Kojima Production has just unveiled this wonderfully tactile new site with more information on its upcoming Metal Gear Solid Touch iPhone game.
Granted, we don’t learn much more from it that we didn’t before — the game will utilize the iPhone’s multitouch system to aim and shoot or pinch and zoom sniper scopes, it’ll be split into two chapters, with the second ‘deeper and more revealing’ release available as a free update to early adopters, and points earned along the way can be spent on iPhone wallpapers — but it promises more information soon, and its flick-navigation honestly feels fantastic.
Submitted not to send stateside readers into jealous piques, but more to illuminate the kinds of games that will certainly becoming to the stateside DSiWare Store after the new unit’s April release: a new post from Japan’s Game Watch [Google translated here] which shows off the rest of next week’s downloadable software selection in addition to Mr. Driller, as previously noted.
Among other Mahjong and Japanese e-book apps, the update will see the addition of two Nintendo-themed $2 calculators, one Super Mario Bros. styled, and one with an Animal Crossing skin. Game Watch promises both will have specific throwbacks to their respective games, and, curiously, highlight twice that the calculators can convert human to dog years.
But the real story here is, as always, Skip/Nintendo’s ongoing series of Art Style games, and the pick of the litter here appears to be the above puzzle game Hacolife, in which you race against the clock to fold laid flat squares into perfect cubes, where they’re picked up by the warehouse robo-arm and carried away.
Also added to the Art Style lineup (and again seemingly incomprehensibly titled): Nalaku, which looks nothing if not avertical version of cult PlayStation puzzler Intelligent Qube, and, as TinyCartridge aptly notes, might be the first Art Style/bit Generations game with an actual playable human avatar (Aquario‘s diver doesn’t quite count).
I’m not fully sure I’ve bought into the gameplay hook on this one, but the theme song loop on the game’s home page makes me feel like I’ve just stepped through the pearly CV/Gates and am being directly exposed to the face of the God of Synthesizers, which may sway me in the end.
The most curious DS-related post I’ll have written all week: Wellington, New Zealand artists Christian Pearce and Greg Broadmore are part of an ongoing exhibition through February 27th in Wellington’s Civic Square called 99DS.
The premise? 99 “Dodgy Slips” and 99 “Deadly Sleds” — that is, 99 nude women taking a tumble off banana peels, and 99 Big Daddy Roth-esque hot rods — all created with DS homebrow paint software Colors (now also available on the iPhone).
Of the precise numbering, the artists explain:
The premise behind the 99DS series is a simple one — pick a subject, draw it 99 times and hit save. And why 99? That’s how many save slots Colors supports, and also coincides with the point at which one entertains thoughts of stylus-based seppuku.
Oh! This is wicked: Offworld launched with news that electronics kit manufacturer Evil Mad Scientist had begun shipping their Meggy Jr RGB DIY handheld gaming kit: the gorgeously ultra low-res 8×8 LED portable that was nothing if not the kid-friendly, Game Boy version of Toshio Iwai’s Tenori-On.
The kit shipped with one game, a “pixel-blasting side-scrolling shoot-em-up” called Attack of the Cherry Tomatoes, but the purpose, of course, was to roll your own creations with the Arduino SDK.
I honestly have been lax in following the Meggy Jr. scene to see what people have been coming up with, but friend of Offworld Darius Kazemi has just revealed some work in progress videos of his first game. Fittingly, for its resolution, it’s a rogue-like with ASCII symbols here replaced by those pale-lit-color-baubles, and I’m enamored with the way the screen lights up with the key icon once you’ve picked one up. You can see more of the design ideas behind his game via this earlier post.
Has anyone else out there created or come across any other Meggy projects of note?
It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, but I was still thrilled to see it. You may have spotted this earlier via Takahashi’s secret entry on the official o–o.com site (“concealed in tomato of a lower right ‘green pepper’ area”), but now it’s official: Portland software company Panic (the studio behind Mac FTP program Transmit and web dev tool Coda) have scored the exclusive license to sell T-shirts based on Keita Takahashi’s just-released PlayStation 3 downloadable Noby Noby Boy, just as they did for Katamari Damacy. And they’re perfect.
