Officially one of the more insanely detailed papercrafts I’ve seen in recent months, ‘Papercity’ links this Ninja Gaiden diorama (rar’d PDF), that makes a strong case for a 2.5D resurrection of the game ala Bionic Commando Rearmed. [via ALBOTAS]
Von Trier’s Zentropa film company officially lists Morten Iversen — former script writer for the Hitman games, and now head of Copenhagen-based studio ZeitGuyz — as the game’s director. /Film’s translation of the original Politiken article says the game will be about conquering your own fears, adjusted to the fears you tell the game you have in real life.
It will also, despite starring DaFoe, follow the events of the film itself, which means prrrrrrobably none of the film’s “unhinged female madness, female-inflicted penis bashing and female self-inflicted genital mutilation” that made it “the talk” of Cannes, to say the least (unless you list it as a fear?).
Hit the jump for the film’s trailer, which is also prrrrobably a little NSFW right at the tail end there (so to speak). [Thanks Gus!] (more…)
It’s 2008. You’re an experienced game maker waiting to pitch your big new idea to your boss. ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘It’s a motion controlled music party game with novelty peripherals that will retail for around £100!’ you blurt. A smile. ‘Perfect!’ says your boss. ‘Get my secretary to give you $10 million on your way out.’
It’s 1998. You’re an experienced game maker waiting to pitch your big new idea to your boss. ‘Well?’ he asks? ‘It’s a motion controlled music party game with novelty peripherals which will retail for around £100!’ you blurt. A frown. ‘What,’ he asks, ‘is a music game? And what’s a party game? And what’s motion control? And who pays £100 for a videogame? What kind of lunatic are you?’ At which point you remind him you’re the Yuji Naka kind of lunatic and the secretary gives you $5 million on the way out anyway (adjusted for inflation).
Samba de Amigo is the most prescient project in videogame history. We’re so used, now, to the way that Guitar Hero and Wii Fit rule the game charts, that we forget how far we’ve come, and how crazy those initial pioneers must have seemed. But in 1998, when Samba went into development, it was out on its own.
Parappa had been around for a few years, but Guitar Freaks and Taiko Drum Master were yet to debut. Mario Party and Bishi Bashi Special came out just a whisker before it, and long after it must have gone into development. The only peripherals in town were light guns and steering wheels.
Samba De Amigo was a genuine quantum leap. There was so much in the implementation to give it credit for – the exuberance of the visual style, itself a radical rejection of the browns and greys dominating early 3D gaming; the crisp groove of the move sets; the ludicrous playlist – that it’s been easily to overlook the brilliance of the very idea. (more…)
Guerrilla artist Invader invades Montauban, France on the eve of joining the “Ingres et les Modernes” gallery exhibition, dedicated to the modern legacy of the city’s own Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
Hit the jump for the prettier — but NSFW, I suppose (does art still count?) — version from the gallery invitation that traces the image’s lineage: I’m still trying to track down the artist that created the image in the middle.
After some seven hours (really!) spent giving iTunes and its glacially creeping progress bars the evil eye, the long awaited iPhone 3.0 firmware is now firmly in my hot little hands, and with it comes all the first traces of the device’s own version of social networking that’s made Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, and N-Gage such an engaging experience.
It’s anything but device integrated, mind, and expect to see the splintering grow before it consolidates. First, OpenFeint, the social networking solution first announced in February from the AuroraFeint developers (and currently implemented games like Studio Radiolaris’ Radio Flare) have duly said they’ll be supporting push notifications and in-app microtransactions in their latest version of the platform now available for developers working on games for July onward.
But, more intriguingly, ngmoco stealthily announced earlier this week a new initiative called Plus+. Unlike the current iteration of OpenFeint’s chatroom/leaderboard system, Plus+ comes much closer to Xbox Live in implementing a unified cross-game interface and profile (mine at top, feel free to add me!) that tracks your various achievements, lets you add and compare them against friends (and see which games your friends own), set status updates ala twitter/facebook (both of which will be fully integrated in a future platform update).
The system also tallies an overall point score for both unlocking said achievements or simply involving yourself in the community via invites and challenges, and — company head Neil Young told IGN — there are plans to use those points as a reward system for discounts on games and in-game items.
Currently only their Star Defense contains the Plus+ platform, but, Young said, it will be available in all games from Rolando 2 on, and there are plans to retrofit past ngmoco games with Plus+. The platform won’t be restricted to first-party published games, either: the company made its stealthy announcement alongside news that former Sega president Simon Jeffery had been hired on to head its Plus+ Publishing Group, where he’ll oversee the expansion of the system across more partner games.
And yes, that sound you heard with Jeffery’s hiring was that of the iPhone coming that much closer to the Third Handheld alongside the DS and PSP, just in case you were one of the last few who still weren’t convinced.
Isometric infographic living-room pulsating 8-bit techno from Montreal’s Aliceffekt (MySpace), who has gone on to do much, much more fantastic ‘3D doodles’ and digital art in the intervening two years since this was first uploaded — see it all via Vimeo.
I don’t think anyone doubted that last week’s Ico/Shadow of the Colossus blowout would be a tough act to follow, so instead Media Molecule are going seasonal and celebrating the summer solstice with a druidically bearded Sackboy costume (stuffed felt Stonehenge not included), who’ll land on the UK’s PlayStation Network this Thursday, followed by a June 25th appearance in North America, “just after Midsummer’s Day.”
Drew ‘kidicarus222‘ Mackie posts this overwhelmingly exhaustive article that traces the hidden origins of about a billion different characters from a wide range of Zelda and Mario main and supporting cast members, to Sonic, Street Fighter, Final Fight and Fantasy, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and on and on and on.
A sample? Based partly on conjecture, the names of boss Bowser’s children (as above) traced to Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams, Iggy Pop, Roy Orbison, Motörhead’s Lemmy, Ludwig von Beethoven, Morton Downey Jr., Larry King, with a followup Super Mario World boss unmistakably recognizable: Reznor. [via, again, Tiff]
The latest in Offworld’s attempts to keep your desk as littered with plastic as mine: First4Figure’s Phazon Suit Samus, the latest in First’s officially licensed Nintendo (and THQ and Sega and Tecmo and Ubisoft) lineup.
Riddled with LEDs and, no joke, an “internal IC chip [that] allows for the lights to fade out slowly” when you settle in for bed, it’s as deluxe and pricey as you might expect: the limited run of 1500 comes with a tag of $225, but is ideal for the figure freak that has everything, including First’s fourotherSamusfigures (on top of her Gunship and Metroid Prime Hunters‘ Trace). [via Tomopop]
