LISTEN: FUTURE BOY’S 8-BIT MEGAMIX, THE LAST CHIPTUNE MIXTAPE YOU’LL EVER NEED
Created for Kokoromi’s recent Live Game Sounds event I mentioned a few weeks back, Future Boy’s 8-bit Megamix clocks in at nearly two whole hours of chiptune and low-bit excellence from Freezepop to Treewave to Glomag to Anamanaguchi to Goto80 and everyone else you’ve heard of before, and more you will wonder why you hadn’t heard of yet.
Use it as a primer to the scene, use it as your Jetsons treadmill running mix, just don’t not download it immediately. If it weren’t 139 megs large, I’d embed it here.
While you’re there, also grab A Maze of Death, his ‘eclectro-pop’ opera produced in collaboration with Johnny Cashpoint and based on the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, or his Strange Little World EP (both of which hover somewhere around Atom and His Package meets Magnetic Fields meets Cabel Sasser, when he can be bothered to compose), or any of the extra tracks and more traditional mixtapes he’s posted to his blog.
BLOG.POST[156] – 8-Bit Megamix [Future Boy]
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QUARTER SIXTH: THE LATEST LOOK AT EDMUND MCMILLEN’S ‘HITLERS MUST DIE!’
Though progress on bringing Super Meat Boy to WiiWare has slowed Edmund McMillen somewhat on finishing off his “album” of retro inspired mashup games called No Quarter, he’s just posted the latest look at the first of six “tracks” in the game, now called Hitlers Must Die! (though I have to admit I prefer Destroy All Hitlers).
Originally described as ‘Mario + N + Wolfenstein‘, you now get the clearest view as to how that might work: a heavily physically modeled world with the protagonist running, jumping, and, of course, brutally defeating reams of Hitler clones.
It also strongly brings to mind early indie favorite tar-ball platformer Gish, a game which Edmund McMillen helped design, and which he says he’ll be returning to soon, with “awesome Gish 2 news in the next month.”
Previously:
- Loose change: more work in progress looks at No Quarter – Offworld
- Edmund McMillen gives us No Quarter – Offworld
- Braid star Tim making cameo in WiiWare's Super Meat Boy – Offworld
- The endless forest: first WiiWare shot of Edmund McMillen's Super …
- The dynamic fluids of Chronic Logic's Gish – Offworld
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GIMME INDIE GAME: THE HIDDEN DEPTHS OF ADAM ATOMIC’S FATHOM (WITH BONUS MP3!)
Like a number of the “less said, the better” indie games in recent months (see also: Gravity Bone, etc.), the best thing Adam ‘Atomic‘ Saltsman’s just-released web game Fathom has going for it is the one secret that it would be a letdown to reveal before you’d even had a chance to play.
Suffice it to say: there’s considerable serenity packed deep within its outwardly militant core (a core guarded by, as you’ll see, this decade’s best flower-pot-security-bots), and a disquieting ending that its creator assures me shouldn’t sink my heart as much as it does.
If Saltsman’s name rings a bell it’s because — along with collaborators Infinite Ammo and Flashbang — he had a hand in designing recent Blurst release Paper Moon, as well as physics grappler Gravity Hook, the recently mentioned Dr. Dobbs promotional game, and the iPhone’s original word game best-seller Wurdle.
Saltsman’s pixels are effortlessly charming, his underlying concept — once you “get it” — is genuinely quite brilliant (here’s a hint, if you find yourself a little lost in the dark: the things around you? They’re trying to tell you something), and the game’s chiptune-prog score by Danny ‘dB Soundworks‘ Baranowsky (previously featured for his work on Flashbang’s Blush) works perfectly in concert with the rest to make a fantastic, thoughtful short-story of a game.
As a bonus, Saltsman and dB have given Offworld an exclusive track from Fathom‘s soundtrack, “Boss of Doooooom”, which you’ll recognize from the struggle pictured above. Stream it below, or download directly here.
[mejsaudio src=”http://venuspatrol.com/ofiles/danny_B_-_Fathom_-_Boss_of_Doooooom.mp3″]
Fathom [Adam Atomic, dB Soundworks]
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LEFT 4 DEAD SDK/MOD TOOLS GO INTO OPEN BETA
Just for those that hadn’t seen: over the weekend, Valve released its official SDK/authoring tools to “create your own campaign maps, character skins, 3D models, sound effects, and music” for ever-green fave Left 4 Dead, which I mention here because if someone could make us the perfect 70s suburban shopping mall, I would be eternally indebted.
Authoring Tools/SDK (Left 4 Dead) [Valve, via shacknews]
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READY TO WEAR: MARIO GETS A FIX
Spotted in this week’s batch of Threadless updates: designer Ian Summers suggests that Mario’s mushroom supply might not always have come from question-mark blocks…
Magic Mushrooms [Threadless]
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NGMOCO DROP MORE IPHONE FPS DETAILS, HALO CONNECTION
It’s been some two months since ngmoco’s online multiplayer iPhone arena shooter project codenamed LiveFire (which has now changed to something unrevealed) first made its debut at Apple’s iPhone 3.0 conference, but the publisher has just added a new entry to its developer diary offering a few more details on how its in-game commerce will function.
There was a touch of nervousness with the announcement that the game would support in-game purchases to upgrade and equip your avatar, and it looks like this has been scaled back to some degree: ngmofo Chris notes that upgrades earned as you rise in the ranks will primarily be cosmetic ones (shifts in your armor’s color), but that the in-game commerce could give entirely new thematic armor changes, which are coming, says Chris, from some of the original Halo artists.
But, he continues, they’re sticking their first tenuous dips toes into the water to see how they might balance the game by giving each armor set (heavy armor, amphibious suit, stealth) unique properties:
We’re also in the process of experimenting with gameplay-affecting attributes for purchasable armors. This feature is in the early stages of testing for balance and is something we may or may not ship with, but the design idea is to differentiate the armors sets by speed, protection, physics and other properties that align with the concept of a given armor. So a heavily armored combat suit would take more damage than base armor, but would also come with slower movement.
The intent is to give each a bonus and a trade-off, rather than a complete upgrade, to keep things in balance with the base armor set. Another idea we’re discussing is giving each armor different modifiers to power-ups (either instead of or in addition to base stat modification), so a heavy battle suit might enjoy longer bonus from damage power-ups and shorter bonus from a jet-pack powerup.
Read the full run-down for more on their design, with additional entries on the weapons and actual name of the game promised soon.
IDENTITY & IN-APP COMMERCE IN FPS
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ONE SHOT: SILENT HILL IN REAL, HORRIFYING, LIFE
Cosplay takes a lot of flack in the West, but sometimes, just sometimes, something comes along that forces you to re-evaluate: case in point, Judy Stephens’ Silent Hill set, photographed at the recent AnimeCentral 2009. [via GSW]
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ONE SHOT: METROID BY WAY OF MIYAZAKI
I’ve mentioned Mikaël ‘Orioto’ Aguirre before for his excellent collaborative Gunstar Heroes HD PS3 themes, but since then he hasn’t stopped creating hi-res painterly game-remakes, including this “Nausicaä take on Metroid.” [via Jenn’s always wonderful Infinite Lives]
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YOUR STATESIDE ONE MORE GO: VIRTUAL CONSOLE’S MAJORA’S MASK, DSI’S PICTOBITS
As we’d hoped for since early April, Nintendo has added the Nintendo 64’s time-looping Ocarina sequel The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask to the Wii’s stateside Virtual Console this week, giving everyone inspired by Margaret Robertson’s recent ode to the Zelda game too few have played the chance to give it their own One More Go.
Also of note this week and well worth picking up, the DSiWare release of Art Style: PiCTOBiTS, the stateside release of the Quarth-like picture puzzle/action game we’ve covered a number of times during its Japanese debut as PicoPict, with classic NES remixes by chipper chiptune band YMCK.
Previously:
- One More Go: Majora's Mask, or How to be your own hero of time …
- Have your one more go: Majora's Mask added to European Virtual …
- DSi getting more downloadable Art Style, Tetris Attack – Offworld
- Listen: YMCK's Bowser-busting hardcore Mario remix – Offworld
- Listen, too: Another PicoPict YMCK NES mega-mix – Offworld
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THE NEXT ‘NEXT’: THREE MORE DAYS FOR MORE KOJIMA GAME TEASING
As promised, the clouds have continued to gather on the website for Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s next game, currently codenamed “Next”, with a hint of thunder and lightning (雷電 [Raiden]), a flashing and fading ‘5’, and a countdown timer with 3.5 days remaining on the clock.
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