Offworld

'Seamster's DIY Giant Atari Joystick Lamp

2009-01-06T22:34:01Z

Ending the day where we started, only 100 percent less destructively, Wonderland has discovered new plans recently added to Instructables for this wicked Atari 2600 joystick lamp, with a shade smartly done up in classic game covers -- though, as Alice points out, it is solely for the tool/router/saw/sander/clamp-enabled. Giant Atari Joystick Lamp [via Wonderland]

Shooting Watch gets an English language user guide

2009-01-06T21:15:17Z

Just a single day after getting my own recently reissued version of Hudson's long-coveted Shooting Watch -- Japan's digital 'trainer' meant to help strengthen your button-tapping muscles up to par with the hummingbird-fingered Takahashi Meijin -- and wondering aloud what those two secret functions might be, 1up's reliably niche Ray Barnholt comes through with an unofficial English language guide. Obviously in need of some serious work, my own top score has never reached higher than my very first run of 8.2 button taps per second, half that needed to unlock what turns out to be... a random number generator. Well, that and the infinite respect of your peers/ability to explode watermelons at will, obviously. If you're feeling left out and strapped for cash, homebrew coder 'retrohead' has created a watermelon-enhanced version of the unit for the DS, or you can order your own at any number of online import houses. The Unofficial Shooting Watch User's Guide [Retronauts] Previously: Into the mind of the Meijin - Offworld

Gimme Indie Game: Benzido/Ryan Chisholm's Evacuation

2009-01-06T20:23:05Z

Officially today's most dangerous time-waster is Benzido/Ryan Chisholm's deceptively difficult airlock puzzle, Evacuation. Procedurally generated (and therefore somewhat uneven from level to level -- particularly when it inexplicably crowds all crew into the cockpit) and spanning some 200 levels, your goal is simply to open color-coded locks to eject invaders off your ship, while not exposing crew to either the aliens or the vacuum. Evacuation [via TIGSource]

Metal Gear Solid cast's curiously tense improv session

2009-01-06T18:56:53Z

I can't quite figure out just what's so bizarre about this 15 minute off-the-cuff riff session with nearly all of Metal Gear Solid's voice actors (Debi Mae "Meryl" West was sadly not in attendance), but I'm pretty sure that it all boils down to Paul "Col. Campbell" Eiding quietly lording over the entire proceeding at center back. Metal Gear Solid Cast Improv [YouTube, via Joystiq]

Displaced Lively users finding new home in NewLively?

2009-01-06T18:24:58Z

Via Metaplace's Raph Koster we learn that a China based company has founded NewLively, a VMRL replacement for Google's recently shuttered virtual world that's quite, err, brazen in its interface, down to X-Ray Kid's character art on its familiarly-sparse login screen. The company claims, however, that its platform was rebuilt from the ground up:

After the closure of Lively, there is no greater happiness than to duplicate Lively for the sake of the Lively users. We understand that this activity would generate a certain degree of legal risk. However, whenever I remember the disheartenment and disappointment of that many Lively users, this risk is worth taking and the users will support us... We are not using any codes whatsoever from Google Lively. The entire platform was created new from scratch. Only the concept and the interface remained as Google Lively and the amount of work involved in doing this was quite insignificant in comparison to the creation of the entire system. Moreover, in our understanding of the kinds of platforms, copyright privileges should go to the content providers. As long as these content providers are willing to transfer the platform to Newlively, there will be no issues.

Raph’s Website » Newlively! Previously: Google shuttering virtual world Lively - Offworld

Pinball designer Lawlor on the kinetics of the silver ball

2009-01-06T17:43:45Z

Speaking of lost arts, GameSetWatch has a great interview with pinball designer Pat Lawlor (Funhouse, The Addams Family) that veers comfortably wildly around all topics of the modern pinball industry, but is at its best when discussing just how pin-boards are designed -- a topic closely related to videogame design but so tactile at its core that it slightly boggles my mind:

There are obviously many aspects involved in kinetics. Every designer has differing goals for the "feel" of the game. Usually these goals are a result of the kinds of games the designers like personally. Things to consider are, in no particular order: 1) Middle shots are easier for beginners. 2) How to mix stop and go shots with nice return flow shots. 3) How fast is the overall game? Very fast games are very difficult for beginners. 4) When a shot is missed, what happens to the ball? Is it a bad, clunky thing? Does the ball come back in my face? 5) Are these shots just "there,” or do they represent something from the theme?

