Indie game dev rock star finery, spotted by negativegamer at Manchester’s Videogame Nation museum exhibit [via GoNintendo].
See more posts about: Darwinia, Introversion, Offworld Originals, One Shot
There’s definitely a perpetual hint of Metal Gear in the air lately: after all the official and custom vinyl creations, pre-orders are opening around the net for Medicom’s latest official Snake toy, this super-stylized Zombie-painted Naked Snake figure from Metal Gear Solid 3, due for release this fall. Find it variously here.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Toys
In what he describes as the first ever simultaneous game release on both the Atari 2600 and iPhone, developer, author and researcher Ian Bogost (the producer behind the previously mentioned airport security game Jetset) has released Guru Meditation to the App Store, a portable version of his “zen meditation game.”
The background: the game was originally developed for an obscure ‘Joyboard’ peripheral for the Atari 2600 — the retro-tech equivalent of the Wii’s Balance Board — which, instead of using the controller for an action game, required the player to sit as still as possible on the board. Remain motionless and your guru score rises, move a muscle and you crash back to the ground and start again.
The iPhone version of the game does precisely the same, only requires the player to hold the device in both hands, and uses the mic as well: in this version, you have to remain silent as well as motionless.
It’s a cute and clever idea for sure, but it is curiously effective to concentrate as hard as you can to remain still, and, Bogost notes, takes the one device that excels at distraction — with email, texts, twitter, and calls — and turns it into the precise opposite.
Learn more about the idea behind the game — and its limited edition Atari 2600 equivalent, and find the game on the App Store here.
Guru Meditation — a medititation game for Atari VCS and iPhone [Ian Bogost, iTunes link]
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Over on the regularly wonderful BLDGBLOG, our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol writes on the how designers architect the forms of “evil” in games from rote gothic constructions to cases where the environment is the enemy itself. Says Rossignol:
I suspect… the ways in which game designers architecturally represent evil are becoming too much a part of our everyday imaginative discourse to remain affecting. They’ve begun to lose their danger. The connection with the inhumanity that makes the enemy so thrilling has started to fade via over-familiarity.
Where the evil lair becomes a little more interesting is when its nature is ambiguous – but nevertheless disturbing. Half-Life 2’s Citadel is an example of this. The brutal gunmetal skyscraper that looms over a nameless Eastern European city, below, appears deeply threatening. But, like everything else in the Half-Life 2 universe, it is unexplained. It does not seem inherently evil. The structure moves and groans; it is a machine of some kind. It is something constructed and mechanical, rather than the clear manifestation or emanation of an evil force. The Citadel is not a fire-rimmed portal to hell, nor a windswept ruin. Nor is it a volcano base. It could even be somehow utilitarian. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the real Moscow’s own television tower.
It is, perhaps, even incidental to the scourge that Half-Life’s denizens face: alien infrastructure. It is only later, as the plot uncoils the inner architecture of the Citadel, that you come to realise that it is the enemy: the lair of an alien force that must, ultimately, be destroyed.
Click through for much more.
Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds [BLDGBLOG]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
One of the biggest games of this summer takes on one of the biggest films: a Sims 3 powered homage to Star Trek. It’s an epic trailer with green alien sex, dying red shirts, fight scenes, and dramatic Simlish voiceovers.
If even half of the tools used to create this video will be available to end-users when The Sims 3 is released next month, then you can bet on LittleBigPlanet levels of user-created content. This could be huge.
Return of the Trek Guys, The Sims 3 Parody [YouTube]
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Here’s a faux-retro game styled cinema spot for Toyota’s Yaris by Toronto based Electric Company. This isn’t the first time Toyota has gone after the gamer demographic, having released the first free advergame to grace Xbox Live, Yaris, back in 2007.
It must be a lucrative demographic, since it calls to mind last year’s Spy Hunter inspired commercial from now-defunct Pontiac, for which there is a less seen Making Of video. The “Making Of” is notable for showing that an actual playable Spy Hunter simulator was built just for the ad.
Toyota Yaris [Electric Company]
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The most frustrating demonstration video you might ever watch is still worth seeing for the first footage of Id/EA’s Wolfenstein RPG iPhone port: the turn-based version of the PC classic that we’ve also recently officially learned will be headed to Xbox Live Arcade.
Though the DS version of Id’s Orcs & Elves is as close as I’ve come to the studio’s RPG engine (which was also used for the mobile’s Doom RPG), I’m just going to go ahead and assume for now that in the right hands, it’s not quite so wildly ineffective.
Wolfenstein RPG [Id/EA, via TA]
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The limited edition of 10 sold out three days later, but it’s not too late to at least gawk at Rohby’s custom Metal Gear vinyl, and hold your breath for the next three in his tribute series to the game, starting with Sons of Liberty‘s Russian Soldiers. See more of his work (including a wicked Soundwave Decepticon Mad-L) via his Flickr and his bloHg [via toycutter].
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
As I’ve mentioned several times before (of note, in the turn of the year’s Offworld 20 list), Sony’s google-maps-enhanced top down superhero rescue game The Last Guy is one of the PlayStation 3’s overlooked downloadable gems.
And just when I thought all hope would be lost at ever seeing an expansion to the game, andriasang brings news that not only will it be getting a full Blu-ray retail release in Japan, along with three new levels, previous purchasers of the downloadable version will also be getting a $5 add-on pack that includes those levels alongside a patch for now-requisite Trophys and “other features.”
No word on where on earth the new levels will take us, but either way — if you haven’t already — do yourself a favor and add it to your ‘something for the weekend’ list in anticipation.
The Last Guy [PlayStation, Sony Japan]
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Videogames are brilliant, aren’t they? Namco brings a port of its original arcade game Muscle March to WiiWare in Japan on May 26th. The premise? If it’s not abundantly clear above: after a pro football player steals the all-important protein powder, it’s up to March‘s rippled stars to strike the pose of the wall-smasher in front of you to keep the march moving and bring the thief to justice.
The downside: there but for the grace of Namco do we ever see this leave Japan, and the various regions’ WiiWare channels are hard-locked to each piece of hardware. Namco, if anyone’s reading: of course we do want this. It worked for Katamari, right? And even partners-in-fitness Cho Aniki earned itself a Virtual Console release. Let’s see what we can do.
Muscle March [Namco, thanks to Kotaku for the original video]
See more posts about: Muscle March, Offworld Originals
