Tomorrow finally marks the day that ngmoco releases Hand Circus’s long-awaited puzzle-platformer Rolando, and the publisher has marked the occasion with one final gameplay trailer, as well as a new special Rolando themed downloadable level for Dropship, its dual-‘analog’ vectorbeam shooter (that I’ve yet to mention here, but will in the future).
I’ve spent the past couple days with Rolando, and will be giving the Offworld view tomorrow.
In a fantastic show of love from the 8bitcollective community, the compilation brings together familiar micromusic names like goto80, 8 Bit Weapon and Computeher in HTML advent calendar style, popping up a new song or picture every day.
My tops: the Weapon’s chiptune Ave Maria (!), little-scale’s thickly echoed Coventry Carol, and Shaun Carley’s hyper-breakcore Carol of the Bells.
I was still content with my TI-99/4A when Sears was touting the Intellivision and the still frankly beautiful Vectrex (I’m still waiting on a nice package of repro- overlays, guys), but The Retroist’s scans of the 1983 Sears wishbook remind me of two holidays following, when I was absolutely fraught with anxiety over whether I’d be choosing this ‘NES’ newcomer or the Atari 5200.
The latter I wanted solely because months earlier I’d impressed my elementary school crush with a bowling alley arcade run of Food Fight so amazing I surprised even myself (the trackball was on fire that day). In the end, I made the “right” decision.
Nintendo has released its first and third party release list through the end of winter, and — with 100 some titles on the list — I thought I’d do a little chaff separating and focus on the few that look the most promising. Nintendo’s own heavy hitters, the Wii remakes of Mario Power Tennis and Pikmin, DS’s Pokemon Platinum, and Rockstar’s top down DS exclusive Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars are the obvious choices, but let’s dig down even further… (more…)
Putting to rest at least part of the firestorm that arose from the SecuROM protection of Spore, Electronic Arts has released a standalone tool (currently for PCs only) to de-authorize machines, iTunes style, so players can manage their installs. From the email:
Machines can be de-authorized or re-authorized at any time. The total number of machines on which Spore can be authorized concurrently will continue to be five. To de-authorize a PC download and launch Spore_deauth.zip and run the Spore De-Authorization Tool.exe file.
You can de-authorize at any time, even without uninstalling Spore, and free up that machine authorization. If you re-launch Spore on the same machine, the game will attempt to re-authorize. If you have not reached the machine limitation, the game will authorize and the machine will be re-authorized using up one of the five available machines.
Killing latent dreams that we might get a shrunk down and touchable version of PSP strategy/card game Metal Gear Ac!d, Konami has pulled back the curtain on that earlier teaser and revealed that, as some guessed, it will be bringing Metal Gear Solid Touch to the iPhone/iPod Touch.
It’s still not yet clear precisely how Touch works, but it’s not hard to imagine the on-rails scenes of Metal Gear Solid 4 shrunk down and working honestly quite well for the iPhone, with Konami’s only gameplay hints being that players can “move their alignment or switch to zoom mode” as they play.
At the same time, Konami also announced versions of Dance Dance Revolution (an obvious fit, especially in reaction to earlier innovator Tap Tap), Frogger, based on the original arcade game and not its less successful later 3D remakes, and, intriguingly, Silent Hill: The Escape, a first person shooter that likely won’t be too far astride from its House of the Dead-esque light-gun arcade game.
The latter three games are expected sometime in late December, with Metal Gear due by Spring.
This morning’s essential listen, ‘A Happy New Gear’ gently skewers the most ludicrous aspects of the testosterone-drenched Gears of War 2. First played on the previously mentioned One Life Left (and also featured on their debut compilation), ‘cavalcade’ says the track is part of a forthcoming EP called “Super Mutant Has A Crippled Head,” which I very sincerely hope is not a joke.
Ending today where we did yesterday, 1UP has continued its look at Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi’s upcoming PS3 downloadable Noby Noby Boy with a new ‘gameplay’ video, showing its central stretch and dual-control mechanic (as well as the workings of Noby’s intestinal tract), and the general lazy playfulness of its world (just, not yet, the underlying bits of its multiplayer play and the ‘GIRL’ in the sky).
While we haven’t yet mentioned Good Old Games, we feel compelled to note that they’ve just announced that Oddworld Inhabitants has joined their developer lineup, first with today’s release of the classic puzzle platformer Abe’s Oddysee (along with bonus soundtrack mp3s, wallpapers and a hi-res map), and followed shortly before Christmas by its sequel Abe’s Exoddus.
While you’re sniffing around, I’ll also point out the site’s also home to some very good deals on the original Fallout and its sequel, Planet Moon’s excellent Giants and Shiny’s Sacrifice.
But I particularly liked the mention of Edge magazine’s recent Time Extend looking back at GameCube launch title Luigi’s Mansion for highlighting that it’s a game predicated on creating one definable place and making it cohesive and rich with detail, as opposed to the typical tack of sending the player off to more diverse but sparsely realized worlds. That idea alone has made me want to revisit the game for the first time in what must be six or seven years:
It’s the setting that all this invention is squeezed into which is perhaps the most astonishing element. Rather than the traditional handful of elaborately different worlds, Luigi’s Mansion is focused on depicting a single coherent place. And even though its rooms allow for at least one ice level, they remain consistent with one another despite the variety. Even the observatory that takes Luigi into space begins as a recognisable wood-panelled study, and elsewhere the wallpaper, fittings, doors, and mouldings all help to reinforce just one, very specific, location.