Hit the link for more on the inescapable draw of wolloping Funhouse's 'Rudy' head, and why pinball has "not adequately adapted to the 21st century." GameSetInterview: 'Rudy's Father Speaks - The Pat Lawlor Interview' [GameSetWatch]

Retro repositories for the lost art of the manual

2009-01-06T16:45:45Z

From one lost art to the next, Metafilter has spotted two fantastic repositories for scanned/PDF'd manuals for games both old and new. Most notable is Vimm's Lair, which stocks over 350 each for the NES and PlayStation, as well as hundreds more for earlier systems, and Meekeo does the same for the more modern (and commenters call out ReplacementDocs for the PC set). Edge magazine recently ran a nicely done requiem for/celebration of the dying breed of carefully attentive manuals, and the sadly antiquated practice of including ephemeral ‘feelies’ (cloth/foldout maps and the like). I've got especially fond memories of the lavish anime-esque (a term I wouldn't know existed for another 15 years) artwork that graced the NES's Zelda manuals for filling in the gaps between the 8-bit iconography and the 'reality' it represented. Online Game Manuals (for free!) | MetaFilter

Covering the covers

2009-01-06T16:39:15Z

Only six days into the new year and we've got a handful of nice projects launching: first Today's Free Game, which could quickly make itself quite useful, and now, Simon Parkin's laser-focused Box Art, a new Tumblr blog that does daily just what you think it will:

Box art is a dying art and I think we’ll be all the poorer for its inevitable demise, even if the reduction of humanity’s bulk of packaging can only be a good thing in wider terms. This site then is a place to celebrate the most interesting box art of games past and present from across the world.

The glory days of the likes of Roger Dean's Psygnosis covers are surely all but buried (a legacy I'm sure Parkin will get to in good time), but maybe in some small way Box Art will re-invigorate the practice. Bonus points, too, for Parkin's choice in favicons: the eagle-eyed will notice that it's a detail from my favorite box art of all time, the original PlayStation's fantastically bizarre Jounetsu Nekketsu Athletes (an art-piece I'd like to believe I had a small part in championing, if only because the first google image result I found for it used my same original filename). chewing pixels » Box Art

Rolando gets papered

2009-01-06T15:35:52Z

Fresh off the digital press: Rolando illustrator Mikko Walamies has created a handful of new iPhone wallpapers for Hand Circus, the most charming of which (at right) I believe might just be striking enough to finally unseat Kitsune Noir's Mcbess paper I've been rocking since April. Rolando Wallpapers [Hand Circus, via Twitter] Previously: Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando - Offworld The Offworld 20: 2008's Best Indie and Overlooked - Offworld

Remember Madballs? They're back! In game form.

2009-01-06T14:40:17Z

Winning the Offworld award for Franchise I'd Thought Least Likely To Ever Make A Comeback, Playbrains has announced that cult indie arena-ball-brawler BaboViolent 2 will be given a facelift in 2009 with a new PC and Xbox Live Arcade version, now sporting original characters from short lived 80s fad Madballs (in their first appearance since Ocean's "we'll make a game of anything, really" C64 and Spectrum title from 1987). Truth be told, my interest is actually slightly piqued by the video above, and, as GamerBytes points out, the original BaboViolent worked up enough of a community to spawn its own comprehensive fan-site: this may just be the retro revival we didn't know we needed. Madballs in BABO:INVASION [Playbrains, via GamerBytes]

Weapon of choice

2009-01-06T14:21:16Z

In the most dangerously superfluous update of the day, the juvies at Destructoid have spotted this Instructables how-to that will turn your now outmoded Xbox 360 HD-DVD player into a real live ray-gun, capable of (at very least) burning electrical tape, popping balloons, and lighting matches from across the room, all of which seems like appropriate responses for having sided with the wrong team in the video format war. New 007 Laser Weapon - Revealed! [Instructables, via Destructoid]

Autonomous Katamari-Roomba clean sweeps in 71 minutes

2009-01-05T22:45:24Z

As part of his 'PSX' interface project that "disrupts conventional game interaction rituals," Julian Bleecker has created a custom PS2 dongle and script and dedicated himself to answering an important question:

I decided to do an absolutely crucial bit of game science. Something that I am entirely sure is mulled over constantly, but never properly investigated. The question is but stated thusly: how long would it take the Little Prince to roll up an entire room based on a random path algorithm?

His result, via the video above, clocks in at just over 71 minutes, after a semi-excruciating period of consistently missing the final 10 objects (which Bleecker mercifully manually grabs in the end). The full explanation and code are available at the link. Autonomous Game Controllers [Near Future Laboratory, thanks Tom!] Previously: Manifesto for "blogjects" -- objects that blog - Boing Boing

Kyle Downes' Short Visual History of Videogames

2009-01-05T22:12:00Z

It might lean a bit too heavily on the oft-repeated but dubiously-argued narrative of the industry's bust and boom (and other console wars tropes), but Kyle Downes' 3D/motion graphics student project A Short Visual History of Videogames is as pretty as it gets, and came packed in a gorgeously designed case to boot. His level of dedication is less of a surprise, however, when you realize that he's the same 'Ultra Awesome' Downes that put together the previously covered giant NES controller/coffee table/storage box. A Short Visual History of Videogames [Ultra Awesome, via GamOvr] Previously: Giant working NES controller/coffee table - Boing Boing

