Toshio Iwai’s Electroplankton was one of the Nintendo DSs first, best surprises: a collection of sentient, interactive musical creatures that were, in effect, a reductive retrospective of the past decade plus of Iwai’s gallery art explorations (who had, there, too, focused on the interplay of light/music/touch) made mass-market accessible.
Though it never quite got the attention it truly deserved — nor was it ever really fully understood by consumers, who (having never actually heard of Iwai himself) came in expecting a music tracker and came out befuddled and frustrated by the ‘plankton’s wily wanderings — Nintendo are planning a round-two comeback.
Nintendo has announced that it will be re-releasing the ‘plankton in downloadable DSiWare form over the coming weeks, in three 200 Point (~$2) packs each — but only, for now, in Japan. It would surprise me if they didn’t make their way over soon (after the current backlog of ArtStyle games is cleared out), and six dollars is an unmissable way to collect the package, even if you do miss out on Iwai’s brilliantly hand-illustrated full-color manual. [via andriasang]
I’m honestly not entirely sure how my European readership breaks down, especially those that might not already be well aware of this, but for the stragglers that aren’t: July 24th and 25th will see the first official Blip Festival: Europe, at Aalborg, Denmark’s Platform4.
The lineup includes an international laundry list of familiar names previously seen on Offworld, as well as a number of locals:
Binärpilot [Norway],
Bit Shifter [United States],
Bodenständig 2000 [Germany],
Bu Bu Kitty Fuckers [Denmark],
cheap dinosaurs [United States],
glomag [United States],
GOTO80 [Sweden],
Hally [Japan],
La Belle Indifference [Denmark],
minusbaby [United States],
Nullsleep [United States],
Rabato [Spain],
Random [Sweden],
RECEPTORS [United States],
Saskrotch [United States]
With visuals handled by BlipFest regulars No Carrier and Paris, alongside The Netherlands’ The C-Men and Spain’s Raquel Meyers.
Check the official BlipFest:Euro site for ticketing information and specifics on its accompanying workshops and screenings, which will of course include 2 Player Productions’ Reformat the Planet doc, and No Carrier on doing NES visuals.
And then this happened: World of Warcraft got TweetCraft, its own dedicated Twitter client, available as a free download via codeplex, which lets you:
* Send/receive Tweets in-game (Immediate sending reloads your UI)
* Queue Tweets to send when it’s more convenient for you
* Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic
* AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement
* Extensible so that AddOn authors can register messages or events to AutoTweet
[via laughingsquid]
3M should really consider putting together dedicated pixel-kits for as well loved as they are as such. [via Blog Agog]
Tim Schafer gives IGN a full walk-through — well, OK, of just the first seventeen minutes, really — of Double Fine’s forthcoming Brütal Legend (the second video is below the fold), but that’s more than enough to fall for Eddie’s Clementine: the guitar brought back with him to the Age of Rock which is now imbued with special powers.
Probably you’ll want to hit that ‘play hi-res’: IGN’s embeddables are annoyingly quite rigidly sized. UPDATE: replaced with a Giant Bomb player much more embed-friendly.
Coming July 11th to Montreal’s Society for Arts and Technology (the SAT): Toy Company 4, an all-star chiptune lineup that will include formerly Boing Boing Video’d and Bit.Trip Core title-artist guest star Bubblyfish, the previously featured Aliceffeckt, and artists Mattfuzz, Cougarettes, Pero, with visuals by VJ Pocaille, DJ Erreur 404, and more.
Polytron’s Phil Fish has also said that Kokoromi’s early-Offworld featured game SUPERHYPERCUBE will also be on display, its full head-tracked stereoscopic form.
See the SAT’s page for more information on the show and its lineup. [via Phil Fish]
After many months of (probably misguided, given its ever-clear XNA roots) speculation, Polytron has finally, officially announced that their space-warping 2D/3D debut Fez will be released for Xbox Live Arcade in early 2010.
