I did my damndest to capture Noby Noby GIRL’s triumphant march to Mars via in-game video (you only get the one chance to see the victory-wrap), but my attempts were stymied by the video capability not going live until you actually exit your house.
Accept, then, this commemorative photo above as proof of Noby‘s ongoing popularity, even if Takahashi and co. are pulling out every trick in the book to lessen the dead time between planets, from the upcoming iPhone version, to the SynchroBOY trick which lets single players control multiple boys at a time, to the recent Lucky Week promotion, which saw submitted lengths randomly given various multipliers, which happened to be the final straw that pushed GIRL to her goal.
So what’s life actually like on the red planet? Much the same, so far, though with the addition of new martian inhabitants, obviously, and, more intriguingly, the super-sized royalty unlocked when we reached the moon now making the rounds (on my back, as above).
I wolfram’d (are we allowed to say that yet?) the distance from Mars to Jupiter, GIRL’s next step, which gave me an AU distance over double that from Earth to Mars, meaning, I suppose, that we should expect — barring more of Namco’s divine intervention — at least another 6-7 months before we see the Jovian giant even starting to come into view.
With Namco’s new still-buzzing import oddity Muscle March having just been released to WiiWare in Japan, the first full gameplay video has just been ripped from Nico Nico Douga to YouTube, shown above.
It’s basically exactly what you were expecting (and, with the later-stage posing fakeouts, actually looks fairly challenging), and is all the more glorious for it.
I’m reporting this one straight down the middle: Rockstar have sent word that the second Xbox 360 exclusive episode will shift Liberty City’s perspective from bikers (as with the original Lost and the Damned episode) to balladeers, with the “fall” release of The Ballad of Gay Tony.
Rockstar say this episode will see players take the role of “Luis Lopez, part-time hoodlum and full-time assistant to legendary nightclub impresario Tony Prince (aka ‘Gay Tony’),” taking on a “struggle with the competing loyalties of family and friends, and with the uncertainty about who is real and who is fake in a world in which everyone has a price.”
As a side note, for the the ragtag handful of people that don’t already own the original Grand Theft Auto, both episodes will be combined on a retail disc at release called Episodes from Liberty City, which won’t require the original game to complete.
Oft-mentioned Earthbound/Mother merchandising clearinghouse Fangamer — the company behind the fantastic fan-made Mother 3 guidebook — has just made a surprising announcement: they’ve switched, erm, gears, and added a new game to their merch lineup, Metal Gear Solid.
And, unsurprisingly, it shows all the same attention to detail and phenomenal quality as their Mother merch: currently up for pre-order is an insignia T-shirt for the Big Boss led Les Enfants Terribles project, a shoulderbag emblazoned with a FOXHOUND patch, and a button set of Shadow Moses, Cyborg Ninja, etc. designs.
Head over to their Metal Gear subsite for more information on everything, and to place your pre-order before June 6th and secure one of their custom-stamped dog tags.
Above, the first look at his latest prototype, about which nothing is known, and from which there’s not much to glean, other than to notice that his ‘creatures’ are all being procedurally generated from a common set of facial and bodily elements.
With its previously mentioned naming contest now concluded, Q-games — creator of the PS3 downloadable series Pixel Junk — has officially donned its latest fluid mechanics/subterranean rescue game, simply, PixelJunk Shooter, from a body of entries that also included Depths, Atlantis, Caves, Blaster, and S.O.S.
Also unveiled, the game’s logo above, which captures quite nicely the shifting interplay between its water, fire, and rock elements. See the last Offworld entry on the game for the first full trailer.
NYC Resistor collaborator Kelly Farrell shows off her latest project: a gazing-ball trackball controller that plays Katamari Damacy the way we should have realized it was meant to be played all along.
How does it work? Kelly explains:
It uses an optical mouse to track the ball. I gathered up some cheap PS2 controllers, ripped out the potentiometers on the analog sticks, and replaced it with a digital potentiometer and an arduino. The arduino takes signals from a PS/2 mouse and adjusts the potentiometer accordingly…
Originally I wanted to use one of those giant yoga balls, to really get the scale. But it turns out those don’t roll very well on ball bearings. Luckily Adam had one of those mirror balls folks put in their gardens. Or at least I assume they do, no one I know has a big enough yard to put lawn ornaments in.
Scraping up the last of the long-weekend news, the trailer for Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 followup, Modern Warfare 2. A game so flagrantly big-budget, realistically modeled, and combat-driven may seem an odd fit for the usual Offworld fare, but I’ll let you in on a secret: Call of Duty 4 was one of the smartest games I played continually throughout 2008, and my vote for (no joke) MMO of the year.
Granted, its single player game didn’t quite ring with emotional impact for me as it seemed to do for most (I’d already experienced a more lo-fi version of its desperate, crawling climax a year before in undersung PS2 gem Raw Danger), but the rank-rising, challenge-based and XP driven multiplayer game was the first online shooters since the earliest days of Half Life that would hook me so completely, a crown only stolen by Left 4 Dead.
What we don’t get above, unfortunately, is any further details on how that half of the game will have evolved, but it’s what I’m anticipating more than any other aspect.
