- April is finally here, which means an extremely busy month. First up this weekend is Retro Redux, the 24 hour game design jam. As I said before, I’ll be on hand as a “mentor” to assist the SVA team as they whip their game together.
Earlier this week we hand a meeting to assess everyone’s roles, the toolset, and other basics. We didn’t brainstorm game ideas since there’s going to be a design parameter revealed at the event itself, so we spent some time guessing what that might be. One point of interest was the rumor of a second SVA team headed by… a former acquaintance of mine from the past. There is no second team after-all, but I will see this person again, which will make things very interesting….
I also tried to emphasize the need to stick to a schedule. Considering the rudimentary and downright crude assets that everyone has to work with, 24 hours a drop in the bucket when compared to the many months it took coders to make games for the 2600 originally, though thankfully the tools provided are apparently quite easy. But making the game is one thing, making it fun is a whole lot of something else…
I’ll also be there to observe everyone since I’m doing a piece on the event for Gamasutra. Plus it’ll be a good chance to catch up with a few folks, like Raina (Lee), who’s there covering the event for Wired, Wade from Large Animal, and Jonah Warren.
- And the weekend after is I-Con. I forget to pass this along before; here’s my tentative schedule…
FRIDAY:
7 pm – The Agony of Vaporware
SATURDAY:
2 pm – Ratings & Censorship
3 pm – East vs West: Cultural Differences Between the Games and Gamers (not a regular panel, just my own one hour chat once again)
4 pm – Girl Gamers
5 pm – YesterGames
8 pm – The Perception of Gamers in the Media
10pm – Internet Addiction
SUNDAY:
noon – The Franchise Effect
3 pm – Art of Video Games
4 pm – Video Game Music
- Back to this weekend, the night before the game jam, I’ll be seeing Sin City with MK. This will be the first time I’ve seen a major motion picture on opening night in literally years.
To be honest, its not a good night for going out since I’ll be up for 24+ hours the next day at Parsons, but MK flat out refuses to wait, and neither can I actually. I’ll see any comic book fan film when you get down to it, but this movie looks fucking amazing, plus I’m a huge fan of Robert Rodriguez, and as much as I hate seeing Hollywood suck its own dick (a la Ocean’s Twelve), but this one definitely has that cool “old Hollywood” vibe, which no one seems to be able to replicate (see its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for an excellent example).
I know there’s going to be headaches involved, hence why I always used to see any big release film two weeks later on a Tuesday afternoon. But when you work at an art school (or anyplace that has “media savvy” folks), you almost have to see whatever on opening day unless you want to avoid every conversation the day after (I learned my lesson from SVA already with Kill Bill v.1).
- Even though Spready Bear is far from finished, I already have another game lined up: Catfight, based on MK’s comic (you can now read #1 on her groovily revamped site right here).
Actually, MK’s had an idea for a game for sometime now, and after looking at her preliminary plans, its quite obvious that she’s a real gamer. And I’ve wanted to do a fighting game for some time now, but one with RPG elements in it, and funny enough, her concept is on the same wavelength.
Plus, this will second attempt at making a game based on friend’s comic, the first being a very brief stab at creating a Quicken Forbidden game which never happen. At least I got further along directing the QF movie, which sadly was also not finished.
- Meanwhile in general gaming news, the PSP continues to make headlines.
One of them is about the less than expected sales its had. Of course the system did sell out at specialty game stores like EB and Gamestop, but they can still found at easily regular stores like Target and Walmart. And of course, you can’t find one here in NYC, but that’s cuz its NYC…. its impossible to get anything easily around here sometimes.
I really can’t understand why people are at all surprised. First off, its expensive. Secondly, its coming out at a piss poor time; many people are heavily involved in school finals, while others are dealing with taxes. Plus, if you’re like me, you’re still paying off the shit you bought at Xmas.
Plus, other than Lumines and Ridge Racers, there really aren’t any good games out there, and those two titles certainly is not popular with the masses.
- It’s been interesting reading up on people’s response to the system now that they finally have it. First off, it’s becoming quite clear to everyone that it is not the multimedia mega-machine that everyone was expecting; you can thank outlets like Newsweek and the NY Times a good deal of everyone’s false hopes. That and the retard employee at Circuit City who tells people that you can play your PS2 games and DVDs on the unit. Getting your movies on that system is not at exactly quick and easy, plus you’ll have to fork over some good cash for a decent sized memory stick.
