Just released (and somewhat overlooked) in the last round of weekly PlayStation Network/Little Big Planet updates: the Vera ‘Bee’ Brosgol sticker pack, whose can-can/carny/freakshow illos are a very welcome stylistic change of pace from the LittleBigWatch-ed norm. As Media Molecule themselves noted, her Snow-Bo cartoon has been a darkly cute must-watch YouTube staple.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, One Shot
What’s big and small at the same time?* Matthew ‘servotron‘ Ellison’s custom Shadow of the Colossus Munny, complete with itty-bitty Wander (who you can see in better detail via his original SpriteStitch post). [via Fidgit]
[*actual answer, a la Armando Iannucci: a big egg.]
See more posts about: munny, Offworld Originals, Toys
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A quick housekeeping note: in just an hour or so here I’ll be on vacation through the end of the month, leaving Austin for the night-time wiles of San Francisco*. Steven, Lisa and Rob from over Gadgets‘ way will be keeping the site buoyed with the occasional post, as you will have already noticed, and I’ll inevitably be popping in and out throughout next week if I stumble on something too amazing to not share.
For any Bay Area readers (games industry or no), I’m always happy to hear any suggestions for things to see and/or do throughout the week: send me a note at brandon@offworld.com or @brandonnn on twitter, should the need arise!
I know for sure a few of us will be seeing Anamanaguchi et al. at the upcoming 8bitSF show on the 30th — I’ll do a proper post later in the week as a reminder for anyone interested (as you should be).
Otherwise, play nice while I’m gone.
[* night-time wiles here represented by Chiho Aoshima’s City Glow]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
The North Austin office-park studios of Metroid Prime creators Retro — should you be one of the few to make it past its reception area — are a warehouse-sized web-work of narrow labyrinthine hallways, intersections temporarily roped off to ward against your catching any glimpses of current-project concept art.
Take that alongside first-hand tales of the original founders’ predilection for near military-grade security systems, and it’s not hard — if you’re actively forcing the metaphor — to picture yourself inside the very game that put them on the map, and entertain the notion, at least privately, that maybe later, with the aid of some hard-won knowledge, you’ll be able to loop back and gain access to those previously out of reach areas.
A peculiar mix of brushed steel and magenta-painted drywall, the hallways are lined with ephemera of the studios past decade of output: promotional Prime posters autographed in silver by the overseas internal team with which Retro partnered, but it’s not until you hit the complex’s cafeteria wall that the studio’s true love for the franchise that fell in their lap becomes clear. There, you’ll find a wall-sized rendering of the dread Metroid itself, just above the water-cooler refills, displayed in pixels made of hand-painted NES cartridges.
The story of Retro is the story of Metroid — though that’s not how its story began — the two are now and forever fused. With the upcoming release of Metroid Prime Trilogy, all three of the GameCube and Wii Prime games collected on a single disc, what you’re really receiving is a glimpse at a nearly a full decade of the company where I’m standing. (more…)
See more posts about: Metroid, Offworld Originals
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Harmonix — and, by extension, developers Backbone — had a difficult balancing act to achieve in creating Unplugged, their downsized PlayStation Portable exclusive version of Rock Band.
For the newcomers that have only found the studio’s output only via its most recent games, they had to carefully re-dress the experience of their foundational Amplitude and Frequency games in Rock Band‘s rock/gothic/punk clothes, and had to ensure that that re-dress didn’t also alienate the long-time supporters — the ones, you could say, who were there for the early dive-bar gigs and bought the hand-screened, car-trunk T-shirts.
As a card carrying member of the latter category, then, I can say with some happy surprise that they’ve succeeded with at least that much: though its four-lane compression (corresponding to Rock Band‘s traditional bass/drums/vox/guitar breakdown) might be the next step down from Freq‘s eight to Amp‘s six, returning to that twitchy lane-switching familiarity was entirely welcome after the nearly six year interim since Amp first hit the shelves. (more…)
See more posts about: Get This, Harmonix, Offworld Originals
It’s essentially impossible to enter into a conversation about Shadow Complex — the just-released Xbox Live Arcade game from Epic subsidiary Chair Entertainment — without conjuring either or both two earlier classic franchises, Nintendo’s Metroid series, or Konami’s PlayStation re-invention Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and, for once, it’s not simply lazy comparison, so much as overt, love-letter homage.
And because of it, you have to admit to (or, I will, anyway) at least a small amount of cultural bias — that the game’s surprise debut at Microsoft’s E3 conference brought with it at least a tinge of underlying skepticism, a nagging back brain thought that, “so, the Americans think they can do ‘metroid-vania’, now, do they? Right, good luck with that.”
As it turns out, our luck was the last thing Chair needed: Shadow Complex is, put simply, perhaps the best reinvention of the exploratory sub-genre since Nintendo and Konami’s own subsequent episodes, and certainly the best console iteration to sit next to their more diminutive Game Boy Advance refinements. (more…)
See more posts about: Get This, Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
Chet Faliszek, along with Erik Wolpaw, came to the attention of the all-seeing eye of the internet via Old Man Murray, one of the greatest gaming websites ever to have emerged from American bedrooms. As part of OMM, Faliszek became well known among a certain sector of net culture, including the guys at Valve.
Eventually, both Chet and Erik from OMM joined Valve’s development team, and now contribute as writers and designers. More recently, Faliszek has moved into the limelight as a spokesman for the Left 4 Dead projects. I decided it was time to sit down with him and see what was making the writer from Old Man Murray tick in 2009, with his thoughts on Valve company culture, the mixed messages and missed opportunities that spawned the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott, how the world of Left 4 Dead may or may not tie in to the world of Half-Life, and playing with AI versus playing with another real human being.
So you’re now doing this designer-spokesman role for Valve? We’re seeing you standing up and talking about the Left 4 Dead games at all the cons and stuff now…
Faliszek: Oh, well, I am writing dialogue too.
How is that kind of work meted out within Valve? Were you told you had to go meet the public?
Faliszek: Well actually I wanted to complain about our PR… But, you know, Doug (Lombardi, Valve’s main marketing man) is a smart guy, right, so it was unfair for me to sit on the outside and say “hey, there’s a problem”, I had to get in there and see how it worked. Doug is one guy doing all this on his own, which puts some miles on you.
What did you want to complain about exactly?
Faliszek: Well nothing, exactly, but I was confused about some of the choices we made when we were doing the Half-Life episodes. Of course this is a very open company: so we can just go ask. I can go ask Gabe about any of the decisions made by Valve as a company. So in this case I’ll just go ask Doug some questions, and try to understand what I need to ask. And Doug’s response was “oh, someone to help, thank you.” And that was it. (more…)
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Ragdoll Metaphysics
