With roughly two weeks left to go on each, two games culture design books on Kickstarter that look well worth your support: the first, Read-Only Memory (a fantastic name for a games print house) is putting together this look back at the history of seminal UK developer Sensible Software, which, even just in preview, looks gorgeously minimalist/Swiss/grid-ed out, and comes — at higher levels — with its own 12″ LP.
Meanwhile, Melbourne designer Daniel Lanciana is working up this exhaustive look back at all aspects of Punch-Out!!s past, with an “unofficial 240-page encyclopedia” that includes a cross-platform history, biographies, strategies, merchandise & more — the hitch being that it also includes a number of copyrighted materials he’s only just beginning to receive word from Nintendo on for possible inclusion. Follow his progress on that front here.
There seems to be some sort of internet error happening, because I’ve been scouring Shapeways for the past however long and I still can’t find this amazing Mario-Möbius model, which I would very much like to order for myself. [via Incredibly Strange Games]
About a million tonal, stylistic & emotional miles away from Flying Lotus‘ first teaser (included below the fold) for his upcoming album ‘Until The Quiet Comes‘, but no less worthy of mention, comes Putty Boy Strut.
The video’s a brilliant collaboration with Cyriak (aka “that guy that does the crazyfractal-animalanimations“) that perfectly illustrates what I’ve always imagined was happening inside my computers, anyway. [via n0wak]
For those that may not have been tuned in, one blessed weekend this past June the art/game/music communities joined together in celebration of Superbrothers/Jim Guthrie/Capy’s #sworcery with an all-out remix & original illustration fest.
I won’t mince words here: over the past couple years, Japan’s Game Center CX, known in the west as Retro Game Master, has skyrocketed its way straight up to an all-time television favorite, to the point where I can near-instantly snap out of even the deepest funk when a new episode finds its way to me.
The premise of the show — now in its ninth year — is simple: comedian Shinya Arino, known formally as ‘the Kacho’, is shut inside a room, given a game chosen from the NES through the PlayStation eras, and made to finish it in a single sitting, whether that takes 10, 12, 14 hours, or sometimes (in the most extreme cases) split into multiple runs of as long.
The idea of watching someone else do nothing but play a videogame you just as easily could play yourself may sound counterintuitive and relentlessly boring, but slick, dramatic editing and the resulting victory or crushing defeat payoffs are so rewarding — so universally recognizable for players of any age or stripe — that the show is endlessly fascinating: probably TV’s best ever celebration of the decades-long history of videogame culture.
Though its (honestly fairly awkwardly) English-dubbed net-streaming season has long since been taken down, distributor Discotek Media is right on the cusp of releasing the first ever officially subtitled DVD set, which, at top, the Kacho himself has introduced in a phonetically amazing promotional video.
We’ll have more on the show & the set at a later date, consider this a brief introduction & preparatory post for when the set itself is officially available. [Retro Game Master DVD Set, via Discotek]
Via sort of honestly the last place I’d expect to find a wellspring of interesting information, Fez programmer Renaud Bédard (currently working on mech arena shooter Waiting for Horus as part of Les Collégiennes) has just posted an extensive writeup to Formspring that catalogs a number of features eventually scrapped from the finished product.
At top, an alternate-perspective camera move that would keep things “visually interesting” during long hikes against bridges, which would eventually become a user-controlled easter egg, and below, floating elevator platforms which would move in prescribed directions based on camera-angle switches.
You’ve seen the trailer, but Incredipede creator (& real liveSpelunky character) Colin Northway has just posted an extended video breakdown of how to solve one of the game’s challenges, where the player’s asked to scoop up a falling bonus apple from behind a wall and deliver it to the goal before Quozzle — the game’s main character — does herself.
Admits Northway, of the seven minutes of struggle it eventually takes:
I actually thought up this level on the bus. I also thought up a nice solution to it. Unfortunately the solution I thought would work didn’t work at all so I tried various things in this video until I got it. It’s not a great level and didn’t have the showiest solution but it gives you an idea of how to play.
As a tyke, I had the extreme fortune of having at my disposal a number of art-history survey textbooks (thanks, dad) which I pored over daily — an early, self-guided & very valuable education in art appreciation — and I have very distinct memories of continually returning to one artist: Hieronymus Bosch, whose landscapes were littered with cartoonish-ly caricatured monsters, animals and half-humans that wouldn’t at all be out of place in a children’s TV show if they weren’t so overtly representative of grim morality tales.
It’s with that said that I count myself super lucky to having been asked to be involved with a new art/game initiative from the Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation itself — an organization founded to honor the artist on the 500th anniversary of Bosch’s death.
The foundation has just announced its open call to all game designers to pitch new ideas inspired by Bosch’s work through the end of 2012, which will then be narrowed down to five finalists, who will each receive €2500 to prototype their game. One of those five will be chosen as the winner, who’ll get assistance to complete the work and officially present it internationally along with the rest of the 500-year happenings.
The jury panel, other than myself and Bosch 500 Foundation artistic manager Adriaan ‘s-Gravesande, includes Global Game Jam co-director Zuraida Buter, Hide&Seek New York managing director (and my old boss at Edge magazine!) Margaret Robertson, and Proteus creator Ed Key.
