ONE SHOT: STREET FIGHTING SCRIBBLENAUTS
Scribblenauts artist Edison Yan gives the people what they want, and what they want now is every Street Fighter Alpha character shrunk down to ‘naut form. Also available in Street Fighter III and plain ol’ Street Fighter style, or, also, Final Fantasy VII. [via TinyCartridge]
Previously:
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ONE SHOT: COOKING MAMA, AND FAITH, AND LARA, AND SAMUS, AND…
From the cover of France’s IG games mag. Can you name them all? [via GSW]
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TINKER TOYS: FORMER FASA DEVS REVIVING MECHWARRIOR FOR PC, XBOX 360
And the other revival of the morning: there was a lot of speculation in late 2007 and across 2008 as to what upstart studio Smith & Tinker (winners of one of my top 10 developer logos) were up to. Studio founder Jordan Weisman was the series creator of the original MechWarrior franchise at FASA, but had since moved on to found 42 Entertainment — creators of ARGs like Halo‘s now-renowned ‘ilovebees’ campaign.
The direction started to shape up a bit more when news hit that he’d reacquired a number of his early properties from Microsoft — MechWarrior and Shadowrun among them — but it wasn’t until today that the studio’s debut project was revealed: a current-gen reboot of MechWarrior, as seen in actually kind of unexpectedly wicked action above.
There’s currently no set publisher or release date, but Weisman gave IGN a number of good details as to what to expect from the game in an exhaustive interview, of note particularly for their ideas on a semi-persistent, Call of Duty 4-esque experience-based mode for its multiplayer.
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THE BREEDERS: TEAM17 REVIVING AMIGA CLASSIC ALIEN BREED
Two stories of beloved cult hits getting overhauled for the now-gen this morning: the first, that Worms, Stunt GP, etc. creators Team17, as they quietly announced in late 2008, are due to turn their early-90s Gauntlet-esque Amiga shooter Alien Breed (above), into Alien Breed Evolved:
The studio are still quiet on platforms and details, but promise more information in the summer, and that its co-op game will be “an absolute blast.”
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MICROSOFT DATES SUMMER XBOX LIVE ARCADE RELEASES: SPLOSION MAN, TRIALS HD, SHADOW COMPLEX
A quick note to relay Microsoft’s plans for the rest of Xbox Live Arcade’s summer: following next week’s debut of the re-made Secret of Monkey Island, July 22 will see the release of the 3D remade arcade original TMNT, Turtles in Time Re-shelled, which will then be followed by Capcom’s fighter Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
August 5th will then see the release of ‘Splosion Man, above, the 2D puzzle platformer from Twisted Pixel, the studio behind ace 3D PC/XBLA puzzle game The Maw, followed then by Trials HD, the console port of Red Lynx’s surprisingly engrossing heavily physics-laden motorbike puzzler, and finally, August 19th will be the launch date for Shadow Complex, the 2.5D Unreal Engine enabled ‘Metroidvania‘-esque platformer from Undertow devs Chair Entertainment first revealed at Microsoft’s E3 conference.
Previously:
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ONE SHOT: JYLLIAN THIBODEAU’S HOME-STITCHED RHYTHM HEAVEN GLEE CLUB
There’s something in the water over there at Harmonix that’s causing widespread wicked home-stitch/crochet madness: first it was Milo Martinez’s Left 4 Dead Sackboys (more on those in a second), and now creative director Josh Randall drops a note that playtest coordinator Jyllian Thibodeau has been quietly at work on her own plush tribute: the first third of Rhythm Heaven‘s Glee Club.
My only hope is that the other two, when completed, will be looking on this one with that signature “you’re screwing the whole thing up” scorn. And, unsurprising side note, Thibodeau also has a wicked desk, where I spy not only a pair of Daniel Danger BUDs but at least one member of Peskimo’s Bamboozoo.
Previously:
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FAUX THE ARTS: BUY PRINTS OF JAMES BARNETT’S MATISSE-IAN FALLOUT, HALF-LIFE LANDSCAPES
After receiving what he calls “an inordinate amount of attention in the last few weeks” after his ‘fauxvist’ Fallout 3, Half-Life and Team Fortress landscape paintings were featured on sites like, well, here, artist James Barnett has set up a new project on Kickstarter — the same crowd-funded site fueling Andy Baio’s Miles Davis chiptune cover album Kind of Bloop — to get prints of the art made for everyone who “blanched when I told ’em the prices” of buying an original.
$20 will net you one of the eventual prints of your choice (have a look at Offworld’s own high-res gallery for some of your options), $10 will net you a smaller original watercolor (“to be painted while listening to your choice of audio file(s)”, and $200-400 will get you an original oil painting (un-framed or framed, respectively).
If art’s not really your deal, but you still want to support the artist, Barnett’s also offering a home-cooked meatball meal for anyone in the Scottsdale, AZ area for a paltry $75, and, for $2400, you can buy the artist’s car, complete with “burned-CD collection of impeccable taste and hideous fake-fur seats.”
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IT’S THINKING: GALACTIC ARMS RACE, ‘SPACE DIABLO’ WITH AI-DESIGNED, EVOLVING WEAPONS
I haven’t had near enough time in the past few days to give this a proper go, so let’s explore it together. The gist? University of Central Florida’s Evolutionary Complexity Research Group describes their free PC game Galactic Arms Race as “‘Space Diablo‘, with real-time combat, cool particle system weapons, and RPG-style leveling and skill trees.”
Which is all well and good, but what we’re really interested in here is that second bit, about the cool particle system weapons, because what’s actually happening here, as seen in the video above, is that every projectile pattern is being automatically, systematically and generatively evolved by AI based on player behavior — hence its genesis in an “evolutionary complexity” lab.
The evolutionary algorithm, very cutely called ‘NEAT’ (and it is), has come up with some gorgeous and novel solutions to problems — I’m looking specifically at the ‘tunnel maker’ and ‘wall making’ abilities here — which, as the video will repeatedly hammer home, were entirely AI designed, by aggregating player behavior over the whole system.
The game’s currently available as a free download via UCF’s site, and, being as it’s apparently developed in XNA, could potentially mean an Xbox 360 port at some date, we should hope.
As you dig into it further, let us know what you think via the comments, this could end up being something that bears revisiting over the course of the year as it evolves further. [via slashdot]
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FEAR OF A SACK PLANET: BUY YOUR OWN LEFT 4 DEAD, CUSTOM SACKBOYS
So, after posting yesterday’s One Shot tribute to Harmonix staffer Milo Martinez’s Left 4 Dead Sackboys, Milo Himself showed up to let us know that those self-same-sacks were available for purchase via his site Sack-Planet.
Those, or any others from basic brown on up, apparently: Martinez has a handy customizable order sheet that’s something like Build-a-LittleBigBear, with a 2-3 week turnaround time, and optional tongues thrown in at no additional charge, which I think I’ll be ticking my way through in very short order.
Previously:
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TWEET (#2537848828)
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