PSYCHO-TRONICS: BAD MOVIES REIMAGINED AS EVEN WORSE GAMES

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6.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

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The latest Something Awful ‘Photoshop Phriday’ madness, forum members re-imagine their favorite schlock films as 8-bit games, starting, most stylishly, with Logan’s Run ala Tecmo above.

And then on to Konami’s unofficial sequel to Mystery Science Theater 3000 favorite Manos: The Hands of Fate (look, the whole damn thing is right there to stream! Call it an early Weekend Watching bonus).

And then finally, my personal favorite late 80s software house Von Triersoft does Dancer in the Dark, the handheld platformer: the chip-sampled Bjork songs were amazing.

Head over to SA for the full set. [via GSW]

If you’ve been following Offworld for any amount of time, you’re probably well familiar with Steph Thirion’s iPhone debut, Eliss, one of my first (and, alongside Drop7, still most fervent) recommendations for the platform — especially now in its kinder, gentler state.

As Thirion himself will admit, though, it’s not the easiest game idea to get across in words, images, or even video (above) alone: it’s something that you really have to touch for yourself. And so: he’s just sent on word that a Lite version has just made its debut in the App Store (iTunes link) that’ll give you the first three sectors of the game, so you can see for yourself why it set my heart all a-flutter way back when.

Eliss home [Lite version App Store link, Full version App Store link, Cloud Fields]

The last post where I featured Bit Shifter‘s 2007 BlipFest performance didn’t quite go over so hotly with a few of you, apparently, so try this one — freshly published from 2 Player Productions — on for size instead. It’s from a Tank performance several months later in Spring of 2008, and is a bit more classically melodic. Now do you get why the kids are dancing?

ONE SHOT: MEDIA MOLECULE’S LITTLEBIGDRUID DISAPPEARS

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6.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

2 Replies

News that Media Molecule’s just-announced beardy Druid SackBoy costume has been delayed to next week isn’t exactly earth-shattering, but their accompanying photo — titled sad_druid.jpg — is so tragicomic, after all the smiley sunflower-picking Solstice-celebrating optimism of the original, that I had to mention it here.

SIDE-SCROLLS: 8-BIT NINJA GAIDEN IN PAPER

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6.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Officially one of the more insanely detailed papercrafts I’ve seen in recent months, ‘Papercity’ links this Ninja Gaiden diorama (rar’d PDF), that makes a strong case for a 2.5D resurrection of the game ala Bionic Commando Rearmed. [via ALBOTAS]

EDEN: LARS VON TRIER’S ANTICHRIST, THE VIDEOGAME, ONLY FOR REAL

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6.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

1 Reply

Ah wait, you thought the idea of a Lars Von Trier videogame was someone’s idea of a bad joke? Surprise!

/Film, via Danish news source Politiken, by way of friend of Offworld Gus Mastrapa, brings news that Von Trier’s latest — the Willem DaFoe/Charlotte Gainsbourg-starring Antichrist — will be adapted in game form as the PC title Eden.

Von Trier’s Zentropa film company officially lists Morten Iversen — former script writer for the Hitman games, and now head of Copenhagen-based studio ZeitGuyz — as the game’s director. /Film’s translation of the original Politiken article says the game will be about conquering your own fears, adjusted to the fears you tell the game you have in real life.

It will also, despite starring DaFoe, follow the events of the film itself, which means prrrrrrobably none of the film’s “unhinged female madness, female-inflicted penis bashing and female self-inflicted genital mutilation” that made it “the talk” of Cannes, to say the least (unless you list it as a fear?).

Hit the jump for the film’s trailer, which is also prrrrobably a little NSFW right at the tail end there (so to speak). [Thanks Gus!] (more…)

ONE MORE GO: SAMBA DE AMIGO, OR WHY SEGA OWE ME £400

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6.18.2009

Margaret Robertson

7 Replies

It’s 2008. You’re an experienced game maker waiting to pitch your big new idea to your boss. ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘It’s a motion controlled music party game with novelty peripherals that will retail for around £100!’ you blurt. A smile. ‘Perfect!’ says your boss. ‘Get my secretary to give you $10 million on your way out.’

