus control (my fingers fumble across the landscape in the iPhone's Line Rider, hence the worry): try the freeware sketch-platformer Trace (YouTube gameplay) for a general idea of what we can expect.
Previously:
Crayon Physics Deluxe opens pre-orders - Offworld
Crayon Physics Deluxe [Do the Hudson!!, via Kloonigames forums]
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 2: Passage hit the iPhone
We've quipped Jason Rohrer's low-res memento mori Passage here a few times, and last week saw the surprise release of the game to the App Store.
While the PC version of the game remains freely available, as with PuzzleQuest, there's something nice about having the game literally on-hand to introduce it to new people.
Still best left mostly undescribed so as not to over-explain the punchline (though you can cheat via Rohrer's artist's statement), there's good reason Passage has become the de facto art-game champion: its circumspect metaphor is perfectly extended by its interaction and the experimentation of repeat playthroughs.
Passage [via Jon Blow, iTunes link]
Brandon Boyer
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 1: PuzzleQuest hit the iPhone
A number of Very Good Things happened over the past week when we were all en route to our various holiday destinations, and I'd be remiss not to recap them, because they were all worthy of mention. One of the most notable, of course, was Infinite Interactive's RPG/puzzler PuzzleQuest finally making its debut on the iPhone.
Its release was quickly met with a laundry list of complaints: the hyper-anti-aliased text, an engine curiously struggling under the weight of seemingly light 2D assets (though not quite to the extent of the pre-patched Katamari), and an episodic approach that saw just a third of the game packaged for $9.99 (ending just past the game's first-chapter-closing battle with Dugog), with two more chapters promised that will complete the set. That latter point, in retrospect, is a smart one, given the evolution of the App Store economy where $15-20 releases (outside of highly-niche specialty apps) might as well be lumped alongside Armin Heinrich’s since-removed $999.99 'I Am Rich.'
In the end, though, with a week of the game under my belt it turns out that -- while all perfectly valid -- none of the complaints have managed to truly drag the game down, and there hasn't been a day yet where I haven't stolen away enough time to progress by just one more match-3 battle.
With all of the new classes (and, presumably, the content) of the Plague Lord expansion, and newly online-stored save files (to continue progress in later episodes), the iPhone version might not be the definitive version it could have been, but it is the handiest, enough to properly retire the DS/PSP versions and provide a very welcome introduction to its time-sapping addictiveness to the console/handheld challenged.
PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords [Infinite Interactive, iTunes link]
Margaret Robertson
One More Go: Ranarama
Christmas Eve. Finally the house is quiet, and the lights are dimmed to twinkles. All the hard work is over, the fridge full of once-a-year delicacies and everyone else has gone to bed. But I’m still up, as I always am, to have a last, long look at the tree. Or rather, at the boxes under the tree. The big boxes. The biggest box.
If you’re a gamer, there’s something different about Christmas, something different about those boxes. Part of my work this year has been helping with the launch of the UK’s National Videogame Archive, and it’s meant having a lot of interesting conversations with interesting people about what a game museum might look like. My favourite suggestion so far was that we recreate a childhood Christmas - that childhood Christmas, when whatever it was that changed your life arrived.
So you’d book your ticket, and pay your money, and there when you arrived - alongside the Big Trak or the Tracy Island or whatever it was your sister wanted - there’d be a box with your name on it, wrapped in that papery paper you don’t seem to get any more - and you’d be allowed to rip it open and turn it over and over and over and look at the pictures of Rygar or Pole Position or whatever it was, before taking a deep breath and letting rip on the flaps. At which point a security guard would probably escort you from the premises.
As an idea for a museum exhibit, I admit, it needs a little work, but I’d still love to do it. My big box - my big boxes - would have an ST and a monitor in them, and the tiny, shiny screenshot that I’d pour over would be of Ranarama.
Brandon Boyer
Happy Holidays from Offworld (feat. Keita Takahashi)
Before the site goes any darker and the posting gets even lighter for the remainder of the week, I just wanted to drop off one last little gift, drawn exclusively for all of you Offworldians by (obviously) Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi.
Hope everyone's having a happy holiday, and thanks for all the smart comments and well wishes we've received over our first month here.
Joel Johnson
Fieldrunners update coming "very soon", includes new maps and more towers
One of my favorite iPhone games so far has been Fieldrunners, the relatively simple but incredibly enticing tower defense game. It has a high degree of polish, but sometimes feels like a bit empty with its four towers and two levels. I need more weapons with which to cream tiny, babe-like soldiers into adorable jelly!
I shot a quick email off to Jamie Gotch, Chief Technology Officer of developer Subatatomic Studios, who eased my fears with his response, promising the next update "very soon".
"If I were to guess a day," said Gotch, "I would predict that the release will go live a few days after the turn of the New Year, but a lot will depend on how well Apple can keep up with the developers' submissions during the holidays."
Right. But I want new towers.
Gotch continued, "Included in this new update will be a new map and more towers to help you devastate your enemies, as well as a few other surprises that you'll just have to wait to see."
John Brownlee
Left 4k Dead: Left 4 Dead in 4KB of Java
I had a little difficulty snapping a screenshot without pixelized zombie abstractions sucking the filling out of my intestines, but no matter: this Java tribute to Valve's Left 4 Dead executed in less than 4Kb of code is unbelievably awesome.
Left 4K Dead [Mojang]
Brandon Boyer
The Offworld 20: 2008's Best Indie and Overlooked
Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead, Metal Gear Solid 4, Rock Band 2, Mirror's Edge, Spore, LittleBigPlanet -- as we've reached the end of the year, the lists have become as plentiful as they have predictable. So, instead of reshuffling the same list of 10 (admittedly amazing) games as everyone else, I've taken a different path and put together The Offworld 20.
Covering every current platform (PC/Mac/Linux, PSP, PS3, Xbox 360, DS, iPhone, N-gage), the 20 isn't just a list of independently made and under-appreciated games, it's a list of the games that celebrate what makes Offworld Offworld: the beautiful and the bizarre, and the games trying to push the medium forward and give us something we've never seen before, in whatever incremental way.
In it you'll find time-manipulators, slacker assassins, satellite viewed superheroes, vector vegetation, bubble blowers and balls of tar, techno invaders, spirits of the wind, and, refreshingly, not one single space marine.
I've compiled and written up the list in no particular horse-race order other than alphabetical, and included the best examples of gameplay so you can see it in motion -- let us know via the comments below if there's anything you think we missed.
John Brownlee
Look at me still drinking when there's science to do: the Portal Bar
The Scrollbar in Denmark recently held a Portal themed bar night, replete with teetering stacks of companion cubes and cocktails named the "GlaDOS" and "The Cake Is A Lie," which is the most deliciously cupcake-like shot I've ever seen. I'm making a note on your tab here HUGE SUCCESS.
Portal Bar [Scrollbar via Joystiq]
John Brownlee
Hanging Joysticks
These aren't the first joysticks nailed to a wall as coathooks, and they won't be the last, but it's an apt reminder of exactly the sort of home improvement you can do with some old dusty three buttons.
Hanging Joysticks [Tech E Blog]
John Brownlee
One Euro is not equal to one dollar
Last week, Steam began charging Europeans local currency in pounds and Euros, where they had traditionally paid in dollars translated to pounds or Euros. This drove livid a lot of Europeans. Paying in local currency is appreciated, if only to allow quick calculation as to how much something actually costs. But Valve decided, across the board, to make the exchange rate between the euro and the dollar one-to-one. It isn't: a dollar is currently worth .72 Euro cents. That means Europeans are paying a minimum of a 28% premium.
I'd be more bothered about this if I wasn't used to it. An American living abroad, I've long since accepted that companies translate the prices of products in dollars at a one-to-one rate against the Euro. Valve's not really the bad guy here: when a new game costs 70 euros on store shelves and 37 euros via digital distribution, publishers are going to start putting pressure on Steam.... and Valve is going to have to bend.
Regrettable, but Valve has actually given Europeans games at a discount over retail for a while now. It had to change sometime, barring a cataclysmic shift in the way gaming companies think about Europe... and there's no indication that's going to happen anytime soon.
1€ ≠ 1$ (1euro1us) [Steam]
John Brownlee
Left 4 Dead's Zoe is a fifteen-digit freak
At first blush, it looks like Left 4 Dead's Zoe's superficial dollsomeness may be undercut by her unfortunate happenstance of being a Kuato-style fifteen fingered digital freak. Even a company as detail oriented as Valve is not immune to the occasional photoshop disaster, it seems.
Zoey has three hands [Steam via
Kotaku]
John Brownlee
Nintendo goes boutique in Times Square Toys 'R' Us
Times Squares' Toys 'R' Us has opened this whimsical yet sophisticated Nintendo Department, with bronze-framed flat panels playing game demos like works of art, and dangling crimson candelabras straight out of an old 8-bit game. It's fantastic: Nintendo goes Apple boutique, but with actual personality.
Times Square Toys 'R' Us Opens Nintendo Department [GameLife]
John Brownlee
American McGee's (Papercraft) Alice
This papercraft Alice Liddell, gothified after the American McGee mould, doesn't actually seem too out of place: you can easily imagine a third Alice book written by Carroll, in which his bright-eyed heroine falls through the pages of an art book and becomes a creature of paper, just as she fell through a mirror and became her own enantiomorph in Through the Looking Glass.
Papercraft Alice [Site via Wonderland]
Image: ninjatoes
Joel Johnson
Angles we have hung on high
Knocking together some of the "E for Easy" papercraft models from Cubeecraft.com makes for a fun, attractive Christmas tree. (Cubeecraft does more than just videogame-related papercraft, extending their selection to fan favorites like Dr. Venture and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.)
Cubeecraft Christmas Tree! [Cubeecraft.com/blog via Technabob]
Previously:
Getting crafty with Foldskool and Cubecraft - Offworld
Brandon Boyer
I Get About 55 Percent Of These Fails
Even though my humor doesn't quite fully extend to stack memory overwrite funnies, if anonymous-submission game bug/comment/build error blog I Get Your Fail keeps up with screenshots like the above (and the unbelievably awesome black-hole-sun pair), it might become my favorite games-related blog of 2009.
See also: Media Molecule's beautiful breakdown.
Brandon Boyer
Gasbook's Tezuka Moderno goes full gamer-fashion with DS, PSP cases
Well spotted by Tiny Cartridge and unfortunately just a bit too late to make it to my holiday list are these Tezuka Moderno portable system cases (fitting both a DS or a PSP with an extra cart/UMD pocket) by Gasbook, with a full range of Osamu Tezuka designs from Astro Boy to Kimba.
Just barely less wonderful than the lenticular Astro wallet I carried for many years, I've still got a keen eye on that standard CY-MLGP-M1 pictured (left).
Brandon Boyer
Octoroc releases the full 8-bit Jesus
Doctor Octoroc has succeeded in just squeezing by and delivered the full version of his previously mentioned 8-bit Jesus chiptune holiday album by for Christmas. And while it doesn't have the 'Metroid title music inspired "Silent Night"' we hoped for, he did make good with a similar 'Kraid, Rest Ye Merry Mother Brain,' and a 'Icarus! The Angels Sing' that more than makes up for the loss.
The album's available for a free download, or a full physical package for a $15 donation.
8-Bit Jesus: Full Album Release [Doctor Octoroc]
Brandon Boyer
Double Fine Open the Psycho-pedia
Here's one way to see a whole morning suddenly slip away: first, discover that Brutal Legend developer Double Fine have opened the Psycho-pedia, a clearinghouse of information on their debut game Psychonauts.
Then, methodically work your way through each and every single page gawping at the wicked concept art within and watching MTV2 interstitial videos and an hour-long special on the company.
Finally, realize that even though you own the disc, it might be time to re-buy the digital download and play it all over again (still trembling with acid flashbacks of the hours it took you to get past that circus bit with the kid's "BUN BUN BUNNY" shouts echoing in your back-brain [but it was worth it in the end]).
The Psycho-pedia [Double Fine]
Rob Beschizza
Weighted Companion Pendant
It's $15 at GeekToys' Etsy store. Cake not included.
Mini Weighted Companion Cube [Etsy]
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigWatch, part the final: The Game of Life
Finally, one last LittleBigMorningUpdate: 'Corbu' has showed up even the mechanical brilliance of the LittleBigCalculator and the behind-the-curtain magic of that recent Reversi game with an unbelievable street-lamp clockwork version of the Game of Life, which is doubly impressive for keeping all its inner-workings in plain view (and might be the first time I've seen the PS3 struggle under the weight of a level).
Your best bet to find it is to run a search on 'Corbu' -- I found that searching for 'LittleBigLife' was too choked with other 'LittleBig' named levels.
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigWatch, part deux: Image export, better search, in-game store
In more technical news of the next LittleBigPlanet update, Media Molecule has said that in addition to the Metal Gear pack, the just-released version 'Roquefort' adds, for the first time, the ability to export images to the PS3's hard drive, as well as new search modes for 'Most Hearted, Highest Rated and Busiest,' an in-game store, the ability to yield to the cabbie your Halsey Smalley later, and other general bug fixes listed in full on the site.
Roquefort Update 1.07 - Notes [Media Molecule]
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigWatch: Media Molecule Adds Metal Gear
For the detractors who thought LittleBigPlanet's holiday level pack was a bit lacking in levels, Sony and Media Molecule have just revealed their true Christmas surprise, a massive update and Metal Gear Solid-themed pack of goods that also adds new gameplay elements.
In addition to over 100 new stickers, objects, and materials (which you'll now recognize as the work of Grip Wrench artist Rex Crowle), the update adds five new story levels and one challenge, trophies, and a new paintgun weapon that can be used across all levels.
What I like about the update is that it highlights just what it is that makes LittleBigPlanet amazing: it's best not seen as a videogame itself, but as a videogame version of the games we played as children. I rambled about this in a cutting-room floor bit of tape for the first BBtv update, but Media Molecule's achievement was making a digital version of jumping on couch cushions and pretending the carpet was a shark-filled ocean or molten lava, and this dress-up version of Konami's world perfectly underscores that point.
LBP Premium Level Packs + Costume Packs (Metal Gear Solid Edition) - on the PS Store 12/23 [PlayStation.Blog]
Brandon Boyer
Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando
If I didn't think it'd be unfair to all parties involved, I'd simply title this one "why Rolando isn't LocoRoco," say my peace and be done -- but it would be, so I won't. But I will say, since it's the laziest comparison and being used as a pejorative, that it clearly isn't, and here's why:
Yes, both games feature tilt mechanics (a feature better suited to the iPhone, for obvious reasons). And yes, as such, both feature balls, an understandable choice since those are the types of things that roll on inclines (and a design choice made for this type of game since someone first dropped a marble inside a wooden labyrinth).
And both, true, have chosen bold, high-contrast artwork that cutely personifies the movable objects. This is for a number of reasons: the more adorable the object, the more emotional connection, and the more we care whether or not it haphazardly rolls into spikes. The higher the contrast, the easier it is to follow the action, especially when you're literally twisting and moving the screen in front of your face.
Brandon Boyer
For further reading: Gears of War as Life Aquatic, Lion Legs, Offworld
I was tempted to not follow up our earlier link to Simon Parkin's first Best Games Writing list with his second, if only out of humility, as inside he does call Offworld his "favourite new videogame site of 2008" (next to Sci Fi network/Tom Chick's Fidgit), but, hrm, right, it does have too many good things within to ignore.
Apart from Margaret's debut One More Go column, he calls out an excellent IGN [!] piece on Gears of War 2, which beside Parkin's quoted paragraph contains a wonderfully apt comparison of GoW to the delayed adolescence combat-games in The Life Aquatic, as well Eurogamer's Ellie Gibson's review-response to a GameFaqs message board poster on whether you could drive into and break the legs off a lion in Sony's PlayStation 3 safari sim Afrika.
Best Games Writing of 2008: Part 2 [chewing pixels]
Brandon Boyer
The crying game
Having reached her breaking point on the tire-less/-some swirls of 'can a game make you cry' debate, Offworld's own One More Go columnist Margaret has a lovely final (?) response on the matter, said wonderfully here:
Tears shouldn’t be our goal. Stories don’t need to be our tools. The majority of art forms don’t rely on narrative for their emotional impact. Stop and think about that for a second. The games industry tends to draw on such an amazingly limited roster of inspirations that it’s easy to forget it. But our obsession with linear, story-based - word-based, even - non-participatory art at the expense of all the other forms makes life so much harder for games, and it makes me crazy.
Read more, and her related GDC metagame plan, via her blog.
Snapping point [Lookspring]
Brandon Boyer
Sporesculptor opens for 3D printed Spore creatures
Via press release: Electronic Arts and Z Corporation have just announced the opening of Sporesculptor to offer custom 3D printed figures of your Spore creations, utilizing the same technology as Z Corp's 'Bandmates' figurines for Harmonix's Rock Band.
The announcement isn't too much of a surprise: the private showroom of Spore's debut E3 booth was packed with cases full of the figures, and the conference tables at subsequent Maxis visits were always littered with the same. But it does add focus on what's still Spore's strength: its sense of creativity and ownership over your particular world.
There are limitations: given the near infinite permutations of creature shapes and features, the site has headed off problem children at the pass and lists a number of features that won't work with the tech, for obvious reasons: particularly long, spiny and wispy thin features, and bubbleheaded creatures who are supported by spindly bodies. Instead, the site says, "legs are good."
Starting the process is as simple as browsing to your creature's PNG file and uploading to the servers, and, as with the Bandmates, the sculpts come permanently mounted on a base, and are offered at roughly $49 to the 'mates' $69.
Sporesculptor [EA/Z-Corp]
Brandon Boyer
James Kochalka's Monster Mii: Zex's Sexy X-mas edition
[James Kochalka's Monster Mii is a regular Offworld feature, with a new Mii monster each time for you to bring home to your Wii. Once there, they'll give you creepy stares from the sidelines of your Wii Sports, lap you rudely during your Wii Fit jogs, and in general liven up your Plaza and gaming day.]
For our second and special office holiday themed edition of Monster Mii, we bring you Zex, who's only ever just one bummed smoke away from an HR-alerting inappropriate advance (you may want to keep him isolated in the Mii Channel).
To bring him home to your Wii, enter the Check Mii Out Channel's Posting Plaza, click 'Popular,' then the 'Search' button at bottom. After that, hit the arrows at top right and enter in the code: 3266-4323-7259.
As a sexy Xmas bonus, James has also recorded an original Game Boy theme song for Zex, which you can download here, or listen below:
Previously:
James Kochalka's Monster Mii - Kzorx
[James Kochalka's daily diary strips, which run at AmericanElf.com, have just entered their tenth year and been collected in three print volumes. He is also the author of more books and comics than you can count on both hands, including some that are excellent for children, and others not so much. All are excellent. James also plays rock and roll and Game Boy rock as James Kochalka Superstar, and recently exhibited artwork at Giant Robot's GR2 gallery.]
Brandon Boyer
Myk Dawg's 16-bit Jams for DJ I-Dee
I'd already seen 'Myk Dawg's excellent pastel-pixel video for Offworld fave DJ Shadow, but embarrassingly hadn't subsequently sleuthed hard enough to find his clearly linkable video for DJ I-Dee.
Keep this one on headphones for you NSFWers, and play spot the reference in the comments below.
[very well spotted, Joystiq!]
Brandon Boyer
RPS gets a truthdose from Videlectrix
Friends of Offworld Rock, Paper, Shotgun have landed the ultimate exclusive interview with developer Videlectrix, the team behind Hallrunner, STRONGBADZONE, Trogdor, and our recently noted Dangeresque Roomisode 1: Behind the Dangerdesque.
RPS has previously covered the growing rift between the company and publisher Telltale, and the interview delves into the issue further:
RPS: Now of course the disagreement with Telltale has become public, with the release of the first of your Roomisodes. Telltale are distancing themselves from you, and going ahead with the release of Episode 5 despite this all. Could you explain what led up to the current situation?‘TRIX: It’s very simple, actually. Telltale claims they invented the ’sode’ when they know good and well Videlectrix did decades ago. Are they just ignoring our ‘Cartridgisodes’ or forgetting that we pioneered the ‘LCD Handheldisode?’ Roomisodes were just a natural extension of our earlier innovations. And we will continue to innovashe despite whatever fanciful, pranciful claims Telltale makes.
