Continuing Offworld’s quest to keep you perpetually well clothed: after drip-feeding new designs for the past several months, Japan’s Uniqlo has decided to blow-out the rest of its forthcoming officially licensed games T-shirt designs, showing off every card in its hands for the next several months.
Above you can see a few of the best: Parappa‘s adorable canine mug and the quasi-metal inspired Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins shirt (along with a bonus LittleBigPlanet ring-tee), and below, a quick-dump of all the rest of the assorted goods.
Approaching the subject from two backgrounds (Drzaic’s from her thesis on secrets and glitches in games, and Rauch on morality in games), the two have created a mashup chapter called “Slave Morality and Master Swords,” and, while I haven’t seen the piece itself, I did enjoy this quote from Drzaic (along with the post as a whole):
Peter and I both agree that the game series of Zelda is not, narratively speaking, a morass of intriguing philosophical questions. Every Zelda game has the same plot and In the Zelda world morality is fully black and white, good and evil. While replaying the same plot might sound boring, it isn’t. Each game looks different, feels different, and behaves differently. Players keep coming back because the play itself is the attraction.]
The act of play is where the philosophical questions become interesting. As you work your way through the game world you can subvert the seriousness, the story, and the philosophy itself through your play. In this way, Zelda is a good case study for how philosophical questions can function within a videogame; our book explores the experience of the player vs. the reality of the game…
Defying the laws of a game is an illicit pleasure. In the case of [a glitch in Ocarina letting players fly] meant being able to explore the space in a new way and see incomplete construction and the game world’s edge. The experience of flying in Zelda was like gaining access to the Disneyland Magic Kingdom underbelly or peeking behind the stage of a play. In flying through the air and playing with glitches you get to see things that are not meant for your eyes. It destroys the fiction but it also gives you, as a player, great freedom and mastery over the space.
Head over to Jenkins’ Confessions of an Aca/Fan blog for the full interview.
Via Dotter Dotter, the blog from 3D pixelcrafter Tibori Design, previously mentioned for his Super Mario dioramas: a high-concept Mario pen Nintendo would do well to consider producing.
Japan’s finest hipster retro/game culture store Meteor has announced via its blog that its Famicase art exhibit will be returning to the shop from May 2nd through the 31st.
What’s Famicase? A curated selection of original 8-bit Nintendo cartridges given new labels by the local finest design houses and illustrators, each imagining games never created.
Why should we care when it’s likely that the great majority of us won’t be able to make it in to see the show? Because if this year comes even half as close to the highlights of their 2008 show (my three favorites below), we’re in for a visual treat, regardless.
With Left 4 Dead‘s first free DLC pack to touch down as soon as next week, Valve have finally let loose precisely what its new “Survival” mode will amount to, and, in typical Valve style, they’ve done it with a thoughtful, chart-enhanced look behind its design.
As it turns out, it will be as simple as requiring a team to survive a fairly constant onslaught of infected as intense as the campaign mode’s final moments — and will chart via leaderboards the tighest-knit groups around the world — but, the team found, even an onslaught needs to be properly tuned.
Says Valve:
Given the extreme pace of Survival Mode, the number of zombies killed in a single round often outnumbers an entire campaign. Even optimizing towards using pistols to eliminate common hordes, ammunition usually becomes an issue at some point. As ammo piles provide a unique infinite resupply for players, they tend to be in relatively less defensible positions in the Survival arenas. This means making an all important ammo run is rarely a safe proposition and requires good teamwork and planning. Timing your resources correctly to be able to make a run when necessary can make or break a team. The perfect pipebomb or well placed molotov can mean the difference between a cakewalk and catastrophe.
