HOW CASTLE CRASHERS WAS ALMOST A MUTTPOP/LUCHA LIBRE GAME
Bob Silva — president of Offworld favorite comic/vinyl toy producer Muttpop (seriously, how perfectly sinister is Dr. Destruction) — has just written up a new blog post in which he reveals that Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers creators The Behemoth very nearly teamed up for an original multiplayer game.
Muttpop Bob says that soon after Alien Hominid‘s 2004 console debut, he presented the developer with a plan to base a new game off the Luchadores Five characters from Jerry Frissen’s Lucha Libre comic series.
Bob explains:
Behemoth had just released ALIEN HOMINID for the Gamecube and Xbox. I really felt like the spirit of that game had something in common with what we were doing. I heard that the Behemoth guys were thinking of doing a multiplayer game so I was trying to convince them to do one with the Luchadores Five and Tequila [below right]. Both Tom Fulp and Dan Paladin got back to me via email. They really loved the designs I sent them (I sent the 2 ‘pitch’ jpegs below and a few final pencils images of some of the other characters from Luchadores Five) and were going to talk to their investors about the possibility of collaboration.
They got back at me a few weeks later and said the investors didn’t feel comfortable investing in a game that they couldn’t have full ownership of (which I totally understood) but wished us well on our endeavors. That multiplayer game ended up becoming the amazing CASTLE CRASHERS. I assume they were already in development with Castle Crashers when I approached them. Whatever the circumstances, it was a great honor that those guys loved our designs enough that they considered collaborating (even if it was for just a second).
A shame all around: the Luchadores world is one I’d desperately love to explore first-hand — see more of their incredible characters in Muttpop’s Lucha Libre news section.
Muttpop Lucha Libre Beginnings [Muttpop Blog]
Previously:
You will know it by the piles of dead: building Behemoth's …
Castle Crashers gets Kinged – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
COMPUTERMUSIC4KIDS: MARIEKE VERBIESEN’S BABY’S-FIRST-CHIPTUNE-MAKER INSTALLATION
I don’t think I’ve ever wished for instant video gratification as much as I have just now: artist Marieke Verbiesen (creator of what is probably the world’s best Nordic myth pixel animation ever) has just uploaded new pictures of her installation commissioned for the Netherlands’ upcoming Novembermusic Festival, called Computermusic4kids.
What is it? Verbiesen explains:
ComputerMusic4Kidz is an interactive electronic music installation for kids, inviting them to explore the history and sound of classic gaming consoles…
The installation mainly focuses on the sounds that can be produced with classic gameconsoles and enables children to create music using classic gameconsole soundsamples. By using an intuitive interface children can navigate through a visual library that contains a selection of gameconsoles produced between 1972 and 1990. By selecting a gameconsole they can produce music with samples that originate from the chosen gameconsole.
Essentially, from what cruelly static images I have seen, kids will use a trackball to choose a console on an animated timeline running beneath Verbiesen’s fantastic pixel characters, and then use what appears to be an oversized Monome/Tenori-On-like sequencer to create their own chiptunes.
You can read more about the assembly of the installation at its work-in-progress blog, and, like me, repeatedly slam the F5 key on its still empty video page until something appears.
Anyone up for a jet-set jaunt to the Netherlands?
//☁☹☻(*-* Computermusic4kids *-*)☻☹☁ [Marieke Verbiesen]
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PYWEEK ANNOUNCES EIGHTH INDIE DEV GAME CHALLENGE
Patrick says:
Richard over at pyweek.org just announced the Pyweek 8 (April ’09) competition. Pyweek (if you didn’t already know) is a 1 week gaming challenge to write a video game from scratch in python. There are some pretty cool indy games which have come out of it, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
Registration will officially open on the 27th, with the theme chosen (the last was “the length of a piece of string”) and the challenge officially underway a month after that. We’d love to see something amazing come out of it.
