A BOY AND HIS BLOB DEVS UNVEIL DSI DOWNLOADABLE DEBUT MIGHTY FLIP CHAMPS
WayForward, the company behind Majesco’s Wii rehaul of A Boy and His Blob, are moving from strength to strength in recent days. Fresh off that announcement, the company has also given IGN the exclusive on its first downloadable DS game for the upcoming DSiWare service with Mighty Flip Champs.
IGN’s preview is a bit light on details, but from the screens above you can surmise that its puzzling mechanical hook is main character Alta’s ability to flip rooms displayed on upper and lower screens of the DS in order to move forward to the goal.
The game looks like classic WayForward stuff, particularly in the sense that I’m getting heavy vibes of the studio’s vastly overlooked 2001 Game Boy Color game Wendy: Every Witch Way, a game was sold as a licensed product based on Harvey Comics star — and friend of Casper the Friendly Ghost — Wendy the Good Little Witch.
The license was probably the primary reason it flew straight past the core audience that would have appreciated it, but underneath the product placement was a very clever puzzle/platformer revolving around Wendy’s ability to flip gravity and walk on ceilings to get past obstacles, in what looks on the surface like a similar manner to Mighty Flip. I’m coming up with a grand total of zero YouTube videos to illustrate, but you can see about six seconds of the game (dig that animation!) in this longer GBC clip.
WayForward home [via IGN]
Previously:
WayForward show A Boy and His Blob in motion, promise ‘hug button – Offworld
WayForward reviving A Boy And His Blob for the Wii – Offworld
Wii LIT: WayForward's WiiWare horror puzzler approaches – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
THERE WILL BE JEWELS: CASTLE CRASHER DEVS TEASE NEW GAME
Over at Behemoth’s development blog, the studio has announced that the first video of its third game — following Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers — will be shown off on March 18th, just prior to an early version debuting at the Tokyo Anime Fair.
They’ve teased the game with the image above… My guess? That they’re already creatively bankrupt and are cashing in with a Bejeweled clone (the obvious clue: the glowing red eyes of a million bored secretaries in the background). We hardly knew ye.
Tokyo Anime Fair and Game #3 stuffs! [The Behemoth Development Blog]
Previously:
How Castle Crashers was almost a Muttpop/Lucha Libre game – OffworldYou will know it by the piles of dead: building Behemoth's …
The Behemoth talk Castle Crashers balance, ladies – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LAST CHANCE: DIABLO III RAINBOWS & UNICORNS T-SHIRT DISCONTINUED, DISCOUNTED
If you were putting off buying that Diablo III T-shirt that made the hardcore weep, don’t wait another second. Nerdyshirts has emailed to say:
Blizzard wasn’t quite as thrilled with it as we were… We will be removing the Diablo shirt from our site on Thursday and will not be selling it after this date. We’ve marked the shirt down to only $5, get it before its gone for good!
Diablo III [Nerdyshirts]
Previously:
Get the Diablo III shirt that makes the hardcore weep – Offworld
Offworld: Fashion Archives
See more posts about: Fashion, Offworld Originals
THE SOUNDS OF THE SOUNDS OF VINTAGE ARCADES: MP3 SAMPLES FROM 1982-1988
In case you missed it earlier today on the Mother Boing, Mark dug up this Classic Arcade Sounds collection, whose owner explains:
We recorded our video game experiences from 1982 until 1988 in a variety of locations on the east coast. Most of the recordings come from Ithaca, NY, Albany, NY and Ocean City, MD. Other locations include Lancaster, PA, Falmouth, MA, Rehoboth Beach, DE and Key West, FL.
Luckily I stored all fourteen audio tapes in a safe place and rediscovered them when I moved the rest of my stuff out of my parents house in 1997. In the last several years I digitized these nostalgic recordings to preserve and share them.Experience the magic and the wonder of the early years of coin-op video games. Hear the classic arcade ambience like you haven’t heard it in over a quarter of a century! The blend of several video games being played simultaneously, the kids yelling and the quarters clanking. We will never hear such beautiful chaos quite the same way again….
It’s already pre-faded/corrupted for you, just run it through a bit of tape delay and stick a nice beat behind it, and you’ve got an instant Boards of Canada-esque nostalgic album.
Classic Arcade Sounds [coinopvideogames, via BB]
See more posts about: Arcade, Offworld Originals
THE BLOX THAT GO BOOM: FIRST FOOTAGE OF BOOM BLOX SMASH PARTY
There is nothing I don’t like about the debut trailer for EA/Steven Spielberg’s latest Boom Blox Smash Party, apart from the faint muscle memory echoes of the repetitive stress injuries I sustained in my marathon sessions with the original.
As I mentioned in January, the most exciting hook here is that EA’s sloughed off the friend code burden and is making its sharable levels openly browse-able to anyone, and that its level editor has expanded even further to essentially include the same dev tool set EA themselves used to create those in the retail package.
Boom Blox home [EA]
Previously:
Spielberg/EA's new Boom Blox goes underwater, zero-g – Offworld
Boom Blox does Mario, Galaga, Duck Hunt – Offworld
Ragdoll Metaphysics: Ten Things That Made Me Glad To Be A Gamer In …
Steven Spielberg gets games – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
STEP OFF: SECRET EXIT’S STAIR DISMOUNT COMING TO IPHONE
Not to be outdone by Hondune’s recently mentioned and essentially similar ragdoll injurer Ouch!, Zen Bound creators Secret Exit have playfully dis-announced via the Touch Arcade forums that their original ragdoll brutality sim Stair Dismount will be coming to the iPhone.