The Hospital Elevator, for example, might seem like an easy Crescendo Event to conquer. Hit the elevator button and holdout until the doors open for a quick escape. In Survival Mode, however, the area begins locked down. Areas open as the hordes come in, breaking down the doors to reach the survivors. In each room there are additional caches of vital pills, pipes, and Molotovs. By moving from location to location, using up the plentiful supplies as needed, a team can maximize their time in a game where the elevator never arrives to offer escape. In other maps, items may be less plentiful and require careful planning on their usage. Managing one’s inventory and resources works hand-in-hand with teamwork in Survival Mode.
Heads up Vancouver, lessons offered if not from the master, then at least from “someone who has played numerous variations of Tetris on a number of different platforms and consoles, in the relative comfort of his own home.”
What you get:
Tetris Fundamentals – 90 minutes $30.00
After completing Tetris Fundamentals, you will have:
• the ability to identify and maneuver all 7 Tetriminoes, as well as their major uses
• an understanding of how to achieve back to back Tetrises
• learned to optimize your use of basic features and techniques such as hard drops and wall kicks, as well as making the most out of holds and block preview (these features may not be native to all versions of Tetris)
• watched me play Tetris for 45 minutes
• gained the confidence to play Tetris by yourself or against friends, strangers, and family members
The two hour intermediate course, offered at a variable rate of $40-55, includes “all of the modules covered in Tetris Fundamentals but also includes beer, wine or liquor. You will challenge yourself by applying the skills you’ve learned while growing increasingly intoxicated and playing against someone who is similarly drunk.”
The students meet the master: Swedish game music coverband Power Play do a live performance of composer Hip Tanaka‘s original Metroid music, live at Tokyo’s 8bit Cafe.
There’s tons more Power Play to be had around YouTube, primarily via user apansonsyrke: see also, their Super Mario Bros 2 and RöjMedley of Konami’s Goonies II alongside MegaMan boss music.
Organizers of the Nottingham, UK-based games festival GameCity have announced that the festivities will continue for their fourth year this October 27-31st, and will be, they say, “very different from other videogame events [including GameCity 3]”.
Even more importantly, in a subsequent update, shortly thereafter, the GameCity crew have announced that all of the formal sessions/events at this newly dubbed ‘GameCity Squared’ — which in previous years were open to the public but commanded individual ticket prices — will now be free of charge.
While I unfortunately wasn’t able to make it to the 2008 GameCity, I did spent the week in Nottingham in 2007, and this is what made it near-instantly my favorite games event:
* Public access: the foundatational principle of GameCity is that, unlike most other worldwide events (bar Tokyo Game Show and, now, E4All), it’s a chance for the wider public to interface with game developers themselves. Case in point:
* In 2007, Lego Star Wars producer Jon Smith took to the stage to reveal the Wii version of Star Wars for the first time, to a crowd of pre-teens [read: the game’s actual target audience], where he was able to have a dialogue with the crowd (and was quickly shown up on Star Wars trivia by the precocious youth). This doesn’t normally happen.
* 2007 was also the year that Keita Takahashi also showed off Noby Noby Boy for the first time (above), as previously mentioned (and videoed) in my earlier post on the game.
* 2008 was the year that the festival attempted (and managed) to assembled the largest public congregation of zombies [the final tally came in at over 1200], where they were serenaded by Jonathan Coulton (above).
That’s a short list of a lot of fantastic things that happen yearly, and, long story a little bit shorter: you want to be there this year, and I do too.
Why does that matter? Apart from the inherent benefits of socializing the game (and seeing where you actually stand against your friends), the game’s third “sequence” mode — which drops an identical pattern of discs each game for every player — now finally makes sense when you can track your score against the world.
If you haven’t yet picked up the game (and I don’t actually say this this urgently about many games, especially on the iPhone) — do not miss out on this one, it truly is one of the platform’s finest.
And! As a side note, flipping through its menus has also brought to my attention that the composer of the game’s fantastic Reich-ian soundtrack loops, Steve Horelick, has just released an EP of music from the game via his website. Even more oddly, that has also just brought to my attention that he’s the composer behind the original Reading Rainbow TV theme, which is my mind blown, just a touch.
