"You know how I started playing adventure games when I was 11?" I asked my mom last month. "And played them nonstop for six years?" I nodded at my own question. "Well, I actually never stopped. All I do now is play adventure games from 1992 on my laptop." (via delicious.com/superlevel)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it: the problem isn’t the distracted mind or waning attention spans. Rather, "free time" itself has changed. The average Joe Workhorse has the same amount of spare time as he had in the 1950s. Now, though, in this modern era when work follows us home nightly, leisure time is staggered throughout the waking hours, in fits and starts, crammed between classes or meetings. New technologies—digital video recorders, streaming Netflix, Kindles, and Instapaper—give Joe the option of negotiating media in his own time.
There isn’t time enough, for instance, to listen to an LP directly though; Joe only downloads the hit tracks he already knows he wants. He can’t be home from work in time for Hell’s Kitchen, he knows, so he’ll single out the missed episode later on Hulu.
Attention spans? People focus their energies now more than ever, committing to long novels, longer games, and serialized TV (see also ‘Everything Bad Is Good for You’).
Not long ago, I sat down with Pac-Man CE DX, the new sequel to 2007’s stellar Pac-Man: Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade.
Like its predecessor, DX is a Pac-Man style maze gobbler with a shifting layout and a strict time limit, forcing you to go for the highest possible score before time runs out. DX adds in a “ghost train,” wherein sleeping ghosts around the maze wake up and begin chasing Pac-Man. Provided you don’t get yourself trapped—think Snake—you can use the train to rack up huge scores, grabbing a power pellet and chowing down on dozens of ghosts in one fell swoop.
I’d had a nagging feeling that this reminded me of another game, but I couldn’t pinpoint what. It wasn’t until my riveting game of Centipede at Ann Arbor’s Pinball Pete’s that my memory jogged: DX smacks of the Magnavox Odyssey2 game, K.C.’s Krazy Chase! That game was a curious mash-up of Centipede and Pac-Man, deliberately designed to prevent a lawsuit from Atari—a fate that had befallen the game’s antecedent, K.C. Munchkin.
K.C. Munchkin, released in 1981, was a huge hit for the Odyssey2, at least for its brief availability on the market. Beating the 2600’s notorious Pac-Man port to home consoles by nearly a year, Phillips, the parent company of Magnavox, found themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit by Atari, who argued that the maze game was too similar to their own, and that Atari had the sole rights to Pac-Man on home computer. To be sure, K.C. Munchkin had its differences—multiple mazes, a level editor long before editors were common (it used the Odyssey2’s attached keyboard), and dots that roamed the maze itself—but ultimately it was a game in which an impish munching character wandered a maze, eating dots and avoiding monsters. As if driving the point home, with a wink and a nudge, that K.C. really was Pac-Man in disguise, the game even had power pellets that would allow the player to hunt the three monsters for a limited amount of time. Of course Atari won the suit, and K.C. Munchkin was pulled from shelves. Still, the game’s success had blown the door wide open for a sequel.
Modded and overclocked Xbox 360, cooled by apartment dweller Chris C’s window unit. "I was thinking about doing the mini fridge idea," he writes, "but the fridge looked weird next to the TV."
Doc Pop, the musician / game developer / illustrator / fashion designer / board game enthusiast / yo-yo artist / fro-yo artist, made something again. It’s pretty good—less chip, more glitch, if you feel me—very Mille Plateaux, but with layered vocals like Mark DeNardo.
Eric Caoili: "Taking the internet by storm this week—or at least that small portion of the internet devoted to video games—is Octodad, a 3D, third-person adventure game in which you control a loving father and caring husband who is also a secret octopus. It’s an endearing title about ‘destruction, deception, and fatherhood.’"
"The study also concluded that the pub quiz game even worsened post-trauma symptoms in some cases. ’...Our data suggest that in the field of trauma, not all computer games are beneficial or even merely distracting—some may even be harmful,’ reads the study."
OMG OMG OMG OMG that guy I love from "Alias" (not Michael Vartan, not Bradley Cooper, not Victor Garber, the other guy) is IN THIS TRAILER. He’s IN IT.
You can’t even muster any ire. Maybe Boll’s time really is over. But then you start to think, you know what, I’d totally secretly rent this. That’s because you don’t remember watching ‘Postal.’
