PLAYPOWER TURNING NES/FAMICOM CLONES INTO LEARNING TOOLS FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD
This one might seem to fall slightly out of Offworld’s purview, but PlayPower’s Daniel Rehn is a new friend of the site, and they’re actually doing something both a.) wonderful and humanitarian and b.) closer to home than you’d think.
The PlayPower organization‘s mission is to turn cheap, ubiquitous 8-bit ‘TV computers’ (read: NES/Famicom clones) into ~$10 games-enabled learning devices for the developing world (versus manufacturing custom hardware, as with the OLPC), and they’re enlisting a lot of familiar names to help kickstart the program.
Namely, as Wired’s excellent and exhaustive new feature points out, they’ve tapped the NES hacking resources of 8bitpeoples for help with programming and providing music for new learning games, specifically No Carrier, who helped program Alex Mauer‘s excellent NES-cart-album Vegavox (YouTube).
They’re also tapping into Bob Rost’s NES Basic compiler nBasic which he taught as a Carnegie Mellon course several years back — student creation Dikki Painguin was co-written by World of Goo‘s Wii programmer Allan Blomquist, with fellow 2D Boy Kyle Gabler contributing music.
As you can see, then, all of the PlayPower crew have solid games-related backgrounds which they’re using to giving the product more vitality and appeal, and they’re currently seeking new designs for learning games: check the full wiki and the blog for more details on that, and the group expects to start releasing dev kits soon via MakerSHED.
$12 Computer: Playpower Wants to Save the World 8 Bits at a Time [Wired, PlayPower home]
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GHOST RIDE THE ROVER: COIN APP’S MAX BLASTRONAUT
This one had been off my radar until it got big ups by the Flashbang/Blurst boys earlier today: Indie dev Coin App’s debut PC game Max Blastronaut looks like it’s going in the same Mario Galaxy-cum-arena-shooter direction as Beatnik’s excellent Plain Sight. Coin App describes it thusly:
Play in 1 or 2 player as you take on the invading Dredge Faction using any and all methods available: melee combat, vehicle combat, and shooting over-the-shoulder from orbit. Use planetary gravity to your advantage as you toss melee weapons, shoot missiles around orbit, or even “ghostride” a variety of 2-passenger vehicles into enemies. Travel over 24 worlds spanning six galaxies to defend the universe from the Dredge miners and their industrial mechanized Bosses.
Bonus points, I think, for actually designing an in-game ‘ghostriding‘ technique: I eagerly await more.
Coin App – Creators of Max Blastronaut [Coin App Games]
Previously:
Would You Like To Play A Game? One Point Is Rubbish Edition – Offworld
Gimme Indie Game: the flails and flagellations of Flashbang's …
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THE UNBROKEN THREAD: WHAT RHYTHM DE RUN RUN RUN IS GETTING RIGHT
Developer Alpha Unit hasn’t done a terrible lot worth getting excited about over the past few years, but their DS game coming to Japan on April 4th, Rhythm De Run Run Run, looks like it could be a worthy import, having seemingly learned exactly the right lessons from the Rhythm Heaven series (previously covered smartly in an installment of One More Go).
Specifically, it treats rhythm (as I kept thinking about last night in my restless and listless post-daylight savings insomnia which I can’t seem to shake for the life of me) as the hair’s-breadth line you have to trace but dare not break: a fragile thread that can’t be deviated from without dire consequences.
In Rhythm Heaven, that’s usually compounded by aspects of public performance — trying to avoid the sidelong glares of your singing/dancing/military mates. For Alpha Unit, though, it’s about a goal you’re ultimately trying to reach, as in the video above, with the helpless youth desperately trying to make his way to a portable toilet being driven away (homage to genre grandfather Parappa, no doubt).
Even before Rhythm Heaven makes its way to the west for the first time (it’ll be launching alongside the DSi in April), I’m happy to see it inspiring others for the right reasons. As Siliconera points out, Alpha Unit are also planning to let you control the game with the built-in mic by tapping teacups, rapping plastic hammers, or with diligent training of your kitten, but that’s diversionary stuff: the real challenge is in keeping that thread intact.
Alpha Unit’s YouTube channel (all Rhythm de) [via Siliconera]
Previously:
One More Go: Rhythm Tengoku, or Why plucking the hairy onion makes …
DSi, Rhythm Heaven getting April 5th U.S. launch – Offworld
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A LITTLE GRIP WRENCH MEAT FOR YOUR IPHONE
Somehow I missed these in my earlier links to Rex Crowle’s Grip Wrench series, but — in celebration of his and Media Molecule’s recent BAFTA win for LittleBigPlanet‘s Artistic Achievement — get a load of his iPhone/PC wallpaper series. At right, Grip Wrench’s episode 5 appearance in Pron, in which:
Grip Wrench, for the first time in cinematic history, performs in a movie completely generated by computers. But as the movie brings back memories of his old fighting buddy Shiny ManCannon the computer sensors begin to overload with imagery beamed directly from Grip’s subconscious, and causing a data leak of epic proportions.
Grip Wrench Funtime [Rexbox]
Previously:
Weekend watching: Rex Crowle's Grip Wrench – Offworld
Call of Duty 4 takes home 3 BAFTAs, Mario Galaxy gets Best Game …
LittleBigWatch: Media Molecule Adds Metal Gear – Offworld
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KAIJU ARTIST LAMOUR SUPREME DOES GAMES DESIGN FOR DATAPOP
The date’s also drawing nearer for my much anticipated SXSW related DataPopParty, bringing a strong lineup of 8bitpeoples chiptune artists to Austin for a March 18th show, and local theater chain Alamo Drafthouse has just revealed an exclusive art print and T-shirt for the show from Lamour Supreme.
