WHAT DOES YOUR SOUL LOOK LIKE (PART 2600)
I’m getting to this apparently at least four years too late, but it’s too wonderful not to mention: Rich Grillotti, half of the excellent indie dev PixelJam, put together this 2005 game tech art piece, sub2600.
It’s a simple idea: Grillotti photographed off-screen images of the colorbar patterns that result from incorrectly inserting Atari 2600 cartridges, and compiled them in this Flash gallery labeled as the console’s “subconscious.”
But the result, cross-faded from image to image, is nothing if not a low-bit version of the late Jeremy Blake’s digital video work (you know him best as the title sequence artist for PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love or his artwork for Beck’s Sea Change) and is strikingly beautiful for all the same reasons.
If you haven’t already, get more familiar with PixelJam via their debut shooter Gamma Bros, then move on to their 2008 long distance runner Dino Run. Also see: the output of PJ’s other half, Miles Tilmann, particularly his slow-corroded analog-synth musical output, recommended for fans of Boards of Canada and their ilk.
Sub2600 [Rich Grillotti, thanks .tiff!]
Previously:
Update on Jeremy Blake, Theresa Duncan: body found + CoS claims …
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TOUCH ME I’M SLICK: PERSUASIVE GAMES’ EXPERIMENTAL JETSET
It would have been enough for Ian Bogost and his Persuasive Games outfit to simply port their 2006 “news game” Airport Security to the iPhone for a quick cash in. That game wickedly parodied the TSA’s ever-shifting carry-on rules, turning the ridiculous regulations into a brilliant hectic mini-game formula.
In it, you play as a security gate checker who has to strip every disallowed item from a growing line of impatient passengers — bottled water, shoes, Arabic-printed T-shirts, snakes (get it?) and hemorrhoid cream — but the rules are constantly changing, sometimes in mid-frisk, and rejecting an item that’s allowed smacks you with a civil liberties penalty as harsh as allowing through each forbidden toothbrush and pudding cup.
With its clickable interface correlating smoothly to the iPhone’s touchscreen, an easy port would have been enough, but instead Persuasive has very smartly turned it into one of the most socially- and feature-rich games the iPhone’s yet seen.
Billing itself now as “the first mobile game for business travelers,” Jetset (as it’s now known) uses the iPhone’s location-awareness to link fliers to whichever airport they’re currently in to unlock special local souvenirs (your guess as to which have to be in to unlock the ‘poutine’ and ‘Greek coffee-cup’), which can then be sent to friends via its interconnected Facebook app.
It’s a gimmick to be sure, but one that brings the out-and-about mobile game much closer to home-base, and one ripe for impromptu competitions between the weariest travelers, as the game keeps track of local, global and per-airport high scores. It was always smart social parody from the start, but in making it this much smarter, Jetset has quickly earned its wings in the top tier of App Store output.
Jetset: A Game for Airports [Persuasive Games, iTunes Phobos link]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Touch Me I'm Slick
DIGITAL CHOCOLATE’S TOWER BLOXX COMING TO IPHONE?
Does IGN know something everyone else doesn’t know? Innocuously appearing in the site’s Wireless section
yesterday was a handful of screenshots labeled as a new forthcoming port of Digital Chocolate’s Tower Bloxx Deluxe for the iPhone, though a game page doesn’t yet exist and the publisher itself hasn’t yet given word to that effect.
The move wouldn’t be a surprising one: Digital Chocolate’s already familiar with the platform, having recently ported their Crazy Penguin Catapult (that was the penguin you continually saw when browsing the on-phone App Store) and Chocolate Shop Frenzy, and Tower Bloxx is one of their most successful and award winning franchises.
As much a strategic city-builder as it was an action game, Bloxx‘s central mechanic is releasing units of housing swaying from side to side on a construction yard crane, hoping to hit each successive unit dead center on the one below it. Do so and you maintain stability, but miss and your entire tower begins to sway, making dead-on hits that much harder.
The game was single-handedly my biggest regret in upgrading from a Sidekick II to 3 back when the latter launched, and the sole reason I kept my SKII on hand — Bloxx was the master of mobile gaming’s elusive ‘compelling one-button play.’
This is one I’ll be keeping a watchful eye on, then, it could be that the media leak was Digital Chocolate’s hand being forced: a budget version of eSoft’s suspiciously similar but decidedly inferior Totem hit the App Store just a few weeks prior and could steal some of Chocolate’s thunder.
In the meantime, you can get a taste of the Tower via its PC version, or DC’s first foray into social gaming with the Facebook version.
[via IGN]
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REACTOR-88’S DIG DUG DUNNYS
More excellent custom vinyl goodness, this time designer Ryan ‘Reactor-88‘ Crippen’s one-off Dunnys of Pooka, Fygar, and Dig Dug himself, also known as (fun fact!) Mr. Driller‘s grizzled father and chairman of the Driller Council, Taizo Hori.
Dig Dug Dunnys [Reactor-88, via the excellent ToysREvil, thanks Aaron!]
Previously:
The Munny shot: Earthworm Jim edition – Offworld
New Rolito toy: Patapon X our one true heart – Offworld
Rolito unleashes new Patapon toy – Offworld
A Felyne of your very own – Offworld
KodyKoala's Mushroom Kingdom customs – Offworld
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SEGA TAKING WIIWARE ON POLE’S BIG ADVENTURE
Wait, what’s this? Days ahead of Sega’s official reveal on its mystery countdown page, Japanese games mag Famitsu — via IGN — have lifted the curtain on Pole’s Big Adventure, an original WiiWare game reportedly coming from Phantasy Star Universe producer Takao Miyoshi.