RPS Speaks Exclusively To Videlectrix* [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Brandon Boyer
I feel a wreck without my little china sister
Just added to Take Two's web store, a 'very limited' 3 inch porcelain version of BioShock's Little Sister that was quite obviously always meant to go alongside the Xbox 360's special edition Big Daddy figure. And it comes at a very respectable ten dollars, which is about loads less than I've paid for a number of the vinyl figs scattered around the room.
While I was sniffing about, I also got quite taken with this ultra-dapper Incinerate T-shirt -- the store's also added some other sharp BioShock finery.
Brandon Boyer
Japan gets DSi sketch animation sharing with UgokuMemoChou
Allow me just one last "this is awesome; you can't have it" link for the morning: via andriasang I see that Nintendo has partnered with web company Hatena to let users of the upcoming DSi downloadable sketchbook animation app Ugoku Memo Chou (Moving Memo Book) upload their creations to a full-on YouTube like video sharing site.
The site's already launched and is currently populated with demo movies from the app's developers, including the slightly sinister one above [stripped out because I couldn't get the embed to not autoplay, and the music was driving me crazy], some stop motion claymation done via the DSi's camera, and some otherwise quite impressive animation.
This one wasn't originally on my tentative shopping list, but I might be having a re-think.
UgoMemoHatena [via andriasang.com]
Brandon Boyer
State your business (and your friend code) with Mii cards
Kotaku notes that Nintendo of Japan is offering a new Club Nintendo gift: 150 points will net you 30 business cards printed with the unmistakable visage of your Mii -- and, this time, the added bonus of your Wii's friend code.
In July of this year, Nintendo launched a new Digital Camera Print Channel in the region which, in partnership with Fujifilm, let you order bound photo books featuring images uploaded from your camera and, yes, Mii business cards, all via the Wii itself. In that case a set of 30 cards would set you back 500 yen (roughly $5.60).
The only difference now, from what I can gather, is that extra line with the code, though I'm not positive that the originals let you also add 1-up mushrooms above your name -- I mention this here primarily because, if you're listening and gauging interest, stateside Nintendo, this is something we'd also like.
Club Nintendo new point award: "Wii number exchange business cards"! [via Kotaku]
Brandon Boyer
Space Invaders evolve on Japan's mobiles
Taito really knows how to throw a 30th anniversary blowout party, but this invite unfortunately is for Japan only: Space Invaders Infinity Gene is a new retro-futurist reimagining of the classic arcade game, done up with a new low-bit techno soundtrack and razor-sharp vector beam dressing.
As the title suggests (somewhat, it actually comes off more in the brilliant Darwin quote opener), the premise this round is a standard monochromatic version of the arcade original slowly evolving into more complexity as you work your way deeper into the game.
Like a smaller cousin to Space Invaders Extreme, your ship's been upgraded with twin shots, homing lasers, and beautifully contrail-ed missiles, and the aliens and UFOs morph into creatures and structures too large to fill the screen (along with some clearly Rez inspired cargo ships).
The catch: it's currently a mobile phone-only release, but as Siliconera suggests, it's ripe for a DSiWare release. See the clean video and screenshots via the Famitsu preview.
Space Invaders Infinity Gene preview [Famitsu, Google translated, via Siliconera]
Brandon Boyer
Touch me I'm slick: area/code's Drop7
Update: Shortly after publishing, snap7 was removed from the App Store, but will be returning after the new year under a new name. Until then, consider this an introduction to Chain Factor and a preview of what's to come, and I'll update again when the game's re-released. As noted via this January post, snap7 has officially been re-released to the App Store as Drop7. Check the updated post for more information!
In my top freeware games of 2007 recap, I noted a then-mysterious TV ad campaign related Flash game called Chain Factor. It was a curious mix of falling-block and number games, and, for me, stood so well on its own that it completely overshadowed the promotional ARG purpose it was supposed to serve.
It was cerebral but accessible, and, as I said at the time, was most surprising for blending the mechanics in a way no one (in this age of casual copycats) had thought of before. And it had that fantastic, circular, rising/falling Steve Reich-ian soundtrack. The ARG ended, the show was picked up for another season, and the masses cleared out, but I still found myself continually coming back for another run.
That's why I'm so happy, then, to have realized this morning that area/code, the developer behind Chain Factor, have quietly ported the game to the iPhone as Drop7.
Billed now as Tetris meets Sudoku (which hits all the right notes, but check Factor's rules page for a better gist), the new version has adopted a much cleaner Helvetica design (which gives me NYC subway nostalgia) but kept -- more importantly -- that music. It's also added a new Sequence mode which drops identical discs for all players to compare global high scores, though, so far as I can tell, they're not charted on the web anywhere quite yet (also: a paltry 87,560 so far, if you're wondering).
From top web game of 2007 to one of the top iPhone games of 2008's a very happy progression, and Drop7 comes very highly recommended.
Brandon Boyer
Listen: Pixelmod Records' Merry Pixmas Compilation
Even if you thought you'd had your fill with half of the 8-bit Jesus and our ongoing Blip Fest coverage, do not fail to download Pixelmod's new Merry Pixmas Compilation [.zip].
In a fantastic show of love from the 8bitcollective community, the compilation brings together familiar micromusic names like goto80, 8 Bit Weapon and Computeher in HTML advent calendar style, popping up a new song or picture every day.
My tops: the Weapon's chiptune Ave Maria (!), little-scale's thickly echoed Coventry Carol, and Shaun Carley's hyper-breakcore Carol of the Bells.
Brandon Boyer
What fun life was: the 1983 Sears Wishbook's game wares
I was still content with my TI-99/4A when Sears was touting the Intellivision and the still frankly beautiful Vectrex (I'm still waiting on a nice package of repro- overlays, guys), but The Retroist's scans of the 1983 Sears wishbook remind me of two holidays following, when I was absolutely fraught with anxiety over whether I'd be choosing this 'NES' newcomer or the Atari 5200.
The latter I wanted solely because months earlier I'd impressed my elementary school crush with a bowling alley arcade run of Food Fight so amazing I surprised even myself (the trackball was on fire that day). In the end, I made the "right" decision.
The Video Game Systems of the 1983 Sears Wishbook [The Retroist]
Brandon Boyer
Tomorrow, Rolandos roll on iPhone
Tomorrow finally marks the day that ngmoco releases Hand Circus's long-awaited puzzle-platformer Rolando, and the publisher has marked the occasion with one final gameplay trailer, as well as a new special Rolando themed downloadable level for Dropship, its dual-'analog' vectorbeam shooter (that I've yet to mention here, but will in the future).
I've spent the past couple days with Rolando, and will be giving the Offworld view tomorrow.
Rolando home [ngmoco]
Brandon Boyer
Nintendo's Wii/DS outlook: The Offworld view
Nintendo has released its first and third party release list through the end of winter, and -- with 100 some titles on the list -- I thought I'd do a little chaff separating and focus on the few that look the most promising. Nintendo's own heavy hitters, the Wii remakes of Mario Power Tennis and Pikmin, DS's Pokemon Platinum, and Rockstar's top down DS exclusive Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars are the obvious choices, but let's dig down even further...
John Brownlee
World of Nothiredcraft
According to one crackerjack source — a random yahoo on an Internet message board — recruiters may very well be discriminating against MMO players:
I met with a recruiter recently (online media industry) and in conversation I happened to mention I'd spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online games, which I described as "the ones before World of Warcraft" (I went nuts for EQ1, SWG and the start of WoW, but since 2006 I have only put a handful of days into MMOG playing - as opposed to discussing them - I've obsessed over bicycles and cycling instead).He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc. I mentioned that some people have written about MMOG leadership experience as a career positive or a way to learn project management skills, and he shook his head. He has been specifically asked to avoid WoW players.
I wouldn't say there isn't a lick of sense to this, but it's simply the distinction between the addict and the normal, run-of-the-mill gamer. You might as well not hire people who admit to liking to have a beer once and then because they are clearly jactitating alcoholics.
Should Employers Discriminate Based On World of Warcraft [College OTR]
John Brownlee
Petrogylph's offworld Christmas card
RTS developer Petroglyph sent Kotaku Tower this wonderfully painted card of a Christmas tree being beamed into the Mothership. It makes me wish we could steal it wholesale, slap the Offworld logo on top and send it to each and every one of you.
Happy Holidays from Petroglyph [Kotaku]
Jim Rossignol
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Ten Things That Made Me Glad To Be A Gamer In 2008
There maybe be spoilers ahead, but while there's volumetric-lighting, and Love and romance...
1. Not having enough time to play it all. If there was nothing else to remember 2008 by, there was at least the sheer fact of there being too much to play. In the past few months I've struggled to even know what to boot up, let alone what to persist with, what to bin, what to save for the dark months after Christmas, and what to avoid lest it eat my entire life. It was easier to sit there, paralysed by indecision, reading through everyone else's experiences of these games in internet forums.
Clearly I'm too lazy to perform any kind of accurate metric study here, but I'm fairly sure this has been the single busiest fourth quarter in the past fifty seven years. The variety has been refreshing too: from Saints Row 2 through to Mirror's Edge, from LittleBigPlanet to Dead Space. The mainstream has been hitting its stride and delivering convincing, intimidating monoliths of game timesink. I mean, I think it was a good thing the Fallout 3 story is so short. It meant I had time to buy Christmas presents for my loved ones...
John Brownlee
PSP-4000, PSP 2 totally coming, say publishers
December 12th, 2008. Offworld publishes post entitled "Sony isn't even thinking about the PSP 2."
December 17th, 2008: unnamed publishers say, "Yes, they jolly well are."
Sony plans to refresh the PlayStation Portable product line with a PSP-4000 model in late 2009 and launch a true successor - a PSP2, if you like - later.Publishing sources, speaking to Eurogamer, were unable to provide any further detail on next year's update, which will presumably follow this year's PSP-3000 in taking an iterative approach. The PSP-3000 launched this October and followed a 2000-series model, the first Slim & Lite, in September 2007.
Even fewer details were available on the PSP successor, but we're told that developers are already working on games.
Ultimately, though, I still think it will equal the same thing: an endless battle between hackers and Sony that ultimately results in Sony allowing the platform to stagnate. It's easier for Sony to release solid hardware and then blame piracy for that platform's stagnation than encourage developers to release quality games.
psp-4000 in 2008, PSP2 later [Eurogamer]
John Brownlee
Burt Reynolds boozes it up in You're In The Movies spot
There's something of Orson Welles' Paul Masson advertisement in this spot by Burt Reynolds for the upcoming Xbox 360 title, You're In The Movies. I'm guessing its his slurred, haltering speech and the visible waves of raw gin wafting off of his leathered playboy carapace.
I'm guessing the outtakes were classic.
Brandon Boyer
EA's Spore De-Authorization Tool goes live
Putting to rest at least part of the firestorm that arose from the SecuROM protection of Spore, Electronic Arts has released a standalone tool (currently for PCs only) to de-authorize machines, iTunes style, so players can manage their installs. From the email:
Machines can be de-authorized or re-authorized at any time. The total number of machines on which Spore can be authorized concurrently will continue to be five. To de-authorize a PC download and launch Spore_deauth.zip and run the Spore De-Authorization Tool.exe file.You can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize. If you have not reached the machine limitation, the game will authorize and the machine will be re-authorized using up one of the five available machines.
Spore De-Authorization Tool [EA, via xSpore]
Brandon Boyer
Listen: The Doyouinvert's 'A Happy New Gear'
This morning's essential listen, 'A Happy New Gear' gently skewers the most ludicrous aspects of the testosterone-drenched Gears of War 2. First played on the previously mentioned One Life Left (and also featured on their debut compilation), 'cavalcade' says the track is part of a forthcoming EP called "Super Mutant Has A Crippled Head," which I very sincerely hope is not a joke.
the doyouinverts: New Track (Christmas Single): "A Happy New Gear", doyouinverts - Random Encounter [YouTube]
Brandon Boyer
A Metal Gear you can touch
Killing latent dreams that we might get a shrunk down and touchable version of PSP strategy/card game Metal Gear Ac!d, Konami has pulled back the curtain on that earlier teaser and revealed that, as some guessed, it will be bringing Metal Gear Solid Touch to the iPhone/iPod Touch.
It's still not yet clear precisely how Touch works, but it's not hard to imagine the on-rails scenes of Metal Gear Solid 4 shrunk down and working honestly quite well for the iPhone, with Konami's only gameplay hints being that players can "move their alignment or switch to zoom mode" as they play.
At the same time, Konami also announced versions of Dance Dance Revolution (an obvious fit, especially in reaction to earlier innovator Tap Tap), Frogger, based on the original arcade game and not its less successful later 3D remakes, and, intriguingly, Silent Hill: The Escape, a first person shooter that likely won't be too far astride from its House of the Dead-esque light-gun arcade game.
The latter three games are expected sometime in late December, with Metal Gear due by Spring.
Press release [Konami]
Rob Beschizza
Regulator smacks EA after XBox 360 footage used in Wii ad
Following a complaint to Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, Electronic Arts confirmed that footage in an ad for the Wii version of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 was rendered on a more powerful console.
The regulator upheld the consumer's complaint, saying the pastiche gave a misleading impression of the game's graphical quality. Noting that Woods was depicted using a Wiimote throughout the ad, in sync with the footage and the Wii logo, the ASA said the clear implication was that he was playing the depicted game.
Most interesting among EA's excuses was its claim that the Wii's graphics are simply not good enough to put on television:
[EA] explained that Wii footage would not be of broadcast quality, and the originating agency had thought it preferable to use the Xbox footage, which was closer to broadcast definition, than to "up the resolution" of Wii footage to broadcast quality. ... Although we acknowledged that the message "AVAILABLE ON ALL FORMATS" appeared in the final scene, we considered that viewers would infer from the ad that Tiger Woods was playing the game on a Wii console and the graphics shown behind him were representative of the actual game he was playing
The ad must not be broadcast again in its current form, according to the ruling.
This reminds me of the good old days of buying computer games, where fancy Amiga and Atari ST screenshots were printed on the packaging of crummy 8-bit editions. WHERE WERE YOU THEN, ASA, HMMM?
Rob Beschizza
BBtv: Jellica, Mr. Spastic, and Nullsleep at Blip Festival 2008
Ready for more bleeping at the resonant frequency of awesome? The second part of our Blip Fest 2008 video coverage has Joel talking to more of the musicians who performed at the event, held last week in Brooklyn.
Here's the MP4 download, for keepsies.
Brandon Boyer
Another new look at Noby Noby Boy
Ending today where we did yesterday, 1UP has continued its look at Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi's upcoming PS3 downloadable Noby Noby Boy with a new 'gameplay' video, showing its central stretch and dual-control mechanic (as well as the workings of Noby's intestinal tract), and the general lazy playfulness of its world (just, not yet, the underlying bits of its multiplayer play and the 'GIRL' in the sky).
As was said in the GameCity demo I mentioned yesterday when a koala inexplicably mounted the Noby for a ride: "no one is sure why this is funny."
Brandon Boyer
Nintendo's DSiWare makes holiday debut
So right, that bit I said before about letting the jealousy fade might not last for long: Nintendo of Japan has announced that its DSi Ware campaign -- which gives the upgraded Nintendo DS downloadable software as with WiiWare -- will launch on Christmas Eve.
And if I understand the trailer correctly, and I do believe that I do, Nintendo's holiday gift includes 1000 Points (the rough equivalent of $10) to spend on launch day, which means I'll have just enough for the star-in-your-own-minigame Utsusu Made in Wario, and Art Style: Aquario, the first in the downloadable art-game series that extends those on WiiWare and the Game Boy Advance's bit Generations series (and the game with the best soundtrack of the bunch).
Siliconera has collected media for all the launch titles. The DSi is expected to launch outside Japan in mid 2009.
Brandon Boyer
Self-containing Luigi's Mansion
For further reading elsewhere: taking a turn from the usual top-X lists, Simon Parkin has put up the first of his 'best games writing' lists for 2008 which does contain some excellent picks, from Tom Armitage's previously mentioned If Gamers Ran the World lecture to the pseudonymous Matthew Wasteland's art of systems discussion.
But I particularly liked the mention of Edge magazine's recent Time Extend looking back at GameCube launch title Luigi's Mansion for highlighting that it's a game predicated on creating one definable place and making it cohesive and rich with detail, as opposed to the typical tack of sending the player off to more diverse but sparsely realized worlds. That idea alone has made me want to revisit the game for the first time in what must be six or seven years:
It’s the setting that all this invention is squeezed into which is perhaps the most astonishing element. Rather than the traditional handful of elaborately different worlds, Luigi’s Mansion is focused on depicting a single coherent place. And even though its rooms allow for at least one ice level, they remain consistent with one another despite the variety. Even the observatory that takes Luigi into space begins as a recognisable wood-panelled study, and elsewhere the wallpaper, fittings, doors, and mouldings all help to reinforce just one, very specific, location.
The Best Games Writing of 2008: Part 1 [chewing pixels]
Brandon Boyer
G.E.C.K. Watch: Obviously there's already Dogmeat armor
MTV's Multiplayer game site has done a quick round-up of the best of the Fallout 3 mods they've spotted following the release of the G.E.C.K., showing that, of course someone's already created Dogmeat armor. Unfortunately, the mod doesn't deck the dog in full regalia, so much as set him to invincible.
A quick look around the rest of the site doesn't yet show too many outright amazing things, though MTV did also notice a separate mod that tweaks experience earned so that exploration and discovery nets you the biggest bonuses and helps stave off that level 20 cap for much longer than usual.
Useful, Fun (And Free) ‘Fallout 3′ Mods Already Available [MTV Multiplayer]
Brandon Boyer
Oddworld deemed a Good Old Game
While we haven't yet mentioned Good Old Games, we feel compelled to note that they've just announced that Oddworld Inhabitants has joined their developer lineup, first with today's release of the classic puzzle platformer Abe's Oddysee (along with bonus soundtrack mp3s, wallpapers and a hi-res map), and followed shortly before Christmas by its sequel Abe's Exoddus.
While you're sniffing around, I'll also point out the site's also home to some very good deals on the original Fallout and its sequel, Planet Moon's excellent Giants and Shiny's Sacrifice.
Brandon Boyer
Lode Runner hits the iPod
It's always a bit surprising to see exclusive new games show up for the standard iPod these days, but Hudson's done just that with the release of a robust version of classic platformer Lode Runner. Apart from the standard stages and a puzzle mode, the iPod version's also got a smart new 'gold rush' mode in which you try to dig and collect gold downward -- vaguely Mr. Driller style -- to stay apace in a constantly upward-scrolling level.
It's a bit of a touchy beast: you don't click but rather gently press the clickwheel to move and dig, which lacks the proper feedback you need in stressful surrounded situations, but it's growing on me. And, I'm satisfied to see, it retains the look and feel of Hudson's excellent 3D GameCube version Cubic Lode Runner, making it a very welcome addition to the iPod's Phase, Peggle, Star Trigon and Song Summoner family.
Lode Runner [iTunes link]
Brandon Boyer
Ye olde anagram game challenge
Wired blog Game|Life's (frankly quite good) new entry to an ancient NeoGAF thread of game title anagrams deserves a re-mention of the original. It's a quick race to the probably-NSFW gutter wallowing bottom (not too terribly worse than your average b3ta/Something Awful challenge), but there's a few sparkling gems in amongst the mud.
Brandon Boyer
iPhone cooking with Space Deadbeef
Just slightly embarrassed to appear to have been a little behind the curve on this and just now noticing the new incredibly named iPhone shooter Space Deadbeef (surely a flubbed translation of 'dead meat'?). As Meat Bun adeptly point out, the game is from Polyphony Digital programmer Yuji Yasuhara, and carries that same ultra clean Gran Turismo look into sidescroller shooting.
But more importantly, Yasuhara was also behind Polyphony's PlayStation shooter Omega Boost, and one look at that game in motion, compared with one of Deadbeef itself should be enough to convince you that its lineage is pretty clear.
Best of all, Yasuhara's added it to the App Store for free, and it's honestly one of the best attempts at an iPhone shooter yet, knocking off all of the tilt- or virtual-d-pad nonsense for a tap and swipe lock-on mechanic that, with practice, becomes a graceful little finger ballet amongst the bullet hell. And, even if nothing else, it's fully convinced me that a 3D Rez could absolutely work on the device with the same interface.