Lamour’s most commonly known for his kaiju (ie. beautifully grotesque Japanese movie monster-inspired design) vinyl toys, which you can spy via his flickr, and he’s certainly brought that same inspiration to the Datapop’s design.
I caught the Austin local screening of 2 Player Production’s chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet last night (was anyone else there?), with producer Paul Levering in attendance — they’re helping to organize DataPop, and I’ll be doing my damndest to bring footage/coverage of the show to the site next week.
Alamo’s put up both the shirt and the print for sale via MondoTees. As a reminder, entrance is free to the DataPop show itself, which will be held inside the abandoned Salvation Army by the South Lamar Alamo.
Lamour Supreme X Datapop Shirt and Poster [Alamo, DataPopParty]
Previously:
8Bitpeoples/BlipFest prep Data Pop 09 SXSW chiptune party – Offworld
BBtv: Jellica, Mr. Spastic, and Nullsleep at Blip Festival 2008 …
BBtv: Bubblyfish at Blip Festival 2008 – Offworld
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BIT.TRIP: BEAT PREPPED FOR MARCH 16TH WIIWARE LAUNCH
Gaijin Games’ downloadable WiiWare debut Bit.Trip: Beat has been one of my most anticipated games since its early January unveiling, and now it looks like the wait’s just days away from being over, as viral outlet ‘CommanderVideo’ broadcasts this new encoded missive:
USER:00COMMANDERVIDEO11 PASS:00************11 11 11MISSIONENGANGE1–BTB1–MARCHSIXTEENTH1–COMMANDERVIDEO11
My Wii-mote stands at the ready.
Bit.Trip: Beat [Aksys]
Previously:
Gaijin Games taking the Wii on a Bit.Trip – Offworld
Beat: My god, it's full of bits – Offworld
Beat connection: Gaijin send us on a second video Bit.Trip – Offworld
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ASK THE EXPERT: DR. MARIO TALKS UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
McSweeney’s gets expert commentary from one Dr. Mario:
The other day, Nurse Toadstool and I talked in the break room over reheated mushroom casserole. She appeared sad. She mentioned turning a Goomba away because his health insurance wouldn’t give him enough gold coins for treatment. Then I realized why the same viruses continue to appear again and again. Each time we turn a patient away for financial reasons, not only are we denying care to the poorest creatures, who often need it the most, but we’re putting the disease back into the world, where it continues to spread. Furthermore, the patients I do treat get hooked on my expensive medicine. Mushroom Kingdom’s health-care system has turned into a sick, addictive game…
Here are some of the myths I shamefully propagated.
MYTH ONE
Mushroom Kingdom has the best
health care of any gaming worldConsider the hostile planet Zebes, which the female warrior Samus liberated many years ago. The Metroid viruses native to that planet are as nefarious as they are diverse. Among the viruses cataloged are Side Hoppers, Geegas, and fire-generating Gerutas. But Zebes, a planet larger than the Mushroom Kingdom, has reformed its health system. Free help comes in the form of Chozo statues. Is there a waiting period to receive this help? Yes, and oftentimes one needs to fire a rocket at a red door just to get treatment. It’s a small nuisance when you consider that you get an energy orb that grants full life. Not even my Megavitamins can make that claim.
Dr. Mario Weighs In on Universal Health Care. [McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, thanks Alex!]
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FRAGILE THINGS: AARON MEYERS’ API-DRIVEN SPORE SKELETONS
Officially the first best thing I’ve seen come out of Maxis’ recently opened Spore API: Aaron Meyers’ 279 Spore skeletons (detail above, click through for the massive) — a beautiful and fragile looking little bestiary.
279 Spore skeletons [Aaron Meyers, more processing experiments, thanks .tiff!]
Previously:
Data-mashers at the ready: Maxis opens the Spore API – Offworld
Pixel art Spore creations – Offworld
Sporesculptor opens for 3D printed Spore creatures – Offworld
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INVASION IN PROGRESS: VIDEO OF SPACE INVADER’S 763RD PARIS INVASION
Chances are you’ve at least casually happened across the work of Space Invader before — the Parisian guerrilla artist has been devising his worldwide mosiac invasions for over a decade now, but, via Extermitent, we get a rare glimpse actually catching him in the act.
The slick editing makes it unclear how caught in the act he actually was: that would appear to be French authorities escorting him away from the Montreuil A3 freeway scene of the crime, but it ends with the plus-large result intact.
I’ve got my own set of invasion photos from around Paris and London via my Flickr, where you’ll also find some unartful snapshots of one of his first U.S. gallery installations. I dropped by the locale in 2004, and only slowly did it dawn on me that I was actually inside now astoundingly renowned Hope/Obama artist Shepard Fairey’s Studio Number One (the Obey Giant switchplate cover finally tipped me off). Fairey wasn’t in that day, but I did get a quick thrill talking to the other staffers and getting to nose around the rest of the facilities.
Space Invader home [via Extermitent]
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MOLE MANIA: VINYL TOY/DESIGN GROUP DGPH’S NEW MOLESTOWN SITE
And the flipside of the game-toy crossover: Offworld fave Argentinian illustrator/toy collective DGPH has just launched Molestown in the stylings of a full-on platformer puzzle. The design seems to be only surface deep, but it’s a nice way to explore their various characters and wares, and the long drop into hell was crazy dramatic: chalk them up as another character/design team I’d love to see behind officially produced games.
Molestown [DGPH, via TOYSREVIL]
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