ONE SHOT: CRONENBERG’S 8-BIT DAYDREAM
Tang Yau Hoong‘s Collision, available in T-shirt form from Chimpogo. [via Mike]
Previously:
See more posts about: Fashion, Offworld Originals, One Shot
VIDEO: THE STATE/STELLA/RENO 911 STARS RETROACTIVELY SELL ME A GAME BOY
And a perfect oh-man-what follow-up to the last clip, as The State/Viva Variety/Reno 911/Wet Hot American Summer/Stella/etc/etc. stars David Wain, Kerri Kenney, Ben Garant, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black facelessly big up the Game Boy Pocket in this decade+ old commercial. [via David Wain, via Tiff]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LATE NIGHT NATAL: MICROSOFT’S MOTION CONTROL MAKES ITS NETWORK TV DEBUT
I expect this YouTube video to get unceremoniously yanked in T-minus 59 minutes or less, but for now, you can see a mind-bogglingly wicked six-degrees cross-cultural explosion as Microsoft’s Project Natal is publicly unveiled on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show to the tune of Ratatat’s Bruleé (!), with The Office’s John Krasinski (also director of my highly anticipated adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) and True Blood star Stephen Moyer each taking their turns at the Cosmic Smash-esque demo.
I’m pretty sure that’s game-set-match on some version of hipster-gamer bingo.
Previously:
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Xbox 360
GUT SHOT: ON THE REBRANDING OF EA’S VISCERAL GAMES
I’m honestly still not entirely sold on EA’s recent rebranding of its Redwood Shores output as Visceral Games (producers of Dead Space and the forthcoming game adaptation of Dante’s Inferno [yep]), but I think that’s quite alright, because I’m also honestly not sure I’m their intended audience, at all.
Either way, UnderConsideration’s fantastic design blog Brand New brings this behind the scenes look at the process undertaken by Arnson Communications and Bill Dawson for EA. No slight to the good work everyone involved has done, but I can’t get over how awesomely, perfectly, inappropriately that proposed flip-the-chopped-off-bird logo (above right) sums up our agree-to-disagree position on games.
How Visceral is too Visceral? [Brand New]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
ONE SHOT: THE DEFAULT IPHONE WALLPAPER, LITTLEBIGPLANET STYLE
Media Molecule offer this felt and yarn stitch-up replacement for the default iPhone wallpaper, giving you a LittleBigPlanet of your very own.
Previously:
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, One Shot
FRUSTRATION ON FABRIC: MINI CASSETTE’S 8 BIT JASON SHIRT
Mini Cassette gets a big thumb up from me for venturing way, way outside of the usual Nintendo canon for their pixelated Friday the 13th Jason sprite shirt.
Befitting their line of horror themed tees, the 8BitJason shirt is sure to recall the biggest nightmares of our youth: bad, licensed NES games. Now if only I could get a Fester’s Quest tee.
Also available in girl’s sizes.
8BitJason [Mini Cassette Tees]
Previously:
See more posts about: Fashion, Offworld Originals
YOUTH’S PLAYGROUND GETS WIDER: NOKIA’S RESET GENERATION COMES TO MAC, LINUX, KONGREGATE
This may be the happiest and most unexpected news I’ll run all day: back in December in my Offworld 20 list — compiling the best games of 2008 — I noted a still-too-little-played game from Nokia and Red Lynx, Reset Generation, the flagship title of Nokia’s relaunched N-Gage game service efforts.
Even as many months on, it’s still a hard game to aptly describe: I suggest my more concise efforts over at Edge Online for that, but what you do need to know here is that this many months on there’s still nothing like it on the market, and it still remains as vibrant and essential as it was back then.
And now, finally and surprisingly, Nokia’s updated the Java player to support both Macs and Linux, who classically were barred from the experience, and copied the game onto web-portal of choice, Kongregate, as well.
If you play anything this week, make it this game: it’s wonderfully familiar and deliberately obscure all at once, but it’s a fantastic design lesson in perfectly balanced quick-draw strategy.