You can browse all the former entries on the site, each of which, most charmingly, gets various trophies assigned to them — I loved how many motion sickness/vomit awards Digby Marshmallow’s Space Adventures! racked up.
Number 8 — CHALLENGE START: 51 days [Pyweek, thanks Patrick!]
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GLENN JONES’ CALLED FOR HELP T-SHIRT
The latest T-shirt from the reliably awesome Glenn of GlennzTees, this 8-bit mashup ‘Called For Help,’ following the similarly ghostly ‘Haunted Housework.’
Glenn’s the same designer behind one of my other T-shirt faves, the nicely understated ‘Ground Defenses.’
Called For Help [Glennz, thanks, Gabe!]
Previously:
The Glow, Pt. 3: Literally the best Fallout 3 T-shirts ever made …
Serpentine, serpentine! Neil Gregory's Simple Plan T-shirt – Offworld
Only on Offworld: your first look at Panic's Noby Noby Boy T …
Screaming for Hitekkai: Meat Bun's new T-shirt designs – Offworld
Polygraph's Kakuna T-shirt casts harden – Offworld
A new Hanes Beefy-T awaits – Offworld
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NUMBER NINE: HARMONIX RELEASING THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND ON 9/9/9
Originally revealed in a surprise conference call in late October of last year, MTV, Harmonix and Apple Corps have made the official announcement that The Beatles: Rock Band, a new entirely remade custom version of Rock Band that will trace “an unprecedented, experiential progression through and celebration of the music and artistry of The Beatles,” will be released on 09/09/09 for Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii.
The game will come as a standalone version, or packaged with “a limited number of new hardware offerings modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career,” with LOVE album co-producer Giles Martin serving as music producer. Harmonix also says exclusive content will be offered in coming months along with a preorder campaign.
Harmonix has also just unveiled the official site for the game, which for now is simply a warm-up teaser set inside a recreation of Abbey Road Studios (above, you can spy nearly the same camera angle at around 2:40 of this video).
The Beatles: Rock Band home [Harmonix]
Previously:
Rock Band bucking the sequel trend in 2009 – Offworld
Sony announces LittleBigPlanet, Rock Band for PSP – Offworld
Harmonix head Rigopulos on PS3 Amplitude, iPhone plans – Offworld
Going deep on music with Harmonix – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
ONLY ON OFFWORLD: JAMES KOCHALKA’S SUPERF*CKERS REVIEW KILLZONE 2
If you’ve never been introduced to the Superf*ckers, from Monster Mii creator James Kochalka, here’s the lowdown: they’re “the baddest teenage superhero team around, and everybody wants to join. They live in a big clubhouse, play video games on their state-of-the-art supercomputer, smoke their teammate Grotus’ slime drippings, and fight amongst themselves like cats and dogs.”
Like Kochalka himself, lately their superhero hands have been all over Guerrilla’s PS3 shooter, Killzone 2, and so, in the first of what we’re all hoping is a long running series, Offworld presents Superf*ckers team members Jack Krak and Orange Lightning’s dual review.
A note to the younger and more sensitive readers: as their team name might suggest, the Superf*ckers are as M rated as the games they probably aren’t old enough to play. Consider this your first time warning: no one censors Jack Krak.
Previously:
Offworld: Monster Mii Archives
[James Kochalka‘s daily diary strips, which run at AmericanElf.com, have entered their tenth year and been collected in three print volumes. He is also the author of more comics than you can count on both hands (some for children, others not so much), and plays rock and roll and Game Boy punk as James Kochalka Superstar.]
See more posts about: James Kochalka, Offworld Originals
I WOULDN’T FEEL NO SHAME: HONDUNE’S RAGDOLL INJURER OUCH!
If you’ve played any of the marginally well-known line of PC/Mac ‘Dismount’ games or the more recent nods to their lineage — the free-fall bits of Indie Built’s fantastically underrated Xbox 360 snowboarding launch game Amped 3, or the more recent PlayStation 3 downloadable Pain — you’ll know that there’s something inescapably and fiendishly compelling about the playtime torture of innocent ragdoll humans.
