FITTER, HAPPIER: NINTENDO EXTENDS WII FIT SERVICE TO HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
Though I honestly find its exercise routine too broken up to feel genuinely satisfying (and have for some time instead been recommending — in all seriousness! — Respondesign’s PC/PS2/Xbox app Yourself Fitness), there’s great potential for harnessing and expanding on Wii Fit‘s connectedness to push it into essential territory (competing against friends? local/national challenges?) that to date has gone underserved.
But it appears in Japan, at least, Nintendo’s making good — andriasang files a translated story saying the company is partnering with NEC, Panasonic and Hitachi with a new Wii channel that will send a user’s Wii Fit data to the professional health industry to receive ‘health instruction’ and connect with a recently launched NEC ‘mobile health service.’
The site also says the new ‘Wii Fit Body Check Channel’ will connect with DS pedometer-enabled health app Aruite Wakaru Seikatsu Rhythm DS (which already has been used to transfer Miis for portable personality) to share mobile and local exercise data — here’s hoping all this interconnectivity makes its way stateside soon.
Nintendo teams with electronics makers for Wii Fit health services [andriasang]
Previously:
Wii Fit tops 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival games entrants – Offworld
Miyamoto, Spore awarded Jim Henson Honors – Offworld
Expose the Wii's hidden Mii-transfer menu. – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
PAINTING VARRIGAN CITY RED: FAN-MADE MADWORLD AD
It’s apparently been too long since I last checked in with NeoGAF’s ongoing challenge collecting fan-made magazine ads for Sega/Platinum Games’ upcoming duo-tone Wii brawler MadWorld — I’d missed ‘geek’s fantastic paint-by-number photoshoppery that says everything an ad needs to say about the game (check back to my first half of 2009 Wii/DS outlook for more MadWorld specifics).
MadWorld “magazine ad” challenge [NeoGAF, via GamOvr]
Previously:
Nintendo's Wii/DS outlook: The Offworld view – OffworldMS Paint the games of 2008 – Offworld
Treasure hunt: m0dus/orotio's HD Gunstar Heroes PS3 theme – Offworld
Ye olde anagram game challenge – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
OLLY MOSS BRINGS A TOUCH OF CLASS TO BLACK MESA
The latest in Olly Moss’s Penguin-inspired Videogame Classics series distills Freeman’s essence, rightly, as a game about “crowbars and teleporting.” My favorite part (having briefly moved away from the N64 now) is the top-left iconography showing the platform where the game originated.
One of my most heartfelt 2009 wishes: that Moss continue this as a regularly updated set.
Half-Life [Olly Moss’s Flickr Videogame Classics]
Previously:
Olly Moss's Penguin-inspired Videogame Classics covers – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Olly Moss
MOTHER 3 MUSICAL TOE-DIP INTO BACH, VIVALDI, SATIE… BATMAN, SPACE INVADERS
Following on his earlier excellent breakdown of cult Game Boy RPG Mother 3‘s battle music time signature trickery, Dan ‘Cruise Elroy‘ Bruno has posted another deep look at the game’s musical selections from a historian’s perspective, spotting allusions, lifted selections, and other peculiar references.
Particularly notable is the game’s “Ode to Ancestors: 8th Movement,” a medley of parts of Beethoven’s 5th, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, “Hallelujah” from Handel’s Messiah, and “Spring” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, which Bruno calls “such an absurd juxtaposition that I can’t help but laugh at it every time I listen,” its overt references to Neal Hefti’s Batman theme, and an 8-bit subversion of the Pig Mask Army’s leitmotif.
As before, it’s fantastic, MP3-supported stuff — Bruno’s one of the few that seems both qualified and passionate enough to take us on these smart sonic journeys.
Mother 3’s musical allusions [Cruise Elroy]
Previously:
HOUSECLEANING: OFFWORLD RSS FEED NO LONGER AN UNINTERRUPTED JUMBLE OF WORDS
Unless it’s my own over-dense prose, that is. As you may or may not have been experiencing, since launch our RSS feed has had a bit of a rough time properly converting line breaks, resulting in a single, near-unreadable mashed-up paragraph.
But no more: our own resident renaissance man Rob has finally kicked out the last of the feed gremlins and restored order, so you can now (re-)subscribe with confidence. Thanks to everyone who stuck that out.
I’ve also been getting an increasing number of emails and anonymous comments that some of you are having problems logging in to leave comments — we’re currently working on issues there and will let you know when those wrinkles have been ironed.
Let me know if you’re experiencing any other issues putting a damper on your stay here via the comments (you know, if you can) or that send-a-tip email at top right.
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals
FIELDRUNNERS, EDGE TOP 2009 IGF MOBILE FINALISTS
In its final spin-off awards announcement, the Independent Games Festival has named its finalists in the IGF Mobile competition, covering the best in games for the DS, mobile phones and, in partnership with oft-blogged publisher ngmoco, the iPhone.
The list, happily, reads like a who’s-who of some of Offworld’s favorites over the past several months (and indeed I took an earlier look at the full list of entrants in December): iPhone tower defense hit Fieldrunners, musical lover’s quarrel art-piece Ruben and Lullaby, Secret Exit’s rope-tied Zen Bound, and recent Offworld favorite cubist platformer Edge.
The Mobile competition this year is offering $30,000 in prize money, and the winners, as with its sister competitions, will be announced at the awards ceremony this March 25th (with a special Mobile conference awards show the night prior) during the 2009 Game Developers Conference.