Space Deadbeef [iTunes link, via both Meat Bun and Infovore, almost simultaneously]
Brandon Boyer
Bit Blot's Aquaria hits Steam
Though we'll have to wait just a touch longer for the improvements Mac users recently received, Bit Blot and Valve have made it that much easier to experience their underwater adventure game Aquaria with its release on Steam. Unlike the standard PC version, this one includes new Steam achievements, and, as is Valve's wont, is offered at a debut discount until the end of the year.
You can see an HD trailer of the game here, and watch a sleep deprived and delirious Alec Holowka (now of Infinite Ammo, creator of Gamma 3D game Paper Moon) put together said trailer via Bit Blot's site.
Aquaria [Steam]
Brandon Boyer
Nintendo makes right: U.S. Club offers Game&Watch DS, other handsomeness
The earlier jealousy fades as Nintendo quietly (and perhaps prematurely) launches its stateside Club Nintendo campaign. As with Japan, the Club lets you earn points by entering the registration code found in Wii and DS games, which can then be put toward real actual prizes.
For its inaugural year, Nintendo is offering a grand prize of the exclusive DS Game & Watch Collection, which includes faithfully remade original LCD games Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House. It's quite obviously the pick of the litter, but I can also see die-hard Nintendo enthusiasts enjoying their first opportunity to own a deck of hanafuda cards -- the trade Nintendo was originally in before entering the world of games.
And, even moreso, the Mario hat DS game rack is quite nice, and those three game-card and stylus wallets, especially in the stately Club Nintendo black, are very, very handsome. Back of the envelope calculations from around the forums says the 800 points it costs you for the DS Collection equates to registering some 16 first-party Wii games or 27 DS games, though there are also opportunities to earn more points via online surveys.
The site's still struggling to keep up with all this attention, and login problems abound, but you can at least have a closer look at the prizes while the backend sorts itself out.
Joel Johnson
BBtv: Bubblyfish at Blip Festival 2008
Last week found us at Blip Festival 2008, the megalocus of live chiptunes music, where Game Boys met Atari STs with Amiga visuals for four evenings of square wave fun.
We were out in Gowanus in Brooklyn at the event, at least until Rob and I got tired and had to go home and rest our widdle heads. But until then, we got to speak to several of the artists just after their sets, and the BBtv crew is taking our drunken, blurry footage and actually making something worth watching out of it.
First up: Haeyoung "Bubblyfish" Kim
And if you'd rather have a file for greater viewing options, here's the direct MP4 download.
Brandon Boyer
The dynamic fluids of Chronic Logic's Gish
David Rosen returns again with his Design Tour looks at indie games, this time with Chronic Logic's PC platformer Gish and how its indirect controls (finding momentum to get into the air, rather than explicitly jumping) can be initially offputting, but eventually let you move like "a tar-ball ninja."
Previously:
Brandon Boyer
It's a stretch: Explaining Katamari creator's new Noby Noby Boy
Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi is nothing if not one of gaming's most endearingly (and deliberately mischievously) unorthodox figures, and today's first look at his next near-finished PS3 downloadable creation Noby Noby Boy is proof positive.
At last year's GameCity event, he took to the stage (sans shoes, and accompanied by an ambient soundtrack of rustling trees and crickets), and laid out succinctly where his mind is at on games as a whole: “About Katamari Damacy: I’m sick of it,” his hand-typed FAQ read. “What is the future of video games: I haven’t got a clue. What do video games bring us: It depends on what you’re after. What are video games: Who knows.”
With the opening of o--o, the game's comically and annoyingly oversized website (and the url cutely modeled on the snakelike Noby Boy himself), we get similarly dismissive (and somewhat 'King' like) disclaimers: "This content cannot be classified as a so-called 'game.' It's hard to explain in detail so we'll skip it here. We don't answer any question[s] about this content. No complaint will be accepted after you purchase this content."
Just what Noby is is hard to explain, but the fundamentals are simple: you control a Noby "BOY" with both analog sticks: one for the head, one for the tail, flexing, stretching, and eventually tying yourself in knots, in a playground world that's otherwise devoid of goals. And, as 1UP's preview points out, a Noby "GIRL", suspended in the heavens, is similarly stretchy, but only as a progress-bar reflection of the combined total of collective Noby Noby Boy player progress. As everyone plays, in other words, she grows, reaching new interstellar objects, which will in turn unlock new stages for all players (a brilliantly viral mechanic).
Brandon Boyer
Spike TV's game awards were a bit Brütal
Last night's Spike TV Video Game Awards went off, well, not exactly without a hitch, but Jack Black managed at very least to not cause any major havoc with his flamethrower. In general, the awards themselves brought a keen list of winners (something I say with the caveat that I was one of several judges) from Media Molecule's well-deserved studio of the year to Left 4 Dead's best multiplayer and World of Goo's audience-awarded best indie game.
Will Wright's 'little god in a virtual world' acceptance speech, too, was nice to see broadcast nationally, even if corned up (to Wright's awkward, "oh!") with a silver-painted bikini-clad girl in angel wings descending on a wire-swing to deliver the statue itself.
That about summed up the rest of the awards ceremony itself, and brings me nicely to the point...
Brandon Boyer
Propose with your DS with Multiple:Option's middleware
While I'm not at all opposed to the sentiment, there's something intrinsically a bit lazy about relying on middleware to create a marriage proposal, isn't there? But surely this'll make at least a few couples quite happy: Multiple:Option's software lets you input your proposal message and spits back out a DS rom featuring a simple match-up puzzle game that ends with the reveal once they've won.
"Whether it's a marriage proposal or just a simple confession of love, Easy Proposal Maker lets you concentrate on what's important - your relationship!" says the dev, and at very least I can't think of a more wholesome excuse to get your hands on a flashcart.
Easy Proposal Maker featuring The Search Master [Multiple:Option, via Tiny Cartridge]
Brandon Boyer
Maerleon Cedraeon submerges with Electroplankton
One of the most common misunderstandings -- and sources of post-release backlash -- about Toshio Iwai's early DS software Electroplankton was that it wasn't designed to be a portable music creation tool.
Instead, Iwai was essentially giving players a portable music interaction tool -- shrinking down the larger gallery installations he'd done over the years and making them more accessible both in their distribution as commercial software, and by giving the plankton themselves happy-face anthropomorphic charm.
While that did put off some, who quickly found their best laid sounds succumbing to the whims of the easily-bored plankton, it didn't put off Merleon Cedraeon, who writes he was "suddenly motivated to create a new type of music that I had never before attempted" on discovering the software.
His "Submersive" album is an ongoing work all based around Electroplankton, and his newest song, Neptune, can be heard via that album's webpage. Like the others, it's an ambient mix of a number of the plankton you can interact with, and a good representation of both of what the software and Cedraeon are capable of. Also recommended is ElectricMan, which mixes his plankton style with the DS's bootup sound for a more rollicking electro-track.
Submersive [f3music, via disquiet. Thanks Gus!]
Brandon Boyer
Daniel Pemberton's Little Big Music hits iTunes
As expected, Daniel Pemberton's Little Big Music album -- collecting the 18 tracks he composed for LittleBigPlanet -- has indeed gone live on iTunes (take special note: iTunes Plus, actually, to the happy cheers of DRM foes everywhere).
You can hear 'Horny Old Man,' one of the seven 'b-side rarities' on the collection that didn't make it onto the final release of the game in the preview he gave Offworld last week.
You can also get a preview of 'The Orb of Dreamers,' absolutely the hit of the album, via this YouTube preview of the game's opening cinematic. With this going in one headphone ear, all I need now is my own personal Stephen Fry to coo paternally in the other to enhance my reality by about a thousand percent.
Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra [iTunes link]
Brandon Boyer
PlayStation Network getting besieged by Space Invaders Extreme
A nice follow-on from the last entry: Siliconera has noted that the ratings-board trawlers have dug up confirmation that Space Invaders Extreme, the forthcoming console version of the DS/PSP arcade techno-remix, will be coming to the PlayStation Network as well as Xbox Live Arcade.
As we noted before, not only does the game come with a bonus port of the original arcade game, but a version of Llamasoft's Xbox 360 music visualizer Nuon, though it's likely that'll remain a console exclusive, unless Minter's been very, very quietly working on porting the code to Sony's vastly different architecture.
Brandon Boyer
Llamasoft's Space Giraffe released for PC
That collective whinny you heard earlier this morning was the sound of a thousand Llamasoft fans discovering that the PC version of Jeff Minter's Space Giraffe had finally been released for PC, alongside a demo version you can grab here [.exe]. As mentioned before, after the resounding and baffled silence following its Xbox Live Arcade release, the 'softies have been working overtime to make the PC version a more accessible experience.
On top of toning down the psychotropia of the Tempest-esque strategic shooter with 100 new "NUXX" levels (alongside the XBLA version's original "acid mix" levels), over the past quarter Minter and co. have been hard at work preparing a safe-place of video walkthroughs and tutorials to help coach you into the madness.
Minter also says the PC version adds "the capability for us to make available further level packs - which can be completely new levels rather than simply remixes - should there be sufficient interest," including "chillout level packs, ultra-intense packs, shorter game packs (maybe 20 levels instead of 100 for those who want a shorter game), special themed packs to celebrate Christmas or L. Ron Hubbard's birthday."
Brandon Boyer
The Xbox Live avatar extractor
As I mentioned last week, while there's a tradeoff on the sliding scale of Miis to Xbox Live Avatars to Home's too-real characters where Microsoft may have struck the smartest balance (despite my Mii being far more recognizably Me), what they're doing even more correctly is letting them loose in the wild.
The snowglobe may have been a fun if schmaltzy addition to letting them populate games themselves, but now your Avatars spread more virally with Free Your Avatar, a simple but effective jpg exporter that lets you make Facebook/MySpace pictures and iPhone and desktop wallpapers out of your You.
Even with the limited selection of backgrounds and poses (something Rock Band does awesomely), compared to the arcane fan-made hacks necessary to extract your Mii from the Wii's iron grip (as we have found out in bringing you Monster Mii) it's a huge step in the right direction.
Free Your Avatar [Xbox.com]
John Brownlee
The evolution of video game controllers, illustrated IKEA style
Over at Chewing Pixels, Simon Parkin posted this wonderful evolutionary diagram of the history of video game controllers.
This graphical representation of the evolution of game controllers is neat.The hands shown in each image are of a consistent size meaning that the controllers are to scale. But more notable is the stat rundown underneath each image revealing how the number of sticks and buttons gamers have had to contend with over the years has multiplied.
Control Freak [Chewing Pixels via Fidgit]
John Brownlee
Ms. Pac-Man on the Brain
Body modder and retro gamer Aileen Fritz tattooed Mrs. Pac-Man beneath and around her hairline, with her own nearly translucent skin and throbbing skull playing the background to the pixel gobbling stair-stepping of the eponymous Ms. P.
I love it. As far as career sabotaging tattoos go, this isn't too bad: it's easily covered or exposed with the right hair styles. It also beats the tastefulness of the only other Ms. Pac-Man tattoo I ever saw, at a beach in New Jersey, in which Ms. Pac-Man gobbled dots right up the varicosed inner thigh of a pot-bellied sunbather. *Horf*
Ms. Pac-Man [Body Mod Forums via Kotaku]
John Brownlee
The Venture Brothers goes 2600
The Venture Brothers — Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer's brilliant send-up of pop culture, superheroes and old Jonny Quest cartoons — will release its third season to DVD in these wonderful sleeves channeling the painted late 70's design of old Atari 2600 game covers.
Brandon Boyer
PopCap's Peggle Extreme now free on Steam
There shouldn't be, but probably is, at least one amongst us who hasn't yet known the delirious joy of an EXTREME FEVER or soared along to the Ode of Joy. For you, then, I'll note that Valve has reduced the price of PopCap's Peggle Extreme to nothing on Steam.
Extreme is the Half-Life-themed bonus version of the game first given away with the Orange Box, and therefore a very comfortable way to dip your toe into the experience, if you're (inexplicably) the type that needs your unicorns to be head-crabbed, and your bug-eyed beavers to be flash-fried by a Team Fortress 2 Pyro.
Peggle Extreme [Steam]
Brandon Boyer
PixelJunk Eden patch promises mercy
Still in my very top tier of downloadable releases this year, Q-Games' PS3 art/platformer PixelJunk Eden also gets the award for the game I've sworn at most profusely and most profanely. Those shouts (apart from scaring the dog) have apparently been heard 'round the world: Q has just announced that a new patch will be available very soon that'll bring a continue system, more time, and, most intriguingly, an undetailed "new control system" -- one of Eden's main attractions being its indirect control.
PixelJunk Eden patch [via TheBBPS]
Brandon Boyer
Myst MMO URU going open source, fan-operated
At the latest Austin Game Developer's conference, Turner VP Blake Lewin made a prescient observation when he noted that URU, the beleaguered MMO based on Cyan Worlds' franchise Myst, "lasts longer when the fans run it than when publishers do."
Dropped quickly and unceremoniously by Ubisoft on its 2003 release after a beta that drew some 10-40,000 users, fans kept an unofficial server live for two years before being re-released by Turner's GameTap service in 2006. After just a year in operation, though, it was shuttered again -- Lewin noting that while successful for the service, the cost of operation was too much to maintain.
So, according to a note sent out by Cyan CEO Tony Fryman, the company is going to put the game back in the hands of its dedicated base for operation and expansions, and hope for the best. Said Fryman on the release:
Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we've poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive.
This is also a bit scary for the fans. We realize that this could turn UruLive into the "wild west" and lead to many fractured and diverse MystOnline servers. But it is our hope that with the help of dedicated core fans (if you are reading this, it probably means you) that a safe and secure MystOnline server set (many servers from around the world working together as one) can be created that will let people explore and live in UruLive.
TXT: Cyan makes it official: "Myst" now in the hands of its fans
Brandon Boyer
Katamari rolls onto iPhone
Namco Bandai, it seems, is keen on wholly unannounced surprises. Like the sudden re-emergence of the entirely obscure Mr. Driller spinoff Star Trigon for the iPod, the publisher has quietly released a tilt-sensitive port of Katamari Damacy for the iPhone.
I Love Katamari is necessarily downsized from its console and handheld big brothers, but fully 3D (as opposed to the isometric mobile version) and every bit as warmly familiar. Each of the game's five stages is split into four separate modes: a story mode in which the King requests a single item to be rolled (which unlocks subsequent levels), a time attack to roll as much as you can within the limit, an exact size mode to roll to a perfect fit, and an eternal mode which lets you freely roll however you'd like.
It's safe to say, though, that the iPhone struggles mightily under the weight of your pile of collections, though a reboot and a quick switch to Airplane mode seemed to bring it a bit more under control. And, even moreso than Sega's Super Monkey Ball, there's a very pronounced acclimation period before your dual-analog brain lets go of that need for precision and lets your hands do the work (even still, there were moments when my whole body contorted hoping to squeeze just an ounce more torque out of the device).
But what it does do right is recapture the harrowing anxiety of the originals. I've yet to finish a level with more than 25 or 30 seconds on the clock, which leads me to believe that all my backward bends are exactly to design. Creator Keita Takahashi may have put the series behind him years ago, but there's still a part of me very happy to have it in my hands again.
I Love Katamari [iTunes link]
Brandon Boyer
Would You Like To Play A Game? Networking Edition
It's been a bit too long since we've done one of these, but let's make it a bit different this time. We're all on different pages this weekend, Rob having just put Fallout 3 to bed as Joel just now re-emerges from the vault, John looking for groups on Left 4 Dead (via XBL name 'drcrypt' -- mention Offworld in your request, please!), and me honestly still not sure where the weekend's going to take me (I've been having a desperately hard time lately escaping Banjo Kazooie's Xbox Live Arcade remade paw/claw grip, and am looking forward to sinking in further to XBLA's Meteos Wars).
So, this seems as good a time as any to launch our official Facebook presence, where I've kicked off a thread with our Steam/Xbox Live/PSN/Wii/etc. information, and encourage anyone interested to do the same. Hopefully, while we still fiddle with coming up with something a bit more official, we'll have something more stable than our comments to keep us all together.
As usual, you can also join our Boing Boing Steam group and while I'm passing out our various web presences, I might as well mention that our Offworld Twitter feed is in its neophyte stages and will begin in full soon.
Brandon Boyer
Weekend watching: Rex Crowle's Grip Wrench
Working for a little weekend watching? Motion graphics designer and illustrator Rex Crowle has just unveiled the site for Grip Wrench, his 10-part animated series for MTV Italy's QOOB. Crowle, on top of doing fantastic ad work like Orange's GoodThingsShouldNeverEnd website, is also the man behind much of LittleBigPlanet's striking visual design: you'll instantly recognize his style in every little CMYK flourish you noticed around the game's various worlds.
In this episode of Grip Wrench, the titular star (described as "Hollywood hard man, troubled veteran, reckless patriot") "attempts to atone for previous disasters by taking part in a road safety film. But his easily distracted childlike mind chooses to focus more on playing videogames than saving lives, and as the bodycount rises so does the mayhem."
It's just ever so cutely on the NSFW side, but my favorite of the bunch and obviously a good fit for the Offworld crew, and it's very likely you're going to be seeing more of Crowle around the site in the near future.
Brandon Boyer
The Behemoth talk Castle Crashers balance, ladies
Before descending into punch-drunk madness of its own on the merits of pooping animals in games, Gamasutra's recent interview with Offworld favorite The Behemoth -- makers of sidescrolling shooter Alien Hominid and the recent Xbox Live Arcade retro-inspired beat em up Castle Crashers -- covers some interesting ground on balance issues and the "gigantic nightmare" of stat tracking beneath Crashers' simple exterior, and their continued focus on consoles versus PC portals.
But, even better, artist Dan Paladin drops a metaphor for the Mythical Man-Month so succinct and apt that I'm tempted to try and get it redubbed Paladin's Law:
A lot of people say, "Oh, one guy was drawing, and one guy was coding, so that's why it took so long." But that's really not true. You can have nine ladies, but it's not going to take them one month to have the baby.
Taunting The Behemoth: Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin Cry Out [Gamasutra]
Brandon Boyer
Cult Korean rhythm game DJ Max Technika coming to DS/iPhone
With the American arcade version still yet not made it to a location near me, I'm still not entirely convinced by the idea of PM Studios' touch-screen rhythm game DJ Max Technika, its gameplay (which you can see here) on beat, but so seemingly divorced from the music itself.
It quickly conjures up happy memories of iNiS's Nintendo DS underdog favorite Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan, but it's not entirely clear how compelling the game will be played so straight, without the peripheral connection of your actions to comic vignettes that give EBA its vitality.
It might be sooner than we think to find out, though, in a new interview with Siliconera, PM Studios producer Michael Yum says the company is at work bringing Technika not only to the DS (with 'secret' DSi features), but to the iPhone as well, a device it looks almost tailor-made for.
PM Studios Discuss DJ Max Technika, DS Port, And Pentavision’s Elusive Xbox 360 Game [Siliconera]
Brandon Boyer
Scott McCloud nailed it: GamesRadar pits avatar vs. avatar
Though the results are a bit stacked, with some really curious selections of particular character creations (and the most horrifying Home 'Sarah Palin' you'll ever see), GamesRadar's Avatar Showdown has pitted the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3's personalization features against each other to interesting results.
Not only does the feature near-scientifically prove the theory of the Uncanny Valley, it also perfectly highlights Scott McCloud's point in Understanding Comics about the universality of cartoon imagery.
Microsoft did very well to find a happy medium between the Miis (which Nintendo itself also did well in allowing more flexibility) and Sony's honestly fantastically misjudged Home models (now that it's widely available, I basically dare you to create an avatar which you can comfortably look at and say "that's me!" -- send us comparison shots if you think you've succeeded).
There've been steps in the right direction on the first two parts (Mii masks in Animal Crossing, avatar support in Xbox 360 games), but obviously the killer app would be the extensibility of the former with the social networking of the latter.
All-Console Avatar Showdown [GamesRadar] [bonus links here and here to decent celebrity 360 avatars]
Brandon Boyer
Ten minutes of the Wii's Ghostbusters
Swedish outlet Gamereactor has uploaded a ten minute walkthrough of the opening scenes of Red Fly's Wii version of the Ghostbusters game, which, as becomes immediately apparent, has wisely been designed from the start as a unique experience from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.