As a bonus, and in celebration, game music remix clearinghouse ocremix.com has just posted a new contest to have your way with 8-Bit Weapon’s soundtrack to the game, with prizes including a fully loaded Nokia phone equipped with the mobile version of the game (which I’ve still kept around specifically for late-night pre-sleep sessions), and T-shirts and CDs from the Weapon, including the previously mentioned sample and loop CD just released by Sony.
Reset Generation [Nokia, Kongregate page]
Previously:
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
EDGE OF MADNESS: THE COPYFIGHT BETWEEN MOBIGAME AND TIM LANGDELL
Apologies for the title, as this actually refers to a trademark dispute, but I can’t think of a short-form pun that works as well (trade-lark?). Either way, there needs to be a brighter light shone on this ongoing struggle that’s been waging since the tail end of May, but has gone too overlooked due both to E3 information overload, and the long interim process of gathering all the relevant information, which now has finally come to a head.
Rather than guiding you through the sordid details in their entirety, I point you instead to fantastic summaries recently written up by both Gamasutra director Simon Carless, and Derek Yu at TIGSource — the latter’s community has been doing staggering due diligence at sniffing out the facts over the past few weeks.
But here’s the long and the short: iPhone game creators Mobigame — the French studio behind retro-future cubist platformer Edge have been locked in an ongoing battle with one Tim Langdell, trademark owner of the word ‘Edge’ since his early 80s home computer publishing house Edge Games was in operation, who has since been vociferously defending the mark at all opportunities, when clear common sense would dictate that there’d be laughably little dilution with his sparse output since the days of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.
A short list of the companies that have apparently settled with Langdell and licensed the name or otherwise stepped out of his way include UK magazine Edge, Namco — whose Soul Edge game would be released in the west as Soul Blade, 1997 Anthony Hopkins movie The Edge, Malibu comics character Edge and any Marvel comic with the word in the title… the list goes on, but out of all the heavy hitters that have conceded, Langdell has finally met his angriest and noisiest match in the one place he probably least expected it: the indie game community. (more…)
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
LISTEN: KONAMI’S ARCADE POWER ON SELF TEST THEME, MORNING MUSIC
Also wonderfully spotted by Tiny Cartridge, this little bit of classic arcade musical trivia: a small number of Konami’s arcade machines operating on an obscure “bubble memory” hardware setup — which literally required warming up to get to fully functional — also feature this little minuet known as “Morning Music” to accompany the slow start.
The tune’s gone on to be included in tribute in some of the company’s later music games like KeyboardMania, but, as Cartridge points out, the net effect of starting up a number of the machines every morning, must have been daily cacophonous hell for arcade operators.
See more posts about: Arcade, Listen, Music, Offworld Originals
GIMME INDIE GAME: THE SILHOUETTED SLAPSTICK OF LITTLE WHEEL
The interesting thing about Little Wheel — the latest Flash game from heretofore essentially unknown Slovakian team OneClickDog — is just how fervent the studio is about making sure you finish their game.
Put off from point and click adventures for their 2×2 pixel hot-spot hunts? OneClickDog’s happy to encircle every possible interactive point in glowing grey. Even with that, not sure which order to click things in? Have a peek at the upper right of the screen, where they’ve got a button marked WALKTHROUGH.
But that’s not to say that there’s that much challenge there for a seasoned adventure vet, and even that’s not to say that the game is an out and out breeze.
What the game is is probably the most easily accessible and effortlessly charming little adventure since we last left off with Windosill: all drawn out in silhouette, 10,000 years after a power generator failure knocked out an entire planet of worker drones, your little accidentally awoken bot makes his way through a handful of screens to restore order.
And the best part of Little Wheel? It’s that for a hero, and even in the short amount of time it takes, he manages to make a hell of a mess along the way in cute slapstick fashion. Give the game 20 minutes of your day: that’s about all it asks, and it gives a lot back in return.
Little Wheel [OneClickDog, who apparently, one day after the game premiered, have a new adventure on the verge of launching that I now anxiously await]
Previously:
See more posts about: Gimme Indie Game, Offworld Originals
