Jenn Frank ·
July 6, 2009 at 12:59 am
· Filed under Art
Katja makes iPhone cases from felt. This one looks like a Game Boy.
These little phone pockets are already sold out at her etsy shop but, Katja writes, “Don’t be afraid to contact me if it’s already sold—I have tooooooons of them.”
Jenn Frank ·
May 30, 2009 at 2:38 am
· Filed under Ephemera
Remember Dragon’s Lair? With Dirk the Daring starring as the blundering hero, tasked with rescuing the princess? Kind of tedious?
Within the year following its release, Don Bluth Studios loosed yet another multiple-choice, feature-film-quality adventure into arcades. Called Space Ace, the titular hero—Ace, I mean—was sort of an intergalactic refitting of his medieval forbearer.
And while the thought of conducting Ace through a sequence of quicktime events doesn’t exactly thrill me, the idea of cramming an entire laserdisc game onto the iPhone absolutely does.
Touch Arcade, with undeniably impressive gameplay footage, below:
Maybe I shouldn’t be so dumbstruck by this; hell, Space Ace was gorgeous to begin with. But on the iPhone? Holy cow.
I think I like the idea of this game—a onetime feat of technology—being marvelous and novel all over again. I guess the medium really is the message.
You never would have guessed it, but today was (technically) Infinite Lives’ all-time busiest day ever! That’s because of this oddity, which someone saw fit to add to StumbleUpon. It’s sort of old news, but basically, two dudes hooked up treadmills in this marvelously clever way, and then physically ran across Azeroth. // Since the post first went up, the dudes pulled their write-up and original video. I hate to speculate, but perhaps there was a falling-out with their energy drink sponsor?
Via delicious.com/guardiangamesblog. iPhone developer Rick Strom: "The app store isn’t a sane marketplace at all, any more than the lottery is. When you submit an app, you are buying a ticket."
Dude. With all that news about ‘Feel’ being properly localized, and Retro Game Master 2 not, Infinite Lives is starting to become an XSEED blog. And that’s fine. Here’s more XSEED news: the English-language version of Suda 51’s ‘Flower, Sun, and Rain’, lovingly ported to DS, finally has a ship date.
So Austin Boosinger recommended I check out Gobliiins 4, and ever since, I’ve been really anxious to play the game. What Austin didn’t tell me, though, was that he was in the midst of reviewing it for Adventure Gamers! I liked this sentence: "Some might call Gobliiins 4’s puzzles illogical, but really they just rely on ‘dream-logic’." And also, "Potential frustration is leavened by the silly, playful nature of the game. Mistakes don’t feel WRONG, they simply feel exploratory." He gives it a 4 out of 5.
So. A Destructoid writer visits a psychic. She performs ten-card Tarot spreads for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. Then she makes predictions about each company’s fate. Last but not least, she uses a crystal pendulum to answer Destructoid Community questions about E3. Even if you don’t believe in this hooey, lawdy, what a read.
Jenn Frank ·
May 10, 2009 at 11:08 am
· Filed under Ephemera
3D MeJitterPic for iPhone makes it easy to take two photos, align them with each other, and automagically make an animated gif that can be instantly uploaded to Myspace (I’m not even kidding—that’s a built-in feature). The 3D effect is accomplished using “wiggle stereoscopy.” Hours of house party fun! A live demonstration of the finished product, above.
Jenn Frank ·
May 4, 2009 at 4:31 pm
· Filed under Ephemera
Until a few days ago, the iPhone game Eliss was knuckle-crackingly, hair-tearingly, eye-drippingly tough. Multicolored orbs swarmed the screen too quickly, perhaps, and new game elements popped onto the touchscreen with hardly an introduction.
But Eliss’s creator, Steph Thirion, very actively sought out players’ opinions during this March’s GDC; even after, he went so far as to assemble a whole new crack team of beta testers. Seldom have I met a developer so sweetly wracked with concern after his game has launched—and, moreover, even after his game has already received generally favorable reviews.
Two days ago, Thirion released Eliss v1.1, an update that both eases the difficulty curve and lengthens the game. He’s also clarified the tutorial—although, for my own part, I really preferred the murkiness—and, on top of everything, he’s reduced the app’s price to a comparatively paltry US$2.99. That price point is honestly small potatoes, considering Eliss is every bit as full an experience as Every Extend Extra or Gunpey.
I think it’s really important to note all these changes. Destructoid posted its review of the old version of Eliss today, which is really too bad: a lot of major complaints have been addressed, if not resolved. In any case, if the difficulty curve frightened players off before, Eliss certainly warrants another look.
Pretty good reading recommendation from Jason Gajd.: "Why are gamers so afraid of people taking a critical look at games, of people questioning games, like we do with other media? Many gamers have a chip on their shoulder about being misunderstood; they feel embarrassed that their hobby is still considered juvenile, looked down upon, and poorly regarded amongst many non-gamers. They wish people would respect games, but really, ‘gamers want games to be taken seriously until they’re taken seriously, and then they don’t want them taken seriously.’"