Indie iPhone devs Hondune apparently get it, too, and have just revealed their take on the “genre” (if you can call it that) with their upcoming iPhone game Ouch!. As you can see above, the game looks to offer near limitless ways to ruthlessly torment its hapless main character, with 40 pre-built levels and a scene editor with 60 objects to construct new custom levels.
The game also lets you customize the character via photos or accessories, and, more intriguingly, lets you export and share both characters and levels by importing and exporting generated JPGs in your iPhone’s photo library — the visual version of Bangai-O Spirits‘ MP3 level sharing quirk.
Hondune say they’ve already submitted the game to Apple, and hope for a release within the next week.
Ouch! home [Hondune]
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QUAKE 3 IPHONE PORT DEVS MAKING SPACE TRADER: MOON MADNESS
If you follow iPhone developments at all, you’ll likely recall this video that made the rounds shortly after Apple announced the App Store early last spring, which showed a tilt-sensitive port of Id’s Quake 3 running on the device.
Alberta studio Hermitworks was behind the port, and while they won’t be bringing Id’s game to the App Store (though Id head John Carmack recently told Gamasutra that he’s been tooling with the idea), they’ve just started showing off footage of their first game for the device based on the engine.
Space Trader: Moon Madness is their mobile spinoff of PC/Mac original franchise Space Trader, and promises a vaguely Elite sounding premise, with a mission to “achieve a high score buying and selling commodities. Start on the Moon, buy low. Hop aboard your ship to new destinations. Sell high. So simple its madness.”
The first video footage above doesn’t show much (at least, much clearly), but thankfully shows that they’ve dropped the tilt controls for a much more sensible faux-dual-analog approach that may be one of the more workable first-person iPhone solutions.
Space Trader: Moon Madness [Hermitgames, via PocketGamer]
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WAYFORWARD SHOW A BOY AND HIS BLOB IN MOTION, PROMISE ‘HUG BUTTON’
After Nintendo Power teased with the first images of WayForward and Majesco’s Wii remake of David ‘Pitfall‘ Crane’s obscure NES/Game Boy platformer A Boy and His Blob, the developer has given IGN the first look at the game in motion.
As it should be, I’m getting a very strong vibe of a more than passing resemblance to Frontier’s WiiWare debut LostWinds — both in the serenity of its environments and in the absolute dependency between the boy and blob, something that the team is keen to stress above all else, down to including (according to IGN’s accompanying interview) a “hug” button.
Also striking is WayForward’s reticence to rely on any HUD clutter or narration, with all cues coming in the form of painted signposts and iconic representations of each jellybean’s effect rather than the original textual selector, amplifying its “storybook come to life” feel.
Hit the jump for an additional video from IGN showing the cityscape and underworld more closely modeled on the original NES game’s opening levels. (more…)
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REMINDER: ONE WEEK LEFT TO ENTER EA/PHENOMIC’S BATTLEFORGE CONTEST
3.4.2009
Brandon Boyer
Keeping up with more housecleaning news: there’s one week left to enter EA/Phenomic’s contest to write the legend for Offworld’s exclusive in-game Mutating Frenzy card at right, after already receiving a good number of entries.
As a reminder, after the March 11th deadline, Offworld readers will pick their top three submissions, which will then be forwarded on to Phenomic to pick the grand prize. The third place winner will win an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card, second place will win the same and a BattleForge T-shirt, and the grand prize winner will receive an ATI Radeon HD 4870, BattleForge T-shirt, and have their submitted legend used in the game on its release.
If you want to better understand how the cards are used, Phenomic has opened the game for a public beta through March 26th. To download the client and try the game for yourself, visit this page with full instructions.
Submit your card legend as a comment on the original post, and refer to that post for the full writeup on the details of the game and the contest.
BattleForge home [EA/Phenomic]
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