Finally easing the frustration I’ve had in trying to capture what’s going to make Nicalis’s forthcoming WiiWare platformer Night Game unique, the first trailer has come online that perfectly captures all its serene charm: no enemies apart from physics and friction, just the simple joy of exploration.

As previously noted, the game is up for both the design excellence and grand prize awards at this year’s Independent Games Festival, and shares more than a passing resemblance to freeware hit Knytt Stories, both games having been created by Nicalis’s Nicklas ‘Nifflas’ Nygren.

For a cleaner version of the trailer, head over to GoNintendo, who got the exclusive on this first video footage.

Nicalis home [YouTube via TinyCartridge]

Previously:< The Offworld Guide to the 2009 Independent Games Festival – Offworld
Nintendo's Q2 Wii/DS outlook: Desktop Tower Defense, Punch-Out …
A deeper look at Knytt Stories – Offworld

As they’ve done with their more traditional design challenges, NeoGAF forum users have banded together and created something similarly amazing: an eight-stage note-for-note reproduction of classic Konami shooter Contra in LittleBig-form, straight down to using the Gradius remake‘s Sackboy-less puppetry for its alternating “behind-the-back” levels.

UPDATE: LBP artist Rex Crowle sends word that the new levels have officially touched down at the Media Molecule offices and are being very cheerily received.

LittleBig Contra is OUT NOW!! Let’s Attack Aggressive, GAF [NeoGAF]

Previously:
MS Paint the games of 2008 – Offworld
Ye olde anagram game challenge – Offworld
Painting Varrigan City red: fan-made MadWorld ad – Offworld
This week on 'The Hill': Garry's Mod Madness – Offworld
LittleBigWatch: Media Molecule Adds Metal Gear – Offworld
LittleBigWatch: mind-boggling 'Automatic Reversi' – Offworld
LittleBigWatch, part the final: The Game of Life – Offworld

Just spotted this video from the June 2008 ‘This Happened‘ London interaction design meetup, with 20 minutes of Hand Circus‘s Simon Oliver discussing his inspiration for his iPhone hit Rolando.

Oliver shows off the failed attempts that got him to the place where he could create the game, reveals how Ico/Shadow of the Colossus inspired its design, and gets big bonus points for referencing David Lynch’s excellent book Catching the Big Fish in showing where he gets his inspiration (here, physically, a swimming pool).

Simon Oliver at This Happened… [indirect thanks to Rolando artist Mikko Walamies for ‘liking’ the video]

Previously:
Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando – Offworld
Rolando gets papered – Offworld
Ready for their closeup: Mikko Walamies' Rolando art – Offworld
HandCircus preparing more Rolando for the iPhone, Lite version …

BECAUSE HE COULD: “IMAC G3 + LCD + DREAMCAST = PURE AWESOME!”

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2.26.2009

Brandon Boyer

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It may not be exactly portable, as in the usual work of master console-innards-reshuffler Ben Heck, but YouTube user ‘logicdb‘s Dreamcast and G3 iMac mashup is every bit as gorgeous.

Its only downfall is the slightly inelegant disc changing, which works somewhat clumsily via a removed panel on its side, but it’s otherwise completely self contained and entirely desirable.

See it in motion here, and the lengthy pictorial setup process here.

Previously:
Because He Could Part Deux: The Originator's New Portable Xbox 360 …
Because He Could: Atari 2600 in a Sega Game Gear shell – Offworld

As I mentioned in both Nintendo Wii/DS outlooks, Rockstar’s first DS outing, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, looks to be one of the year’s handheld blockbusters, somewhat returning the series to its birds-eye roots while maintaining much of the progress it’s made throughout — and on an even grander scale than — its 3D evolution. The developer has just released the first official trailer for the game, in which you can glimpse short bursts of gameplay in between its protagonist’s tale.

I’m just as happy to bring it to light if nothing else than for its title music, which, as Rockstar have just informed me (and I should’ve guessed) is a track from Wu’s Ghostface Killah and Offworld favorite MF Doom (or rather, just DOOM, these days), a musical collaboration that’s been threatening to release their debut album for just about what seems like forever now.

It got me excited, anyway. Head over to the game’s official site to see more gameplay-focused video.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars home [Rockstar]

Previously:
Nintendo’s Q2 Wii/DS outlook: Desktop Tower Defense, Punch-Out!! and Jungle Beats – Offworld
Nintendo's Wii/DS outlook: The Offworld view – Offworld

You might be forgiven at first glance to draw quick comparisons between Minotaur China Shop developer Flashbang’s just-released Blush and thatgamecompany’s PS3/PSP indie bedrock fl0w, but the two have little in common past their deep sea struggle.

Instead, Blush is another game in what is emerging as a Flashbang studio-signature as reliable as the Animal/Heavy Machinery meme they’ve seemingly just now deposed: as also evidenced in their original Raptor Safari and the later iPhone Raptor Copter, Flashbang have a passion for flagellation, be it by industrial mace [this kind] or, now, with literal flagella.