Patapon: the tattoo

2009-01-05T21:53:26Z

While I normally can't say I cotton to explicit game-character tattoos (the three pixelated invaders gracing my left wrist felt 'iconic' enough to not qualify), there's something inescapably charming about Masatomo Ueda's 16-man wrap-around Patapon tattoo that ends with Ueda himself as the final boss. Patapon Tattoo [Milano by beer, via Wonderland] Previously: Rolito unleashes new Patapon toy - Offworld New Rolito toy: Patapon X our one true heart - Offworld Praise from Patapon and a passionate plea - Offworld

What's he building in there: Introversion's Subversion

2009-01-05T21:30:39Z

It's been near exactly two years since Darwinia and Defcon developer Introversion first revealed their official "next game" (not including multiplayer expansion Multiwinia), with a debut video showing its initial real-time cityscape generating algorithms. Fast forward to now and, surprisingly, we still have very, very little to go on beyond what we knew then: apart from its familiar vector-beam design, the ongoing blog entries showing Subversion's progress have been just as opaque, bar optimizations of those algorithms, and a fractal descent showing ever more detail at the building-by-building level. We learned in March that part of this is understandable, if not deliberate, when programming head Chris Delay admitted that "we genuinely don’t know what’s going on," but (he'd said earlier) "every day I work on it I’m even more convinced - this is the big one, Introversion Software’s Magnum Opus, and it’s going to be the best game we will ever make." And so every scrap of information, as with Delay's most recent blog post, becomes a desperate hunt for anything that might take us that one level deeper into their mindset. In it we learn that Subversion's progress is now focused on systems of standardized components: "Sensors, Actuators, Emitters, and Controllers," and while we don't get much in the way of narrative, a sense of its sandbox possibilities (and, as its name might suggest, an espionage-tinged flavor akin to Introversion's debut title Uplink) is certainly starting to gel:

...smash one of the Actuators with a hammer, and one of the doors will stay where it is, while the other door continues to open and close. Smash one of the outer sensors and the Actuator will push the door of the end of its slide. Cover the motion sensor with a plastic bag and it wont send any detection messages to the computer, leaving the doors closed. Stick some chewing gum over the inner proximity sensors and they will think the doors are already closed, thus the control computer will leave the doors open. Push a bin in-between the two doors and they will close on it, and sensors on the insides of the doors will detect this obstruction, and the doors will open slightly, then try to close again. The doors will be stuck in an open/close/open loop, constantly hitting the bin and re-opening, just as you’d see in real life. Cut any of the signal wires, or short-circuit them to set a high or low value. Or just plug straight into the control computer and tweak the status variables in memory, making the system do whatever you want whenever you want. None of these are activities or opportunities that I have explicitly created, but all are possible because I’ve simulated the system in sufficient detail. The possibilities for amazingly complex systems and interactions – from Introversion AND from the Subversion community – is kind of breathtaking.

The blog post contains more in-game shots and video of working systems -- the previous twelve 'It's all in your head' entries in the archive will give more of a sense of the scale and the magnitude of the game, while we all patiently await further concrete detail. It's all in your head, Part 13 [Introversion] Previously: The art of vector-war - Offworld Introversion playing with fire with unbeatable DEFCON AI - Offworld

LittleBigWatch: Alex Evans talks Craftworld, social gaming

2009-01-05T18:05:30Z

If you missed the previously mentioned appearance by Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans at Wired's NYC store in early December, the outlet is now showing the entirety of his presentation at Game|Life. Evans' talk was generally a basic overview of LittleBigPlanet and its user-focused, social platform roots (with a keen aside on using arcade game high-score boards as an early example of user-generated content) that might be old hat to die-hard fans, but the 2:30-3:10 mark is particularly notable for its highlight reel and explanation of 'Craftworld,' the 2D vector prototype of LittleBig's gameplay that the company put together to sell the game to Sony (and which will explain the origin of LBP's secret 'Yellowhead' costume). Game|Life Video: The Making of LittleBigPlanet [Wired]

Diving deeper into Aquaria

2009-01-05T17:53:36Z

The latest in David Rosen's ever-popular design tour videos takes a look at Bit Blot's indie adventure Aquaria, paying special attention to the intricacies of the game's level composition and animation system, as well as a number of important features never explained to the player. Previously: At the core of the World of Goo - Offworld A deeper look at Knytt Stories - Offworld The dynamic fluids of Chronic Logic's Gish - Offworld Bit Blot's Aquaria hits Steam - Offworld Bit Blot bring indie-hit Aquaria to Macs - Offworld