What made Panic’s Katamari shirts special was Takahashi’s directive that they explicitly not look like typical ‘game’ wares. Instead, he created a series of images that to the knowing fan were instantly recognizable, but to the rest of the world just looked like good design. Elephants, ostriches, dripping Prince heads and the all-caps ‘FEELING’ (ignore the later Monogram editions), all were a sly wink from one fan of the game to another.
Takahashi has gone in a similar direction, though less diverse, for now, with the Noby shirts. It’s the only direction he could’ve gone really: just longer and longer.
The shirts will come in four different “lengths” — that is, BOY stretched to 12, 48 and eventually the 144 inch tangle that’s little more than a dust-bunny squiggle with feet and that trademark hapless little •.• face. The 24 inch shirt is the only of the bunch that features GIRL, patterned with her signature static hearts.
Though the shirts aren’t yet back from the printer, Panic has just officially opened up its doors on this Noby launch day to take pre-orders, which will begin to ship sometime in the neighborhood of mid-March. Best of all, the site to order the shirts will be accessible at the ridiculous visual-punny URL Takahashi revealed today: www.o–T–o.com (www.o–T–o.com/jp/ for overseas orders).
Though the original version of this video is actually slightly old, having appeared just prior to Offworld’s launch, I’m bringing this new DMDS mix version up again for a number of reasons:
a.) it’s excellent (and tragic!) stuff
b.) I don’t think the original made the rounds quite as much as it deserved
3.) I can link to The Lost Levels’ MySpace page, where you need to listen to the Tommy Tempa remix (track 3, possibly the best chiptune head-nodder I’ve ever heard)
d.) so you can see director Steve Jones’ (aka Eyebath) hi-res stills from the video, and
e.) it’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.
Though details are still scarce, news from the ongoing DICE convention in Las Vegas has come in that Spicy Horse head American McGee will be following up his dark fairy-tale reinterpretation Alice with a new sequel slated for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The original Alice game, developed by Dallas studio Rogue Entertainment, was released by EA in 2000, and saw the Wonderland star platforming her way through a gothic version of Carroll’s story.
Since then, McGee has released Bad Day L.A. — most notable for its art direction by LA art duo Kozyndan — and, more recently, created the 24-part episodic Grimm series, which again re-interpreted classic tales in a more sinister (and simultaneously cutely cubist) fashion.
No projected release date or further details were given in the press release, apart from the concept shot included.
[James Kochalka‘s Monster Mii is a regular Offworld feature, with a new Mii monster (or two!) each time for you to download to your Wii. Once there, they’ll give you creepy stares from the sidelines of your Wii Sports, lap you rudely during your Wii Fit jogs, and in general liven up your Plaza and gaming day.]
Our latest edition of Monster Mii brings double the monster, double the Mii, with Mario Kart-loving Frozog and [his? her?] hard of hearing companion Trazzle coming in full, live color from their Frogger-esque bayou home.
To bring them home to your Wii, enter the Check Mii Out Channel’s Posting Plaza, click ‘Popular,’ then the ‘Search’ button at bottom. After that, hit the arrows at top right and enter in the following codes:
[James Kochalka‘s daily diary strips, which run at AmericanElf.com, have just entered their tenth year and been collected in three print volumes. He is also the author of more books and comics than you can count on both hands, including some that are excellent for children, and others not so much. All are excellent. James also plays rock and roll and Game Boy rock as James Kochalka Superstar, and recently exhibited artwork at Giant Robot’s GR2 gallery.]
Where can you see the Team Fortress 2 Heavy duke it out next to Devo and Achewood’s rabbit ambulance, around the corner from City 17’s Citadel and a strider, and just blocks away from a neighborhood being attacked Rampage style and a statuary tribute to Leeroy Jenkins?
Only in Ryan Allen’s Goon City (which thanks, Anon, for noting is actually a community undertaking by the Something Awful forum goons [hence the name (and the now understandable mix in pixel-stylings)]).
It’s a matter of hours now, for the statesiders, at least, until Keita Takahashi’s Noby Noby Boy hits the PlayStation Network. We should have more exciting Noby related news later this afternoon, but for now, celebrate with Namco’s expertly timed slapstick comedy.
