Now this is more like it: though the video included with Keita Takahashi’s last missive to the official PlayStation Blog didn’t show much of what to expect from the four-player addition to Noby Noby Boy, the latest official Namco video has that and much more.
The update, which according to the official site is set to go live April 28th, will bring a number of changes to the game, including new hairstyles for BOY’s house (!), new music (as promised), a new “thinking pose of the bird” (that detects your online status), and.. well, the aptly named “fart boy.” I’m presuming that’s what’s happening at 0:25-0:29ish of the video above.
This reconstructed image shows off all the new updates: ‘fart boy’ at lower left, house-hair in the middle, and a list of new instruments at lower-right, including congas, guitars, and marimbas.
o–o home [Namco]
One last look this morning at a wonderful-thing-we-can’t-really-have: Capcom’s venerable Monster Hunter series may have never hit the West as it did in the East, but there it’s managed to spawn its own subculture of inspired design.
Case in point, design group Doarat‘s retro-clash promotional T-shirt for the third iteration of Capcom’s PSP version, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (coming to the U.S. as Monster Hunter Freedom Unite in June), as spotted on Yahoo Japan’s auction site.
My favorite, though, remains the ‘Melaleu’ Felyne & crosspaws shirt at right, only spotted up for bid once, and now long out of print at places like CDJapan.
Monster Hunter home [Capcom]
Developer Gordon ‘differentcloth‘ Midwood covers all bases and describes his debut iPhone game lilt line as a “retro rhythm racing beat ’em up action game with a dubstep flavour.”
I can only add a touch of context and place it somewhere between the Game Boy Advance’s bit Generations game Dotstream and a neon-razor take on the ubiquitous genre of cave/helicopter web-games.
Created in collaboration with London dubstep duo 16bit — and looking precisely like the kind of retro-future game laser-targeted to the Offworld audience — lilt line will include ten levels, each based on a unique 16bit song.
Differentcloth says the game was submitted to Apple nearly a week ago, and should be coming very soon to an App Store near you, and as Midwood mentions in the comments below, the “turn-based flight simulation digital pet rhythm racing action” game is now available on the App Store.
liltline home [differentcloth, App Store link, 16bit MySpace, via Renaud Bédard]
I knew I shouldn’t have waited too long: earlier in the weekend I spotted this pitch-perfect custom via Vinylpulse, in which UK artist Okkle took one of my favorite toys released this year — Peskimo’s Monster Burp — and turned it into a tribute to Taito’s Bubble Bobble with little Bub blowing a massive Beluga-bubble.
After hemming and hawing all weekend about whether to drop the £85 on it, I check again this morning and it is, of course, long gone. But we can still gawp at its craftsmanship, I suppose, and the good news is that it’s not too late to get the Peskimo original and attempt the conversion yourself.
Okkles Custom Monster Burp Bubblun of Bubble Bobble [Vinyl Pulse]
As mentioned before, a sneak peek at Petri Purho’s desktop background during this year’s Indie Games Summit showed the picture at right of head-spinningly prolific indie dev Cactus, and considering his last work in progress update covered some eight games — none of which were at all related to front-burner larger projects like Brain-Damaged Toon Underworld and compilation game Mondo Nation or those seen in his last WIP trailer video — the photo suddenly feels slightly less parodic.
It’s heartening to see, then, that at least one of those games from the last round has carried through to a month and a half later, as Cactus shows off three sets of images from the games he’s currently turning his attention to.
None of the games are yet named, but between the three — which cover themes as wide ranging as the only vaguely misogynistic looking “game about killing each other” and the “game about killing airplanes” (the one seen last month as well) — it’s the dream-haze galactic geometry of the third “game about killing everything you love” that’s got me the most intrigued.
Whether any of the three eventually see the light of day is anyone’s guess, but in the meantime, you’ve got your work cut out for you finishing all of his prior games, if you haven’t already — start with the Cactus Arcade compilation for the fastest path into his special blend of inspired madness.
Screens from upcoming games [Cactus Squid blog, Cactus’ home site]
After stepping through the mind-melting time-warps of GDC’s Experimental Gameplay darling Achron and Flashbang’s similarly looped Time Donkey prototype, you might be ready to get your head around the latest Experimental Gameplay entry to be publicly revealed.
