Jenn Frank ·
April 7, 2010 at 2:41 pm
· Filed under Art, Books, Nonfiction
I am just going to assume everyone knows about how Nintendo started out as a playing card company. Right?
So anyway, Bill Mudron, who is a reputable artist and my third or fourth -favorite person in the world, is working on some weird Nintendo history thing, I don’t know. Looks like a book or something. He just uploaded a book jacket to his Flickr. Whatever.
Comprehensive round-up of backlash re: GameCrush, the amihotornot-esque site where you—yes, you, lady!—can earn some pocket $$$ just by gamin’/hookin’. And why not? I SHOULD charge dudes admission to play me at Castle Crashers co-op! One time, admittedly on a dating site, a guy asked me for my Live gamertag, and I was like, "Uh huh huh huh, only if you pay me first." So, hey! Safe spaces be damned, otherize away! I’m gonna make bank! Suckers.
Do you guys have to do this to me? Do you have to pestle my little stone heart into powder? No one needs me to save this del.icio.us link anyway (I am #148), because anybody who is anybody has already clicked this, read it, and died. If it is true, and I have claimed that it is, that any creative act is the active movement from Intention to Realization, then it must also be true that talking can wait.
Here’s a post-GDC IGF rant. I am somewhere I can’t watch videos, so I can’t check out his grievances: I am basically adding this link to my del.icio.us for later when I can totally click on everything. Enjoy!
As I recently did, this dude purchased a copy of Horrorsoft’s 1992 dungeon-crawl Waxworks (which is NOT abandonware, people!) from GOG.com. Verdict: this game is hard as balls.
Retro Gamer—which, as an import publication, costs a fuck-ton on US newsstands—is now an app on the iPhone! I will spend all day debating and budgeting in my head. Thanks a lot, Eric.
Girl meets boy in PlayStation Home, texts him dirty things, and introduces herself to his mom. (Uh, also, girl is 43-year old married mother of three, and boy is, uh, 14. So there’s that, too.)
A nice little interview with the team behind ‘Owlboy.’ What’s that you say, dev team? Playable by March? You better not be pulling my leg like last time.
The trouble with rooting around Tumblr is, it’s practically impossible to source these types of things. I had hypothesized that this custom controller was the unholy result of Arcade-in-a-Box, but I’ve now learned that it appeared at last year’s Season’s Beatings IV event.
Ray Barnholt and I used to talk about how we want to play games and relax, and we don’t get to. One time I drew him a picture of an arcade cabinet of a hypothetical coin-op called Relax and there was a bear coming out of the screen. I was like, “Ray, look! It’s your life!” Video via leighalexander
"The DMS is the only wavetable synthesizer for the Apple //e, IIc, and IIc+ computers that is suitable for performance use. It supports up to 8 voices, which can be selected from the 10 on disk, and played (monophonically) from the Apple II keyboard."
[NOT GAMES] – Tosa Novmichi, one of the creators of the Knockman toys (my favorite!), will attend a signing in his honor this Saturday at Giant Robot LA. There, he will demonstrate his latest musical toy, the Otamatone, an electronic musical instrument that superficially resembles an erhu, but sounds more like an aerophone, but also (!) has a little puppet mouth that functions as a mute, dampening the sound. (Otamatone = automaton? So clever!) I would like to get really good at playing the Otamatone, then use my musical abilities to win Mr. Novmichi’s love.
This got RTed approximately 5,348,780,670,897,168,097 times yesterday, so I started to feel guilty and am now doing my part. "Originally the grey shirt was on the left, and it was selling way more," web developer and Attract Mode proprietor Adam Robezzoli tweets. "Then I moved the gold one to the left and now it’s selling way more." Fascinating.
Article begins with in-game footage from ‘The You Testament.’ In it, Christ dies on the cross. Then ‘Bib,’ a hulking goliath of a man, sets about brutalizing everyone at the crucifixion (he punches Mary Magdalene in the back of the head!). Indie game designer Mat Dickie, we learn, loves God—I think?—and he also loves wrestling. ‘The You Testament’ is basically a wrestling game, but it’s set during Christ’s lifetime, and there’s also a lot of meditation and hugging. Maybe this doesn’t sound like it makes sense, exactly, but it will make sense. (via @AttractMode, and in turn via @FortNinety)
Good Old Games is a website that repackages ROMs of still-licensed games, many of them over a decade old, and sells them as digital downloads. I’m only just now trolling the ‘editorials’ section for the first time, and wonder of wonders! GOG.com doubles as a pretty good resource for newcomers to the point-and-click adventure game genre. Here’s a nifty retrospective by my e-pal Pete Davison.
Unbelievably completionist (yes, "completionist") Phantasmagoria retrospective. Hey, GOG! When’ya gonna start distributing Phantasmagoria: a Puzzle of Flesh, hmm? ‘Cause that game is pretty much the weirdest.
On the heels of the ongoing print media death throes freakout, which more recently has been, inexplicably, conflated with iPad tech coverage—and btw articles about either thing have done absolutely fucking nothing for me—this is really good.
Yesterday, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg revealed more plans for Coney Island’s upcoming Luna Park, which will be built on acreage that was formerly a part of Astroland.
I ‘play’ a lot of Foursquare when I have my iPhone on me, and I unlock myriad ‘achievements’ especially if I have been drinking. Look at these patches! They’re all ready to be stitched onto your high school Letter or Denim jacket. Jeremy Parish long contemplated, quietly, the logistics of Retronauts embroidered badges—I think he should have those made, don’t you?
The Behemoth’s Dan Paladin—that’s the artist behind Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers—permits us this inside peek at his creative process. The video is time-lapsed, so it’s like a character design speedrun!
“My dream manifested in the murk of split-pea monochrome—your dream might have been in color, though, if you had an NES, and if you are able to dream in color.”
You guys, I am so excited. I always wondered what, exactly, the link was between the Adventure Island series and Takahashi no Bugutte Honey was, and today I found out!