I love how studios are going to release movies on UMD for $30 a pop. Okay… I can get Kill Bill to watch on my small PSP screen, with no extras and for thirty dollars, or get for one so I can watch it on my TV with tons of, at this point, expected extras, and for half the price. Ummm…
- Back to the sales, Nintendo took advantage of Sony’s less than thrilling news (you just know that they were hoping for news stories of people bashing each other’s brains in to get a PSP) by revealing that the DS was close to the 6 million mark. 6 million sold or 6 million shipped, which are two totally different things? Who knows, really. But there are millions of DS’s in people’s hands, and with such a huge number, Nintendo had better start delivering on those promises…
Also, they’ve just unveiled a new “totally insane, cutting edge” ad campaign(!). As Steve said it best when I showed it to him “But where are the game?”
- I know this is old news, but for those who still don’t know, there’s now a web browser available for the PSP which was hacked from Wipeout Pure (okay, make that three games out there that I really want to play).
- Oh, and now it seems you can get your PSP replaced if there’s dead pixels. But only if its “determined to be defective”. Great.
I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but Sony’s customer support has some of the most upright assholes anywhere. I remember when I called to get my defective copy of Gran Turismo 2 replaced, and I had to spend twenty minutes on the phone to “prove” that it was defective by going through a long, drawn out Q&A, much of which didn’t make sense, which I failed and therefore couldn’t get a replacement copy!
- There not much info on this thus far, but there might be a game, a la RPG Maker, that allows people to create games via the PC and that can be downloaded to the PSP via the internet, meaning anyone could play the game. The program/game is being designed by FromSoftware, which mostly makes Armored Core, the really hardcore mech simulations. This has the potential to be really awesome.
- Since I don’t have cable, let alone any television at my new place yet, I didn’t see it, but last night’s episode of South Park was about Kenny getting a PSP. At one point, the line “The Sony PSP was built by God” was uttered, which got a great response from gaming forum geeks everywhere. This sorta reminds me about the episode that sorta centered on Dreamcast.
I do hear that it was a really funny episode overall, but other than South Park and a few other shows, I really haven’t missed television all that much, and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve been in such a long stretch without TV in my entire life (it’ll be two weeks tomorrow). I know last night episode also centered on that vegetative woman, and the current events is something which I’m also really behind the times on. Besides no televised news, I haven’t read the paper in weeks, and I just haven’t the interest to pursue current events via the web. But when I recently asked folks what I’ve been missing out, its quite clear that its absolutely nothing. I’m sorry, but I have much better things to do and talk about than dwell on people and their misfortunes.
But I’ll have to get back to television soon… the second season of Venture Brothers was finally officially confirmed, plus there’s a slew of other awesome shows set to premiere on Adult Swim. And of course, there’s Robot Chicken that I’m already missing.
- Anyway…. back to games, remember Sega Fantasy V? Well here’s Sega Fantasy VI. God I wish I knew what they were saying.
- And tomorrow is April 1, which in in the world of video games is the biggest day for false hopes and outright bullshit. Hell, it’s already struck; last night, a student talked about the upcoming bonus disc that’s supposed to come out with the next Zelda, which redoes Wind Waker in the new game’s engine… which was this year’s EGM April Fool’s Joke.
But here’s something different… instead of dumb 12 year olds making up news about video games, a game maker is doing it themselves. Behold, the EXIDNA!
There are several variants of the hardware to suit different kinds of gamers’ tastes, such as the O-MARU for “casual” gamers…
… Or the STICK for elderly gamers…
The system has some truly awesome peripherals, including a “body pillow controller”, and the games are even awesomer! There’s one that has a cute looking deer interacting with trucks, Super Epic Innovative RPG (the title’s tentative), R-Type Final 2 (see, the last one really wasn’t the absolute final chapter after-all!), and my personal fave, Space-Time Firefighters Sakurazaka, which not only looks to combine the Power Rangers with Burning Rangers with Back to the Future with Dance Dance Revolution…
All I can say is that Irem is fucking amazing. And they apparently do something like this every April 1rst! You can find more info at this GAF post.
- So my boss Kate is lending me an old SVA iBook to take along to the Atari event. You might recall that my original iBook from work was sadly destroyed on the eve of my trip back home late last year. Anyway, it’ll be nice to have another portable Mac to work on, or so I thought. For some reason, the iBook fucking stinks. Literally! It fucking reeks of some foul order. It seriously smells like ass!
The iBook has been passed around for a bit, stuck in a bag for a while. Some have tried using it, but once the bag was opened, it was immediately closed. Since its been through several hands, no one has a solid idea why it reeks. Either that or someone is possibly embarrassed about it.
One thing I tried emphasizing at that aforementioned meeting was the need to not lose track of time. Organization, communication, and the setting up of milestones, as well as meeting them, is the key to success. But I also mentioned that everyone needs to keep hygiene a top priority as well; a bunch of computer nerds are all going to be working together in one room for 24 hours, which means that its gonna start smelling real bad after a while. So I’ve instructed them to bring plenty of gum and deodorant.
And now I’m gonna be the jack-off who stinks up the place with a fucking stinky iBook! Jesus fucking Christ…
