Spotted by Tom and even more wicked than ESPN’s Konami code web-hack that made the rounds earlier in the week: flickr user (and apparent Second Life enthusiast? Second Life employee) Torley has just discovered that his Bandcamp stats page holds a secret — a playable version of Defender overlaid on his traffic graph.
The best part, notes Tom: “the more popular your band pages, the harder Defender gets.”
A low-bit rainbow-pixellated bird — the same one, obviously, as flew in to alert me to hidden envelopes being discovered around San Fransisco during GDC — has again dropped in with this new image, whispered something unintelligible about the next volume in Gaijin Games’ Bit.Trip series, touched a single wing-feather to the side of its beak, and flown off without a trace.
His appearance has reminded me, too, that I’ve still yet to make it through even the first challenge of the original Beat — so much for worries that the game would be all-show and no-play — though I did watch with no small amount of stupefied wonder as Flashbang’s Ben Ruiz quietly showed the rest of a small GDC party up by making his way through on his first attempt.
He remained stoic throughout: the only sign of weakness was a single bead of sweat slowly tracing a line down his forehead.
Every new video weakens my resolve: Darius Kazemi has uploaded new video of his previously mentioned MeggySynth, only now, he’s combined it with Josh Brandt’s sequencer MeggySeq for a standalone programmable/freestyle device.
More videos are available via his flickr, including a few of Everyday Shooter creator Jon Mak making his own Meggy music.
And now, as with their local collaboration with culture mag Vice, Media Molecule (actually, Sony Europe) gives us another reason to wish we were in the UK: every “every man, woman and child of the UK and Ireland” are due to receive a free woolen Sackboy, simply for subscribing to the recently established official LittleBigPlanet UK YouTube channel.
After subscribing, sending your address to Sony either via Youtube or an email to littlebigplanet@scee.net will net you the toy, which I’m presuming is the mini-knit keychain version launched in Japan shortly after the game, pictured above.
Rest of the world: time to ring up your UK friends, then, or work feverishly and jealously on a custom knit of your own.
I don’t often make much ado of the press swag that filters its way into the Offworld offices (though I can say that drinking my morning joe out of a Minotaur China Shop mug regularly makes my day [and I’ve yet to smash it in clumsy rage]), but sometimes there comes an object too good to not capture for posterity.
Case in point, the contents of today’s golden padded envelope: a Space Invaders Extreme print signed by original series creator Tomohiro Nishikado, to mark the occasion of next week’s downloadable release, courtesy Taito and console-version developer Backbone.
My wrist-tattoo invaders glowed on opening the package, as if they’d been waiting their entire lives to be reunited.
In other games-related custom news, toycutter has spotted new work by ruben1553 (he of the excellent actually-frozen Frozen Caveman that made the rounds last year), including more than a handful of BioShock, Zelda, Starfox and Castle Crashers Munnys that make up for in inspired character choices what they might lack in subtle brushwork.
I suppose adjusted for local time it might be passed already, but it’s never too late to head over to indie studio Nicalis’s blog to leave birthday greetings for Daisuke ‘Pixel’ Amaya — the one man creator of long-time freeware favorite Cave Story.
Nicalis is, of course, the developer tasked with finally making the game commercially viable (after a number of false starts and rumored retail releases for the DS and PSP) by bringing it to Nintendo’s WiiWare service, alongside their own original previously mentionedNight Game.
And the best reason to head over regardless: to see the custom art gift for Pixel (above right) created by Adam Saltsman (who himself is helping put together the WiiWare port) in its wonderful full resolution.
If you haven’t yet exposed yourself to Cave Story, head over to MiraiGamer’s tribute site, where you can find it available for a wide range of platforms (the unofficial PSP port comes highly recommended).