Because unlike fl0w or its later twice-removed cousin in the first stage of Spore, Blush is less about eat or be eaten — less about the head and more about the tail. It’s more about tracing graceful but deadly arcs through the water, and quickboosts to waypoints to deposit eggs collected through your kills, which grow your tentacles and further increase your speed.

As with nearly all of its web and iPhone ilk, it’s an arcade-style race against the clock for high scores and achievements — almost more of a sport than a natural sim, with a steady ramp of earned skill and subsequent challenge, and that ever present one-more-go urge when you see how pathetically you’ve stacked up to the rest on, even your best runs.

It’s also aggressively beautiful, everything softly and semi-translucently neon lit, and while it may not have the mathematical complexity or the slapstick charm of something like China Shop (in fact, it might be their most ‘serious’ game to date), it’s every bit as confidently constructed and polished as anything they’ve done.

Blush [Blurst]

Previously:
Gimme Indie Game: Minotaur China Shop, happiness in shattery …
Riding the iPhone's Raptor Copter – Offworld
Flashbang Relentless-ly tease new game – Offworld

Nintendo has sent over a breakdown of first and third party releases for both the Wii and DS, and, as I did for its winter update, I’ve done a little chaff separating and focused on the few that look the most promising. It’s a lighter schedule than last, looking solely at the next three months, and there are fewer surprises (and a few worrying omissions, NanaOn-Sha/Rodney Greenblat’s habitually-delayed Wii rhythm game Major Minor’s Majestic March having dropped from Majesco’s list), but still several titles worthy of mention.

The headline game here is Nintendo’s Wii remake of NES classic Punch-Out!! (above, as somehow fortuitously predicted by today’s Onion news), which they’ve dated for May 18th. This comes alongside other remade franchises like Excitebots, a new racing game from in its ‘Excite‘ (-bike, -Truck) series, due April 20th. (more…)

ONION GETS EXCLUSIVE ON HIPPO, POPINSKI CAMEOS IN TYSON BIOPIC

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2.26.2009

Brandon Boyer

3 Replies

Someone at the Onion’s been on a NES kick lately (maybe with all that free time now that they don’t have Bush to maim and rest comfortably): following ‘Man Finally Unpauses ‘Super Mario Bros.’ After 18 Years Of Chores‘ comes this:

A new documentary titled Punched Out!!: The Mike Tyson Story, which follows the legendary boxer’s career from his debut as a challenger to the infamous DREAM FIGHT!! against Little Mac in 1987, will premiere at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival.

Ten of Tyson’s most well-known opponents are interviewed in the film, with Von Kaiser, Soda Popinski, Don Flamenco, King Hippo, and others reminiscing about the boxer’s career…

The film is premiering in the SXSW Film Festival’s documentary competition alongside Exciting Bikes, a documentary that explores many of the unanswered questions about motocross races of the 1980s, including the mystery of why the track was sometimes blue.

The best bit, though, is buried in the middle:

Tyson himself admits that it was his incessant blinking—the only time he showed any weakness in the ring—that ultimately lead to his demise.

New Mike Tyson Documentary Features Exclusive Interviews With Super Macho Man, King Hippo [The Onion]

COOKING MAMA COMES TO THE IPHONE

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2.26.2009

Brandon Boyer

2 Replies

As I brew up my own real life version of the above and prepare for the day, my morning scroll through the App Store has alerted me to the fact that Taito has just brought its much-beloved culinary mini-game collection Cooking Mama to the iPhone.

A quick run through has shown that at first glance it’s every bit as well played with a finger as with a stylus — I managed to prepare a silver medal shrimp gyoza plate that was going wonderfully until I oversteamed them at the end.

The move comes just a few days after Taito made the jump to the platform with an emulated version of the original arcade Space Invaders [App Store], and, as with that, Cooking Mama comes at a premium price ($6.99 here, $4.99 for Invaders) — I haven’t decided yet if that’s a console game maker’s naivete of the tooth-and-nail App Store economy, or well-deserved confidence in the name-brand power of its franchises.

Cooking Mama [Majesco’s Wii/DS home, App Store link]

Previously:
Mama in the garden – Offworld

A new indie PC music development I’m keeping a close eye on: Thinking Studios’ Raycatcher, which looks like a menage spawn between fan favorite Audiosurf (for its dynamically generated play), Newtonica (for its in-bound color matching), and Cyclomite, the InstantAction game from Stubbs the Zombie creator Wideload (for its flat-field spinning).

The demo currently offered by Thinking doesn’t give you a full sense of how it will eventually play (there’s no mp3 support, and you can’t even get really clever and try to test its mettle by sneaking in Animal Collective songs by renaming the demo mp3s in the data folder), but watching the video above should illuminate things, as it were (at least, until the RIAA/YouTube mutes the music).

Raycatcher [Thinking Studios, via Indiegames]