My only explanation is that they were unhidden hours after I originally posted: TinyCartridge notes that a BlipFest 2007 video of Tree Wave every bit as gorgeously shot as the rest of the Blip videos I recently linked is currently up for viewing.

The song in the video is ‘May Banners’, another off the same Cabana EP as their previously linked ‘Sleep’.

Order the Cabana EP via AtariAge here, or download the abridged version via archive.org here, and order the 2-disc 2 Player Productions’ BlipFest 2007 DVD here.

Tree Wave home [qotile]

I see my recent subscription to Mike Nowak’s Nerd Music tumblr is already paying dividends, as he brings me Nine Inch Nails by way of Dr. Mario with this 16-bit version of The Perfect Drug.

Dr. Mario: The Perfect Drugs [Nerd Music]

Briefly fallen off the radar since its Japanese debut announcement during the week of GDC, Namco has just unleashed the first stateside trailer for hi-res PS3 Katamari Damacy remake, to be known here as Katamari Forever.

While it retains much of the same flavor as the Japanese premiere, it plays down the stellar lineup of soundtrack remixers and instead plays up the fact that the PS3 version will have selectable graphic filters in place to lend the old environments new freshness from cel-shading to woodgrain to colored pencil sketchiness.

Katamari Tribute home [katamaridamacy.jp]

STAR POWER: INFINITE AMMO, FLASHBANG BRINGING PAPER MOON TO BLURST

---

4.28.2009

Brandon Boyer

Leave a reply

Like the Offworld equivalent of a rock and roll supergroup, Heroes and Villains developer Infinite Ammo and Minotaur China Shop developer Flashbang have joined forces to bring a new version of the former’s planar-platformer Paper Moon to the latter’s online game service Blurst.

If Paper Moon sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it here many moons ago, when Infinite Ammo originally created a stereoscopic version of the game for Kokoromi’s Gamma3D last November.

Like Flashbang’s other Blurst output, though, the game has been updated to include “a combo-based scoring system, new levels, improved visuals, musical score, sound effects, greater replay value and online leaderboards/achievements/bonuses,” says Ammo.

The game is set to go live this Friday, the 1st — in the meantime, you can get a taste of the original via Gamma3D.

A Collaboration: Paper Moon Launching May 1st [Blurst, Infinite Ammo announcement]

TAKE THIS ROM AND..: INDIE DEV QUITS MAINSTREAM JOB VIA SUPER MARIO

---

4.28.2009

Brandon Boyer

7 Replies

Indie developer Farbs — creator of 8-bit videogame mashup Rom Check Fail and the later, similarly stylish Polychromatic Funk Monkey — quit his mainstream job as gameplay programmer at 2K Australia in fitting fashion: he created a playable take on Super Mario Bros that delivers the message far better than any scathing letter could.

Play the letter here, and see Farbs’ other creative output here.

A Message for 2K Australia [Farbs]

SYNTHESIZER NOBY: THE 29 NEW MUSICAL OPTIONS OF NOBY NOBY BOY

---

4.28.2009

Brandon Boyer

1 Reply

Though the PlayStation Network itself is frustratingly down for maintenance at the moment, leaving me unable to get a good sense of GIRL’s progress over the past few days, the 1.1 update for Keita Takahashi’s Noby Noby Boy mentioned yesterday is indeed live and accessible.

The most striking difference on starting the newly updated game is the musical one: on exiting your (newly coiffed) house, a new vocal track directly brings back those warm nostalgic Katamari feelings, but then (on further fiddling with controller options), you realize that you’ve got open access to 29 new music tracks, which I’ve highlighted below:

An eclectic mix to be sure, from the classical stylings of acoustic guitar to the primal melodies of the kalimba. But my current favorite? The cello, which at long last grants your wish to stretch and swallow anthropomorphic sharks to the soothing dulcet tones of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, you can do this:

o–o home [Namco]

With the veil now lifting on the games revealed at Capcom’s blowout ‘Captivate 09’ event last week comes the first full trailer of their previously mentioned Dead Rising sequel, every bit as tongue-in-cheek parodic as it is horrifying (very much in the vein of Romero’s legacy).

The trailer doesn’t get into much of the underlying gameplay other than returning to the panoply of usable objects that will aid in staving off the undead hordes, but with some of the most creative chainsaw work I’ve seen in ages, I suppose that’s not to its detriment.

Dead Rising home [Capcom]

With an original early 2006 release and subsequent IGF 2007 nomination for innovation in design (an award that would go to Jon Mak’s Everyday Shooter), Nabi Software’s turn-based ragdoll block/ball fighter Toribash should be a familiar name to anyone keeping half an eye on the indie scene.

I’ll admit, I’ve let my attention lapse over the following years, but as it turns out, progress has been steady at turning the game even further into the cutely stark rock-em, sock-em display of brutality it’s had as its singular focus since the start.

And now, Nabi developer Gerald Tock writes in with this latest video above, showing off the latest improvements being made to the forthcoming WiiWare version of the game (newly announced in January), including full fight scene editing and smoother flow all around.

You can still download the game for free at its official home, and, even more intriguingly, investigate the third party mod/hack scene, which has been churning out tweaks like this fantastic Toribash skate mod below.

Toribash home [Nabi Software]

GIMME INDIE GAME: THE HYPER-REAL SURREALITY OF VECTORPARK’S WINDOSILL

---

4.27.2009

Brandon Boyer

3 Replies

Like James ‘presstube/insertsilence’ Paterson, the Flash creations Patrick Smith has been creating over the past five plus years as ‘Vectorpark‘ haven’t quite penetrated the games industry’s consciousness as much as they should have, and maybe fair enough: his earliest creations like Levers and especially later updates like FeedTheHead were as much interactive toys as anything (the line’s blurrier with Park, which initially bears an uncanny thematic resemblance to Amanita‘s later Samorost).

But that’s fully changed with Windosill, Smith’s latest creation, where each single screen has a single goal to progress to the next: namely, finding a single pink cube via simple point/click/drag interactions which will unlock the right-hand door of each diorama.

But even still, it’s not necessarily the rules of the game that are the draw as much as the successively more involved exploration that takes place in each area to get to that block, all a culmination of (and with overt throwbacks to) objects of Smith’s earlier output.

And that exploration wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding were it not for Smith’s ability to somehow have teased out (with the aid, I can only conclude, of some dark, black magic) easily the greatest sense of physicality Flash (still, remember, an essentially 2D toolkit) has ever produced. Everything has such a well defined heft and tension, everything responds to your prodding with just the right amount of ‘squishiness’, that even its most surreal concoctions feel fantastically alive.

The free demo version of the game will get you roundabout halfway through, and, it should be said up front, it’s absolutely worth the $3 pittance Smith asks to continue on to the end, as there’s one single screen — and it kills me to not splash it all over the page here — that so perfectly both bends the rules of the game up to that point and typifies that magically-alive hyper-reality that it’s worth the admission alone.

Download Windosill here, explore Smith’s back catalog via Vectorpark proper, and see more of his traditional art via Smithpixdaily and his now defunct co-edited magazine The Ganzfeld.

Windosill [Vectorpark]

Director Erik Tillmans (whose resume also includes animation work on films like Kung Fu Panda, Enchanted and Team America) sends in this video he created for The Black Comets‘ “One Thousand Stars.”

The video’s Final Fantasy inspiration is sadly prescient, as some six months later, the band would move on to play new roles. See more of Tillman’s work via his DJ Shadow remix scored reel here.

Black Comets – One Thousand Stars [YouTube, Erik Tillmans’ home, Black Comets MySpace]