The stars have been caricatured to more cartoony forms, the clip shows off a number of the unique gadgets that you'll utilize, and also shows that, 25 years later, you'll finally be able to capture the first film's librarian-ghost and bring some semblance of closure to the trauma of a childhood's worth of screaming nightmares (for me, at least).
ATARI: Ghostbusters Wii presentation [Gamereactor TV, via Red Fly]
Rob Beschizza
Life-size papercraft Link hat (and hair)
Nintendo Papercraft presents exact cardboard renditions of 3D console characters, from Pokémon of every stripe to Link's hat.
This particular hat is from Twilight Princess. The model is life-size, so it's completely wearable (proof here). It's designed so that you can make the hat seperate from the hair, so the hair is completely optional. The hat will be slightly too big though if you don't make the hair. With all the hair made, I can wear it perfectly without the thing shifting on my head.
Pictured below is a gentleman actually wearing this uncanny thing. If nothing else, it conclusively proves that after quality steel and well-tanned leathers, all a hero really needs is a giant can of hairspray.
John Brownlee
Fallout 3 level cap bumped up with DLC
For all of Fallout 3's strengths, it gives more content than the leveling system gives reason to continue playing after the main quest has been completed. By level 16, the average Vault-Dweller is an unstoppable juggernaut: by level 20, everything's going down with a single VATs headshot, with 60% of the map still unexplored.
Luckily, it looks like the Fallout 3 DLC is going to remedy that. According to an interview on IGN, Bethesda intends on extending the level cap in the third DLC pack, Broken Steel, as well as add new foes, perks and items. Hopefully, that will also come with a bit of a beefing up of the end game.
Brandon did link this same article yesterday, but I wanted to call some attention to the upped level cap... I really think that getting excited about new content is probably premature without actually being able to advance from it.
John Brownlee
Sony isn't even thinking about the PSP 2
According to Sony Computer Entertainment Europe boss, Sony's not even thinking about a PSP 2.
Reeves said that Sony is instead focusing on continually improving the current generation of the handheld format.
That's a shame, I think. The PSP is still a remarkable handheld. Of course, internally, one suspects Sony is still blaming piracy for killing the PSP, so any PSP 2 would likely feature even more draconian in trying to stamp out homebrew.
That's a shame: a compromise of an open architecture and an online app store would probably go very far indeed to making the PSP 2 the success that its older brother never quite managed to be.
Sony rules out 'PSP 2' [MCVUK]
Brandon Boyer
Extra Hyper Korg DS-10 performance
Still riding high on Jetdaisuke's infectious Korg DS-10 saiko-fever, I was happy to see this live performance from October's EXTRA Hyper Game Music Event via GameSetWatch, which brought together Ridge Racer composer Nobuyoshi Sano, all-star Final Fantasy rock band The Black Mages member Michio Okamiya, and Chrono Trigger composer Yasunori Mitsuda for an all-Korg techno blowout (skip to 5:20 to see what it looks like to get crazy down and dirty with a DS).
GameSetWatch correspondent Jeriaska talked with the three after the show where they talked about how the software came together and how the Chemical Brothers inspired Sano's soundtrack for PS2 fantasy RPG Drakengard (!).
GameSetInterview: Korg DS Trio Talk App Creation, EXTRA Concert [GameSetWatch]
John Brownlee
ebooks come to the Nintendo DS
Nintendo and HarperCollins are teaming up to turn the Nintendo DS into an eBook reader with their obviously titled 100 Classic Books Collection.
Essentially, twenty quid gets you 100 Project Gutenberg books dumped on a cart and wrapped with a remedial text reading program.
This isn't such a bad idea, but it depends on how well done they make the text reading program wrapper. Something as elegant and flexible as uBook for the Pocket PC would be great, but most of the text reading programs I've seen for the DS in the homebrew scene have had a real hard time displaying text attractively.
Really, I think the DS has promise as an ebook reader: it has the advantage of two screens, after all. But I'd prefer to see it as built-in functionality... perhaps a firmware update to the DSi.
Mario makes way for Shakespeare on Nintendo DS in HarperCollins deal [Times Online]
Brandon Boyer
The Xbox 360 snow globe
Well, this is certainly cute: making good on its promise of providing a New Xbox Experience, Microsoft has got into the spirit with an embedded shakable snow-globe that populates itself with your friends' avatars. Entirely superfluous but well integrated, it's just one more step on the path to make the console "the place you and your friends live."
Stir your friends up in the Xbox LIVE Snow Globe [Major Nelson]
Brandon Boyer
Brütal news is now: EA to publish Brütal Legend
I knew funny business was afoot early this morning when Double Fine moved their Brütal Legend threat level system to "violated lemon" ('I hear news knocking at the door!'), and it wasn't for naught: the developer has just announced that EA will publish the they're-making-me-call-it-NWOB-heavy-metal action/adventure for PS3 and Xbox 360 in Fall of 2009.
It's good news not only for the game, which has been floating in somewhat of an uncomfortable news-void for the last year following the Vivendi/Activision merger, but also for EA, who've been moving from strength to boutique-gaming strength with this and the recent announcement that they'd be releasing a new game from Killer7/No More Heroes dev Grasshopper Manufacture.
As noted before (where you can also see its debut trailer), the first new footage of the game will be shown Sunday night at the Spike TV Video Game Awards show.
Brütal Legend [EA/Double Fine]
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Indie Game: Minotaur China Shop, happiness in shattery
Minotaur China Shop might not be Flashbang's most accessible game (that prize would have to go for the much more parent-friendly puzzler Splume), but it is its funniest. It's not just the latest blog entries from the overly defensive Minotaur himself, though that helps, or that in-game, Flashbang have played everything perfectly, wryly straight, even when the pegasus in leopard print walks in and desires the 'fancy plate.' It's also the more subtle joke that, at heart, China Shop is a subversion of and a gentle dig at the current casual game glut of Diner Dash clones.
But it's also that, played "right," Flashbang have perfectly pegged that ever-present anger-management underlying tension. You get that from the Minotaur's stiff bipedal wobble (who you "drive around" more than "make walk"), as well as the precariousness of the shop packed tight with breakables, and the absurdity of the beast choosing a new profession so dainty at its core (that's made the juxtaposition an apt cliche from the start). All together, there's never any doubt that you're only one misjudged turn away from havoc.
And, smartly, Flashbang have tuned that havoc into just as lucrative an option as playing straight: once the Minotaur has let his rage get the best of him, insurance kicks in and compensates you for every broken item, though you'll obviously lose your customer base and have to deal with security firing arrows to keep your aggression in check.
Set in five separate days over which you can tune and upgrade both the happiest and angriest play styles as you wish, Minotaur lends itself perfectly to experimentation and replay -- exactly what you'd want from a web game -- and has instantly rocketed itself to the top handful of our 2008 indie game list.
Minotaur China Shop [Blurst]
Brandon Boyer
GarageGames sets InstantAction free
InstantAction is somewhat the runt of the online games litter, and a bit unjustly -- like the Unity player, IA's plugin lets you play 3D games through the browser, and, better yet, the company has just done away with its pay-for options and opened up the entire site for free play.
Why should you care? Along with Stubbs the Zombie/Hail to the Chimp developer Wideload's decent puzzle game Cyclomite, InstantAction's main draw is third person shooter Fallen Empire: Legions, which, if you squint, you might call a not-too-distant cousin to PC cult shooter Tribes. That's no accident -- InstantAction's branch on the family tree is just a few short leaps away from Tribes developer Dynamix, by way of IA's parent company GarageGames.
InstantAction also has a number of games on the way: "Ace of Aces (aerial dogfighting), Lore: Aftermath (big time mech action), and BLUR (arcade racing)," which they're giving people who'd already paid for game passes early access to as a token of appreciation.
Goodbye ActionPasses; Hello Freedom [Instant Action]
Joel Johnson
My favorite moment at Fünde Razor '08
I am proud to say that Fünde Razor IV 2008, with drinking and rocking across the country, prizes going every which way, raised a grand total of...$9,423! Not a bad haul for the kids being treated in hospitals across the county. Thank you to everyone who participated, now shockingly far too numerous to mention.
We had a great time at the Village Pourhouse in New York, with a tournament run by RockGamer.com, a raffle stocked with tons of prizes from generous companies, and lots and lots of booze.
But I have to say my favorite part of the evening was as things were winding down on the East Coast. I called Crecente to see how Fünde Razor Denver was going.
"Hey, let me call you back in ten minutes," he said. "I'm going to put your phone up to the microphone."
A few minutes later I answered his call.
"Hello?" Three hundred people or so came screaming back out the other side of the line.
"HIIIIIIIIII!"
"This is the strangest phone call I've ever received!" I told them.
A huge cheer!
"As you know, New York is better in every way than Denver."
"BOOOOOOO!"
"And every year we raise more money than Denver."
"BOOOOOOO!"
(In fairness, this is only Denver's second year with a Fünde Razor.)
"But this year I have a special surprise."
"YAAAAAAY!"
"Brian has told me that if Denver beats New York, he will...Cut. His. Hair!"
A roar so loud it overwhelmed the microphone on Brian's phone came through the line, followed by a childish shriek that I can only presume came from Crecente about to pass out from the notion that he might be shamed into cutting his piratical mane.
Mysteriously, the line went dead.
Denver did end up bring in the most money, a cool four grand — New York brought in $3,073, with first-year San Francisco bringing a very respectable $2,360 — but as far as I have been told, Crecente has not yet put blade to hair.
Next year!
Related • Funde Razor Rocks Out Denver for Child's Play [Kotaku]
• Photos: Funde Razor 2008 NYC [RockGamer.com]
Brandon Boyer
Bethesda releases Fallout 3's Garden of Eden Creation Kit
Bethesda has just sent word that its Garden of Eden Creation Kit has just gone live. The G.E.C.K., as mentioned in late November, is the official editing tool for the PC version of Fallout 3.
The full wiki user guide is over here, and be sure to leave us any comments when you've created something wonderful, as we saw over here.
Garden of Eden Creation Kit [Bethesda]
Brandon Boyer
theRelativity goes inside subjective reality
With Sony due to release a major update to its PSP/PlayStation 3 Escher-esque echochrome, an update that will bring both the requisite Trophies and a massive 1000+ new user-created levels to the game, it reminds me that I haven't yet mentioned theRelativity.
echochrome, as you may have already seen, is a game developed on the back of Jun Fujiki's OLE Coordinate System, a proof of concept PC demo that lets users not only construct the impossible objects Escher helped make famous, but make them interactive playgrounds for its monochromatic artist models. Stripping out all awareness of object permanence, gaps can be bridged just by shifting perspective and covering the hole, dead ends can be extended by realigning elements: it's a perfect example of the things that only games can accomplish.
Fujiki's extended that idea, then, with theRelativity, which, as you can see above, takes place not on top of the objects but from inside, giving you vantage into an added impossible dimension and further breaking down all common knowledge. As with OLE, it's not a game per se, but at least an opportunity to play, and if nothing else: a perfect starting point for echochrome 2.
theRelativity [Jun Fujiki]
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Indie Game: I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors
Currently making the rounds is Gregory Ludus Novus Weir's I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors, which he succinctly describes as "a tale of love, loss, and balloons."
It does share a lot in common with Daniel Benmergui's previously mentioned I wish I were the Moon, both aesthetically and in its multiple endings it's up to the player to experiment with to ferret out. Part of me wishes Weir had the same confidence to leave the narrative implied rather than explicit, though I suspect that has more to do with its participants not 'reading' quite as clearly as The Moon's in their low-res form.
But either way it's a successful playfully lonely Cthulu-ish journey of discovery that I'll not go into too much detail on for fear of giving away its best lines -- have a look and let us know what you think.
I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors [Kongregate]
Brandon Boyer
Wii Fit tops 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival games entrants
Celebrating "creative activities and the development of media arts" from games to animation to web design, the Japan Media Arts Festival has announced that Wii Fit has topped the list of its game entrants.
The organization says it recognized the game for "[broadening] the appeal of a device that tends to be thought of as a boy’s toy, turning it into a family communication tool; we can see in it a glimpse of the future of video games."
Nintendo's game beat out other entrants like Devil May Cry 4, PixelJunk Eden, Pokémon Platinum, echochrome, and augmented reality cube puzzle levelHead, but ultimately -- and very fairly -- was bested by Electroplankton creator Toshio Iwai's electronic instrument Tenori-On.
2008 [12th] Japan Media Arts Festival | List of Award-winning Works [via Siliconera]
Brandon Boyer
Treasure Trove promises wi-fi hot spot item hunting
Still yet to be publicly released, Justin 'CosMind' Leingang was one of the winners of the Austin GDC's all-Texas Indie Games Festival showcase for his art-game Glum Buster, a game only described in the vaguest terms as “a collection of my daydreams, for your daydreams.”
As we patiently await more details on that (which he says are "coming soonish"), Leingang has been slightly more forthcoming about his new game for Austin publisher Aspyr that sounds similarly ethereal. According to a new interview with Gamasutra, Leingang is behind Treasure Trove, a DS game that lets players "hunt" for items that are generated from wi-fi signals in the surrounding area.
It's a compelling idea -- it's nice to be able to harness all of that invisible data that we're awash in to creative ends. And it's an idea that that worked well in Konami's PSP title Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, which generated new collectible soldiers based on that similar mechanics. That game became a mainstay of my long Chicago bus trips -- when I knew I'd continually hit fresh points as I moved across town -- and Leingang reports similar results for the prototype of Trove.
It's still not clear what kind of game he'll be hanging the technology around -- Gamasutra only further reports that collectible items also have musical properties that can be used to create exchangeable compositions -- but it sounds like it's coming together as a properly interesting portable mashup.
Interview: Aspyr's Treasure Troves To Use DS As 'Real-Life Treasure Hunt' [Gamasutra]
Brandon Boyer
A new look at Thatgamecompany's Flower
Sony has released new footage of one of my most anticipated 2009 downloads: longtime favorite Thatgamecompany's PS3 downloadable Flower, a followup to their earlier fl0w, and similarly serene PC demo Cloud. I couldn't be happier to see the PS3's supercomputer core being harnessed purely for the purpose of rendering fluttering petals and waves of knee high grass, and making something as intangible as wind a 'playable character.'
Brandon Boyer
Going deep on music with Harmonix
Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos has some very smart reflections on the birth and evolution of music gaming in this recent chat with Wired, talking about the work and non-work of music creation software -- which the company was founded to create -- versus their music performance software as we know it today.
He also expounds on how familiarity with the music helps guide you as a player, and the risks in broadening its catalog from Guitar Hero's cherry-picked 'best of the history of rock' catalog to Rock Band's more all-encompassing selections that attempt to foster music discovery rather than just appreciation, and, implicitly, makes you understand why the company is at the fore of the music gaming genre.
Brandon Boyer
The cat's cradle balance of Street Fighter II
Designer David Sirlin had a thin tight rope to walk in remaking and rebalancing aspects of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for its XBLA and PSN debut, and it's fascinating to listen to him delve into the minutae of those decisions, revealing just how precariously and artfully constructed the game is, especially when he slings jargon like:
Their complaints led me to try the fairly extreme measures of letting his jab torpedo destroy fireballs -- wow! -- with his Hundred-Hand Slap being lower damage and lower priority, and his deadly Ochio Throw no longer being repeatable and only retaining half its dizzy power.
If you're still the type that still struggles to appreciate the game as much more than a ratatat of flailing button mashing, I recommend watching this 2004 championship video to its end. Even if you can't fully appreciate the complexity (the storyline gist goes: it sure looked like the girl was going to get the guy, but with just the thinnest sliver of life meter left he delivers a stunning comeback), the reaction of the crowd is enough to clue you in that something earth shattering has just happened.
Brandon Boyer
Fallout 3's cold war
Bethesda has handed IGN the first extended details on the first downloadable content for Fallout 3, due January, which will see players working their way through a military simulation of the liberation of Anchorage from communist Chinese invaders.
From what I can gather from the frustratingly no-follow-ups interview, it sounds like the simulation will take a more strategic turn, including "interactive Strike Teams" (still unsure whether this interaction will extend beyond the "stick close to me, give me some room" rules that currently apply to the main quest's partners). I'm similarly unsure exactly how to suspend my disbelief in bringing new weapons from inside a simulation back into FO3's real world, but I suppose it could be as simple as a storage locker next to the computer.
The interview also touches at minor hints at the two following DLC packs, including a wink I'm interpreting to mean that Pittsburgh has gone all-ghoul.
Margaret Robertson
One More Go: Ikaruga, The Big Enemy Is Approaching
One of the most enduring relationships I have is with four men I’ve never met. Seven years ago, Hiroshi Iuchi, Atsutomo Nakagawa, Yasushi Suzuki and Satoshi Murata created Ikaruga, the spiritual successor to Treasure’s majestic Radiant Silvergun. Ikaruga is what some people call a top-down, vertically scrolling, combo-based, arcade shoot-’em-up. What I call it is art.
Now, the whole ‘what is art and are we it yet and if we are can we have a cookie?’ is one more futile arguments generated by videogames. It’s not a useful question, for many obvious reasons, but there is one answer to it that I rather like. It goes like this: the hallmark of good art is that every time you go back to see it, it’s changed. Or rather, it hasn’t, but you have, so through viewing it you’re able to measure and identify the changes within yourself. It’s as good an answer as any other to the great unresolvable what-is-art conundrum, and if you apply it to videogames, then my Mona Lisa is Ikaruga. Beautiful, enigmatic, alluring and unmasterable.
Brandon Boyer
Only on Offworld: A sneak peek at Daniel Pemberton's LittleBigMusic
It's no secret that LittleBigPlanet has one of the outright hippest soundtracks in recent memory, coolhunting its way through the basically heart-melting naiveté of The Go! Team's 'Get It Together' and the fractured pounding rhythm of Battles' 'Atlas' (which I'd like to go ahead and declare our gaming generation's version of Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott's Looney Tunes staple 'Powerhouse').
So it was with great excitement that I woke up to an email from Daniel Pemberton (of the Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra) with news that Little Big Music, his own collection of 18 tracks composed for the game, was nearly due for an iTunes release. Most notably, Pemberton is the man behind 'The Orb of Dreamers,' the warmly angelic dusty-vinyl ambient track that marks your entry into the game.
Even better, Pemberton has partnered with Offworld to give you the first listen to the album with 'Horny Old Man,' one of the seven 'b-side rarities' on the collection that didn't make it onto the final release of the game, but may be used in the future as the Planet evolves and expands.
Somewhat akin to Montreal DJ Kid Koala, the song's a romping bout of ragtime/big band turntablism, and my favorite on the album outside of 'Dreamers'. Without further ado, then, here's that track, which you can also download directly here:
'Little Big Music: Musical Oddities From And Inspired By LittleBigPlanet' is due to appear on iTunes by December 15th (we'll link you to it again when it goes live), and you can hear more from Daniel on his debut album TVPOPMUZIK, which includes some tracks later reworked for the game as well as 'Pip Pop Plop,' the theme song for the first season of Offworld favorite British comedy Peep Show.
Brandon Boyer
A deeper look at Knytt Stories
As with his earlier look into the subtle complexities that made World of Goo so rewarding, David Rosen has turned his attention now to nifflas's Knytt Stories, a game I chose as one of the top five freeware releases of 2007 in a former life.
As I said there, Stories takes the best parts of Cave Story (the similarly excellent freeware game), particularly the joys of its pure platforming and exploration, and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus's "propensity to strip away all of a game's unnecessary layers until its shining core is revealed," both of which Rosen expounds upon nicely with his attention on Knytt's smart handling of "progression" and control.
Brandon Boyer
Steven Spielberg gets games
What's Steven Spielberg know about games? Quite a happy lot, it turns out: Tom Chick has just published a new interview with the filmmaker turned gamemaker for Yahoo, where he waxes on the staying power of his first collaboration with EA, Boom Blox (still a family favorite it turns out), and notes that it was his idea to include the "peanut gallery" of animal observers to cheer the player on (something we've touched on here before).
