Problem: how to raise awareness of BioShock in a traditionally first-person-shooter-averse territory? Spike/2K’s answer: nevermind the footage, channel an ever so slightly perceptible Chris Cunningham influence and get to the crux of the game — underwater city, sinister little girls.
[via Gemaga]
See more posts about: BioShock, Offworld Originals
But then some game music a bit less cerebral, but no less enjoyable: ambient/electronica blog Disquiet notes this four-man half-hour Korg DS-10 live jam mp3 from Melbourne’s DyLAB, which shifts in and out pretty effortlessly from well tuned thumps to utter blippy madness, and (for all the app’s precise stylus-ing) must have been a sight to behold.
And because this comes up nearly every time we mention DS-10, a reminder: the software’s no longer an import-only rarity; publisher Xseed has released it stateside, where you can find it at most major online retailers. Let us know if you create anything amazing.
Nintendo Korg DS-10 x 4 Jam MP3 [Disquiet, via Gus]
Previously:
Korg DS-10 + bendy straw = handheld talkbox – Offworld
Extra Hyper Korg DS-10 performance – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
Any opportunity to bring the ponderous weight of a Whitney Biennial artist to the site: an overly opaque post over at Rhizome on ‘Video Game Soundtracks 1983-1987‘ sent me on an afternoon’s goose chase trying to figure out just what the hell is going on here, and I think I have it:
Artist Seth Price, concerning himself with a multi-part work on music “solely as digital information: programmed, encoded, extracted, sometimes going through MIDI translation, uploaded and downloaded, finally burned to compact disc; all the while passing through numerous data compressions and file formats,” devotes one chunk of that thesis to game music.
His wonderfully overwrought statement on the work (pdf) comes up with some decent musings on the nature of the beast:
Structurally, the genre presents unique limitations. A track must be energetic but not distracting, the consummate “background music”. It need not follow a standard musical trajectory, since it must be capable of looping ad infinitum, allowing players as much time as needed with a given screen or level. Because of this, many of the album tracks start abruptly or quickly peter out, their duration determined by the programmer who removed them from the circuits. For this reason, many of the tracks must be considered extracts or samples of larger and arguably infinite compositions.
And Price’s end result: a lengthy megamix of 8- and 16-bit era straight-up MIDIs joltingly cut back to back.
Yes darling, but is it art? Either way, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt if only for this description of his later video piece, ‘Editions‘: “a partial inventory of imagery: dancing cats, grated cheese, civic violence, Richard Serra, video-game audio effects and a roiling ocean.”
UbuWeb Sound: Seth Price [via Rhizome]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
Allow me just one more fashion update for an otherwise slow pre-New Year’s workday: seeing a new King of Games design made me wonder if there’d been any recent news from my other favorite jp.games-fashion outlet, POKÉMON 151, and indeed there is.
Launched officially by Pokemon developer Game Freak in June, design house Polygraph came up with four original designs (Articuno, Cubone, Hypno, and MewTwo) that were all as subtle, elegant and jaw-droppingly beautiful as a Pokemon shirt is ever going to get (dig, especially, Hypno/Sleeper’s sinister silhouette).
Now I see they’ve updated with a new design featuring Kakuna that’s giving me just as much a touch of that old, familiar design-lust.
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
Flickr’s ‘burns1de’ took a moment during his safehouse breather to spot this plaintive graffiti in Left 4 Dead, as noticed by GamOvr.
That makes a perfect segue to mention the latter site as one of my favorites of 2008: GamOvr’s something akin to a well-curated tumblr/ffffound specifically for the gaming set, and an always reliable source for one-hits of niche ephemera.
Recent favorites? Sega’s Fonz, more 8-bit lacework (previously covered here), this fantastic Mirror’s Edge wall-scaled ad in Shibuya, and right, right, something of our own.
“I miss the internet” [via GamOvr]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
This T-shirt — fortuitously spotted by a twitter search, and, I’ve just sussed out, purchased by Southampton DJ James Zabiela — is just a few quick fixes away from being an amazing bit of site merch.
No luck finding my own, but at very least I’ve just learned the kanji for Offworld. [Update: Buy it here at Last Exit To Nowhere, thanks Transmission3000!]
Offworld Colonies t-shirt [via search.twitter]
See more posts about: Meta, Offworld Originals
Every day a new King of Games design is unleashed feels a bit like Xmas — their latest is this just released Punch-Out!! hoodie set (perhaps in celebration of the forthcoming Wii remake), with matching fingerless gloves to boot.
I have to admit, the new design doesn’t quite do it for me as much as older classics like the lush gradient of the Fantastic Adventure hoodie (that may be just because the site won’t let me zoom in far enough to read the text), but it does have the benefit of actually being in-stock and available worldwide (a more recent development) — just be prepared to spend most of your Mike Tys^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Mr. Dream title bout winnings to get it.
The King of Games [via Kotaku]
See more posts about: King of Games, Offworld Originals
By now you’re probably well familiar with Paul Robertson’s Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 and epic Kings of Power 4 Billion % (it’s actually a bit criminal to stream either; check here and here for a download mirror to watch in full res), and now he’s returned with, err, an energy drink commercial. It takes too long to get to the good bits, but then you never want it to end.
Syke Makes Life Like a Video Game! [YouTube, via TIGSource]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Paul Robertson
A number of Very Good Things happened over the past week when we were all en route to our various holiday destinations, and I’d be remiss not to recap them, because they were all worthy of mention. One of the most notable, of course, was Infinite Interactive’s RPG/puzzler PuzzleQuest finally making its debut on the iPhone.
Its release was quickly met with a laundry list of complaints: the hyper-anti-aliased text, an engine curiously struggling under the weight of seemingly light 2D assets (though not quite to the extent of the pre-patched Katamari), and an episodic approach that saw just a third of the game packaged for $9.99 (ending just past the game’s first-chapter-closing battle with Dugog), with two more chapters promised that will complete the set. That latter point, in retrospect, is a smart one, given the evolution of the App Store economy where $15-20 releases (outside of highly-niche specialty apps) might as well be lumped alongside Armin Heinrich’s since-removed $999.99 ‘I Am Rich.’
In the end, though, with a week of the game under my belt it turns out that — while all perfectly valid — none of the complaints have managed to truly drag the game down, and there hasn’t been a day yet where I haven’t stolen away enough time to progress by just one more match-3 battle.
With all of the new classes (and, presumably, the content) of the Plague Lord expansion, and newly online-stored save files (to continue progress in later episodes), the iPhone version might not be the definitive version it could have been, but it is the handiest, enough to properly retire the DS/PSP versions and provide a very welcome introduction to its time-sapping addictiveness to the console/handheld challenged.
PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords [Infinite Interactive, iTunes link]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
One quick final recap to say that, away from the constant iPhoning, one of my two other holiday concessions was a few hours making my way through Media Molecule’s ‘Metal Gear Solid Premium Level Pack,’ which, put plainly, is an essential download for the game.
As much a clearly loving tribute as a collaboration, the levels inside are some of the most inspired the game has seen to date — both officially and from the community (although that’s somewhat an unfair comparison with the community’s IP restrictions).
Between the spot on extension of the Paintinator gun (turning the platformer into a surprisingly adept bullet-hell dual-analog shooter), the secret meta-lightgun-game behind the pack’s first intro level (you’ll know it when you discover it), and its final showdown: if this is what we can expect from the future of the LittleBigPlatform, we’re in very good hands.
Previously:
LittleBigWatch: Media Molecule Adds Metal Gear – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
