I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but all these properties have been terribly mishandled since like the late 1990s or whenever. Listen, you: we still really want to play these dumb old games. We consistently pay for the privilege. Sure, remakes and homages are a little squirrelly, but litigious smackdowns are some way to repay our love.
If the titles’ original developers had any complaint about any totally amazing project, that would be one thing, but honestly, we all know the franchise creators have been shorn away from their own work for at least a decade. It’s OK to wring the last drops of money out of whatever you have, but just don’t be obvious about it.
Oh my gosh, what am I trying to say? Just, like, try not to be dicks about stuff when we’re all looking directly at you, right? But yeah, thanks for the inch here, the inch there, OK, because we live for that. And oh, yeah! Sarien.net is coming back, sort of. Sorry I sound so annoyed about it; I’m really not.
"Hence, it is no coincidence that some (media) artists have begun working with computer games in recent years. The possibility of making modifications to computer games (‘mods’ for short) has inspired them to create their own versions of games that, in some cases, take the premises of the games further and think them through to their logical conclusion and, in others, explicitly contradict them. As such they differ from mods created by fans, as these generally make do with redecorating the existing game structures." (via dinosaurparty)
How did I miss this last week? Nicolai Troshinsky (of Loop Record, a game I liked very much) has designed Raccord Sniper, a FPS "memory game" ripped from the glossy pages of an Ikea catalogue. (download here)
The US Department of Defense launches its Virtual PTSD Experience! (Oh, dear.)
This sort of thing reads very silly, OK, but a substantial portion of my article for the next issue of Kill Screen Magazine centers on VRT ("virtual reality therapy") and how it has helped agoraphobics, aerophobics, and glossophobics. VRT is effective; it does work.
P.S. The Virtual PTSD Experience comes with a "relax button." (Via borderhouseblog.com)
"Sure—but the beauty (and fun) of games is that you don’t feel overwhelmed by your virtual defeats, because you know you can eventually advance, and mastering the skills to do it takes only hours or days. In reality, you get just one life, and by the time you’ve figured everything out, it’s game over." (via @betajames)
My copy of 999 recently arrived in the mail, but I haven’t been able to play it (my beloved DS Lite is in my apartment in Chicago, although it did eventually occur to me to just say fuck it and buy a DSi XL using a line of credit, but I haven’t).
I’ve also been careful to not read anything about 999 at all, at least up until now. Today I read this analysis with one eye open, very literally squinting and winking at it, trying to not accidentally read anything I won’t be able to scrub away. Phew! No secrets spilled, I don’t think.
Ooh, I just hate that Cassandra. (Full disclosure: I have never played Settlers of Catan because I don’t have three dorky friends or any patience, but this article is exactly why I bought TSURO: THE GAME OF THE PATH last week.)
What a cool list of, er, I think these are all browser games? Right now I’m hooked on ‘Neon Race.’ A little Enduro, a little Burnout, a little Tron, knowwhatImsayin.
Uhhhh. Last week I made my boyfriend watch that Famicom footage of the never-released Aliens game, and then this morning as I was stalking his Facebook page, I saw that someone had slapped up a link to 1UP on his wall.
Frank Cifaldi did some really nice legwork here. You know, he’s that guy. The guy who does all the nice legwork.
This lit-journal has posted some of the loveliest, most careful work on video games I’ve read, OK, but what I really love is this-this-this. (It might be the watercolor illustrations helping out.)
I am linking to the version of this animated infographic that counts it out in U.S. $$z so that, if you’re anything like me (California-born, bad at numbers), you don’t pop a blood vessel doing math.
My Second Life avatar, awestruck by almost a thousand other avatars (click for a closer look).
“Mixed reality” artist Kristine Schomaker—Gracie Kendal in Second Life—is completing work on 1000 Avatars, a tower of larger-than-”life”-size avatars photographed from behind. Get it? Because, in a third-person game like Second Life, you only see your own backside—Kristine’s photos reflect how Second Life users actually come to visualize their virtual selves.
The chest-bursters look less snakey in this version, and I like this Samus-Ripley a lot more than the big, super-detailed MSX sprite, which seems comparatively clunky. The music is rockin’ in both (it’s Uematsu!).
"Cognitive scientists have known for some time that being in a good mood improves many aspects of thought; in particular, it boosts your ‘cognitive flexibility’—your ability to detect unusual relationships between things, and to figure out new, different ways to solve problems."