Spielberg then turns his attention to storytelling and says:
You know the thing that doesn't work for me in these games are the little movies where they attempt to tell a story in between the playable levels. That's where there hasn't been a synergy between storytelling and gaming. They go to a lot of trouble to do these [motion-capture] movies that explain the characters. And then the second the game is returned to you and it's under your control, you forget everything the interstitials are trying to impact you with, and you just go back to shooting things. And that has not found its way into a universal narrative. And I think more has to be done in that arena.
That, as we also pointed to before when Jordan Mechner similarly discussed letting each medium do the job of the medium, is a very salient point and obviously something we very much agree with.
Chick has posted the full unedited exchange via the Quarter to Three forums, my favorite part being the implied ubiquity of games when Spielberg says "of course" he's played Half-Life.
Steven Spielberg - Celebrity Byte [Yahoo! Games]
Brandon Boyer
Sony responds to Sackbook closure
As we've been following closely, fan-made LittleBigPlanet social networking site Sackbook was recently shut down just days after it kicked off at the behest of Sony's legal team. Today, in the midst of a roundup of various community concerns (including the ongoing moderation guideline debacle), Sony assured everyone that it had only proper privacy concerns in mind:
An impressive community fansite popped up last week and we were all impressed, but we’ve been in discussions with the site owner and requested the site be suspended. Chris, the site owner, was happy to work with us on this. Our intent is to be able to offer everyone the choice of whether their shared data is visible or not in order to protect everyone’s privacy, and while Sackbook was doing nothing wrong in the way it presented information and had no access to any personal data, we believe this additional option is important.
Good news, then, and happy to see everyone as impressively impressed as I was, and looking forward to its relaunch in the near future.
“SACK IT TO ME”…Weekly Answers to the LBP Community’s Questions (12/9) [PlayStation.Blog]
Brandon Boyer
Offworld goes to hell
As John noted earlier, today marks the 15th anniversary of the release of Doom, which we're celebrating in turn by hanging the Phobos drapes. Celebrate yourself with a build of Chocolate Doom, a day spent wiled away with the Xbox Live Arcade version, a run through the Flash version we noted earlier, and by leaving your reverent remembrances in the comments below.
John Brownlee
Buffalo Bill's Xbox 360 room
It's the running under-the-breath narration that pushes this video into the horror category. The creep de la creep. The only thing missing is Q. Lazarus' "Goodbye Horses" and the line, "Would you friendslist me? I'd friendslist me. I'd friendslist me hard."
It is an awesome game room, though.
[via POETV]
Brandon Boyer
Offworld on BBtv: Awesome edition
Clearly still struggling through Infinite-Jest-esque urges to purchase beauty-enhancing video phone masks and the anxiety of talking to yourself while staring into a tiny, lit, terrifying Hal 9000 eye-hole, I've made my official non-gnome deathknight debut on BBtv.
In it I recap what we've been doing on the site (most notably, the debut of Monster Mii), recommend Dr. Awesome, the first game that's felt to me like a proper 'iPhone game,' versus a game that's merely been made for the iPhone, and let you know what's happening on the site in the coming weeks.
Bonus points for recognizing any of the ephemera in the background, and, as usual, a direct download link so you can blow it up full screen and shoot suction darts at my scruffy mug.
John Brownlee
Guitar Hero goes arcade
Activision is planning on bring a port of Guitar Hero 3 to the arcades in a port called Guitar Hero Arcade in a co-venture with Raw Thrills and Konami. This actually seems pretty perfect — the gawking crowds of skill-appreciating teenagers of your local arcade makes for a real life crowd to give you star power.
My only hesitation is that playing Guitar Hero in a loud, public setting tends to be unsatisfying: you can only barely hear the notes you're playing and it's easy to get knocked out of the rhythm. This is the very problem I had showcasing my skills at the Guitar Hero II launch party and at GC, and, I assume, the reason I was not buried under a flurry of lustfully cast off underwear.
Guitar Hero Arcade based on Guitar Hero 3 [Multiplayer]
John Brownlee
Left 4 Dead 360 hacking
Left 4 Dead modding is by necessity going to be best on the PC, but that's not to say you can't have your fun on the 360. Attack of the 50 Foot Francis! Crackdown style superjumps! Liliputian teammates! It's all done by instituting PC-type console commands on the 360 via a hacked hard drive.
The worry — a good one — is griefing, but I dunno, I think this looks kind of fun. Well, right up to the point that a colossal, skyscraper-sized Louis spots me across the map in Versus and peppers twelve city blocks with buckshot.
John Brownlee
Buy the car that Doom bought
Ordinarily, an eBay auction for an ordinary and seemingly unremarkable 1995 Acura NSX (current bid: $461.78) would not be enough to excite. But this eBayed Acura is different: it was purchased by Dave "iddt" Taylor. It's the car that Doom bought, and Taylor is selling it on the fifteenth anniversary of Doom's release (today, incidentally).
Why would anyone sell such a car? According to Taylor's eBay ad, the answer is the gradual feminization of age:
I am selling it because I am coming up on my 40th birthday and my testosterone is now low enough to make me feel guilty that someone packing more isn't enjoying it.
And it comes with some great extras:
I'm also including some of my Doom stuff with the car. One is a Doom T-shirt with "Wrote it." written on the back. These were only given to the development team, and there were only about 8 of us. It's been washed many times and is one of those rare T-shirts that looks really good faded. It is XL, but it has shrunk to about L.Another Doom goodie is a boxed copy of the original game for the PC that was framed unopened. I doubt these are very common, because I am pretty sure you had to mail order them, and they're a funny size and don't come in shrink wrap.
The last one is a hand-made, comissioned Doom sweater I had made in Dallas for about $400 by a lovely woman who hand-knitted it from scratch, doing a fine-grained, dithered blend from dark red to light red for the gradient. It's extremely meticulous and well done, and she had to look hard for just the right shades of yarn. The colours are all spot on, and it's a big sweater, can easily fit an XL.
Pictured, the sweater, which is enough to cause any gamer to slaver. Throw in the number of the button cute sweater model, Mr. Taylor, and you can have my $500 now.
1995 Acura NSX [eBay]
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigWatch: mind-boggling 'Automatic Reversi'
LittleBigPlanet creator 'physicslike' (who is also behind a few of LBP's Tetris creations) appears to have dumbfounded even Media Molecule themselves with the new 'Automatic Reversi' level, which I can personally now attest rivals the Gradius remake as one of the most ingenious rule-breaking stages yet created.
As above, the level lets players use black and white stickers to plot their next Othello move which, awesomely, sets in motion a series of clockwork events just barely visible behind the board that queues it for the next move. Your best bet to try it -- with its all -kana name, is to search via the 'physicslike' username, where you'll also find a number of other interesting machinework tests.
Brandon Boyer
How Dune II was inspired by the Mac desktop
Just appearing online is Edge magazine's excellent 'making of' article on Dune II -- the game that would essentially birth the real-time strategy genre -- with the magazine noting upon a recent replay that "the same basic viewpoint, interface, controls and gameplay underpinning Dune II are still being reused today, with only the most minimal level of evolutionary advancement."
Most interestingly, the feature goes on to quote producer Brett Sperry, who reveals that the game was less inspired by Herzog Zwei, as is often reported, but rather something much more mundane:
“Herzog Zwei was a lot of fun, but I have to say the other inspiration for Dune II was the Mac software interface. The whole design/interface dynamics of mouse clicking and selecting desktop items got me thinking, ‘Why not allow the same inside the game environment? Why not a context-sensitive playfield? To hell with all these hot keys, to hell with keyboard as the primary means of manipulating the game!’”
The Making of... Dune II [Edge Online]
Brandon Boyer
All is forgiven? Giana Sisters to make commercial DS debut
The air's a bit thick with irony with the announcement that publisher dtp and developer Spellbound will be releasing a new version of The Great Giana Sisters for the DS, Nintendo having, on original C64 release, pressured the game off the shelves for its overt similarity to Super Mario Bros.
For its part, the new version looks to have rightly ditched its Mushroom Kingdom garb entirely, and honestly sounds like a labor of love, having tapped composer Fabian Del Priore -- known in classic computing days as 'Rapture' and now part of the Play! game music/symphony tour -- to remix and update its soundtrack.
The game is expected to be released in June 2009.
Rob Beschizza
Tetris Bracelet
A handmade unique, yours for $70. Pick it up before that damn blizzard sorc who never says anything does.
TETRIS Bracelet[Etsy via Wonderland]
Rob Beschizza
The year's most over-rated games
Fidgit takes a crack at some of the year's best-received titles, suggesting that to be lauded is not necessarily the same as to be loved.
7) Spore The developers have explained that Spore was essentially three products: a content creator, a game-ish sort of thing, and a way to share stuff. Unless you're interested in at least two of those three things, and if you're willing for at least one of them to be rather anemic, Spore will be a head-scratcher.
To learn what game Tom Chick considers a long slow wank, check out the full article.
10 most overrated games of 2008 [Fidgit]
Brandon Boyer
Denki re-emerge with XBLA boardgame mashup Quarrel
Scotland developer Denki has a pedigree that belies the attention its received: studio head Gary Penn was formerly of DMA Design (who you now know as Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar North) and has had design roles in games like Body Harvest (which you could argue was a prototype for how GTA would eventually function in 3D) and, more recently, Crackdown.
Denki, for itself, has been behind some of the best cult hits of the Game Boy Color/Advance generation from the very smart puzzle game Denki Blocks to Go! Go! Beckham!, a wholly unlikely and wickedly good GBA title that brought the soccer star cutely into a pastel Mario/Yoshi's Island-esque world which he conquered with trademark footwork (see: this YouTube video).
Now, after a diversion onto set-top box game venture which hasn't panned out technologically, Scottish games mag Square Go has got the first look at Denki's new Xbox Live Arcade venture, Quarrel: Word War One. Square says the game plays out like "Scrabble x Risk x Countdown" (the last of which necessitated a google: I'd substitute Boggle, perhaps, for the Americans), where word games blossom out to territory control, which appears to feature Denki's by now recognizably primary-colored aesthetics and might just turn out to be a surprisingly good development.
World Exclusive: Quarrel - Hands On [Square-Go]
Brandon Boyer
Eskil Steenberg's Love hitting alpha
As Jim alluded to in his most recent column, one of my favorite memories of this year's GDC was watching both him and PC Gamer UK's Tim Edwards trip over themselves for the words to describe exactly what they'd witnessed in seeing Eskil Steenberg painterly, user edited, generative FPS MMO Love. Words failed them then, words quickly break down into a pile of descriptors that don't quite mesh correctly in the brain (as just then) and I think still don't quite have the impact that they should.
But the time for words is steadily growing shorter: capping off a long reflection on controller schemes, feedback loops, and Quake's online multiplayer '50 Milli Second rocket prediction,' Steenberg has dropped a tiny grenade in our laps with this: "Next week when i get back home from LA, my first alpha will go out..." Hopefully we'll have a few more words of our own to stumble through soon.
It started 50 milliseconds ago [Quel Solaar]
Brandon Boyer
Sony lawyers ransack Sackbook
Well, that was short-lived: just days after launching the by all rights completely excellent data scraped social networking site Sackbook, Sony have sent mastermind Chris Warren a cease and desist until "they take a look at how the data is accessed to ensure everything is safe and lovely (it is, but they are right to make sure of such important things)."
That shatters my theory, then, that Media Molecule had to be at least in part co-conspirators, and certainly ups my respect for his bit-jacking methods.
Sackbook shut down by 'Sony's Sacklawyers' [Sackbook, via LittleBigPlanetoid]
Brandon Boyer
Boom Blox does Mario, Galaga, Duck Hunt
All eyes might currently be on LittleBigPlanet for the new wave of user generated content, but I'm very happy to see Travis Hendricks's enterprising series of retro remakes in EA's Boom Blox. Hendricks covered all the bases from Donkey Kong to Galaga to Pac-Man to Super Mario Bros. to Duck Hunt, and eagle eyes might spot that the last one does indeed look like it was meant to include a dog you can finally, finally, bean for all the years of merciless taunting.
8 Bit Games Recreated in Boom Blox [Game On Nintendo]
Brandon Boyer
Love is... ever so slightly wrong
Spotted via Tiny Cartridge and winner of today's seriously?-most-unlikely-license goes to Zoo Digital and Elephant's forthcoming Love Is... In Bloom expected just after the new year for Wii and DS.
Elephant's site appears to have been crushed from the preponderance of in-bound love, but Zoo says the game will feature (as Tiny Cartridge aptly recalls) the Homer-Simpson-described "two naked eight-year-olds who are married" building "the best Florist shop around, by "preparing the soil and planting seeds to grow magnificent flowers that you can then sell them in your very own Flower shop to earn money and grow a little empire."
We're obviously not the target market here, but I'm also struggling to figure out who is, and only slightly unnerved by the image of even a little empire of the wo/man-children.
Love Is... in Bloom [Zoo Digital, via Tiny Cartridge]
John Brownlee
Warhammer Online to carve statuary of the top players
The problem with MMORPGs is the ubiquity of heroes: the world's just maggoty with them. Nothing particularly feels epic, evil is never defeated and the greatest heroes only differ from the level one milksops by the rarity of their clothes and the visible smell waves oscillating off of their avatars. In largely static game worlds of unevolving lore and unfluctuating threat, there is no capacity to feel like a legend. Which, when you think of it, is very much at odds with the spirit of Tolkein that largely informs games like Everquest, World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online.
At least the latter game seem to recognize it, though. Mythic's introducing a rather cool little addition to Warhammer Online, aimed at making outstanding players feel more like ineluctable legends of the game lore. Starting with patch 1.1, Mythic will reward the top ten players on each realm with statues of their characters in the main city centers.
I think it's a nice little touch. MMORPGs need more of these sorts of gestures to the player, incorporating their deeds and heroism into the fabric of the game lore to both inspire and garner the jealousy of their fellow players.
Dev Diary: Player Statues [Warhammer Herald]
John Brownlee
Katasushi Damacy in a Bento Box
The most delicious Katamari: the Prince of All Cosmos rolls himself a piscine planetoid of ricemen, vegetables and seaweed within the damacy of a Bento Box.
bento #14: Katamari Damacy [Anna the Red via Kotaku]
John Brownlee
Expect new Guitar Hero releases for the next ten years
According to Jesse Divnich, an analyst at Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, lackluster sales of Guitar Hero: World Tour indicate that Activision's franchise has reached its half-life.
According to Divnich:
Currently, we expect unit sales to decline by more than 50 percent series-over-series for November. This is coming off the October month where series-over-series units declined by more than 60 percent.
Thank god. There is no need for yearly (or oftener!) Rock Band or Guitar Hero releases... at least on store shelves. That's not to say we shouldn't welcome more tracks, or arenas, or models: the games just have more merit as relatively static and, unchanging platforms delivering fresh musical gaming content via an iTunes-like delivery model.
In other words, let's stop shipping confusing new versions of these games and make the controllers the platform, delivering and updating content entirely over the Internet through a combination of free patches and micro-transactions. A sea of different Guitar Hero and Rock Band discs on the shelf just confuses matters. There's just no reason for them.
But then Divnich said this:
We expect Guitar Hero and Rock Band releases for the next 10 years as they will always have a large and loyal market base, just as [Dance Dance Revolution] is still today a very profitable franchise for Konami, even though that series reached its peak a long time ago.
So don't expect Guitar Hero or Rock Band to stop shipping discs anytime soon.
John Brownlee
Strong Bad channels LucasArts in very first "roomisodic" game
Following their series of episodic Homestar Runner games on the Wiiware, the Brothers Chap have shown their website visitors some tongue-in-cheek love with the very first "roomisodic" Strong Bad game, Dangeresque Roomisode 1: Behind the Dangerdesque.
It's a fun ten minute diversion, in the style of the golden age of LucasArts adventure games... which means lots of surrealist humor, corny jokes and puzzle logic hypodermically-suctioned out of the Robitussin-pickled brain pan of a non sequitur loving man-child. A peer of that very same man-child, I loved it.
Dangeresque Roomisode 1: Behind the Dangerdesque [Homestar Runner via GameLife]
John Brownlee
Super Mario's skeleton swallows a racoon feather
I do not generally go for gaming t-shirts — my gaming is a secret shame, thank you very much, and should not be fashionologically broadcast — but I don't think even my self-loathing can resist stretching this sepulchral raccoon Mario across the sinewy and majestic mounds of my pectorals.
Gorgeous. Unfortunately, it's sold out right now, but I'm hopeful for a reprint. A t-shirt design this wonderful should not be allowed to go out of print.
Super Mario Skull T-Shirt [Etsy via Wonderland]
John Brownlee
Disney's Pure shields kids from profanity by including Urbandictionary on the disc
Disney games almost always contain profanity filters, and these filters are apparently ripped directly from Urbandictionary.com in several languages, including English, Dutch, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Italian.
Urbandictionary is as exhaustive and authoritative a source as any to make sure that toddlers playing Minnie Mouse Pattycake multiplayer don't get propositioned with donkey punching, but the way Disney included the profanity filter in their off-road racing game Pure is laughably inept: an exhaustive list of profanity and shocking sexual metaphor is included as a plain text file in the game's install directory, just waiting to be discovered by the same kids Disney presumably wants to shield from dirty sanchezing and the like.
In short, when a kid buys Pure, he's also getting a couple of exciting extras included on the game disc, including a comprehensive dictionary of obscenity-laden slang and an extensive catalog of sexual perversions. It's not really a big deal — a Hot Coffee scandal over something like this would be absurd — but you've got to marvel at Pure's programmers: why isn't this list hosted client side?
Pure Profanity List [Swear Words via Pure (PC) [Quarter to Three]
John Brownlee
Batman: Arkham Asylum trailer conjures wishful thinking of Batman in Rapture
The latest trailer for Rocksteady's upcoming action title Batman: Arkham Asylym is superficially impressive, a rapid staccato of the leering rictuses of Batman's villain gallery, all of whom are nightmare ids sprung from the broken mind of Bruce Wayne himself. Familiarity with Grant Morrison's brilliant Arkham Asylym graphic novel fills in the blanks a bit, leading me to hope for the best.
And what is the best? Actually, a game more like Bioshock than a comics-licensed game, where Arkham Asylum is Rapture, the Joker Andrew Ryan, the escaped inmates Splicers, and the amnesia subplot replaced by Batman finally coming to understand his own insanity's symbiotic link to that of the maniacs of Gotham.
I hope for that game. I don't think Rocksteady or DC is going to give it to us, though.
Brandon Boyer
Edmund McMillen gives us No Quarter
Indie designer Edmund McMillen, the mind behind 2004's excellent tar-ball platformer Gish, has just shown off No Quarter, his next game coming in early 2009.
McMillen describes No Quarter as an "album" of retro inspired mashup games, with a tracklist (as seen above) which so far includes:
1."gun" (Mario + N + Wolfenstein)
2.Trivium (Tetris + Physics)
3."epic flail" (Missile Command + Rampage)
4.Hext (Scrabble + Hex board)
5."tree" (Art game + Sim)
6.Odyssey (Lunar Lander + Awesome )
Since it was announced before Offworld launched, I'll also note that McMillen has just self-released a similarly album-like retrospective of his games and comics called This is a Cry For Help, which includes versions of web games like Meat Boy, Tri-achnid, Aether and Coil, as well as unreleased bonus material from commercial games like Gish and Blast Miner.
A full contents list can be seen here, with a trailer here on YouTube. His work has a tendency toward the dark (sensitive gamers warned), but is always thoughtfully tempered, smartly done and comes highly recommended.
No Quarter [Cryptic Sea]
John Brownlee
Phil Spencer and Major Nelson talk Crackdown 2
In an utterly casual non-confirmation of a non-rumor, Major Nelson pressed Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer about the possibility of a Crackdown 2 on the last episode of the Major Nelson Podcast.
Major Nelson: "I'm here to tell you on behalf of the community, I want — we need — another Crackdown... That’s all I'm going to say, so you don’t have to confirm for deny anything. I'm just saying we want it."Phil Spencer: "Yes, Crackdown's one of my favorites. I'll leave it at that.”
So much ado about nothing, but it's a testament to how great a game Crackdown was that just these two guys winking at each other in a sound booth about a possible sequel was enough to quaver my inner thighs.
