With LUA scripting included in the latest version of NES emulator FCEUX, Rusted Logic blogger Xkeeper has woven some black magic into Super Mario that gives you full keyboard/mouse control over your surroundings.
No word on when they’ll let loose the scripts to the rest of us, but Xkeeper’s got more LUA hacks hanging out around YouTube.
Last September at the Austin Game Dev Conference, I broke a little tidbit of news that former Deus Ex: Invisible War designer and then newly-hired Arkane producer Harvey Smith was working on an iPhone game for the studio, which he described then simply as a “casual strategy” card game.
That game, as it turns out, was just announced by stateside Cooking Mama publisher Majesco (an unexpected pairing) as KarmaStar, the first move for both Arkane and Majesco onto the device.
Majesco describes the game as a multiplayer strategy game, but the goal, wonderfully, is focused on sharpening and developing personal traits — Health, Mind, People, Love, and Money — by working with or against your opponents. Says the publisher:
By taking small, calculated steps, players have the ability to build these traits, or live dangerously and see where a little deviousness can take them. Each game takes no more than 10 minutes, so players must waste no time in mapping out either a constructive or combative strategy and then pursuing their chosen path in order to achieve their life goals.
Due for release by the end of March, even if it ends up coming across as entirely casual/quirky/light board game fun (and it’s too soon to say based off the handful of screenshots released so far), I love the idea of a game predicated on personal/inter-relational conflict and growth: real, everyday stuff, as opposed to the usual manufactured conflicts.
Even for all its loony grinning spacemen — it seems like natural stuff from a designer who in all his recent developer sessions and extended interviews has dealt heavily with personal introspection and issues of identity in and through games (he’s certainly the only developer I’ve ever seen drop the name Judith Butler).
If you’ve never heard his name, a little introduction: Hong Kong artist Michael Lau is one of the progenitors of the urban/vinyl toy scene, having curated his line of Gardeners for over a decade now, and remains one of the scene’s most original and influential artists.
His yearly CSBOOTH exhibit at his personal HK gallery always ends up spawning at least one completely wicked design (see: CSBOOTH15’s 2001: A Space Odyssey crossover fig), and it’s looking like CSBOOTH16 is going to be no exception.
The flier at above right has recently been making the rounds, showing an unmistakably Metal Gear-ish motif, followed by that pixelated preview which, shrunk down (via crazytoyz), is starting to snap into focus as what would appear to be one of his miniature Square figures in Snake’s signature Metal Gear Solid 3 alligator-mask.
That’s all we’ve got to go on for now, but CSBOOTH16 will open a week from Saturday, and all will be revealed.
Slightly ashamed to admit this: I don’t know if it was the excessive bloom of the earlier video footage of Tarsier‘s PS3 remake of Rag Doll Kung Fu (created by Mark Healey just prior to co-founding Media Molecule), but it was only just now that I realized how perfectly plastic each of its fighters are.
Or, really, how perfectly it’s evolved from the paper-cut manual-drag look and feel of the original to this action-man scheme which, I’m guessing from the video, combines a hint of the digital puppetry of LittleBigPlanet‘s Sackboy with triggers mapped unleashing your articulated kung-fu-grip attacks.
I’m also happy to see that customization’s made it back in, even if to a lesser degree than the PC’s draw-your-own cutout skins: look quickly enough and you’ll see that even a fully jointed version of Sackboy has made it in.
This one might seem to fall slightly out of Offworld’s purview, but PlayPower’s Daniel Rehn is a new friend of the site, and they’re actually doing something both a.) wonderful and humanitarian and b.) closer to home than you’d think.
The PlayPower organization‘s mission is to turn cheap, ubiquitous 8-bit ‘TV computers’ (read: NES/Famicom clones) into ~$10 games-enabled learning devices for the developing world (versus manufacturing custom hardware, as with the OLPC), and they’re enlisting a lot of familiar names to help kickstart the program.