"Eliss is the kind of game that gets me excited about the iPhone as a game platform. It might be the fart-noise apps that are getting the press, but it’s games like Eliss, Edge, and Zen Bound that truly define what the iPhone represents for gaming. As long as the significant challenge doesn’t scare you off, I’d pick this one up in a heartbeat."
Jenn Frank ·
March 15, 2009 at 2:40 pm
· Filed under Ephemera
I’m really, really bad at Eliss, the multi-touch plate-spinning game for iPhone. I think my failure falls somewhere in my personal Venn intersection of shortsightedness, panic, and a total lack of coordination.
You’re nodding and thinking to yourself, “Stop worrying! No one can be that bad at Eliss.” You’re wrong. I am starting to realize there is something genuinely wrong with me.
There are 20 levels. I passed the first stage after a day of trying. I can’t pass the third stage.
I can see what needs to happen, and I want to make that happen, but I’m graceless and stupid, my brain motoring at half-speed. I’ve shown Eliss to others, demonstrating its artfulness and my stupidity. Friends invariably pluck my iPhone from my hands, to show me how it’s done, and then they don’t want to give me my phone back.
“Stop beating my phone game,” I snapped at Scott Sharkey, grabbing at my phone. I put my iPhone somewhere private he couldn’t get to it, like in my purse or in a drawer, I can’t remember. Scott smiled at me quizzically.
This is so frustrating because Eliss is obviously the raddest game for the iPhone yet. And I can’t play it! It’s right in front of me, and I can’t do it! I’d wanted to talk about it once I’d played it except I can’t. I can’t do it. And everyone else can!
"’If you’re have a slamming Saturday night, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t feel like a game of Legend of Zelda,’ said Dennis Crowley, who was presenting his new mobile social networking application, Foursquare, on March 9 at the monthly New York Tech Meetup. ‘What we wanted to do is turn life into a video game. You should be rewarded for going out more times than your friends, and hanging out with new people and going to new restaurants and going to new bars—just experiencing things that you wouldn’t normally do.’"
"By some lights, this a golden age for writers, who can launch a blog, post their views online and reap the rewards of community, commenters and cross-referencing colleagues. This is all true. In addition to expanding the audiences of experienced writers, the web has created a showcase for extraordinary young talent like Matthew Yglesias, Ben Smith, Marc Ambinder, Ross Douthat, and Ezra Klein. On the web, no bureaucracy makes them wait their turn, no dunderheaded editors hold back their talents. ¶ But for a host of other young writers, there is still the problem of getting paid. Newspapers are no longer an option. The New York Times pays $300 for an op-ed piece today, less than it did a decade ago—and it wasn’t real money then. With more than 1,000 submissions a week, The Times’ opinion pages (for which I’ve done short stints both writing and editing) really needn’t pay anything at all. After all, the number of people willing to write for free is vast."
I know we’re all rolling our eyes, but I totally get this. If US Air stole my Xbox, I would be so bummed. I’d be all, "You jerks owe me a billion kajillion dollars," and I would be sobbing. You can’t replace that thing. It’s a perfect creature, perfectly broken in, just the way I want it. Also: I realize a lot of people saw this article through actual, legitimate game news outlets. I, however, read about it on IvyGate, my favorite Ivy League gossip site. Here is the link.
"A couple of years ago, the hot trendy thing on the Internet was to be a well-versed technology writer of the female persuasion with a tech blog so popular that for some reason unknown to sane people, it inspired commenters to respond with vile and misogynistic threats of sexual violence and imminent death." Why do people on the Internet send death threats to, uh, tech writers? No, really, why?
"Ignoring what you want. Recycling the old. Fixing what can be saved. Is this the new American way when it comes to tech toys and electronics—an industry in which new gadgets can become outdated within months?"
With the iPhone version of SimCity already here and a port of Oregon Trail on its way, my pal Seth names five more classic games he’d like to play on his iPhone. (The last one is a weird one.)
Jenn Frank ·
February 21, 2009 at 9:51 am
· Filed under Ephemera
Every morning, my mom hops onto her twelve-year old Hewlett-Packard PC and reads the news.
Specifically, she reads MSN. She only visits websites and articles that have been linked to from MSN.
The twelve-year old computer sits on my childhood desk in my childhood bedroom. When she reads the news, I am usually still asleep in my childhood bed. She likes to read the news aloud.
“Oh, cool,” I said sleepily, “read them to me.” I sat up to put on my glasses, then lay back down. “Let’s see if we can guess them in advance. Uh, Doom or Quake. Diablo or Starcraft. OK, go.”
Midway through the list, my mom hesitated. “Number six. Um. ...Rogue?”
“Really! Who wrote that,” I said, sitting up in bed.
“The Ten Greatest PC Games Ever,” she read aloud.