Realtime World's Crackdown was a great seller for Microsoft with 1.5 million copies sold, and for my money the ultimate gamer's sandbox game. Why has no one else ever made a game about an ex-Nazi scientist who creates an immortal genetic superman to battle mob bosses in a crime beleaguered city? Why don't more games let you play a facially pierced cyborg capable of jumping over skyscrapers while simultaneously kicking the skeletons out of the bodies of cyberpunk yakuza? Why don't other games give you achievements for rocket juggling? And why don't other games feature an insistently critical basso voce narrator to sarcastically crack wise about your fuck ups?
Unfortunately, a sequel was never announced. According to Realtime Worlds producer Phil Wilson, the reason was simple: Microsoft was late asking for a sequel, at which point, the developers were already working on "bigger, better things."
Let's hope this means Microsoft's finally made Realtime Worlds a solid enough offer for them to work on two projects at once.
Show #301: Phil Spencer, Keiichi Yano, Jerry Johnson and Seth Killian [Major Nelson via Kotaku]
Brandon Boyer
Korg DS-10 + bendy straw = handheld talkbox
In his purple plastic new-wave shades, Jetdaisuke speaks the universal language of awesome in explaining how to construct a portable talkbox out of a plastic straw, a DSi, and Xseed's Korg DS-10 software. If anyone needs me, I'll be off recording my krautrock cover of Pete Drake's previously featured 'Forever'.
The DS-10-aided “Talking Modulator” with a straw!!!! [KORG DS-10 Blog]
Brandon Boyer
Dotter Dotter's 3D pixelcraft
More retro inspiration: there's something about how the shading softens the hard pixel lines in Tibori Design's Dotter Dotter series that makes me almost lust for either a next-gen game done up with the renderer or -- fire up your 3D printers -- figure playsets of each. Nintendo's already essentially done the latter nearly spot on with their Super Mario Bros. dioramas, so it's up to somebody now to do the former.
Brandon Boyer
8-bit Jesus, the NES themed chiptune holiday album
If you Blip Festers haven't come home all burnt out on square waves, the wonderfully named Doctor Octoroc has uploaded a 9-track preview of his unfinished (how many more can he come up with?) Christmas chip-tune album, each song done in the style of a different NES game from 'Little Drummer Nemo' to 'The Legend of Noel' to 'Super Jingle Bros.'
Try as I might, I can't come up with any suggestions for the second half (due by the new year, at the latest) better than one commenter's wish for "a Metroid title music inspired 'Silent Night.'"
8-Bit Jesus: New Christmas Chip-tune Album [Doctor Octoroc, via Infinite Lives]
Brandon Boyer
Better left unsaid: scraps from Left 4 Dead's cutting room floor
We've already looked at length at what Left 4 Dead is subtly teaching the player in its opening cinematic, and over at the game's official blog, they've recently posted a detailed look of their own at the four month process of shaping its intricacies.
Most intriguingly, the earliest videos hint at a budding last-guy-on-earth romance between Zoey and Francis, which sounds just about as off-putting as they said it ultimately was, and the post shows the challenges of cutting down unintended comedy and making characters less vulnerable than they wanted them to be:
Through playtesting, we also found that the initial sections of the hunter sequence were lingering a bit too long, allowing viewers to wonder whether Louis would himself become infected. In later edits, this part of the intro would be edited more tightly and shot with more close-ups in order to remove any lulls in which the viewers would be tempted to ponder the fate of Louis themselves. You also notice that the hunter no longer gets away from the survivors but instead falls from the building and sets off the car alarm, providing a plausible cause for the Survivors setting off the alarm.
Brandon Boyer
We're born alone, we Harvest alone, we die alone
I was set on not thinking much of this cheerily morbid little video based on description alone, but some mix of the Byrne and the hammered-home message about the thankless plight and futility in the games we play (and, by proxy, the life we live) won me over pretty quickly.
As Resigned's 'Sir Cucumber' puts it:
I've never believed in much, but in my youth I held a private article of faith that in the extra mode of Balloon Fight if I just kept going a little bit longer, if I just held on, something good would happen. It had to. Or else what was the point?A small part of me still wants to believe this, but I know better now.
Balloon Trip: An Existential Journey [Resigned Gamer, via Free Pixel]
Brandon Boyer
Screaming for Hitekkai: Meat Bun's new T-shirt designs
After burning through old stock in a Black Friday fire sale, games T-shirt design co. Meat Bun has revealed their new slate of product with five fresh designs, and it's hard to choose a favorite.
I think it's the ever-so-vaguely-Misfits-esque glow in the dark design they debuted at their Street Fighter IV launch party, but it might also be the much-more-blatantly Screaming For Vengeance inspired Ikaruga X Judas Priest design on banana yellow.
Blog Archive » Fresh Meat - Series 2 [Meat Bun]
Brandon Boyer
Everything is pixelated: Scribblenauts catalogs the natural world
Developer 5th Cell quickly established themselves at the vanguard of realizing the DS's potential with their 2007 platformer Drawn To Life (and it's Spongebob-licensed followup), which gave players the ability to draw and customize nearly all of the game's assets -- its main character, weapons, enemies, the world itself. That was followed on by the more traditional Lock's Quest, a Tower Defense clone that, even if more traditional, was at least smartly timed with the boom of the genre across all platforms.
Now, IGN has revealed their latest game, Scribblenauts, with a premise so audacious it'll be nearly impossible to follow on with execution that won't end up falling short for someone. In it, you guide Maxwell on a quest to collect Starites by writing in the name of an object to help solve a puzzle with, and -- as the IGN interview repeatedly italicizes -- that object could be anything. As in the trailer above, a Starite stuck in a tree can be reached via ladder, knocked down with a football, or, of course, by conjuring a beaver to saw through the trunk.
As creative director Jeremiah Slaczka explains, the studio's essentially been mapping out a spreadsheet of "everything" for months and firing off quick-drawn assets for each, along with how their properties affect each other (fire burns wood, doughnut attracts cop). It doesn't sound entirely far off of the create-anything emergent possibilities of LittleBigPlanet, with the important caveat that the player designs the scenario as well as the means for solution in that game, where here the challenge will be working our way through 5th Cell's mindset.
Whether they can succeed will remain a gaping chasm of an open question until more of the game comes to light over the coming months, but for now it's hard not to stay just a little entranced by the magic of its possibility.
John Brownlee
Why in-game advertisements should be limited to multiplayer
There's reason to distrust in-game advertisement. For one, it does not noticeably reduce the cost of a game on the consumer end, which is the way the advertising model works in most other mediums. But the larger point is that game developers have never seemed capable of the subliminal restraint necessary to infuse a fictional, artistic world with real-life shilling. The analogical result can be like cracking open Pale Fire and read for a couple of pages only to have John Shade burst in mid-stanza and moistly shout "BAWLS! DRINK IT! TO THE EXTREME!" in your face.
Over at Fidgit, the illustrious Tom Chick has some thoughts on Ubisoft's in-game advertising for Far Cry 2, which features fictionalized ads in single player and real advertisements in multiplayer. Chick's curmudgeoning is entertaining to read in and of itself, but the most thoughtful analysis actually comes from a commenter, Mark Greyam, who notes:
When you play Far Cry 2 single player, you're some jerk with plot-convenient malaria, exploring dry, windswept savannah, trying not to get shot to pieces as you attempt to play both sides against each other, and run over zebras.When you play Far Cry 2 multiplayer, you're UberL33tSniperXXX69w00t, running around trying to headshot people as they scream about chocolate milk and inform you of the various ways in which they violated your mother last night. And boy, did she like it.
The fourth wall doesn't really exist in multiplayer games, so when the game decides to break it down and then thoroughly stamp all over the pieces until it's a fine wall-paste by advertisting a game that exists in the, you know, real world, it's not really as jarring.
An excellent point, and I think it's the solution to the long-term problem of monetizing games through advertisements. Multiplayer is already usually a corruption of a game designer's vision for his world, in that it places the most important element of the game experience in the hands of humans, a large percentage of which are very likely smacktards. Introducing ads into the multiplayer experience can help fund ongoing development and keep servers intact while remaining, if not congruous, then at least equally incongruous as a world populated entirely by homicidal, bunny-hopping fourteen year olds.
There's multiplayer titles in-game advertisements can't work in, of course. For example, Valve's Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2 manage to imbue the unpredictable human element with the spirit of the game world even in multiplayer, largely by making sure that each player is only in control of the actions — not the character — of his avatar. In games like these, in-game ads would always shatter the fourth wall wide open. But those sorts of games are rare indeed, and I think we can trust the developers actually gifted enough to make multiplayer games of that level of artistic caliber not to then spray them with advertising smegma.
Far Cry 2's in-game advertising [Fidgit]
John Brownlee
Space Invaders Extreme for XBLA comes with retro extra
Like Puzzle Quest, Space Invaders Extreme — an entrancing electronica-fueled rhythm game featuring Taito's pixelated invader squidlings as exploding beats and notes — has turned into one of those games that I feel compelled to buy and replay on every system for which it is released. I already own the DS and PSP versions, and the announcement at TGS that the title would also be debuting soon for Xbox Live Arcade made it almost a certainty that I'd be spending some of my gamer points for the game on that platform as well. But if you're still not convinced Extreme is worth buying yet again, some added impetus, courtesy of Square Enix and Taito: the XBLA version will also include a port of the original Space Invaders, gratis.
Space Invaders Extreme XBLA comes with Space Invaders Not Very Extreme [Destructoid]
John Brownlee
Midway wins in Psi-Ops vs. Psi-Ops lawsuit
It was the most frivolous of lawsuits. A delusional screenwriter sues Midway for $1.5 million, claiming the theft of the plot, characters, design and title of his 2001 screenplay. The screenwriter? William L. Crawford III. The screenplay? Psi-Ops. And the game he irrationally thought had ripped him off? 2004's Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy. A lunatic, that one.
When you put it that way, it's hard to read the summary of the Crawford v. Midway lawsuit without thinking that the plaintiff might just have a case. But a federal judge has thrown out the case, claiming there was "minimal evidence supporting a reasonable possibility" that Midway had access to Crawford's screenplay. Legally speaking, the two Psi-Ops are considered the independent creation of similarly themed artistic works.
I'm glad. Midway's Psi-Ops was an under appreciated little gem of the last generation: to this day, it still offers gaming's best take on what it must be like to be a Jedi... albeit, one without a light saber or a LucasArts license. Midway's financial woes aren't likely to appoint them the developers of a sequel, but with the Crawford lawsuit dismissed, there's at least the possibility that someone will snag up the IP during Midway's bankruptcy fire sale and make a worthy sequel to it.
Midway wins in Psi-Ops copyright lawsuit [Big Download]
John Brownlee
Before and After: the Capital Wastelands
Games Radar has knocked up a fascinating (though depressingly low resolution) series of comparison shots between the real Washington, D.C. and its irradiated, ghoul-infested skeleton, as it appears in Bethesda's Fallout 3. Two thoughts present themselves.
The first: if not for the certainty of triggering a national panic that would be sure to cause a GTA style blowback on the medium as a whole, I would love to see some real-life Fallout 3 cosplay in D.C. Think the S.TA.L.K.E.R. cosplay that goes on in Chernobyl, but instead featuring cardboard-attired Enclave soldiers battling BoS paladins in the D.C. Metro with rust-painted NERF guns.
The second: a more interesting comparison than just D.C.'s architecture might be to see how much of Fallout 3's Capital Wastelands can be fit into the real-life D.C. My suspicion is that as big as the game world Bethesda has created seems, it would all probably fit comfortably within the Mall.
Fallout 3 vs. reality: photo comparison [Games Radar]
John Brownlee
Dragon Quest goes ballet
I will not pretend to be a scholar in the world of Dragon Quest, but this Dragon Quest ballet performed by the Star Dancers Ballet of Japan— while not based on any particular game's plot — seems to adapt most of the series' central motifs, weaving orchestral versions of the themes of the first four games into a mash-up gaiden following Torneko and Taloon through a prancing, symphonic adventure.
Hit play. Even if you don't care to watch all thirteen parts, the music is very relaxing to have going in the background. My only real criticism is that dancing isn't interrupted nearly enough with random battles with slimes, which to me is the true hallmark of the Dragon Quest pedigree.
Dragon Quest Ballet [CD Japan via Destructoid]
John Brownlee
Atlus PR manager defies genetic programming, exhibits sense of humor
The nature of the public relations man is well known. Grown as pupating, translucent-skinned embryos from specimen cells scraped off the corpse of an interstellar ravisher of worlds known only as Jenova, they are the slithering appendages of an Eldritch thing which believes it can reshape the very nature of reality through the medium of press releases and disseminating email blasts. They are soulless creatures of exquisite malevolence, and all that comes from the stretched, pink rictus of their lips are lies.
That is not to say, though, that the occasional PR man doesn't exhibit a deft sense of humor. After three of their unannounced titles were accidentally leaked on the ESRB's website, Atlus' Aram Jabbari sent Silicon Era a wonderful little joke press release, claiming that they'd be announcing all future titles in this fashion from now on.
Here's a snip:
“Our experiment has been a rousing success,” said Aram Jabbari, Manager of PR and Sales, beaming. “Allowing information about our upcoming titles to be silently posted on ESRB’s website has been a triumph, and we’ve decided to abandon all direct, overt disclosures of our future games in favor of quietly allowing the posting of new titles onto ESRB.org. Every other publisher puts their press releases out there in the same distribution channel, and sometimes the news gets overlooked. By sneaking all future game announcements onto the ESRB website for just a handful of passionate editors to find, we distance ourselves from industry conventions.”
All joking aside, PR managers have a difficult job: to manage the unmanageable flux of public reaction. Their bosses never think they're doing enough, while at the same time they are reviled (only seldom secretly) by the very press which forms public relations' symbiote. The difference between a company perceived by the gaming press as thoughtful of its customers wishes and having a good sense of humor oftentimes comes down to the nature of a single PR guy toiling away in a cubicle somewhere.
Kudos to Aram Jabbari. Not that three unannounced Atlas titles getting accidentally leaked qualifies as a public relations nightmare, but handling unexpected little crises with a tongue rooted firmly in cheek is a much better palliative than cease-and-desists.
Atlus has a sense of humor about ESRB Leaks [Silicon Era]
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigSupernova in motion
Following on our earlier post via Dengeki Online, Q Entertainment has officially announced that Lumines Supernova's U.S. release will also get the exclusive LittleBigPlanet skin. They've alsosent us the video above, showing off a newly remixed down-tempo LBP track, which we'll admit fits the Lumines mood moreso than the Go! Team track we suggested earlier.
The company says that the PS3 release, which comes after the game has been ported to PS2, PSP, Xbox Live Arcade, PC and mobiles, will also feature other exclusive new features, including a "dig down" mode that has you clearing an already-full playfield, and a sequencer mode that lets you "create your own background music using the sound loops provided in the 'Sound Bank' – drums, bass, synthesizer 1, synthesizer 2 and effects."
As before, no strict release date has been set, but again has been slated for a 'winter 2008/2009' release.
Lumines Supernova [PlayStation, Q's official Lumines site]
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Indie Game: Rescue: The Beagles
Originally created in June for a TIG Source competition based on procedurally generated content, indie developer 16x16's winning entry, Rescue: the Beagles, has finished subsequent tweaking and been released as an official final version. As you might expect from the name, your humanitarian mission in the game is to hop between three layers of terrain picking up hurt and otherwise wandering beagle pups before they're carted away to an animal testing facility.
This sounds easier than it is: the deceptively complex game requires more multitasking ability than you might expect, and relies heavily on split second decisions on which layer to jump to next as its randomly generated peaks and valleys come together and diverge.
The game is almost Spelunker-level strict (see: this awesome Japanese video for more on that) on how far you can fall to the next layer down, and any dog that manages to pass you by is an instant lose, but stick with it long enough and you'll manage to work yourself into a very satisfying rhythm.
Rescue: the Beagles [16x16, via IndieGames]
Brandon Boyer
The Munny shot: Earthworm Jim edition
Recently spotted in vinyl toy maker Kid Robot's preview of upcoming additions to its gallery, a custom version of its signature Munny figure reworked in the image of Earthworm Jim. The custom was done, as eagle eyes will have spotted, by Andrew 'Creatures In My Head' Bell, who you may also recognize from his Dot Overdose t-shirt which debuted at this year's ComicCon.
It's a very nicely done custom, though I am curious how he does his trademark head-whip from inside the helmet.
More Munny Sneak Peeks [Kid Robot, via theBBPS]
John Brownlee
Obama goes Gears of War
On display in Miami at the Art Basel expedition, this painting by artist Daniel Ortiz features our President-Elect as a Gear of War, revving the buzzsaw on his Lancer and attempting to plunge it through the chest of the Republican Horde Leader as a Dick Cheny Brumak lumbers monstrously in the background.
Honestly, this painter is pretty inept — those are the least recognizable Palin, McCain and Biden caricatures I've ever laid eyes upon — but it's hard not to titter at the appropriation of Gears of Wars ongoing battle between macho cyber-armor beefcakes and a monstrous chthonic horde as a metaphor for the bipartisan rivalry of American politics.
Gears of War gets political [Kotaku]
Brandon Boyer
A much smaller Tripper approaches
Just a day after mentioning its PS3 remake Astro Tripper, PomPom Games has uploaded a new video teaser for the iPhone version of the original Space Tripper, which I will now more correctly note shares far more in common with classic Commodore 64 game Uridium than it does with Defender.
Though the stony silent video doesn't give away much, so far as I can tell the game will be of the auto-fire variety, controlled by the iPhone's tilt-sensor, and the ship flipped with a tap on the screen, all of which is looking quite elegant.
Space Tripper running on the iPhone [Youtube, via PocketGamer]
Brandon Boyer
Trine: Blue wizard is about to draw
Frozenbyte, the Finnish studio behind Steam's top-down sci-fi action game Shadowgrounds, are making good on their new original IP strategy with the announcement of the forthcoming Trine for PlayStation Network and PC.
The short teaser above goes a long way in selling the game, giving away one of its most intriguing gameplay aspects: a drawing mode looking nothing if not like Crayon Physics brought to fantastic life, placing platforms and boxes into its fully physics-based world, and hot-swappable characters which each have their own specialty to advance you further into its levels.
The studio says the game should appear in the second quarter of 2009.
Brandon Boyer
Sega launches casual portal PlaySEGA
As more publishers take to the web to capture casual-gaming dollars, Sega has taken a page from EA's Pogo.com and launched its PlaySEGA portal. The site currently is offering reworked Flash versions of its own hits (most notably the unfortunately Mario-less Sonic at the Olympic Games) as well as third parties (see: anything by pixel-geniuses Nitrome), and says that its for-pay VIP service will soon offer Sega classics like Columns, Puyo Pop, Chu Chu Rocket, Sonic The Hedgehog and Super Monkey Ball Tip n’ Tilt.
Like Pogo's "gems," playing PlaySEGA games will net you Sonic's "rings," which you can use to customize your avatar and add items to your delightfully named "Escape Zone" profile page.
Brandon Boyer
PS3's Lumines Supernova to include LittleBigPlanet skin
Japan's game news service Dengeki Online is reporting that Lumines Supernova, the first version of Q Entertainment's music/puzzle game for the PlayStation 3, will be getting its own LittleBigPlanet skin (that is, music track and accompanying background art). Q hasn't mentioned which song will make the cut, but we're hopeful it's Go! Team's "Get It Together," the deliriously cheerful recorder-laden tune.
A number of sites are dubiously reporting that the Lumines game would be playable from inside LittleBigPlanet itself, we're fairly confident this is not the case. No date has been set yet on Supernova -- Dengeki says the game will be available "this winter."
Lumines Supernova collaborates with LittleBigPlanet [Dengeki, Google translation]
Brandon Boyer
Metal Gear's December Surprise
Back in July, as many may have forgot, a French games blog suggested a rumor that Kojima Productions might have a December Surprise up its sleeve. December 12th, they said, six months after the release of the game (that length of time, players will note, fitting in nicely with the fiction of Metal Gear Solid 4) might trigger an in-game event.
Kojima's no stranger to time-based fourth-wall-shattering trickery: one of Metal Gear 3's aged boss characters can be secretly defeated by saving in the middle of a fight, exiting out and forwarding your PlayStation clock by a few days, and returning to the game to find him dead from waiting.