Like Ouch, Secret Exit say Dismount will allow players to map custom faces onto the ragdoll’s head, and will include that large photo icon for capturing in-game shots of the resulting mangled bodies.
The developer has kept an archive of the PC/Mac/Linux version of Stair Dismount, and the rest of their physics-based lineup (Truck Dismount is even more awesomely wince-worthy) for you to try out in advance. While it looks like it’ll be more limited in scope to Hondune’s game, from their previous iPhone output it’s clear that Secret Exit have a leg up on visual finesse and polish that could put this in its own league.
Stair Dismount Touch – The Official Thread of Denial and Misinformation [TA forums]
Previously:
I wouldn’t feel no shame: Hondune’s ragdoll injurer Ouch! – Offworld
Crate digging through IGF Mobile 2009 – Offworld
Fieldrunners, Edge top 2009 IGF Mobile finalists – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
WHO WILL BLOW IN OUR NES CARTS WHEN WE’RE GONE: CHRISTOPHER LOCKE’S MODERN FOSSILS
Says artist Christopher Locke of his modern fossils:
They are made from actual archaic technology that was once cutting-edge. Most of these examples were discovered in the United States, although the various species are represented all over the world. It is sad, but most of these units lived very short lives. Most people attribute the shortened lifespan to aggressive predators or accelerated evolution, but this is not necessarily true. It has been shown recently that the true demise of most of these specimens came from runaway consumerism and wastefulness at the high end of the food chain.
In a special process, these items are reproduced in a proprietary blend of concrete and other secret ingredients, giving them the look and feel of real stone fossils. Each fossil is made one at a time, by hand, in an individual mold. Because of the hand-made nature of the item, there will be variations in pigmentation, and small imperfections in the surface. While you can choose a general color range, please keep in mind that each fossil is unique, and color variations are inevitable.
Each “species” of modern fossil has a Latin name marked on the bottom or back, and can be shipped straight to your door.
Shown above, “Dominaludus nintendicus (burnt),” but also see Dexteludicrum repuerasco, and his various other non-explicitly gaming fossils. My only quibble, even though Ludustatarium temperosony does show its age with the wired plug, he should’ve gone with the all-digital original, which is already even deader.
Christopher Locke’s Heartless Machine – Modern Fossils
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
PRAISE DOBBS: DR. DOBB’S CUSTOMIZABLE PIXEL PLATFORMER
Tasked with rejuvenating the Dr. Dobb’s brand a year ago, my old colleague Simon Carless put together an ace plan to involve the indie games community with the original Dr. Dobb’s Challenge — a remix contest that let developers mod a barebones Windows/Windows Mobile platformer originally created by Professor Fizzwizzle developers Grubby Games and mobile studio b3team.
Now they’ve upped the ante with the Dr. Dobbs Challenge Deuce, with the help of Gravity Hook creator Adam Saltsman, and the results so far are actually surprisingly wicked.
Saltsman’s new pixel-heavy Silverlight version takes the four characters from the original and gives each unique powers — the mummy gains a hat-tip to Mario 3 with an invulnerable sarcophagus move, the lizard can wall jump, the pirate can super jump off his peg-leg. The game also has some other subtle nods to the hardcore, like Dobb’s ability to use oversize soccer balls as weapons ala Treasure’s Bangai-O Spirits et al.
As the name implies, this is all built on top of a contest, of course, but it’s entirely enjoyable on its own. The in-game level editor and browser lets you page through custom built levels and share them with unique URLs, making it one of the most robust and enjoyable indie web creations in recent memory.
Dr. Dobb’s Challenge Deuce [Dr. Dobb’s]
See more posts about: Adamatomic, Offworld Originals
GIMME INDIE.. AUDIO? TODAY I DIE’S SONIC PREVIEW
What’s next from the creator of understated indie fave I Wish I Were The Moon? Daniel Benmergui has teased his latest game, Today I Die — currently in the process of finding a sponsor for its eventual release — with only three elements.
In his latest blog post he’s added the image to the right, a single sentence describing it as being about “the daily choice of waking up in the morning,” and an mp3 preview of its soundtrack by Hernán Rozenwasser (who was also behind the audio in Benmergui’s 2008 Java heartbreaker Night Raveler).
There’s not too much we can glean from the audio, other than a similar deep-sea sonar and slow-drip motif that’s echoed in the preview image: here’s hoping for a Kongregate or similar portal release soon.
Today I Die (Soundtrack) [Ludomancy]
Previously:
Gimme Indie Game: Daniel Benmergui's I wish I were the Moon – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
JORDAN MECHNER’S THE LAST EXPRESS REMIXED AS ANIMATED FILM
Continuing his terrific work fully archiving — in diary and video form — the process that led to the release of his landmark original Prince of Persia game, Jordan Mechner has remixed the entirety of his later, less well known, CD-ROM adventure The Last Express as a 75 minute cartoon.
He explains:
A couple of years ago, for a fun weekend project, I captured a dozen hours of gameplay footage from my 1997 adventure game The Last Express and edited it down into a single, 75-minute linear narrative.
Other than a walk down memory lane, I’m not sure what it’s good for. It doesn’t work as a movie — the demands of game vs. film storytelling are too different — and the low-res, dissolve-between-still-frames animation looks awfully clunky now. But for anyone who’s interested, here it is (in eight 10-minute segments).
The Last Express Remixed [Jordan Mechner, Vimeo playlist]
Previously:
Mechner talks film, game, graphic novel storytelling – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
