Infinite Lives

• YouTube – Dr. Katz: Just guarding the blue key
  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
• Retro Thing – Is This The Ultimate Commodore 64 Mod?
  "The case is modeled after a Moog monosynth, with wooden end caps and lots of metal."
• Retro Thing – Brand New Music Synth—For the Apple II?!
  "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."
• Opposable Thumbs – From school to XBLA: The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
  New on XBLA! The student-made game impressed at IGF 2008, and starting today we can all reap the rewards.
• Siliconera – Survey Says Men Like Final Fantasy V, Women Favor Original Final Fantasy
  Unsurprisingly, both sexes like FFVII, so there you go. It’s something we can all agree on!
• IndieGames.com – Interviews: More IGF Finalists
  A link roundup replete with IGF interviews from all over the web.
• Massively – An introduction to Myst Online for newbies
  Oh, I will most definitely be referring to this resource for weeks/months to come.

• Vinyl Pulse – Tosa Novmichi Signing @ Giant Robot 2 (2.20)
  [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.
• Arcade Heroes – National Textminator tournament now live in the UK
  Are you the fastest text-messaging gunman in the west? And by ‘west’ I mean the UK? Well, unholster that mobile phone: you could win £10,000!
• Attract Mode – Area 5 T-shirts
  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.

• Heavy – Mat Dickie, The Greatest Game Designer You Have Never Heard Of
  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)
• Christian Gaming Zone – The You Testament
  Come to think of it, this review (and reviewer) is/are pretty amazing, too.

• GOG.com – Gabriel Knight retrospective
  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.
• GOG.com – Editorial: Smoke, Mirrors and the Phantasmagoria
  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.
• TFSBLR – Captain N: The Game Master by Darren Calvert
  fan art of who must be the Biggest Gamer Ever, the fictional Captain N
• jim rossignol – Rock, Paper, Shotgun, And Why We Need To Make Publications Into Homes, Or Maybe Just Local Pubs
  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.
• Expressive Intelligence Studio – John Davison of GamePro Talk at UCSC
  John Davison of What They Play is slated to give a lecture at UC Santa Cruz this coming Tuesday, February 23, at the Digital Media Theater.
• Arcade Heroes – Coney Island revival project begins this summer
  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.

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