All of that's preface to the widely reported new teaser on Kojima Production's website which simply reads "A Next Metal Gear is..." accompanied by an image that is surely only coincidentally similar to the green glow of the Xbox 360's power ring (note: it's just as similar to the PS3's own [colorless] power symbol).
We're as much in the dark as anyone for now, but thought the timing of the new teaser seems oddly serendipitous and worthy of note.
Joel Johnson
Video: Real-life Mario Kart
A real-life Mario takes on the cars that refuse to race him on the streets of France.
Video Star Remi Kart [Nimportequi.com]
Brandon Boyer
Social networking for generation burlap
Right, well, this has instantly become my new favorite web-project: Chris 'ixalon' Warren has pulled some manner of black data-slurping magic (which I'm still trying to piece together, and suspect can't have come without at least a little assistance from Media Molecule themselves) to create Sackbook, a fully automated social network for LittleBigPlanet.
By visiting Sackbook's in-game world and leaving a confirmation-code comment on the level, the site will be instantly updated with your friends, hearted levels, and hearted creators, all of which are fully searchable, and accompanied by the photos that get snapped in-game.
It also makes for a much better level browser and discovery tool than flipping through LittleBigPlanet's overcrowded and spherical search results, and I suspect will become invaluable as the game evolves and grows as a platform.
Brandon Boyer
Go undercover for the Resident Evil 5 demo
With Microsoft and Capcom only releasing the Xbox 360 demo for Resident Evil 5 in Japan import-focused blog Siliconera has released a comprehensive guide for the rest of the world to sneak in under the radar and download it for yourself.
The bonus? Once you've got your digital paws on it, the demo plays fully in English, and even calls itself Resident Evil versus its rest of the world name, Biohazard.
How To Get Access To Japan’s Resident Evil 5 Demo [Siliconera]
Brandon Boyer
Mirror's Edge, running the void
Though I'm still reserving judgment about how the just announced DLC for Mirror's Edge will work without true-life guideposts to get my peripheral bearings, what I do like (apart from the gawpingly beautiful plain shapes they've created) is that it's bringing me warm feelings of Super Mario Sunshine's secret "void" levels -- pure, self-aware videogame environments that exist for no other reason than to play in.
Watch the trailer for the DLC pack, which will be released in late January (with an exclusive additional map for the PS3) at YouTube.
Brandon Boyer
Riding the iPhone's Raptor Copter
Following on our earlier post on indie dev Flashbang's amazingly literal Minotaur China Shop (which we've heard well-placed whispers might be crashing about some time next week), the developer has shown a quick preview of their first fully 3D iPhone game, Raptor Copter.
As it sounds, the game will see players snaring raptors with a hooked ball hanging from a transport chopper (in a very similar manner to their PC title Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, just on a different axis) and depositing it in proper raptor receptacle, via, we'd be willing to wager, a tilt-sensitive interface and Flashbang's signature focus on physics-enhanced play.
The game's set for a December release, with pricing and more details promised shortly.
Raptor Copter Teaser [Flashbang]
Brandon Boyer
The Bitcrushing Sega Master System
Chiptune artist and circuit bender Sebastian Tomczak over at little-scale has figured out a way to turn a Sega Master System II into a real time 'bitcrusher effect unit.'
Brandon Boyer
Eliot Min's little drummer girl
Seen via Rock Band's "zine," this gorgeous concept art from illustrator Eliot Min, who also worked alongside Steven Kimura for the game's Beast of Burden concept costume.
The People's Artist // The 'Zine [Rock Band]
Joel Johnson
Prizes you could win at Fünde Razor IV as we raise money for sick kids
A few years ago I held an event each year to raise money for the Child's Play Charity. We called it, in proper rock style, Fünde Razor. We're now in our fourth year, and thanks to help from friends in the industry — Kotaku, Game|Life, Rock Gamer, Gizmodo, not to mention tons of game and gadget manufacturers — we've raised thousands of dollars that we give over in its entirety to Child's Play. We've even moved beyond our original New York event to add a Denver and San Francisco event, all next Wednesday evening. (Location and times over on FundeRazor.com. [There's a similar event on Tuesday in Chicago.])
Prizes will vary a little bit from event to event (a lot of what we bring in are review items and such that all we bloggers have in our closets) but here's a partial list of what you can expect to win in the raffle or as door prizes at all three cities' events.
It really is a blast. If you make it to the NYC event, come tell me hi!
Here are the things I will somehow figure out how to lug via public transit:
• Rock Band 2 Special Edition Bundles signed by Harmonix! (Including special appearances by developers from Harmonix at the NYC Event!)
• An Xbox 360 Arcade!
• Tons of full-sized LEGO sets!
• A variety of CDs and more from Universal Music!
• Microsoft Zune!
• Chumby!
• TokyoFlash watches!
• Hand-made LEGO videogame sprites from NetDevil!
• Videogames from EA!
• Starpex Guitar controllers from Peak!
• Rock Pedals!
• AC/DC Live: Rock Band Track Pack (X360)
• MySims Kingdom (Wii) (Signed!)
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning plus free play cards! (Also signed!)
• Games from Rockstar Games!
• Lots of games too inappropriate to give to kids!
• Lots of various swag from videogame and gadget journalists! From our closets to yours!
Brandon Boyer
Only on Offworld: Introducing James Kochalka's Monster Mii
I've been a long-time follower of comic artist and musician James Kochalka, and so was quite happy when we first met through the 'net and traded Wii friend codes, and even more thrilled when a small but steady stream of delightfully bizarre characters filed in upon opening my Mii Channel the first time following.
So, in the spirit of sharing, and as part of that drive to widen the games community that I've been harping on about since the beginning, James and Offworld have partnered to bring you Monster Mii.
Monster Mii will be a regular feature introducing a new Mii monster each time for you to bring home to your own Wii. Once there, they'll give you creepy stares from the sidelines of your Wii Sports, lap you rudely during your Wii Fit jogs, and in general liven up your Plaza and gaming day.
This week's monster is Kzorx, who's down on public affection, but big on incandescence. To bring him home, enter the Check Mii Out Channel's Posting Plaza, click 'Popular,' then the 'Search' button at bottom. After that, hit the arrows at top right and enter in the code: 6140-6148-3207.
And let us know how he gets on with everyone else.
[James Kochalka's daily diary strips, which run at AmericanElf.com, have just entered their tenth year and been collected in three print volumes. He is also the author of more books and comics than you can count on both hands, including some that are excellent for children, and others not so much. All are excellent. James also plays rock and roll and Game Boy rock as James Kochalka Superstar, and recently exhibited artwork at Giant Robot's GR2 gallery. We are very happy to count him as a genuine Offworldian.]
Brandon Boyer
An Astro Tripper approaches
Though we Yanks will have to wait a few months longer, PomPom have announced ahead of Sony that they'll be making their European PlayStation Network debut next week with Astro Tripper. PomPom's the team behind the excellent early-XBLA arena shooter Mutant Storm Reloaded and its later scrolling followup Mutant Storm Empire.
Astro Tripper, as RockPaperShotgun pointed out in October, is actually a remake of their earlier Mac game Space Tripper, which they describe as more Defender to Mutant Storm's twin-stick Robotron-esque play, and looks as though it retains all the dynamism of that shifting flat-field perspective that's become their hallmark.
As with their earlier games, a PC version should also be due shortly, which might tide us in the U.S. over until 2009.
Astro Tripper [PomPom Games]
Brandon Boyer
Crate digging through IGF Mobile 2009
Scanning through the entries into the Independent Games Festival mobile game sub-competition pulls up quite a few interesting looking titles this year, including Secret Exit's Zen Bound, the iPhone version of Zen Bondage, a PC game from demoscene coders Moppi which consists of nothing more than wrapping 3D objects in rope with curiously satisfying results (a perfect fit for the iPhone interface, and one we've been patiently awaiting for quite some time).
There's also and-or's DS homebrew Wardrive, which turns local wi-fi hotspots into enemies you fend off with the stylus, and the intriguingly artful looking Ruben and Lullaby in which you control the temperature of a lovers' quarrel by using iPhone motion and gesture controls to anger and calm the couple.
Finally, and unfortunately the one I can find the least additional information on, PSP game Rhythm of War, from Ukrainian team SME Dynamic Systems Ltd (about whom I can only dig up some dubiously Google-translated information, which also seems to suggest they've also got a DS sketching game called Pika-Rica). The single screenshot looks like an intriguingly colorful play on Taiko Drum Master with a military unit firing on approaching monsters.
2009 IGF Mobile Competition Reveals Record Number Of Entries [GamesOnDeck]
Brandon Boyer
Rock Band about to get A Little Bit Country
From the MTV owned Country Music Television blog (and therefore very probably not empty conjecture!), the first real word of Rock Band branching out from its, well, rock roots with the first all-country DLC:
Just wait until Dec 16. That’s when Rock Band will add five country songs to its downloadable content for PlayStation3 and XBOX 360... This bundle’s going to have [Dierks Bentley], plus Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert and the Dixie Chicks.
Say what you will about the tricky mashup of four spike-and-leather be-goth'd members working their way through a cover of my grandmother's favorite hits, but more diversity is always a very good thing, especially if it spurs more back-catalog digging ('Ring of Fire' being a new Offworld hit in iNiS's karaoke game Lips).
Brandon Boyer
Praise from Patapon and a passionate plea
The best thing Patapon creator Hiroyuki Kotani says in his new interview with Gamasutra is a simple lesson I wish more developers would learn:
In my previous career as a teacher, what I learned is that if my students are happy, they would learn more; so, we had to praise them rather than scolding them. So, that's the biggest hint I got for the creation of games: I have to make the users happier, so they would feel like they are encouraged to go to the next stage.
It's an obvious point (and one elaborated on very incisively at GDC 2008's Treat Me Like A Lover session by Offworld columnist Margaret) but one that bears repeating.
As an example: one of the keys to Rock Band's success compared to Harmonix's earlier rhythm games like Amplitude and Frequency wasn't just the real-world fantasy of its plastic peripherals, but the subtle but constant reinforcement of just how brilliant you're doing, what a fantastic rock star you actually are, when the in-game audience cheers your star-power successes and sings along to 'your' vocals when the full band's maxing out their meters.
Developers: do more of this.
The Rhythm of Creation: Hiroyuki Kotani and Patapon [Gamasutra]
Brandon Boyer
Dress your racers in red and black
A very good update comes via Tiny Cartridge today, who missed (as we did) news of a homebrew contest for Nintendo's much-beleaguered Virtual Boy that netted not many entries, but at very least two racing remakes: the ubiquitous Mario Kart (of course), and, even better, a fancified duotone version of Outrun.
Not only that, but it's pointed me toward the fact that Vectrex.biz's Richard Hutchinson, creator of the first flashcart for 80s home vectorbeam console Vectrex (which I'd be all over if I didn't already own Sean Kelly's excellent 60 game multicart) has also produced a flashcart for the Virtual Boy. The cart currently appears to be sold out, though, so it looks like I'm going to have to wait to emerge again from those long VB nights with that trademark panda-eyed visor-line around my face.
VB Racing, a homebrew Outrun clone for the Virtual Boy [Tiny Cartridge]
Brandon Boyer
Garry's Mod life
There's cause for celebration all around for the 2nd anniversary of Half-Life 2 user-tomfoolery-enabler Garry's Mod: he's just revealed that he's sold well over 300,000 copies of the mod (which, as the bloggers with calculators have deduced, works out to over $3 million thus far), and found stardom so rich he has accidentally shared airplane-food-vomit stories with Junction Point's Warren Spector.
But for a mod that's birthed multiple fan-fic teleplays, innumerable wickedly good multiplayer creations, and an awesome gallery of Team Fortress 2 dioramas, it is stardom well deserved.
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigStickerPacks
Ah, this is an idea so good I'm a little ashamed I didn't think of it first: LittleBigPlanet fan site LittleBigPlanetoid has started curating sticker packs from designers and illustrators and putting together in-game levels where players can collect them. Brighton-based illustrator Matt Buchanan drew the first such pack, with submissions that perfectly bill the mood of the game.
The current catch is that, with a patch to allow picture imports straight off the PS3 not yet available, the sticker quality isn't quite up to snuff, but Planetoid promises the levels will be reworked when the game allows.
LBP Designer Sticker Pack #1: Matt Buchanan [Little BIG Planetoid, via Media Molecule]
Joel Johnson
Tap Tap Dance, Christmas with Weezer on your iPhone
Tapulous is releasing two new music games for the iPhone and iPod Touch platform, both of which continue to prove that their model of integrating music and gaming might just have legs.
The first, Tap Tap Dance, is an update of their popular Guitar Hero clone Tap Tap Revolution, with a brand new OpenGL-based engine. The big news is that the game will ship with tracks from major label electronic artists like Daft Punk, Moby, Justice, and the Chemical Brothers.
The other, which is just ridiculous enough to work, is Christmas with Weezer, a version of Tap Tap Dance with an entirely new soundtrack recorded exclusively for the game.
Brandon Boyer
Space invaders on your side
With my Space Invaders enthusiasm in full swing now that Get Even has finally been released, I was doubly pleased to see Final Invader DX, an indie competition submission that, like Get Even, tells the tale from an Invader's perspective. This time it's a traitorous octo-invader who steals top secret plans and defects to Earth not wanting to take a suicide mission from an overzealous commander.
The best part: a vaguely Mr. Driller/Elevator Action-esque second act that sees the invader working his way down through caverns to get to the UFO (and the perfectly timed "thank you but" message just as you think you've reached the end), and the Darius style warning messages which ChangeV complains no one noticed, but we did, ChangeV, we did.
Final Invader DX (.zip) [via auntie pixelante]
Brandon Boyer
New Rolito toy: Patapon X our one true heart
Apparently not one to take the release of the second Patapon game sitting down (yuk), Rolito has revealed that Medicom is expanding their licensed toy series from the previously shown Bearbrick to this stand-ee plush warrior. I'm completely sold (read: a sucker), but listen, Medicom: what the world really needs is a sound-activated Patapon that lets you tap a rhythm and have it respond in turn. Isn't it obvious?
Brandon Boyer
OneLifeLeft's 'Music To Play Games By'
Now in its fourth season, Ste Curran, Simon Byron and Ann Scantlebury's One Life Left is literally the UK's second best games-related radio program/podcast (or so says iTunes, at least) and an Offworld favorite, and -- having more or less cornered that market -- they've now set their sights on the music industry.
Printed in an extra limited edition of 800 (with 200 having gone missing in the mail), their debut CD 'Music To Play Games By' was compiled by the previously mentioned Simon 'chewingpixels' Parkin, and features a wide variety of micromusic and otherwise games-friendly artists from far corners of the globe, with names like Chicago/New York's Mark Denardo, Portland's Copy, Scotland's Project A-ko, Norwich's The Lost Levels and "Europe's favourite satirical videogame-centric musical group" The doyouinverts.
Parkin has put up preview clips of several of the tracks on the CD, which can be purchased worldwide via AmazonUK.
Brandon Boyer
Countdown to Brütality
The primary reason I'm excited for Spike TV's forthcoming Video Game Awards show? Even apart from the fact that I returned to serve as one of its judges, the ceremony will include the first new look in over a year at DoubleFine's black metal adventure Brütal Legend, the sophomore game from the studio behind Psychonauts, headed by former LucasArts designer Tim Schafer.
That year long wait has been a tumultuous one: as with the Ghostbusters game, the Vivendi/Activision merger put the future of the game in some jeopardy, and its new publisher is still not yet known. Schafer went so far as to devise an encoded threat level system to let people know where the game stands, which he's just raised to Haunted Sandalwood, or "omg I think there may be some news this month," which we're going to go ahead and guess will come alongside the new video.
Jack Black -- who plays Brütal Legend's hessian lead -- will host the awards show, which will also see appearances by Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, Cliff Bleszinski, Fallout 3 producer Todd Howard, and LittleBigPlanet's Alex Evans. Spike TV will air the show live Sunday, December 14 At 9:00 PM ET.
Brandon Boyer
Qu'est-ce que c'est Banjo?
Submitted without a trace of irony, the latest viral video for the recently released Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (and by proxy its just-released Xbox Live Arcade remake counterpart).
Apart from the honestly amusing Jinjo postcard, in keeping with Rare tradition, the video does contain hints of cute industry in-jokes (Kazooie apparently off taking part in a Women in Games conference), which carry through in the game itself, as with Humba's continual references to her all-girl clan the 'Hag Trolls,' a play on Ubisoft's Frag Dolls. The game always reserves its sharpest barbs for itself, though, from its very opening act, which sets you on a trademark 'collect-a-thon' before reeling you back in and starting the game proper.
An Eiffel of Banjo [YouTube]
Brandon Boyer
How evergreen, City 17
Gamasutra notes that Game Informer magazine has run life to date retail sales for Valve's Half-Life franchise, and even not counting units sold through its Steam service (keeping those figures traditionally tightly held), the numbers are duly impressive:
Half-Life - 9.3 million Half-Life: Opposing Force - 1.1 million Half-Life: Blue Shift - 800,000Counter-Strike - 4.2 million
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero - 2.9 million
Counter Strike: Source - 2.1 million
Counter-Strike [Xbox] - 1.5 millionHalf-Life 2 - 6.5 million
Half-Life 2: Episode One - 1.4 millionThe Orange Box - 3 million
Left 4 Dead - 3.6-3.9 million (projected)
As Gamasutra points out, while the figures on their face would suggest a downward trend in sales for each new volume of the game, the 2004 release of Half-Life 2 was the first to be released simultaneously at retail and via Steam.
Analysis: Valve's Lifetime Retail Sales For Half-Life, Counter-Strike Franchises [Gamasutra]
John Brownlee
J.C. Denton responds to an ontological quandary
Compelling. I wish I'd seen this a decade ago: with the benefit of this clip and some hindsight, I would never have bothered actually writing my dissertation in metaphysics.
Offworld Crew
Only on Offworld: Be one of the first to join virtual world Metaplace
From Offworld to the virtual world: Offworld and developer Metaplace have partnered to bring the first 250 readers a chance to get an early jump into the company's web-embeddable and fully user-created new software.
Headed by MMO veterans Raph Koster and John Donham, Metaplace counts itself as the world's first open platform that harnesses the power of the Web to allow anyone to create, build and live in their own unique virtual world, and build a network of those worlds, creating, they say, "an ecosystem where they collaborate, socialize and conduct commerce forming new societies and economies as we do in the real world today."
And, as Koster explained in September, Metaplace is also jumping ahead of the pack in modeling the software's Terms of Service around his 2000 manifesto “Declaring the Rights of Players", which gives creators "freedom of expression, ownership, including earning money & running their own world, privacy," and the ability to develop their own individual terms of service. Users, too, get "freedom of speech & assembly, privacy, rule of 'law' and due process," and full ownership of their own IP.
To start building your own brave new world, visit Metaplace and use the invite key "OFFWORLD".
UPDATE: Though all of the keys have now been used up (quite quickly, actually!), you can still sign up at Metaplace's waiting list to get in line - new applicants are accepted weekly.
John Brownlee
Conservative Christian group says Army of Two has "homoerotic undertones"... but don't all games?
According to the Timothy Plan, a "conservatively Christian" investment firm, Army of Two is one of the gayest games you can possibly buy. Their rationale? According to their list of the thirty most morally irresponsible video game comes this compelling rationale:
Army of Two: Homosexual Encounters: ...Somewhat homo-erotic undertones between the two main characters are present.
"Somewhat?" They aren't wrong, but it's only because this same charge could be leveled against any number of games featuring overcompensatory beefcake he-men firing their shotguns at groin level and calling each other "brah". Women often complain about the over-sexualized depiction of female characters in gaming, but practically all male protagonists are basically the oiled and glistening avatars of gaming's collectively closeted id. Which is awesome.
For instance, take the characters of Gears of War, as designed by Epic's own break dancing, fashion-obsessed lead designer, CliffyB... a man who, incidentally, is more well-known in the annals of the gay gaming world by his "other" nickname, "Dude Huge." Not only are his creations Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago merely a dip in a vat of coconut butter away from posing for a Playgirl pictorial called "Queers of War", but their Delta Squad "wingman," Augustus Cole, has a call sign (Cole Train) that is literally an underground gay euphemism for group bum action.
