I last mentioned ‘videogame culture shop’ Attract Mode on Offworld’s launch when I pointed to (and apparently ‘leaked’ — sorry, fellows!) an early T-shirt design from artist Harvey James. At the time, the launch of Attract Mode’s own site was still in the unforeseeable distance, but I’ve just got word today that the group’s new blog has appeared.
While the actual shop and further designs have yet to be revealed, the group’s initial blog posts are pleasingly left-field, celebrating the awesome pixels of the Flying Pizza Kitty as well as the art-grotesque paintings of Japanese artist Masao, and giving me good hope for the types of artwork they’ll be curating in the future.
I’ll say here as I did when it was first revealed, though, unless they make a print available of Harvey’s Game Girl pin-up in addition to the wearable, there is no justice in the universe.
Very much enjoyed Tom Chick’s latest list for Sci-Fi Network’s games blog Fidgit that, appropriately, focused on the 10 games that redefined science fiction — videogaming’s, as Chick put it, “Gattica, Dark City, Clockwork Orange, and Wall-E.” Pleasingly, the list contains a number of undersung classics that are always well overdue for a revisit from Eric Chahi’s Out of this World/Another World (which got a high-def anniversary re-release just a few years back) to Belgian developer Appeal’s fantastic Outcast — and saves an unexpected twist for its number one.
As I plug away on a bigger feature due later today, I’ll point you this morning to the fifth annual “Best of” feature from casual/web powerhouse blog Jay Is Games, which has opened for public voting and contains an absolutely overwhelming list of browser/downloadable/freeware nominees that should tide you over for a good long while.
TIGSource’s Indie Game Database has been growing at a very healthy rate — having just now reached over 500 entries — and, to help foster further growth, the group has added a REST API to help spread its exhaustive cataloging. The most exciting development to come out of its new accessibility, though, is TigBox [PC only .zip].
According to TIGSource’s Jeff Lindsay, he and indie dev Ivan Safrin have been “toying with the idea a Steam or iTunes Store app for indie games” since the 2008 GDC, and TigBox is the first ‘v0.01 alpha’ step in that direction. The app currently only consists of two tabs — Your Games, and Get Games — and works by grabbing a list of the top rated TIGdb games, which can be automagically downloaded and installed with a double click.
I couldn’t get the app to actually, erm.. work (it creates folders for the games like a champ, but seems overly temperamental on which files it then wants to download or not), but the TIGers admit it’s more a proof of concept rushed out at the last minute. Either way, it’s certainly one of the most important projects to keep an eye on in 2009, and a fantastic idea to unionize and legitimize the motley crew of worldwide indies.
Even though it’s primarily full of the hokey amateur charm you’d normally expect from threads like these, there are some entries in the NeoGAF forum’s “favorite videogame moments” MS Paint thread that are genuinely a little jaw-dropping.
[James Kochalka‘s Monster Mii is a regular Offworld feature, with a new Mii monster 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.]
For our third edition of Monster Mii, we bring you Dorgie, whose dry-cleaning bill is only matched by the size of his heart (we recommend ‘favoriting’ him in the Mii Plaza for a quick change of dungarees).
To bring him 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 code: 6513-2494-4351.
[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.]
Hidden in amongst an otherwise innocuous post by Nicalis, one of the team behind bringing Pixel’s certified indie platformer darling Cave Story to WiiWare, is news that the game will be getting more than just an updated facelift for its console port:
We’re still working away at Cave Story trying to make sure it’s faithful to Amaya-san’s original while adding a few things for the console release. One of these new additions, I’m happy to announce is Download Content. I think we received enough e-mails demanding it that we’re doing our best to include some new surprises in the WiiWare release.
The best part of Ballmer’s CES keynote last night? It wasn’t the old hat Halo sequels and Xbox Live Primetime games — it was the announcement that not only would Microsoft’s game-maker studio codenamed Boku be officially released as Kodu, but that the suite would become an integral part of the Xbox 360 Community Games channel.
First demonstrated in March of 2007 and again brought to light in October of 2008, as above, the kit is meant as an introductory course to games programming (but done purely via the controller with simple formulaic logic): more LOGO (and including a turtle of its own) than LittleBigPlanet (to which it’s been most often and annoyingly/lazily compared).
What’s not clear yet is just how it’ll be delivered and how its sharing functionality will integrate into Xbox Live, but its bright pixel-organics (actually strikingly similar to Tibori’s Dotter Dotter art I mentioned in December) are a very welcome development, and there are few things on my 2009 radar I look forward to playing with more.
In my line of work, I hear a lot of bad game ideas, which is something I find agonizing. This is because about 90% of them are emanating out of my own mouth, usually prefaced with something asinine like, ‘This is just off the top of my head, but..’ or ‘I know! Why don’t you try…’ The theory is that the good thing about bad ideas is that they always teach you something. In my case, they usually teach me how polite and patient my colleagues are.
Thankfully, the other 10% aren’t my doing, but what’s amazing is how many of them get made. One of the worst game ideas ever was embodied in Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, which is a platform game you control with a pair of cheap electric bongos.
Not, please note, a modern, newfangled, automagic platform game like Assassin’s Creed. A proper, old-fashioned 2D platformer with ledges and enemies and timed swings and all the things that make you cry out for a nice crisp d-pad and a decently sprung jump button. Or, in the absence of those, perhaps at least something with more than two buttons which you can operate without having to pretend to be a toddler who just dropped a jam sandwich off his high chair.
So why go back to Jungle Beat? For a little reassuring schadenfreude that I’m not the only person who can have bad game ideas? No. Because it’s a dazzling, dizzying delight. Bad idea; brilliant game. (more…)