There’s a teaser trailer, but the documentary is still in production. Filmmaker Brad Crawford is petitioning for funding online at indiegogo.com/100Yen (via @n0wak)
‘Gamification’ takes a big punch to the nose: "What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience. Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards." (via @betajames)
Woodruff and the Schnibble—the box art specifies The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble, but the title screen touts Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth—was lovingly localized and published in 1995 as YASA.
Oh, I like that acronym! I just made it up: Yet Another Sierra Adventure. I can’t be the first person to think of YASA, but let’s keep using it.
Woodruff looks like a Gobliiins game because—unofficially, anyway—it really is a Gobliiins game. Like the rest of the Gobliiins series, Woodruff was designed by the mad geniuses at French developer Coktel Vision, where artist Pierre Gilhodes first developed the series and its distinctive style.
Because my sense of humor skews "innocently bizarre" and at least one ‘shop winner was too sick for my taste, #10 was my favorite. I know a girl who wears a baseball cap sideways a lot, and I really really like her, OK, but when she’s not looking I turn to D and whisper, "Paperboy calls it quits!"
I was looking something up online when I fell upon these really excellent gameplay videos by Bruno de Figueiredo (AKA “dieubussy,” AKA the Eastern Mind guy).
And I was really gladdened to see the videos because, not only do they illustrate PC games that are harder to obtain and get running, but these games are also absolutely essential non-games. All three titles are contemplative by anyone’s standards, but they feel especially slow now.
Jude Buffum is great. His meticulous, deliberate paintings, each one an entire mosaic of pixels, are much too charming to come off as labored. His work for the ongoing cult series curated by Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles—including Crazy 4 Cult, the 3G show, Under the Influence, and Idiot Box, to name a handful—reappropriates pop culture, often recasting familiar faces, places, and subplots as video game battles.
And now for something a little different:
“For the upcoming show Pixel Pushers, sponsored by Scion and curated by Giant Robot,” Buffum writes, “I decided to explore the carnivorous side of the world of video games.” And sure enough, each of Buffum’s 6 macabre works is styled after the beef chart.
Here, Mario’s nemesis Koopa is drawn and divvied into mouthwatering steaks, while Zelda’s Ganon, with his porcine snout, can be turned into bacon, sausage, and ham. The Final Fantasychocobo is hacked into like a chicken, as is Mario’s stalwart companion Yoshi—he can lay eggs, after all. But best of all, Bloopers and Cheep Cheep fish (they’re the two adversaries from Super Mario Bros’ obnoxious underwater levels) finally get a chilling comeuppance, served with a side of wasabi. So gruesome!
Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot curated the show, which runs from November 13 through December 11 at Scion Installation Gallery LA. The opening reception will be held on the evening of November 13, 7:00-10:00 PST.
Pixel Pushers: An Exploration of 8-Bit Digital Media
November 13 – December 11, 2010 Scion Installation Gallery
3521 Helms Avenue, Culver City 90232
(310) 815-8840
#2 in my Top Five Best Screensavers Ever. Why am I so attached to these old things? I guess a screensaver was like a comfortable roommate, and I’d look over at the corner of my teenager’s bedroom and see him there, half-awake, muttering to himself, doing as he does.
I was searching for a copy of After Dark for Win3.1 (I think I’ve forever misplaced my floppies NO KIDDING), and I ended up finding a Flying Toaster screensaver for OSX instead (see also http://uneasysilence.com/toast/). Except for the jarring absence of "Ride of the Valkyries," this seems pretty accurate.
Not long ago, I sat down with Pac-Man CE DX, the new sequel to 2007’s stellar Pac-Man: Championship Edition for Xbox Live Arcade.
K.C. Munchkin, released in 1981, was a huge hit for the Odyssey2, at least for its brief availability on the market. Beating the 2600’s notorious Pac-Man port to home consoles by nearly a year, Phillips, the parent company of Magnavox, found themselves on the receiving end of a lawsuit by Atari, who argued that the maze game was too similar to their own, and that Atari had the sole rights to Pac-Man on home computer. To be sure, K.C. Munchkin had its differences—multiple mazes, a level editor long before editors were common (it used the Odyssey2’s attached keyboard), and dots that roamed the maze itself—but ultimately it was a game in which an impish munching character wandered a maze, eating dots and avoiding monsters. As if driving the point home, with a wink and a nudge, that K.C. really was Pac-Man in disguise, the game even had power pellets that would allow the player to hunt the three monsters for a limited amount of time. Of course Atari won the suit, and K.C. Munchkin was pulled from shelves. Still, the game’s success had blown the door wide open for a sequel.