Hit the jump for the full list of finalists and links to our previous coverage on the entrants. (more…)
See more posts about: IGF, Offworld Originals
LISTEN: PAUSE OFFERS FREE INDIE GAME SOUNDTRACK DOWNLOADS
New musical awesomeness spotted via ‘Dong’s excellent EngRish Games blog: Pause, the “music label and community with a focus on unorthodox forms of 8-bit music yet prone to various other styles,” has started a separate section called +PLUS, dedicated solely to releasing free soundtracks from a variety of indie games.
The five-strong list includes not only ‘Dong’s own soundtrack to his excellent abstract freeware shooter Nanosmiles, but an orchestral album for Studio Eres’ similarly abstract tower defense game Immortal Defense (one of my favorites of the genre), EMH Soft’s Endgame: Singularity, Arue’s Another Bound Neo, and, best of all, Disasterpeace’s short EP for Offworld favorite Rescue: The Beagles.
All are top quality releases well worth a download, as is most of the rest of the Pause catalog, which together should tide you over for a good long while.
+PLUS [Pause, via EngRish Games]
Previously:
Gimme Indie Game: Rescue: The Beagles – Offworld
Listen: 2D Boy's free World of Goo soundtrack – Offworld
Listen: Pixelmod Records' Merry Pixmas Compilation – Offworld
Listen: Bizarre give us 46860 Choices – Offworld
Listen: Leeni's 8-bit kabuki 'Underworld' – Offworld
Listen: The Doyouinvert's 'A Happy New Gear' – Offworld
See more posts about: Listen, Music, Offworld Originals
PIKILIPITA’S ULTRA-HYPNOTIC PLAYSTATION 2, GAME BOY ADVANCE VJ KITS
My shameful admission: I have wasted more time today than I’ll willingly fess up to watching this video on repeat, completely transfixed by nothing more than: pulsing circle, moving checkerboard, strobing Hello Kitty, shifting rainbow bar, strobing Hello Kitty backward, file browser, sunburst heart. And again, and again.
The video is a 2-player live demo of Clément ‘Pikilipita’ Cordier’s PS24VJ, a custom-coded homebrew kit for ‘video jockeys’ to import their own graphics and video via a USB stick, and cut and manipulate from each to each using the standard DualShock controller, and — in the hands of its creator, at least — it’s way more mesmerizing than it should be.
Interestingly, PS24VJ is the third iteration of Cordier’s tools that span back to both a Game Boy Advance version, where you’re limited to his built-in graphics but freed up by its pocket size, and Pikix, a later version for the Linux-based Korean handheld GP2X.
Cordier is selling PS24VJ as donation-ware (contact him with an offer), and custom-flashed GBA carts appear to still be available alongside standalone ROM files (Pikix is available as a free download), and, just as I’d hoped, he notes that he’s eager to work on an iPhone version with networking capabilities for multiple VJs to mix at once.
PS24VJ: VJ software for Playstation 2 [PIKILIPITA, via Digital Tools, the best blog I’ve discovered in weeks]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
SUPER MARIO LAND: THE DRUNKEN EDITION
This is how I picture it: it’s 3:30am and you’ve just got off the express train back to your cramped flat after a long drunken night at a secret Kiiiiiii show or Delaware exhibi+ion, where you down a few more beers to keep the buzz alive, and that’s when your friend, er, ‘Steve’ (apparently) breaks out the Super Game Boy.
Knowing full well that his grasp of English is even more tenuous than yours with Japanese, he gives you the full play-by-play anyway, because he knows that’s what makes it so funny, and it is.
I have to imagine it this way because it’s almost impossible to get your head around otherwise. I still don’t understand why the Goomba broke the house windows to bite the pizza.
Possibly drunk japanese guy rambles over Mario Land (in English) [sp0rsk’s niconico re-upload, same guy/same schtick to Super Ghouls’n Ghosts in Japanese]
Previously:
Revolvingdork's Super Mario Land etched Eee PC – Offworld
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals
CHAMPION OF GUITARS: TEXT ADVENTURE GUITAR HERO GETS REAL
The current management of this rather seedy venue doesn’t much care about appearances, apparently. Nonetheless, it’s become one of the hottest spots in the area, attracting surly alcoholics from all around. A variety of local acts, the vast majority unrelentingly terrible, play here every Tuesday night. Coincidentally, it’s Tuesday night.
A host of unsavory-looking people makes up your audience for the night. They’re all staring at you expectantly.
A fake plastic guitar lies on the ground in front of you.
Bolted to the wall is a television screen, dark and foreboding.
I take back everything I said: moments after after clicking my tongue at the internet for not turning ianwarren’s Guitar Hero 1.0 concept into a playable text adventure, real ultimate hero Bill Meltsner emailed to let me know that his Champion of Guitars is, in fact, playable online.
It’s everything I’d hoped it would be, particularly its wry version of the audience enthusiasm/performance meter, and though I haven’t had the time yet to make it all the way through my first gig, Meltsner says the game does let you play the song to completion. He also hints that there are other audience-related and item manipulation easter eggs that I’ve yet to discover: let us know what you find via the comments below.
Play Champion of Guitars online, or grab his Zcode here for use in any interpreter — create the most fumbly version of an iPhone Rock Band imaginable!
Image via DeGraeve’s IMG2TXT.
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals
