READ/WATCH/LISTEN: ROMANIAN MAG OTAKU PLAY INCLUDES INDIE/CHIPTUNE DVD, EBOY POSTER
Spotted by the TIGSource crowd earlier in the weekend and quickly ordered before its minuscule run of 350 copies ran dry is Okatu Play, the latest issue of a chapbook style magazine put out, as it happens, by the same Romanian organization that put together the Otaku festival Mike noted a week or two back.
The table of contents is a laundry list of unfamiliar or only hazily recognized names, but it’s the included DVD that is more overtly the draw: in addition to a lineup of 2007 BlipFest videos (all taken, it would seem, from the earlier mentioned Vimeo uploads that included 6955 and Virt), the disc also features music by Nullsleep, Kaseo and she, trailers and info on a number of Offworld-regular indie games, and, to top it off, comes with a foldout poster by iso-pixel artists eBoy.
The magazine ran me just over $20, and still looks to be available as of now: see also some previews of their earlier issues via issuu.
OTAKU PLAY [via TIGSource]
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KNIT FOR RESALE: CROCHET YOUR OWN BOY
We’ve always got time for more Noby Noby Boy love here at Offworld, and today’s dose comes courtesy of Asia Bur-Min’s Crochet Noby Noby BOY.
There’s only one available to buy over at Etsy, but have no fear; Asia’s also selling the pattern for the lovable 4ft-long scamp – so if you fancy a BOY of your own, there’s never been a better time to take up crochet. Or, alternatively, make friends with someone who can already crochet.
[Pattern- crocheted Noby Noby Boy toy, via GameSetWatch]
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ONE SHOT: ORRANGE™’S HALF LIFE NOVA PROSPEKT, LEGO EDITION
Inside ORRANGE™’s Combine facility, part of an ongoing Lego Half Life series, via benisadork.
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RED VS. BLUE: VALVE’S LATEST TEAM FORTRESS MASTER-SHORT, MEET THE SPY
Leaked this weekend: the brilliant culmination to a series of Team Fortress 2 character updates that saw the focus on the Sniper abruptly backstabbed and turned to a focus on the Spy.
These guys need a feature-length, immediately.
Team Fortress [Valve]
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LISTEN: JAPANESE SYNTH LEGENDS YMO, DONE IN DS-10
Following up on our previous Korg DS-10 related posts, here’s a pair of DS covers of legendary Japanese synth-band YMO.
NATT021’s dual-DS powered cover of “Rydeen”, embedded above (original version), and PECG300’s Korg DS-10 cover of “Technopolis” below (orginal version.)
Knowing of YMO’s mid-70s electronic and computer game influences and their subsequent influences on videogame music composers like Hitoshi Sakimoto, there’s something genuinely fitting about seeing their classic tunes played on a Nintendo DS.
YMO “RYDEEN” on Nintendo DS (KORG DS-10) [YouTube]
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ONE SHOT: THE HEIGHT OF BEDAZZLED DARWINIAN FASHION
Indie game dev rock star finery, spotted by negativegamer at Manchester’s Videogame Nation museum exhibit [via GoNintendo].
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ZOMBIE SNAKE: MEDICOM’S LATEST METAL GEAR SOLID 3 VINYL
There’s definitely a perpetual hint of Metal Gear in the air lately: after all the official and custom vinyl creations, pre-orders are opening around the net for Medicom’s latest official Snake toy, this super-stylized Zombie-painted Naked Snake figure from Metal Gear Solid 3, due for release this fall. Find it variously here.
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IOM: IAN BOGOST’S GURU MEDITATION COMES TO IPHONE
In what he describes as the first ever simultaneous game release on both the Atari 2600 and iPhone, developer, author and researcher Ian Bogost (the producer behind the previously mentioned airport security game Jetset) has released Guru Meditation to the App Store, a portable version of his “zen meditation game.”
The background: the game was originally developed for an obscure ‘Joyboard’ peripheral for the Atari 2600 — the retro-tech equivalent of the Wii’s Balance Board — which, instead of using the controller for an action game, required the player to sit as still as possible on the board. Remain motionless and your guru score rises, move a muscle and you crash back to the ground and start again.
The iPhone version of the game does precisely the same, only requires the player to hold the device in both hands, and uses the mic as well: in this version, you have to remain silent as well as motionless.
It’s a cute and clever idea for sure, but it is curiously effective to concentrate as hard as you can to remain still, and, Bogost notes, takes the one device that excels at distraction — with email, texts, twitter, and calls — and turns it into the precise opposite.
Learn more about the idea behind the game — and its limited edition Atari 2600 equivalent, and find the game on the App Store here.
Guru Meditation — a medititation game for Atari VCS and iPhone [Ian Bogost, iTunes link]
Previously:
- From Atari Joyboard to Wii Fit: 25 years of "exergaming" – Boing …
- Touch me I'm slick: Persuasive Games' experimental Jetset – Offworld
- Beam racer: MIT previews Bogost/Montfort Atari 2600 book – Offworld
- Layoff: financial crisis through a match-three casual game lens …
- Bleed for me: undoing Atari 2600 emulation perfection – Offworld
- On wires and pumps: Persuasive Games talks Jetset, App Store …
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EVILBLDG: JIM ROSSIGNOL ON THE GAME DESIGN’S ARCHITECTURE OF ‘EVIL’
Over on the regularly wonderful BLDGBLOG, our Ragdoll Metaphysics columnist Jim Rossignol writes on the how designers architect the forms of “evil” in games from rote gothic constructions to cases where the environment is the enemy itself. Says Rossignol:
I suspect… the ways in which game designers architecturally represent evil are becoming too much a part of our everyday imaginative discourse to remain affecting. They’ve begun to lose their danger. The connection with the inhumanity that makes the enemy so thrilling has started to fade via over-familiarity.
Where the evil lair becomes a little more interesting is when its nature is ambiguous – but nevertheless disturbing. Half-Life 2’s Citadel is an example of this. The brutal gunmetal skyscraper that looms over a nameless Eastern European city, below, appears deeply threatening. But, like everything else in the Half-Life 2 universe, it is unexplained. It does not seem inherently evil. The structure moves and groans; it is a machine of some kind. It is something constructed and mechanical, rather than the clear manifestation or emanation of an evil force. The Citadel is not a fire-rimmed portal to hell, nor a windswept ruin. Nor is it a volcano base. It could even be somehow utilitarian. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the real Moscow’s own television tower.
It is, perhaps, even incidental to the scourge that Half-Life’s denizens face: alien infrastructure. It is only later, as the plot uncoils the inner architecture of the Citadel, that you come to realise that it is the enemy: the lair of an alien force that must, ultimately, be destroyed.
Click through for much more.
Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds [BLDGBLOG]
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VIDEO: SIMS TREK
One of the biggest games of this summer takes on one of the biggest films: a Sims 3 powered homage to Star Trek. It’s an epic trailer with green alien sex, dying red shirts, fight scenes, and dramatic Simlish voiceovers.
If even half of the tools used to create this video will be available to end-users when The Sims 3 is released next month, then you can bet on LittleBigPlanet levels of user-created content. This could be huge.
Return of the Trek Guys, The Sims 3 Parody [YouTube]
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