CAN’T SAY NO TO EDGE: OLLY MOSS RETURNS WITH FOUR NEW RETRO-INSPIRED GAME/BOOK COVERS

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6.1.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Officially, Olly Moss was off the case on his original series of retro-book covers that helped kick off the long-running design craze, but, like a reluctant Solid Snake, he was called back into action and created these four for an upcoming Edge magazine article on evergreen games.

Says Moss: “You can’t say no to Edge.”

The instant winner of the four: his cover for Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4, which, in the context of the game (the plus-sign numbers counting toward your multiplayer kill-score) is much more grim than it would first appear.

I consider it a Very Lucky Day when I wake up to an email from Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, who this time wrote to remind me that Noby‘s GIRL had finally made the last push to Mars.

And just when I was reaching for the reply button to remind him that I’d actually already done my tribute post to the occasion, I realized just what his enclosed above video actually was. Embarrassing admission: it kind of gave me goosebumps.

o–o [Namco]

For the small handful of you that hadn’t yet heard, a quick recap: that low but growing squeeee you might’ve heard Saturday afternoon was the deflating balloon sound of one of Sony’s biggest E3 surprises — their new model PSP, the Go (and with it confirmation/video of portable LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear and Gran Turismo games) — being unceremoniously leaked early via their PS3 downloadable TV show Qore.

The full-body-wince irony is that ridiculous cloak and dagger dressing they chose for their Qore reveal — which likely was meant to be set live this Thursday, two days after this coming Tuesday’s E3 press conference.

But, with the lesson learned and the damage irreversible, Rob over at BBG rounds up the specs that set it apart from the standard PSP — 3.8″ display, 16GB of flash storage, a Memory Stick slot, and Bluetooth — and offers a smart look back at former Sony devices that show some of its industrial design roots.

The biggest change for the device, is of course not necessarily one of form factor but of content delivery: without a physical UMD slot, the Go represents Sony’s boldest push yet into digital realms, and thus will not replace but sit alongside (for now) the company’s PSP-3000, ensuring that retail (by which I mean the fierce sleeping giant GameStop) is not cut entirely out of the mix.

But! The most Offworld-ready tidbit of information out of the stilted conversation above — and offered almost entirely in passing — is Koller’s admission that there’ll be a renewed initiative to bring smaller (read: indie?) PSP offerings to the device as well. While Sony’s been doing a better job at re-releasing older UMD releases via digital means, there’s still only a very small handful of dedicated digital PSP releases on the PlayStation Network, and even then mostly downscaled handheld ports of PS3 originals (see: fl0w or Everyday Shooter).

This, then, apparently shows Sony hoping to step into somewhat the same arena as Nintendo — with its newly launched DSiWare — the ever-present iPhone, and whatever XNA-on-Zune handheld initiatives Microsoft might be announcing in a matter of hours, which it first revealed at GDC 2008 and which seems to have gone almost entirely forgotten since.

What you might not have expected from all the early footage of Flashbang’s next web-playable Blurst game, Crane Wars (and I certainly didn’t until this latest look): it’s much more a game of con-struction, with de-struction simply the goal of its newly shown-off titular competitive aspect.

And, for a game about, you know, just cranes and buildings, it’s shaping up to be as charming and light-hearted as we’ve all come to expect from the ‘bangs by now. The sudden appearance of a dumptruck tumbling through the air — thrown, it turns out, by the AI opponent to stymie your progress — is your first taste of that, which carries through right to the union/scab banter at the end, all underscored by the cheerful score by Infinite Ammo’s Alec Holowka.

All in all, it’s looking quite fun, and is expected to hit the service on July 1st.

ONE SHOT: NEIL VOSS’S MUSIC GENERATING IPHONE PUZZLER, XGON

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5.31.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Artist, designer and musician Neil ‘alinear‘ Voss offers the first peek at xgon, the upcoming iPhone “puzzler and music generator mashup” he says bears only a coincidental resemblance to Trism — now instantly one of my most anticipated apps.

If you only know NYC devs Area/Code from their phenomenal iPhone game Drop7 — and even if you feel like you know a bit more — give co-founder Kevin Slavin’s presentation at the recent 5D Immersive Design Conference a half hour of your weekend.

Originally linked by Bruce Sterling over at his Wired blog, Slavin covers not only the history and background of the studio (and their fantastic and still too-unknown location/real-world based games like Tokyo’s Print Club sticker popularity contest, Superstar and Facebook’s Parking Wars) and more on Chain Factor/Drop7 than even I knew, but — speaking as he was on the future of TV — makes his strongest point at the end, contending that ‘any screen without a mouse ships “broken”‘.

We’ve seen a short clip of the game in motion before, but WayForward have returned with a longer video of the interplay between the boy and his titular blob, in their new Wii game inspired by David Crane’s NES original.

Offworld favorite indie dev Cactus finally long-form reveals Air Pirates, his LoFi Minds collaborative “game about killing airplanes“, which will be coming next month to UK TV network Channel 4’s “E4” entertainment subsite.

What I hadn’t known before: the Flash game of “pirates, airplanes, giants, loot and secret bases in volcanoes” will apparently include platformer sections, spotted briefly toward the end of the video, which has since doubled my interest.

The latest look at Double Fine’s PS3/Xbox 360 open world metal slasher Brütal Legend introduces the star power the studio’s tapped with its four Rock Gods: Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, Lita Ford, and, of course, Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne.

Brütal Legend [EA/Double Fine]

RABBITS: THE SUBTLE TERROR OF OBESOLETE’S DIY SILENT HILL PLUSH TOY

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5.29.2009

Brandon Boyer

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Etsy user obesolete offers this plush toy of one of Silent Hill‘s creepiest conceits (as below): the obliviously joyful and blood-splattered series mascot Robbie Rabbit (only the second most terrifying rabbit-related horror of all time).

Robbie Rabbit Plush – Silent Hill by obesolete [Etsy, via TinyCartridge]