Also in development by Time Donkey designer Steve Swink and Scott Anderson — and playing somewhat like Tyler Glaiel’s Closure in reverse — Shadow Physics sees you controlling a character locked on a flat 2D shadow plane while you simultaneously manipulate a light source to cast shadow platforms necessary to proceed.
As you can hear in the video, the demo’s a rough cut with ideas still not implemented, including variable light brightness that can wash out shadows in certain areas to create gaps in platforms, and colored lights for colored shadows, each with unique properties.
This early on there’s no set date or target platform, but Anderson says the game will be in development for at least another year.
Experimental game: Shadow Physics [YouTube, via Chroma Coders]
Your new unofficial soundtrack for Offworld browsing: Mnemosyne’s 8bit FM, streaming “nerdcore, chiptunes, soundtracks, remixes & more.”
The link comes via Mike Nowak, who’s just launched his own very valuable new tumblr blog dedicated solely to ‘nerd music’, including a few finds previously spotted here.
8bit FM [Mnemosyne, Nerd Music tumblr]
I don’t know about the weather where you are, but where I am, spring really has taken hold, and in the past week or two given me the most tantalizing glimpse of summer just around the corner; it’s been shirt-sleeve weather all week. How apt, then, that the recent release of OutRun Online Arcade coincided almost perfectly with the start of a hot spell.
OutRun is summer gaming personified: taught, arcade racing, with a blazing blue sky, an open road, a girl at your side, and heady salsa rhythms blaring from the stereo. Although OutRun saw release in 1986, it’s really 2003’s OutRun 2 that my heart belongs to, with its rolling roads, spectacular scenery, and thumping Richard Jacques re-workings of the classic OutRun score. Sumo Digital’s OutRun Online Arcade is an HD reworking of OutRun 2 SP, the arcade follow-up to OutRun 2. Sumo were responsible for both the original Xbox OutRun 2 port, as well as the majestic OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast – spectacular on a powerful PC, and still one of the few games to let you share saves between a PS2 and PSP.
OutRun‘s gameplay has barely been altered in 23 years: you race your Ferrari through a forking map of stages, dodging traffic and other racers, left turns taking you to easier stages, right turns to more challenging. The end of each stage extends your time; if you’re good, you’ll make it to one of the five goals. And that’s it: it’s a pure Arcade racer, better as time-attack than competitive. What the 2003 sequel – and subsequent iterations – add to this a fabulous drift model.
When it comes to drifting, OutRun is not quite Ridge Racer: drifting is not always the best solution to every corner, but it is a spectacular one, and one that your female passenger always seems to enjoy. The careful balancing of drift with conventional cornering, sliding the car from lock to lock through hairpins, and slipstreaming through traffic to make ever-tighter deadlines is a real challenge, and there’s a lot of pleasure to be gained from shaving second after second off your times.
A few notes for first-time OutRunners; the trial version is a bit crippled, as it doesn’t extend time after checkpoints, meaning it’s quite hard to envisage what full-on time attack looks like. By default, the game is set to VERY EASY and has over-sensitive handling – you can fix this in the options menu, and you should find Normal difficulty offers a fair bit of a challenge. And, whilst it’s a remarkably impressive game squeezed into Live Arcade’s 350mb cap, a lot of the sound has been heavily compressed – which is, sadly, most noticeable on the marvellous soundtrack. It should sound a little better than that, honest.
But: give it a chance and it will slowly win your heart. The stage design never ceases to charm; the first time you speed past its waterfall or Easter-Island-inspired statues at 300kmh, you can’t help but grin. There’s no time to stop and take pictures, because there’s racing to be done; you’ll just have to come past this spot again. Whenever it’s grey and wet outside, you’ll know it’s always a Mediterranean summmer in OutRun land, and five stages should do as a cure for any Seasonal Affective Disorder.
OutRun Online Arcade is polished, joyous, arcade fun, and the perfect game to get you in the mood for a spring weekend in the sun. That’s what I’ll be doing with some of my weekend (along with the ever present levelling in Feralas); what are you going to be up to, Offworlders?
[OutRun Online Arcade is available on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade, right now]