And that's just one example. The protagonists of most shooters and action games are essentially bearish superhunks, each seemingly only a headshot and a high-five away from greasing up their pecs and settling into a congratulatory snuggle. And that's just fine by me. There's no divorcing the gay from gaming: it's right there in the first syllable!
It's all folly. Avoiding the homo-erotic undertones in your gaming is basically part and parcel with avoiding the fun. And I like my games to be fun. Thanks to the Timothy Plan and their ringing if accidental endorsement, Army of Two just went on my Christmas list. It better be as gay as they say it is.
Jim Rossignol
Ragdoll Metaphysics: 2008 And The Indie Renaissance
There's nothing about 2008 that I'll remember more fondly than the bold success of independent games developers. Based on the past couple of years, and the guiding lights of companies like Introversion, I had been anticipating some positive trends for 2008, but things really started to clarify at February's San Francisco GDC. The signs were all there: 2008 was going to be a crucial year for the indie gaming scene.
It's fair to say that the Independent Game Summit was brimming with energy, and the independent developers had more to say - and more to be happy about - than any of the scores of well-paid big-studio professionals who were strolling lackadaisically around the convention centre halls. In fact, seeing games like World of Goo and Fez in motion was pretty unsettling: they were so imaginative, and so cogent, that the idea of their being built up by two man teams seemed absurd. If I were a developer working in a big studio game, I would have been rethinking my life choices around that time.
Joel Johnson
iPhone games dominated by big publishers, but a couple of indies slip by
Mobile Orchard figured out a way to pull out sales data from the iPhone App Store and used the power of maths to calculate which games were actually earning the most revenue. That contrasts nicely with the sales data recently released by Apple which shows the following games as the most downloaded:
1. Texas Hold’em
2. Moto Chaser
3. Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3d
4. Super Monkey Ball
5. Cro-Mag Rally
6. Enigmo
7. Air Hockey
8. Bejeweled 2
9. Flick Bowling
10. Line Rider iRide
Texas Hold'em and Crash Bandicoot actually swap places when you factor in the price points as Mobile Orchard has done in the chart above, with the kart racer sneaking ahead in overall earnings. (Although exactly how much money has been earned is murky, since Apple released only rankings, not specific download numbers.)
Mobile Orchard's analysis also highlights how few independently developed games are earning the big money, with only Subatomic Studios' fantastic Tower Defense clone Fieldrunners and John Moffett's iHunt breaking into the top ten.
Price and Popularity: The iPhone App Store’s Data Show Who’s Making The Most Money [MobileOrchard.com]
Brandon Boyer
Ghostbusters: The Game: The New Trailer
Just as we said we hadn't seen near enough of the Ghostbusters game yet, Atari delivers, with digital Bill Murray looking so much more spritely than we've seen him in his last howevermany sad sack films.
Brandon Boyer
LittleBigPlanet's Alex Evans making Wired Store appearance
If you're in NYC for Blip Fest or otherwise, it's not too late to sign up to see Media Molecule founder and LittleBigPlanet programming lead Alex Evans at the Wired Store on December 4th, where, if you're lucky, he'll show off his demonstration video of the 2D prototype that sold the game to Sony.
Little known fact you can impress him by knowing: prior to his work with Bullfrog/Lionhead, Evans was a demoscene coder by the name of Statix, and, as his newer moniker Bluespoon, did generative visuals for the 2004 Squarepusher and Jamie Lidell tour with London Sinfonietta. No joke!
Meet LittleBigPlanet Maker Alex Evans at Wired Store Thursday
Brandon Boyer
Because He Could Part Deux: The Originator's New Portable Xbox 360 Experience
Following on Technabob's Atari 2600 gently crammed in a Sega Game Gear shell, Ben Heck -- the grandfather of all bizarro and beautiful gaming hardware hacks -- has revealed his latest: a new revision of his laptop Xbox 360s. This time Heck notes:
It differs from my past Xbox 360 laptops in several ways:* Removable standard Xbox 360 hard drive for easy profile/data swapping
* Both memory card slots accessible, same reason.
* No keyboard! Really, they have those chat pads, what’s the point? (Besides looking cool)
* Simplified layout of ports and buttons.
* Internal wi-fi module, no external antenna. Antenna is strung out inside unit like other consoles/laptops.
* Beveled edges! Countersunk screws!
The unit's also got a built in Live Vision camera, an easy access panel to the 360's hard drive, and as usual, is completely desirable for all its impractical manufacturing.
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Gimme Gimme SingStar ABBA
The main reason I'm happy to see today's release of SingStar ABBA: they were (I'm man enough to admit) my first musical love (at 3!), and I've secretly been waiting my whole life for a valid excuse to recreate a performance as epic as Partridge's above from the comfort of my own bedroom.
SingStar ABBA [PlayStation.com]
Brandon Boyer
A Felyne of your very own
Capcom's biggest ongoing error in judgment? Not realizing that Monster Hunter's Felynes make up about 75 percent of the game's total charm (It's a cat! Who carries in its paws a stick with an even bigger paw hand-sewn on the end!), and basically ache for a spin-off game of their own. You've given them their own brand of ramen, Capcom, peek over at Majesco's success and give us a Wii/DS cooking game of their own -- even Disgaea's bit-part self-destructive Prinny d00ds got their own game.
In a show of self-solidarity, then, I note that import house NCSX is taking pre-orders for two new Merarou and Airou Felyne toys, which, even at five times the cost of the crossover toys created by razor-toothed designer Touma, should probably be purchased en masse if only to prove to the developer just what it's been sitting on all this time.
NCSX Import Video Games & Toys: Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G Airu DX - Import Preorder
Brandon Boyer
Gimme Indie Game: Daniel Benmergui's I wish I were the Moon
Daniel Benmergui's I wish I were the Moon is likely the only explicitly Italo Calvino-inspired game you'll play all year, and, even in its prototype form, is cutely innovative to boot. Benmergui created the game to show at Tokyo Game Show's Sense of Wonder Night -- one of the first summits to show off independent games and those seeking to do something new (and was the place where the void-painting game The Unfinished Swan first appeared before its preview video swept the blogs).
Even as quickfire and seemingly simple as the game is, I wish I were the Moon's photo-mechanic -- unjustly overlooked outside of a handful of games like Pokemon Snap, Fatal Frame, and PC Engine/PlayStation oddity Gekisha Boy -- brings a welcome change of pace, and tells a lovely and/or heartbreaking story at the same time.
Brandon Boyer
Heavy Rain's Cage on the case for normality
The most heartening part of 1up's new interview with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain director David Cage isn't the part where he notes that they've entirely reworked the quick-time-event mechanics or the fact that the taxidermist scene shown off so far was created solely for demonstration and hasn't given away any of the story itself.
It's that he makes the case that Rain will be more about the banal complexities of real life, compared to Indigo's 'fantastic' final third:
We tend to believe in our industry that we need to tell simplistic or spectacular stories, where the hero saves the world, destroys evil, or has supernatural powers. This is because the videogame, as a medium, has been too immature to tell complex and subtle stories. I made this mistake myself at the end of [Indigo Prophecy], where I felt my story needed something spectacular because all I had so far was normal people leading a normal life. I realized that the "normal" part was the one that worked the best, and that it wasn't necessary to save the world to tell something exciting anymore. Heavy Rain will be about normal people in real life, and I believe it'll be much more emotionally involving, as gamers will easily relate to the situations and characters. This is a new approach. In Heavy Rain, you won't be a superhero or a gangster. You'll just be someone real.
That's something we would happily like to see far more of.
John Brownlee
Sega developer logistically explains why modern Sonic games are terrible
I have never liked the Sonic games. There is, of course, the regrettable tainting of the franchise by the seedy self-pleasuing of the furry community over its most cherished characters, which drops in dollops upon poor Tails' eponymous appendage. But even before that, I never liked the games: I largely associate them with running into an impossible-to-dodge wall of spikes at roughly one thousand miles per hour.
Apparently, though, that's what people want: in response to the release of the latest Sonic title, Sonic Unleashed, there was marked fan disapproval of the fact that Sonic spent just so little time, you know, doing his thing. Which is running into spiked walls. In response, a Sonic Team member told David Clayman something interesting. Here's the conversation David related on a recent podcast:
I was like, come on, everybody just wants Sonic running, like, what's up with the werehog? And he was like, well, here's the deal ... he runs at this miles per hour, kilometers per hour, and he laid out all of the statistics on how fast this hedgehog goes, and he was like, 'In order to make a game where Sonic is running and everybody enjoys the whole thing we'd have to design this many miles of level, and it was some ungodly number'. And he's like, 'And that would be like maybe a three-hour game'
There's actually something satisfyingly candid about that response. Sonic is a relic of the 2D era, and his defining characteristic — speed — was informed largely by Sonic Team's ability to easily build levels with block-based 2D architecture... and, of course, the majesty of "blast processing." But large levels meant to be traversed with speed are time consuming when built in three-dimensions... and only a certain number of them can fit into the game budget. This means making more levels that are meant to be traversed more slowly to pad out game time. Yet fans expect the customary Sonic experience all the same.
Still, the way this guy talks, modern Sonic games disappointing fans is some sort of logistical fact. That's quitter talk. What do you want, the furries to win? Show some ingenuity and give everyone the frenetic spiked-wall-colliding simulator they've been clamoring for! It's the Sonic experience!
Sonic Team Unleashes the Reason Sonic Doesn't Just Run Any More [Kombo via Destructoid]
John Brownlee
Xbox 360 logo spotted hovering as UFO in the skies over 17th century Hamburg
The thing that really tickles about the Xbox 360 logo spotted in this 17th century woodcut of a UFO sighting over Hamburg, Germany isn't the staggering serendipity of two separate artists, separated by hundreds of years, coming up with the idea of a big circle with an X notched in the middle. No, it's not that: an idiot could come up with the idea of dividing an oval in fourths. But the utter mundanity of the similarity is what is ultimately so wonderful about it.
You just know that the rediscovery of this woodcut will inevitably prompt thousands of damp-browed ufologists to be so utterly gobsmacked by the similarity that, after quickly rubbing one out to some of the choicest moments in Fire in the Sky, they will unspool their madness upon all of us in one long cryptomaniacal conspiracy theory that will firmly implicate J. Allard, Peter Moore and Steve Ballmer as members of the Reptilian junta.
UFO glowing wheels sighting over Hamburg Germany November 4 1697 [Flickr]
Brandon Boyer
Nonfinite's DIY Game Boy LED light kits
Though Game Boy musicians prefer older model handhelds for their cleaner audio, it comes at the cost of visual clarity: the un-backlit portables aren't exactly conducive to low-light club situations.
Via Tiny Cartridge, though, we see that 'Nonfinite' has hacked together a super sexy LED-lit solution in the whole spectrum of colors that he'll be selling (both pre-modded and in kit form) at this weekend's Blip Fest. You can also find the same on at his site, for both music making, and as Cartridge puts it, evil sessions of Game Boy classics.
Brandon Boyer
Ghostbusters game coming June 2009
Other good news out of the Atari event today: the Ghostbusters game, which Atari picked up after the Vivendi/Activision merger saw a number of games shed from their release list, was given a June 2009 release date on all its platforms: PS3, PS2, 360, PC, Wii and DS, CVG reported.
Though not much has been seen of the game, anticipation still runs high with Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd firmly behind the project, penning the script and reuniting the original cast. There's something of some homespun pride here as well: Austin locals Red Fly Studios (the developer behind the just-released Primus-enhanced Wii title Mushroom Men) are at work on the PlayStation 2, Wii, and DS versions while North Texas's Terminal Reality (Spyhunter, Bloodrayne) handle the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports, and Austin's GL33K is handling audio, bringing in the original cast members to lay down their lines.
With the push for a 2009 release, the game will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the first film, and is being approached as an official interactive sequel to Ghostbusters II.
Brandon Boyer
Mizuguchi moves to Wii with Atari
UK outlet CVG has just reported that at an ongoing Atari event in London, our oft-blogged studio Q Entertainment has announced that Space Channel 5, Rez and Lumines creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi is making a move to the Wii with a new music title. Mizuguchi didn't offer up any details on the game, but announced it solely as codename "QJ." Former PlayStation head and now Atari president Phil Harrison has also said that the publisher is looking to bring QJ to other platforms, "including online."
The studio also announced, according to CVG, that Atari will be publishing a new retail Xbox 360 disc for Europe called Q3, which will package all of Q's Xbox Live Arcade games -- Lumines Live, Every Extend Extra Extreme, and Rez HD -- as well as their add-on content for 30 euros.
Apart from helping Harmonix/MTV localize Rock Band for Japan, Q has taken somewhat of a detour from its music/rhythm roots in recent months, so news of QJ is quite welcome, to say the least.
Brandon Boyer
Mama in the garden
Even if she's not going vegetarian, at least she's going green: in a move that shouldn't surprise anyone, considering how Mama has turned around Majesco's fortunes, the publisher has announced that Gardening Mama will be released for the DS in Spring of 2009.
In it, she'll be turning her attentions from the kitchen to let players "manage their garden through the seeding, blooming and maturation phases, and then produce items from the plants they've grown (i.e. grow strawberries to make jam or raise pumpkins and then carve a jack-'o-lantern)."
And as Destructoid recently noted, her offspun hobbies don't end there, Taito has trademarked Pet Shop Mama as well, which Tiny Cartridge reckons is a rebrand of import handheld stalwart Pet Shop Monogatari.
Brandon Boyer
The art of vector-war
First announced in March and now existing somewhere in excruciating limbo, Introversion's Darwinia Plus tops the list of my most anticipated Xbox Live Arcade games. Made up of the original arcade/real-time strategy Darwinia release and the more recent multiplayer version Multiwinia, this pitch-perfect parody trailer -- sending up Halo 3's melodramatic "Believe" ad -- does a good job of explaining why.
The PC versions are available now via Steam or direct from Introversion.
Brandon Boyer
Getting crafty with Foldskool and Cubecraft
Just spotted via Kotaku are Marshall Alexander's latest series of Foldskool Heroes, this time with a decidedly classic gaming bent: 64KRAM, your Commodore pal; Junior, a 2600 Jr. alike; and our favorite, the Pong arcade machine called Nolan, after Atari founder N. Bushnell.
If your fingers ache for more folding and tab-slotting after you complete these three, I recommend heading over to Cubecraft, where Christopher Beaumont has been cranking out scads more pop culture and game character projects: from the obvious (Mario, Mega-Man, Master Chief, Kratos, Katamari's Prince, Snake) to the more recent (Mirror's Edge's Faith, Fallout 3's Vault Boy) to the obscure (Mother 3's Claus and Lucas, Braid's Tim and 'creature', Portal's Chell) to the just plain awesome (the Duck Hunt dog, obviously).
Brandon Boyer
On the momentum in Mirror's Edge
There's been a bit of a tiny dust storm brewing over the release and critical reaction to EA/DICE's Mirror's Edge over whether reviewers cursed the darkness rather than light a candle over the things the game did right. Over at Tom Armitage's Infovore site, he's written his own very smartly considered reaction to just what Edge does do right, and how that rightness can manifest itself in feeling let down -- though not the game letting you down, but you letting down the character you inhabit. Says Tom:
Mirror’s Edge is at its best in moments of free exploration, finding new paths over serene rooftops, feeling that sense of flow as you tuck your feet over a barbed-wire fence; when it captures the feeling of a body moving, be it through graceful falls or being violently hurled off a building by a former wrestler; feeling like you’re flying across the city.It’s at its worst when, unlike on the rooftops and in the stormdrains, it places obstacles in its path - narrative, out-of-engine cutscenes, action-through-havoc that you can’t escape.
And especially when it makes you fail: Faith is clearly an experienced runner, and there are times where the player can’t live up to their avatar’s abilities. DICE choose to present that in binary success or failure, which has lead to criticisms of trial and error. Perhaps; at the same time, I’ve never encountered a single glitch or unrealistic motion throughout all my travels through the game. The coherence of the illusion is remarkable, and the price for that coherence is a definite kind of failure at times. I am not sure that’s necessarily a good enough excuse for some of the stop-start, but I feel that the coherence of the game’s illusion is something that isn’t praised enough. If only that could be provided without such a sensation of failing - not as a player, but failing the character you play.
Brandon Boyer
At the core of the World of Goo
2D Boy's World of Goo is a fast and obvious pick for indie game of the year for myriad reasons, and in the spirit of showing, not telling, fellow indie developer David Rosen of Wolfire picks apart just about damn near every one in this lengthy and very incisive video. Although heavily design oriented, it also makes a smart introductory primer on the game, should you not mind getting a peek at its later levels, but it's at its best elaborating on all the brilliant little details you intuited but perhaps didn't explicitly notice.
Brandon Boyer
Microsoft kicks off weekly Xbox Live holiday deals
Following its previously posted Black Friday deal (which, according to my just-now check of the NXE, is still available), Microsoft has announced that it'll be dusting off a weekly holiday deal from now until the end of the year, starting with a third-off price drop on Halo 3's Legendary Map Pack, originally released in April. The pack contains three maps inspired by multiplayer levels from earlier games in the series: Avalanche, Ghost Town, and Blackout.
My suggestion for next? A price drop on the Xbox Originals versions of Psychonauts, Dreamfall and Indigo Prophecy, which would make for many happy holidays indeed.
John Brownlee
My, what a lovely picture of Mega-Man...
It's rare that an artist's statement gives true value to otherwise easily forgotten work, but this clumsily wrought illustration of Mega-Man by ~eluted over at deviantART transcends mediocrity to masterpiece thanks to a twain of jotted-off, explanatory lines, written by the artist herself.
The first:
Tools of the Trade: menstrual fluid, ink
And then again on another page:
menstral fluid in sketchbook
Notice that a "pen" or any other drawing instrument is not mentioned as a tool having being employed in this artistic reproduction of one of 8-bit gaming's most cherished heroes. What we have here is a work of art that was literally birthed.
Update: The genesis of a masterpiece? Quoth the artist:
I painted it for my husband--it was a request.
megaman [deviantART via Crunchgear]
Brandon Boyer
Gandreas brings Rogue to iPhone
What better way to show off the glittering power of your 22nd century handheld communications device than with a 1980's ASCII UNIX RPG? Gandreas Software has ported Epyx's seminal early-PC RPG Rogue to the iPhone as a free download, and -- to be fair -- has done a very noble job of bringing the game up to date.
Gandreas's version adds tile graphics (and a very smart tilt-mode that morphs the landscape view's ASCII mode into graphics as you turn it up to portrait) and gesture based commands (trace a W on the screen to wield a weapon, R to remove a ring), but keeps the same brutal difficulty of the original: be prepared to die a lot by the crooked claws of kestrels.
Brandon Boyer
The gamer's guide to the Wilhelm Scream
I obviously haven't been spending near enough time plumbing GiantBomb's user-generated depths, because this is the first I've noticed of the growing list of games that use the ubiquitous Wilhelm Scream. As the description notes, the Scream is a delightfully obscure in-joke amongst Hollywood sound-mixers, who've been tucking the clip into anywhere and everywhere they could, and once you've heard it a few times in a row, you'll never be able to un-hear it again.
The biggest repeat offender on the list is the LEGO series (Star Wars and Indy) and various other Star Wars titles, which is no coincidence, as LucasFilm sound effect designers Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson were the pair credited with starting the trend. I'm going to have to replay Bionic Commando Rearmed and Team Fortress 2 with more open ears next time, though, and apparently even Halo 3 got in on the action.
Wilhelm Scream (video game concept) [GiantBomb]
Brandon Boyer
Chronicle holding LucasArts book signing
Via BigDownload we note that Chronicle Books will be holding a San Francisco signing on December 4th for Rogue Leaders, its upcoming visual history of the golden age of Lucasarts adventures.
Chronicle says the book is "a deluxe compilation that traces its history through never-before-published interviews," with "more than 300 pieces of concept art, character development sketches, and storyboards have been lavishly reproduced to showcase the creative talent behind such videogame classics as The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic."
Cartoon Brew ran a scan of the one-sheet several weeks back with a selection of the images inside. The signing will be this Thursday, December 4th at Chronicle's 680 Second Street outlet, and the book itself will be released more widely in mid-December.
Rogue Leaders signing [Chronicle Books]
Brandon Boyer
EA reviving Dungeon Keeper as Asian MMO
At a time when even NES cult brawler River City Ransom is finding new life as a sidescrolling MMO