According to translations coming from IGN, NeoGAF and elsewhere around the net, the game is a multi-layered heavy-meta parody of 8-bit classics, with a constant barrage of retro-referencing set ups and pratfalls.
Case in point, if you can make it out in the image on the right, collectible mushrooms (as with Super Mario, obviously) make your character grow, but to absurdist dimensions — the red blocks on the right there are your characters now-gigantor feet.
That’s put that one square on my most-wanted list then: I’ll be checking back in a few more days for more information and crossing every pair of fingers and toes I’ve got for a Western release.
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LITTLEBIGWATCH: NEW PACKS BRINGING WIPEOUT COSTUMES, KITTIES GALORE
Curious timing: just as I was fidgeting about trying to resurrect from the tattered remains of Edge’s original website a fully-functioning copy of the magazine’s excellent Q&A with the artists responsible for Europe’s Wipeout Pure PSP booster pack (including my favorite track from friend of Offworld Jon Burgerman), word comes in of more fanciful Wipeout crossovers.
This time, it’s with LittleBigPlanet, as Sony Europe community manager ‘MusterBuster’ has laid out the next several months of LBP addon’s and packs, including, in February, a WipEout HD costume pack which transforms your little Sackboy into the pilot of his own little cardboard Feisar or Icaras ship.
Other new packs on the horizon: the Ape Escape and Toro (Japan’s PS3 mascot) costumes that originally shipped with Japan’s copy of the game, a God of War tie-in pack, a vaguely horrifying Groundhog Day pack, and a Valentine’s Day pack that promises at least one massive kitten head sticker.
No word on equivalent stateside release dates, but the wait’s rarely been long between territories.
Little Delay To LittleBigPlanet Content [eu.playstation, via Shacknews]
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FLASHBANG LET LOOSE A LITTLE BLUSH
Putting to rest the mystery behind their recent tease of a game inspired visually by flight404’s gorgeous generative squid, Minotaur China Shop makers Flashbang have given us the first look at the end result, Blush.
The team haven’t revealed much beyond that, other than their terse Pong-instructions-like guidelines: “destroy enemies and collect their powers to increase your own.”
So, we’re happily slotting that in a category vaguely along the lines of Spore‘s initial stage or Thatgamecompany’s fl0w, then, but have no doubt Flashbang have more twists to add in the coming weeks, ahead of its projected March 1st release date.
Announcing Our Next Game: Blush
Previously:
Flashbang Relentless-ly tease new game – Offworld
Gimme Indie Game: Minotaur China Shop, happiness in shattery …
Things We Lost In The Snow, pt 4: Raptor Copter hit the iPhone …
See more posts about: Blurst, Flashbang, Offworld Originals
UNFINISHED SWAN, FEIST MAKE IGF STUDENT SHOWCASE FINALS
Ian Dallas’s Unfinished Swan video enraptured blogs everywhere before Offworld had a chance to leave the launch pad, but now the game’s been named one of this year’s ten finalists in the Independent Games Festival’s Student Showcase, so I’ve got a great excuse to run the video again.
Elsewhere, the finalists included Feist, also a finalist in the main IGF competition (see my writeup of that in the Offworld Guide to the 2009 IGF), the environmentally minded “Tetris meets Sim City” City Rain, the “exploration of familial relationships” game Where is my Heart?, and, errr… the “funkalicious first person dish washing wonder” Dish Washington, created as… a Half-Life 2 mod?
Expect more in-depth looks at the games soon, and hit the jump for the full list of entrants and links to their respective IGF pages. (more…)
See more posts about: IGF, Offworld Originals
THE HUMANITY OF LUCASARTS’ VIRTUAL WORLD FORERUNNER HABITAT
As if I needed another excuse to get my hands on Rogue Leaders, the visual history book on the golden age of Lucasarts I mentioned in December, Gamasutra has run a great excerpt not on any of the usual Monkey Island or Grim Fandango suspects, but rather Habitat, the late-80s Commodore 64 virtual world forerunner which ultimately failed for its beta trial’s overwhelming success.
The article explains of its creation:
Development began in 1985 and sketched out a virtual world where each player had an in-game “avatar” — a word defining a player’s online representation (and still used today). These characters could interact with other players, connected in a massive online world composed of 20,000 “regions” — essentially individual screens connected to as many as four additional regions…
Despite the apparent advantage of not having to program artificial intelligence for in-game characters, given that all the players were real people, creating rules for player interactions required the developers to broach subjects never before considered in game design.
Remarked Chip Morningstar in a long treatise on Habitat’s creative process: “A special circle of living Hell awaits the implementers of systems involving that most important category of autonomous computational agents: groups of interacting human beings.”
Book Extract: ‘Rogue Leaders’ On Lucasfilm Games’ Habitat [Gamasutra]
Previously:
Chronicle holding LucasArts book signing – Offworld
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THERE GOES MY GUN: APERTURE SCIENCE HANDHELD PORTAL DEVICE IN REAL LIFE
Easily the most incredible cosplay accessory ever created, ’emilyskeith’s real world Portal gun does everything just about perfect, and is so meticulously constructed I — no lie — can’t tell how it was made by anyone other than Aperture Science themselves.
Update: You can see many more pictures detailing its creation via the constructor himself, ‘Volpin’, at his cosplay.com gallery.
Portal Gun [Flickr, via N’gai]
See more posts about: Offworld Originals, Portal, Xbox 360