Jetdaisuke conducts the gadget orchestra

2009-01-05T15:52:51Z

One last game-tech mash-up morning update: Jetdaisuke, the same electroclash-bespectacled rock star that taught us how to make a talkbox from our DSi, conducts his 'gadget orchestra' consisting of a DS Lite playing Toshio Iwai's Electroplankton, Korg DS-10, App Store Japanese-gong oddity 'Mokugyo (with Cat)' on an iPod Touch, an iPhone running Brian Eno's generative music app Bloom, and, most traditionally, a Korg Kaossilator. [via Tiny Cartridge]

Grok this: Receptors' Korg DS-10 album

2009-01-05T15:21:49Z

Following the last in our impromptu and now apparently ongoing series of Korg DS-10 showcases, I was pointed in the direction of Receptors' all DS-10 album 'groKwork,' available as a free download via last.fm (along with a number of other more traditionally chippy EPs). Receptors is the solo alias of Jeremy Kolosine, the curator behind Astralwerks' excellent all-star/all-chiptune Kraftwerk cover album 8-bit Operators, and while groKwork is a bit harder and more dense than my usual predilection, it is a good starter set for those wondering just what the DS is capable of churning out. groKwork for gameBoy - Korg DS10 – Receptors [last.fm, thanks n0wak!] Previously: Korg DS-10 + bendy straw = handheld talkbox - Offworld Extra Hyper Korg DS-10 performance - Offworld Four times the DS-10 - Offworld

Treasure hunt: m0dus/orotio's HD Gunstar Heroes PS3 theme

2009-01-05T14:39:33Z

Spotted on infamous games forum NeoGAF, resident artists m0dus and orioto have collaborated on a new basically stunning PlayStation 3 theme based on Treasure 16-bit cult hit shooter Gunstar Heroes, with one HD artwork each and a set of themed icons. m0dus is no stranger PS3 themes -- after a series of unofficial creations, Konami hired him to create the official Silent Hill 5 theme, and orioto has been working the 16-bit HD airbrushed remakes for some time as well. m0dus and orioto's experimental thread of art collaboration . . .

Still Alive, theremin style

2009-01-05T14:38:50Z

Glasgow's Greig 'conquerearth' hits all the right notes at making a new viral classic: untraditional instrument used for game music - check, Portal tie-in - check, using hack-up tech to outwit a game (here, Rock Band's vocal track pitch recognition) - check and mate. See also: Greig's covers of Epona's Song from Ocarina of Time, and the Halo 3 title music. [via Kotaku]

Are you there, God? It's me, Mario Kart

2009-01-05T13:44:38Z

Would you like your own corded Mario Kart phone? Too bad! This $70 phone, sold originally by NoveltyTelephone.com, is sold out. But because we love you lots, we've taken the onerous task of typing "Mario Kart phone" into eBay's search box to discover one on sale for just $40. There's also a couple on sale from Amazon vendors. Use it in good health. [via The Earth Times] (Thanks, Bob!)

Microsoft refuses to fix broken Xbox Live account

2009-01-02T16:44:58Z

Online gaming's descent into a bureacratic social networking hell continues apace, aided by the scripted and unhelpful staff that man Microsoft's telephones. From Qt3 poster RickH:

I set up an Xbox Live Silver account for one of my sons in April 2007, using a Windows Live ID linked to one of my email addresses. This Christmas, he asked for and got an Xbox Live 12-month card so he could play online. ... However, when I try to enter the code, it says it can't connect to Xbox Live. (Which is BS, because I can do it with the other profiles in the system.) After a half hour on the phone with MS's highly scripted but ultimately useless 1-800-4MYXBOX folks, they told me that the Windows Live ID "hadn't been used in so long that it expired." As a result, my son's Xbox Live Gamertag, which logs into Xbox Live just fine to record his achievements, is permanently unable to be turned into a Gold account.

If you've considered getting Silver "just for now" with the idea of changing your setup later, it's worth thinking again: you may ultimately have to discard your ID, achievements and saved games to get what you want. Thread [qt3]

Gimme Indie Game: Derek Yu's Spelunky

2008-12-30T22:17:39Z

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]

Come to Big Daddy

2008-12-30T21:31:12Z

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]

Four times the DS-10

2008-12-30T21:10:58Z

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

They want to make an artwork out of your dreams

2008-12-30T20:10:41Z

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." UbuWeb Sound: Seth Price [via Rhizome]

Paul Robertson pumps pixels for energy drink

2008-12-30T19:18:41Z

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]

Polygraph's Kakuna T-shirt casts harden

2008-12-30T18:32:01Z

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. [POKÉMON 151]

Look a little bit like Little Mac

2008-12-30T17:30:21Z

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]