It’s 1998. You’re an experienced game maker waiting to pitch your big new idea to your boss. ‘Well?’ he asks? ‘It’s a motion controlled music party game with novelty peripherals which will retail for around £100!’ you blurt. A frown. ‘What,’ he asks, ‘is a music game? And what’s a party game? And what’s motion control? And who pays £100 for a videogame? What kind of lunatic are you?’ At which point you remind him you’re the Yuji Naka kind of lunatic and the secretary gives you $5 million on the way out anyway (adjusted for inflation).

Samba de Amigo is the most prescient project in videogame history. We’re so used, now, to the way that Guitar Hero and Wii Fit rule the game charts, that we forget how far we’ve come, and how crazy those initial pioneers must have seemed. But in 1998, when Samba went into development, it was out on its own.

Parappa had been around for a few years, but Guitar Freaks and Taiko Drum Master were yet to debut. Mario Party and Bishi Bashi Special came out just a whisker before it, and long after it must have gone into development. The only peripherals in town were light guns and steering wheels.

Samba De Amigo was a genuine quantum leap. There was so much in the implementation to give it credit for – the exuberance of the visual style, itself a radical rejection of the browns and greys dominating early 3D gaming; the crisp groove of the move sets; the ludicrous playlist – that it’s been easily to overlook the brilliance of the very idea. (more…)

ONE SHOT: INGRES MEETS INVADER IN MONTAUBAN

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6.18.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Guerrilla artist Invader invades Montauban, France on the eve of joining the “Ingres et les Modernes” gallery exhibition, dedicated to the modern legacy of the city’s own Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

Inside the exhibit, he shows his “Rubik Odalisque” (a tribute to Ingres’ Grand original), and elsewhere in town, the similar ‘La Source‘-inspired mosaic above (alongside more traditional invasions).

Hit the jump for the prettier — but NSFW, I suppose (does art still count?) — version from the gallery invitation that traces the image’s lineage: I’m still trying to track down the artist that created the image in the middle.

(more…)

DOUBLE PLUS ENHANCED: 3.0 SOFTWARE OFFICIALLY UNLOCKS IPHONE SOCIAL GAMING

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6.17.2009

Brandon Boyer

4 Replies

After some seven hours (really!) spent giving iTunes and its glacially creeping progress bars the evil eye, the long awaited iPhone 3.0 firmware is now firmly in my hot little hands, and with it comes all the first traces of the device’s own version of social networking that’s made Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, and N-Gage such an engaging experience.

It’s anything but device integrated, mind, and expect to see the splintering grow before it consolidates. First, OpenFeint, the social networking solution first announced in February from the AuroraFeint developers (and currently implemented games like Studio Radiolaris’ Radio Flare) have duly said they’ll be supporting push notifications and in-app microtransactions in their latest version of the platform now available for developers working on games for July onward.

But, more intriguingly, ngmoco stealthily announced earlier this week a new initiative called Plus+. Unlike the current iteration of OpenFeint’s chatroom/leaderboard system, Plus+ comes much closer to Xbox Live in implementing a unified cross-game interface and profile (mine at top, feel free to add me!) that tracks your various achievements, lets you add and compare them against friends (and see which games your friends own), set status updates ala twitter/facebook (both of which will be fully integrated in a future platform update).

The system also tallies an overall point score for both unlocking said achievements or simply involving yourself in the community via invites and challenges, and — company head Neil Young told IGN — there are plans to use those points as a reward system for discounts on games and in-game items.

Currently only their Star Defense contains the Plus+ platform, but, Young said, it will be available in all games from Rolando 2 on, and there are plans to retrofit past ngmoco games with Plus+. The platform won’t be restricted to first-party published games, either: the company made its stealthy announcement alongside news that former Sega president Simon Jeffery had been hired on to head its Plus+ Publishing Group, where he’ll oversee the expansion of the system across more partner games.

And yes, that sound you heard with Jeffery’s hiring was that of the iPhone coming that much closer to the Third Handheld alongside the DS and PSP, just in case you were one of the last few who still weren’t convinced.