Brandon Boyer

Angry dad, the game: Taito's arcade table-flipper Cho Chabudai Gaeshi

Is it too much to expect to just come home to a little god-damn peace and quiet after an exhausting day at work? Taito's Cho Chabudai Gaeshi makes a game of the impotent seething rage of a frustrated father, letting you "up-end the tea table" (as Miyamoto himself famously figuratively does) for high score. [via Taito]

Steven Leckart

Ryan Adams Reviews Gorf, Rides Tangents

Singer and serial celeb-dater Ryan Adams is now a columnist for The Awl. Above is some footage of him playing and musing about Gorf:

Playing Gorf is like getting wasted, or what I remember about getting wasted: It's loud, it's confusing, there are a bunch of lights going off, people (robots) are shooting at you, you need pizza, etc., then its game over.

Witty! ...But wait, there's more. Adams also wrote a column. His propensity for tangents is, at times, astounding. For instance:

I still play console arcade games. It feels like a more complete experience. The consoles themselves are really beautiful. I love all those fantastic flashing lights, the panels, the artwork; It's like picking on somebody your own size.

Can you imagine if you were to walk into an arcade--there are still arcades, but they are BARcades because if you are from the 1980s you are pretty much a) drinking sometimes, b) a drunk, or c) trying to keep LSD flashbacks at bay (being myself "not drinking" this disqualifies me and a lot of other reluctant exercising one-time wasteoids)--can you fucking imagine if one day you went to the BARcade with, er, I dunno, Jimmy Numbchuncks's friend Nancy Bungglerope and you ran into Danzig going for a two player run with some or all the members of Whitesnake? That would be fucking awesome.

Yes, it would be. Adams continues:

...Creator Jamie Fenton also made a Mrs. Gorf but nobody was rushing to the drawing board for that game. Supposedly Fenton had a sex change, but I don't know about that. I'm not sure whose voice they used to make the game sound like an alien commander, but when it is cackling at me I am always convinced it is someone wearing amazingly tall platform shoes, you know, the kind where everybody looks when you go by.

Not to be a dick, but it must be nice to casually throw out information about people's personal lives without bothering to verify or even find a link or two to support the claim.

In conclusion, Adams says:

"It's just a badass game..."

I can't say I disagree.

[via Pitchfork]

Lisa Katayama

Can Bejeweled fight depression?

A study commissioned by game company Pop Cap to researchers at East Carolina University has found that playing Bejeweled may stave off depression by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Here's an excerpt from a story in the Washington Post about a 49-year old woman named Gail Nichols who contacted Pop Cap &mdash the company that created Bejeweled &mdash saying that she was able to fight off a particularly low low by losing herself in its sparky digital jewels:

Nichols said she liked a version of the game where she was not competing against anyone or trying to rack up mammoth points. In her favorite version, colored gems drop endlessly onto the screen, and Nichols said she falls into a trance of simultaneous concentration and relaxation that she calls Zen.

I'm not depressed, but during a brief moment of frustration at work yesterday I decided to try playing Bejeweled to see if it would improve my mood. For the few minutes that the game lasted, I was entranced and obsessed with matching colored gems. Turns out I suck at this game, though, so when the screen screamed No More Moves! at me several minutes later, I felt shittier than ever.

[via Washington Post]

Lisa Katayama

Street Fighter cell phone strap

Here's a cell phone strap from Strap-Ya that looks like a video game controller and replicates the sounds of famous Street Fighter moves made famous by characters Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim, and Chun-Li. Check out the flashy product promo video (in Japanese).

[Product page via TokyoMango]

Brandon Boyer

Art Of The Arcade: your new favorite tumblr follow

Just launched and ready for your doting 'reblog's and 'like's: Nick Dart's Art of the Arcade tumblr, which has already given us this excellent quote about the meaning behind Atari's instantly iconic logo, and about which he explains:

As a frustrated 24 year old arcade collector and designer, I decided to put Art Of The Arcade together to make people aware of the forgotten design and illustration work that took place in the golden era of arcade gaming in the 70's & 80's. The idea behind the site is to try and show this work in a new context, and give exposure to the designers that helped create a billion dollar industry and a new social past time.

