Today’s the day you’ve long been anticipating/dreading: Dreamlore/Mezmer’s PC arcade/real-time-strategy game Stalin Vs. Martians has officially touched down — with tongue firmly in dictatorial cheek — on various download services like GamersGate, Impulse, Direct2Drive and Steam and is awaiting further orders.
I’ve picked up my copy but haven’t yet had a chance to install: in the meantime, see the final blast of high music-video weirdness with the above, Firelake’s “S.T.A.L.I.N”.
Stalin vs. Martians home [Dreamlore, Mezmer’s community site]
The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world…
It’s perhaps inevitable for me – a career nerd whose entire existence is awash in aspects of gaming – that an interest in JG Ballard’s prophetic, psychological fiction would feed into how I thought about my chosen subject. The same seems true of anyone who reads the author with any kind of attention.
The tributes following his death last week come not only from writers, but from architects, musicians, artists, film-directors, and technologists. They each, through their own lenses, see him as not simply a science fiction writer, but as a philosopher. “Picturing the psychology of the future is what it’s all been about,” said Ballard.
He was a man who did not use computer – the novels emerged longhand from a typewriter – and yet Ballard’s dissection of technology and the modern world it has fostered was remarkably precise. His careful, almost technical, writing seemed to pinpoint contemporary reality even when he wrote about drowned, jungled cities, or terrorist cults in suburban English settings.
He analysed and exploded the celebrity-obsessed media culture long before it hit its zenith, with The Atrocity Exhibition in 1970, and spent much of his career reimagining the environmental disasters that face us, with The Drought, The Drowned World, and The Terminal Beach.
But it was the books which looked at consumerism, of the work-leisure-work culture of the early 21st century, and the observations about the banality of our comfortable lives, that really struck me. They contain ideas that now turn up in my games writing without me even consciously writing them down. (more…)
I can’t have been the only one who played d_of_i‘s original sand games (collected here alongside all its various spinoffs) and thought that someday, eventually, someone could make an extremely compelling game out of the experience.
As it turns out: that’d be Q-games, who have finally revealed the full trailer to their recently teased and re-teased fourth PixelJunk game, still known as 1-4. As you can see above, the game takes everything engrossing about manipulating realistically modeled particle/fluid mechanics and combines it with subterranean rescue, Lunar Lander/Dropship-esque thrust physics and 360 degree shooting.
In further viral efforts, Q-games has also left the name of this game up to the players: they’re currently holding a naming contest at the game’s official site, with T-shirts for the winner and five runners up. Head over there for more artwork and details, and to submit your own entry.
PixelJunk™ 1-4 Naming Contest [Q-games]
Though I mention it here far less than I should, Capcom’s Phoenix Wright remains one of my favorite franchises spawned (in the West, anyway) by the DS. Even with the occassionally overly-rigid logical path the game forces you to traverse, over its various volumes it’s had its share of hot-flash brilliance in both character and dialogue, and I don’t think there’s anyone who could slight it for giving videogames’ legacy an outlet for courtroom drama.
That’s why, then, I’m happy to see confirmation coming from the previously mentioned Captivate conference that its next spin-off sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, confirmed for the U.S.
The game turns the tables on the usual defense attorney setup and sees Wright’s long-time rival working his prosecutorial duties, and key to this iteration is a “logic” mode that requires players to take found clues and literally connect pieces of information to infer new conclusions — a mind-play system that hasn’t really been attempted since Raw Danger‘s amnesiac character puzzle-pieced his memory back in place.
Capcom’s got more information on Edgeworth via its community site.
Captivate09: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth [Capcom-Unity]
Edmund McMillen — creator of forthcoming WiiWare platformer Super Meat Boy — has been teasing for some time that some twelve odd characters of various other indie game renown will be joining the titular Meat Boy for the multiplayer sections of the game.
Now, via his meat blog, McMillen has officially announced the first with news that Tim, star of Xbox 360/PC puzzler hit Braid will be joining the game — not quite so surprising in that Tim’s actually a character originally designed by McMillen and visually updated by later Braid artist David Hellman.
Still, the cameo appearance and promise of more to come has me more excited than ever for the indie-game-community/jam vibe direction the game is taking.
TIM! [Super Meat boy!]
My only explanation is that they were unhidden hours after I originally posted: TinyCartridge notes that a BlipFest 2007 video of Tree Wave every bit as gorgeously shot as the rest of the Blip videos I recently linked is currently up for viewing.
The song in the video is ‘May Banners’, another off the same Cabana EP as their previously linked ‘Sleep’.
Order the Cabana EP via AtariAge here, or download the abridged version via archive.org here, and order the 2-disc 2 Player Productions’ BlipFest 2007 DVD here.
Tree Wave home [qotile]
I see my recent subscription to Mike Nowak’s Nerd Music tumblr is already paying dividends, as he brings me Nine Inch Nails by way of Dr. Mario with this 16-bit version of The Perfect Drug.
Dr. Mario: The Perfect Drugs [Nerd Music]
Briefly fallen off the radar since its Japanese debut announcement during the week of GDC, Namco has just unleashed the first stateside trailer for hi-res PS3 Katamari Damacy remake, to be known here as Katamari Forever.
While it retains much of the same flavor as the Japanese premiere, it plays down the stellar lineup of soundtrack remixers and instead plays up the fact that the PS3 version will have selectable graphic filters in place to lend the old environments new freshness from cel-shading to woodgrain to colored pencil sketchiness.
Katamari Tribute home [katamaridamacy.jp]
Like the Offworld equivalent of a rock and roll supergroup, Heroes and Villains developer Infinite Ammo and Minotaur China Shop developer Flashbang have joined forces to bring a new version of the former’s planar-platformer Paper Moon to the latter’s online game service Blurst.
If Paper Moon sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it here many moons ago, when Infinite Ammo originally created a stereoscopic version of the game for Kokoromi’s Gamma3D last November.
Like Flashbang’s other Blurst output, though, the game has been updated to include “a combo-based scoring system, new levels, improved visuals, musical score, sound effects, greater replay value and online leaderboards/achievements/bonuses,” says Ammo.
The game is set to go live this Friday, the 1st — in the meantime, you can get a taste of the original via Gamma3D.
A Collaboration: Paper Moon Launching May 1st [Blurst, Infinite Ammo announcement]
Indie developer Farbs — creator of 8-bit videogame mashup Rom Check Fail and the later, similarly stylish Polychromatic Funk Monkey — quit his mainstream job as gameplay programmer at 2K Australia in fitting fashion: he created a playable take on Super Mario Bros that delivers the message far better than any scathing letter could.
Play the letter here, and see Farbs’ other creative output here.
A Message for 2K Australia [Farbs]
