It’s been nearly four and a half years since the release of Halo 2 on the original Xbox console. The game is remembered for a number of reasons—online functionality, the story, perhaps even the hype. But for a select group of fans, Halo 2 is remembered fondly not for its play features, but for the Halo 2 ad campaign: The Haunted Apiary, or I Love Bees.
I Love Bees is an ARG, or alternate reality game. What that means specifically is hard to quantify, but ARGs tend to share a few common characteristics. They are played in real time over a finite length of time; they involve group efforts in puzzle-solving, either online or in the real world; their stories are told in rather unconventional ways, ranging from clothing lines to trading cards to false newspapers to in-game websites in games over the years. As for I Love Bees, the main action of the game occurred at the website of the same name.
You know that new DS game, Retro Game Challenge? I didn’t want to say anything, but frankly, it’s last year’s news. And it’s nowhere near as good as its sequel, Arino no Chosenjou 2, which Chris Kohler is playing. Thought you should know.
Jenn Frank ·
February 28, 2009 at 12:27 am
· Filed under Ephemera
To its credit, this GameStop employee training video is very cute. I really kind of mean that.
Here are some notes I scribbled down as I watched:
GameStop says: Don’t scare off the nice middle-aged lady with your “gamer jargon.”
Jenny adds: Don’t attack the nice middle-aged lady with questions at the front door.
GameStop says: Do ask a ton of questions! What is she looking for? Customize your recommendations for the nice lady customer!
Jenny adds: But talk a little faster, a little less like your customer is an idiot.
GameStop says: Lady shoppers are divided into “hunters” and “gatherers.” Hunters know exactly what they want and make a beeline for it. Gatherers are ‘browsing’ and are therefore more susceptible to suggestion. Both invariably require your special brand of expertise!
Jenny adds: Don’t forget the third category of female GameStop shoppers over the age of 25—they’re called “gamers.”
P.S. If you try to upsell me on that free subscription to Cosmo (8:26), I will cut you.
"Hideo Kojima and his hour-long, near-nonsensical, soap opera cut-scenes don’t value your time. Fortunately, your time is now worth next to nothing." It would be just another diggbait trash piece, but it isn’t. Robert Ashley is just that good.
"’I think a lot of the conversation these days is myopic,’ said Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of The Washington Post. ‘The problem is how to monetize all content, which is not simply how to solve newspapers problems. Our problems are ultimately the same as the movie industry’s, the book industry’s, the magazine industry’s, the music industry’s. We all meet on a vast, flat digital plane, which is a sort of Hobbesian, anarchic, unordered place.’"
"Selecting a bootleg CD-R of Gravitation, she walked back to the counter where she overheard two guys discussing the copy of BioShock that they were buying and in particular what a deep story it was supposed to have. Emily rolled her eyes." (via)
Jenn Frank ·
February 26, 2009 at 3:24 pm
· Filed under Fashion
I don’t remember how I ended up with Aled Lewis’s illustrations open in a Firefox tab—I probably followed a delicious link or twitter tweet in the middle of the night—but here it was the next morning, still on my laptop, being all awesome.
But this one: this one is the one I want. Because I like crime shows and Law and Order and TV about forensics and Police Quest adventure games and morbidity. I would totally play this shirt. And it’s on sale! Nine measly bucks for a girls’ XS or XL! (Sorry, boys—maybe they’ll reprint it.)
"For a long while she was, in my mind, ‘that cool, good-lookin’ girl who is into video games.’ This is not to say I walk around equating moral worth or coolness with good looks; it is merely in recognition of the fact that cool, good-lookin’, girl, and video games do not often find themselves in the same sentence with the same referent. Video games began as a form intended for children and young people." Real Actual Writer Tom Bissell interviews Video Game Journalist Heather Chaplin in the most recent issue of The Believer.
"If you haven’t taken the plunge into the murky world of high definition television, here are 10 good reasons to keep an old-fashioned tube TV around. Perhaps it won’t be your primary set, but there are solid reasons to keep a CRT as backup."
"Further compounding the problem is that Falcom’s design philosophy has evolved very slowly since the debut of games like Dragon Slayer and Ys; ‘stubborn’ might be the best way to describe the company’s approach to game design."
"It turns out that the death knell for EarthBound’s Virtual Console release was Nintendo’s own legal team. Fearing possible copyright repercussions (especially over the soundtrack, which borrows liberally from bands like The Beatles), they demanded changes to the game from the Japanese side of Nintendo."
"Kicking of its recently unveiled Atlus Online service is a brand new free-to-play MMO that will use the always-interesting backdrop of steampunk." Whoa. Later, Babbage.
Retro Game Challenge, the English-language version of GameCenter CX: Arino no Chosenjou, launched earlier this month in North America. Its sequel is slated for release in Japan on the 26th (tomorrow!).
What follows are six minutes of an intriguing 23-minute program that aired on Japanese television on the 17th. It is meant, in turns, to promote Arino no Chosenjou 2, to give a history of the GameCenter CX television show, and, seemingly, to generate still more interest in the television show’s ongoing localization project.
Jenn Frank ·
February 23, 2009 at 12:44 am
· Filed under Music, Television
“And dere’s one special lady who’s found her way through my vinyl-treated denim shirt and into my heart—and that’s this lady behind me. Meez Pac-Man.”
In an Angle Dance -caliber performance, The State’s Michael Ian Black—surrounded by dancers clad in Blade Runner raincoats—sings a love song to a Ms. Pac-Man upright arcade cabinet.
Jenn Frank ·
February 22, 2009 at 11:45 pm
· Filed under Music
They told him, “Don’t you ever come around here,
“Unless you’re really good at Soul Calibeer”
There’s Frogger in their eyes
And Crystal Castles in their leers
So beat it, just beat it
This April, Michael Jackson will auction his arcade collection, including Frogger, Soul Calibeeer, and an old Zoltar machine. Zoltar, you guys.
Check out the Julien’s catalogue—either MJ doesn’t own a Moonwalker, or he ain’t sellin’ it.
It’s been nearly four and a half years since the release of Halo 2 on the original Xbox console. The game is remembered for a number of reasons—online functionality, the story, perhaps even the hype. But for a select group of fans, Halo 2 is remembered fondly not for its play features, but for the Halo 2 ad campaign: The Haunted Apiary, or I Love Bees.