As you can see, then, all of the PlayPower crew have solid games-related backgrounds which they’re using to giving the product more vitality and appeal, and they’re currently seeking new designs for learning games: check the full wiki and the blog for more details on that, and the group expects to start releasing dev kits soon via MakerSHED.
This one had been off my radar until it got big ups by the Flashbang/Blurst boys earlier today: Indie dev Coin App’s debut PC game Max Blastronaut looks like it’s going in the same Mario Galaxy-cum-arena-shooter direction as Beatnik’s excellent Plain Sight. Coin App describes it thusly:
Play in 1 or 2 player as you take on the invading Dredge Faction using any and all methods available: melee combat, vehicle combat, and shooting over-the-shoulder from orbit. Use planetary gravity to your advantage as you toss melee weapons, shoot missiles around orbit, or even “ghostride” a variety of 2-passenger vehicles into enemies. Travel over 24 worlds spanning six galaxies to defend the universe from the Dredge miners and their industrial mechanized Bosses.
Bonus points, I think, for actually designing an in-game ‘ghostriding‘ technique: I eagerly await more.
Developer Alpha Unit hasn’t done a terrible lot worth getting excited about over the past few years, but their DS game coming to Japan on April 4th, Rhythm De Run Run Run, looks like it could be a worthy import, having seemingly learned exactly the right lessons from the Rhythm Heaven series (previously covered smartly in an installment of One More Go).
Specifically, it treats rhythm (as I kept thinking about last night in my restless and listless post-daylight savings insomnia which I can’t seem to shake for the life of me) as the hair’s-breadth line you have to trace but dare not break: a fragile thread that can’t be deviated from without dire consequences.
In Rhythm Heaven, that’s usually compounded by aspects of public performance — trying to avoid the sidelong glares of your singing/dancing/military mates. For Alpha Unit, though, it’s about a goal you’re ultimately trying to reach, as in the video above, with the helpless youth desperately trying to make his way to a portable toilet being driven away (homage to genre grandfather Parappa, no doubt).
Even before Rhythm Heaven makes its way to the west for the first time (it’ll be launching alongside the DSi in April), I’m happy to see it inspiring others for the right reasons. As Siliconera points out, Alpha Unit are also planning to let you control the game with the built-in mic by tapping teacups, rapping plastic hammers, or with diligent training of your kitten, but that’s diversionary stuff: the real challenge is in keeping that thread intact.
Grip Wrench, for the first time in cinematic history, performs in a movie completely generated by computers. But as the movie brings back memories of his old fighting buddy Shiny ManCannon the computer sensors begin to overload with imagery beamed directly from Grip’s subconscious, and causing a data leak of epic proportions.
The date’s also drawing nearer for my much anticipated SXSW related DataPopParty, bringing a strong lineup of 8bitpeoples chiptune artists to Austin for a March 18th show, and local theater chain Alamo Drafthouse has just revealed an exclusive art print and T-shirt for the show from Lamour Supreme.
Lamour’s most commonly known for his kaiju (ie. beautifully grotesque Japanese movie monster-inspired design) vinyl toys, which you can spy via his flickr, and he’s certainly brought that same inspiration to the Datapop’s design.
I caught the Austin local screening of 2 Player Production’s chiptune documentary Reformat the Planet last night (was anyone else there?), with producer Paul Levering in attendance — they’re helping to organize DataPop, and I’ll be doing my damndest to bring footage/coverage of the show to the site next week.
Alamo’s put up both the shirt and the print for sale via MondoTees. As a reminder, entrance is free to the DataPop show itself, which will be held inside the abandoned Salvation Army by the South Lamar Alamo.
Gaijin Games’ downloadable WiiWare debut Bit.Trip: Beat has been one of my most anticipated games since its early January unveiling, and now it looks like the wait’s just days away from being over, as viral outlet ‘CommanderVideo’ broadcasts this new encoded missive:
