NOT WHAT I NEEDED: YOU GOT YOUR RIC OCASEK IN MY EARTHBOUND EDITION
The bigger story here: trusted sources tell Starmen.net — clearinghouse for all things pertaining to SNES cult hit series Earthbound — that the game’s spring 2008 ESRB rating was not a sign it would be hitting the Wii’s Virtual Console, but was, literally, “a mistake,” and that the game is seemingly inextricably bound in a legal battle because of copious pop culture references and samples Nintendo of Japan is stubbornly refusing to allow Nintendo of America to fix.
(The question unanswered: what about the “time and circumstances” make now the moment for Starmen to let this out of the bag?)
But of more pertinent interest: which references and samples, exactly? To that end, Starmen spinoff blog Earthbound Central has put together a list of some of the most unexpected samples hidden deep within Earthbound‘s soundtrack.
A sampling: background clicks and synth pads from Ric Ocasek’s ‘Keep on Laughin’ show up in the Moonside area theme, ‘Jackie’s Cafe’ contains warped bits of both the Little Rascals/Our Gang theme, and, of all things, a bent version of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Though EC doesn’t overtly say that this is specifically what’s causing hand-wringing with Nintendo’s lawyers, presumably this is enough of a start.
EarthBound Music Similarities [EarthBound Central]
Previously:
Mother 3: Behind the Music – Offworld
Mother 3 musical toe-dip into Bach, Vivaldi, Satie… Batman …
Mother 3 translators start Earthbound Central blog – Offworld
Saturn-ine: another Mother/Earthbound treat we can't have – Offworld
Earthbound goods for the rest of us – Offworld
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NYC GAME-DESIGN INSPIRED SCHOOL QUEST 2 LEARN OPENING FALL 2009
New York’s Institute of Play has officially announced the foundation of Quest to Learn, a new school for “digital kids” that will be accepting its first 6th grade class this fall, which “uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences for students.”
The Institute explains:
Games work as rule-based learning systems, creating worlds in which players actively participate, use strategic thinking to make choices, solve complex problems, seek content knowledge, receive constant feedback, and consider the point of view of others.
As is the case with many of the games played by young people today, Quest is designed to enable students to “take on” the identities and behaviors of explorers, mathematicians, historians, writers, and evolutionary biologists as they work through a dynamic, challenge-based curriculum with content-rich questing to learn at its core.
It’s important to note that Quest is not a school whose curriculum is made up of the play of commercial videogames, but rather a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly immersive, game-like learning experiences.
Games and other forms of digital media serve another useful purpose at Quest: they serve to model the complexity and promise of “systems.” Understanding and accounting for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century.
Institute of Play executive director Katie Salen is one of the school’s designers: you may know her as co-author — along with Gamelab‘s Eric Zimmerman — of Rules of Play, one of the best texts encapsulating the fundamental language of game design.
The school is currently looking for both teachers and students, and, it says, will be expanding “by a grade level annually through 2015.”
School for Digital Kids: 6th-12th grade [Institute of Play, thanks Drew and Alex!]
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READY FOR THEIR CLOSEUP: MIKKO WALAMIES’ ROLANDO ART
Officially added to illustrator Mikko Walamies’ online portfolio: his designs for Hand Circus’s killer iPhone app Rolando, which means gorgeous high-res zoomed out maps (suitable for wall-papering), and closeups of the game’s cast, including my favorite tongue-biter of them all.
Walamies’ apparel and print sections also house some gorgeous designs.
Game Design: Rolando [MW82]
Previously:
Touch me I'm slick: ngmoco/Hand Circus's Rolando – Offworld
HandCircus preparing more Rolando for the iPhone, Lite version …
Rolando gets papered – Offworld
See more posts about: Hand Circus, Mikko Walamies, Offworld Originals, Rolando
THE SPACES BETWEEN: THE IPHONE’S FIRST DESIGN-NERD GAME, KERN
I’m every bit as much a design nerd as I am a game one, and clearly I’m not alone: architect/designer Jason Franzen and musician/programmer Adrian ‘Rust Cycle‘ Johnson have created Kern, the first game that manages to build fun out of the bane of every typographer’s existence.
The game’s hook is quite simple: upper-case Helvetica words fall slowly from the top of the screen, and you drag a missing letter from each to its properly kerned spot. The closer you are and the faster you manually drop the word, the better you do. Miss your goal by an inch and you lose a life… errr, ligature, which you can gain back by being right on the spot.
The game’s beautifully designed (all on a grid, natch) but quite simple in its current form: FORMation promise more music and online leaderboards in a later update. The group’s also behind Eye vs. Eye, a two player game where you mix RGB values to sight-match colors, and will be releasing Hexxis in the near future, which I can’t help but think will be something on the order of bit Generations’ Dialhex/Art Style’s Rotohex.
Hit the jump for the full Kern trailer.
SPACE, THE FINAL FONT TIER [FORMation, App Store link] (more…)
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SOLDIER ON: A NEW LOOK AT DE BLOB CREATOR’S SWORDS AND SOLDIERS
I’m getting so many vibes from this latest ‘story’ trailer it’s hard to tell them apart, but they’re all meshing in a very pleasing way: I see Worms, Defender, Patapon and a healthy dose of vaguely Castle Crashers style, and that’s just a cursory look.
Due for a downloadable WiiWare release in coming months from upstart Ronimo Games, Swords and Soldiers will be the Wii’s first big real-time strategy game, and its hook is that you do it all on a 2D sidescrolling plane.
For the skeptical, it should also be noted that Ronimo might be unproven in the commercial game space, but the team is the same behind de Blob, or rather, the original student team that created the 2006 prototype for the City of Utrecht (and they’ve even kindly linked my original writeup for Edge magazine), before THQ picked up on its brilliance and would turn it into one of the publisher’s leading original IP franchises, with a current Wii and iPhone release and sights set on an eventual DS version.
Swords and Soldiers home [Ronimo Games]
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INTROVERSION’S DEFCONAR: MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE AUGMENTED REALITY
Having mastered the art of the vectorbeam and procedurally generated cities, where next for Introversion? Courtesy a blog post by company programmer Leander ‘elDiablo’ Hambley: augmented reality.
Hambley shows off the first experimental baby steps to get the studio’s global thermonuclear war sim Defcon literally running on the desktop, and explains:
DefconAR was originally just gonna be a cool little toy for us to use in the office to wow people who came to see us. Who’d have to hide the Defcon screen from your boss when playing Office mode, if there isn’t even a window open for it? Have a small tile on your desk, wearing some AR goggles, and no one would know. Obviously there isn’t much to it at the moment, I still need to spice up the world rendering, and then add in some actual content, but just imagine how this would look with nukes flying over the globe in realistic arcs, and maybe even 3D mushroom clouds.
Hambley makes no promises as to whether the self-admitted “silly thing” will ever see the light of day, but in my head it does look amazing.
Tom!]
Previously:
Introversion playing with fire with unbeatable DEFCON AI – Offworld
What's he building in there: Introversion's Subversion – Offworld
The art of vector-war – Offworld
The Offworld 20: 2008's Best Indie and Overlooked – Offworld
See more posts about: Introversion, Offworld Originals
NOBY’S WAKEY-WAKEY: YOU HAVE TO BREAK THE MUSHROOM
‘Y’ is right. The wait until Thursday is going to be excruciating.
o–o [Namco]
Previously:
It's a stretch: Explaining Katamari creator's new Noby Noby Boy …
Ask a stupid question: Takahashi finally ‘explains’ Noby Noby Boy – Offworld
Happy Holidays from Offworld (feat. Keita Takahashi) – Offworld
Another new look at Noby Noby Boy – Offworld
Noby Noby Boy stretches further into February – Offworld
It don't mean a thing: another last look at Noby Noby Boy – Offworld
Why can't I stop: Noby in the sky with stripes – Offworld
Today’s drip-fed Noby dose: Noby tastes the rainbow – Offworld
See more posts about: Noby Noby Boy, Offworld Originals
LITTLE SHOCKS: IG FUN SHOW OFF IPHONE/MOBILE BIOSHOCK
That IG Fun have been planning to bring BioShock to mobile phones (including the iPhone) has been known since shortly after the iPhone itself launched, but — I must admit — the news came with a healthy dose of skepticism, not least because the game’s original product page didn’t inspire much confidence.
But, over the past year, the developer has been hard at work at downsizing all of Rapture into its handheld form, and, via the latest news from UK outlet PocketGamer, you can see the results above. The trailer, shown at Mobile World Congress, actually might not be the latest footage (it appears to be the same ‘alpha footage’ shown at the CTIA expo in September), and is obviously shown optimized for standard mobiles, but still gives us a good taste of what to expect from the iPhone version: that is to say, not a fair bit off its console counterpoint.
PocketGamer also has the game’s initial direct feed trailer that hammers that point home, with the only question now being one of control. From everything seen so far, it’s clear that IG Fun are hoping to stay as true to form as possible, but doing first person right via touch alone has been a notoriously tricky venture. However, with IG Fun due to speak at this year’s GDC, it shouldn’t be much of a wait to see their plan of attack.
Previously:
Come to Big Daddy – Offworld
I feel a wreck without my little china sister – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
IPHONE’S SECOND PUZZLEQUEST CHAPTER COMING AS FREE UPDATE
Most all of the charges leveled against the iPhone version of Infinite Interactive’s sadistically addictive puzzle/RPG PuzzleQuest — primarily its anti-aliased-to-illegible text and sluggish reaction time — have been fixed in subsequent patches, but the one aspect still held against it is its price.
Offered originally as a three chapter download, with the first set at $9.99 and the later two to be determined, the game was theoretically set to be one of the most expensive titles on the platform, all things being equal.
But it seems publisher Transgaming has relented to the App Store’s still wildly unsettled economy and announced, reports PocketGamer, that the game’s second chapter will be available as a free addition to owners of the game’s first chapter. The new chapter has just been submitted to Apple for approval and should be set live in the near future.
Presumably, the first and second chapter together will be the equivalent of the game’s original console and handheld release — and will match the current price of Steam’s PC version — with the third chapter equating to the Revenge of the Plague Lord expansion released last July for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network versions.
No matter how the game’s pricing eventually shakes down, PuzzleQuest is still one of my iPhone’s most played, and is an essential download particularly for those that haven’t experienced it 1-4 times before on its various other platforms.
Second chapter in Puzzle Quest trilogy to be free [PocketGamer, PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords home, iTunes link]
Previously:
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 1: PuzzleQuest hit the iPhone …
You're my obsession: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix demo goes live – Offworld
See more posts about: Offworld Originals
UNDERSTANDING UNBOUND: VOGSTER’S COMIC BOOK BRAWLER UNBOUND SAGA
Somewhat lost in the ComicCon shuffle (and certainly off my radar until just now) was perhaps the most appropriate game to make its debut at the convention: following directly in the footsteps of Sega’s 16-bit brawler Comix Zone is another game breaking out of the comic’s proverbial box: Unbound Saga, which will be published, fittingly, by Dark Horse Comics exclusively as a downloadable PSP game via the PlayStation Network.
The game, developed by Vogster Entertainment (the same studio behind Tecmo’s overlooked 2008 light hearted real-time-strategy DS game Robocalypse), sees protagonist Rick Ajax struggling against ‘The Maker,’ a Looney Tunes-like omnipotent hand that draws the obstacles in Rick’s way.
In a recent talk with MTV’s games blog, Vogster producer Mike Kennedy promises the game will be steeped deeply in comics culture, saying that the game’s titular fictional comic “has been around since the ’70s in one form or another. They’ve kind of weathered some ups and downs in the industry; they’ve had their black-and-white version, their manga version, their foil cover Jim Lee version in the ’90s. So the idea is that [the video game] is their latest reinvention.”
Gritty with a satirical and self-parodying bite, then, which is just how we like our grit.
Unbound Saga [Vogster]
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