Add it to your list which should already include PixelStyle, TextAdventure, Nerd Music, and Box Art. [via FFF]

Brandon Boyer

One shot: streetpong, the first

A gorgeous night shot by one of indie gaming's leading renaissance men, Vincent Diamante (also: thatgamecompany's Cloud and Flower composer), used to illustrate Chris Dahlen's similarly wonderful Edge piece on Diamante's own Mobile Gamer 1: a street-ready version of Pong that you play by physically rolling the cabinet on its casters.

Brandon Boyer

Screenburn: LowRez's glitched-out arcade boot-screen T-shirts

For the person that finds ErrorWear's Pac-Man killscreen shirt just a bit too, like, obvious: LowRez is offering a series of shirts featuring the glitch-out bootup screens of various arcade games, named only by their year of release.

Above: Booting1982a, Booting1982b, and Booting1980. Tons more pixel, vector, and retro designs are also available at their web shop. [Well spotted as usual, GSW]

Brandon Boyer

One shot, Darkstalking, with Paul Robertson

'Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006' and 'Kings of Power 4 Billion %' animator and Scribblenauts contributor Paul Robertson shows off his contribution to Udon's art book tribute to Capcom's classic supernatural fighter Darkstalkers. I always feel like a chump stretching and squishing his pixels, so be sure to view it at its native res for maximum impact.

Brandon Boyer

15 Kopeks Amazing: a virtual look inside Moscow's Soviet Arcade Games Museum

This started to make the rounds a few weeks back, but hasn't gathered nearly as much attention as it should, for as outstandingly wicked as it is: you may have originally heard of Moscow State Technical University 'Soviet Arcade Games Museum' from an April 2009 Edge article that told the story quite well, but was accompanied by painfully tiny images.

But now, of all people, Art Lebedev's design studio -- the same creators as the OLED-driven Optimus Maximus keyboard [the same as was featured on, of all things, a 2007 cover of Edge] -- has given the museum a full website makeover, complete with a growing collection of its games recreated and playable online.

Of the collection, the most playable is Sea Battle (above, dig the fantastically ambient faint whirr of its machinery as you play, and its rustically smudged viewfinder), but there's also the Street Racer-esque game Magistral (right), Rally, another competitive racer, and finally Gorodki, a digital adaptation of a traditional sport that, even now having read about, I still don't quite understand.

In addition to the recreated versions (look around for the 'play' link on each page), the site's collected PDF versions of the machine's manuals, close-up money shots of its coin slots, and more gorgeous photography of each machine than you could ever want.

The only thing it currently lacks is a full English translation (I've somewhat annoyingly linked to Google translations of each of the pages above), but presumably they're being added over time, as the museum itself continues to restore and collect more historical information on each game.

If you only visit one site today, make it this one.

Brandon Boyer

Video: 8-bit arcade classics are back, in Lego form

Lego Arcade, by YouTube user MlCHAELHlCKOX, whose Lego/game obsession goes back several years to his original Lego Marios (the first of which is below the fold). [via Morgan Tucker]

READ THE REST

Brandon Boyer

One shot: Galaga, streak'd

Offworld favorite design blog Kitsune Noir discovers the iPhone camera takes wicked long-exposure arcade game shots, like lo-fi versions of Rosemarie Fiore's own long-exposure series.

Brandon Boyer

Listen: Konami's arcade power on self test theme, Morning Music

Also wonderfully spotted by Tiny Cartridge, this little bit of classic arcade musical trivia: a small number of Konami's arcade machines operating on an obscure "bubble memory" hardware setup -- which literally required warming up to get to fully functional -- also feature this little minuet known as "Morning Music" to accompany the slow start.

The tune's gone on to be included in tribute in some of the company's later music games like KeyboardMania, but, as Cartridge points out, the net effect of starting up a number of the machines every morning, must have been daily cacophonous hell for arcade operators.