Not sure that there’s a iron-clad source
Not sure that there’s a iron-clad source on this, but a new version of Katamari Damacy seems to be rolling towards the Wii. Katamari seems like one of those games that the Wii remote was made for.
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kottke.org posts about games
Can’t. Stop. Playing. Desktop Tower Defense. (via damn you, schachter)
Can’t. Stop. Playing. Desktop Tower Defense. (via damn you, schachter)
The Game Neverending Museum contains several screenshots
The Game Neverending Museum contains several screenshots and a paper transformation matrix. I got a little nostalgic for Web 1.0 looking at this.
Wii Sports high scores
I don’t spend enough time playing Wii Sports to claim mastery in any of the events. I’m hovering around 2000 in tennis, I’ve bowled a 248 (twice), shot an 8-under in 9 holes of golf, and got my only gold medal in “Hitting the Green” with a distance of 84 feet. The big question, particularly in the Wii Tennis clubhouse, is: how high can a person’s score go in a particular sport? Anything over 2000 displays off the chart:
After poking around for a few minutes, I discovered the Wii High Scores pool on Flickr, in which were the 2310 in tennis above, several 300 games in bowling, an 8-under in golf, and 153.1 feet in “Hitting the Green”. Wii boxers in this thread claim a top score of 3124, after which it seems nearly impossible to score even a single point. Here’s a screenshot of a 3120-level boxer:
Does anyone have any Wii Sports high scores to share? Anyone over 2300 in tennis? Photo evidence is preferred.
Notes from Will Wright’s keynote at SXSW 2007. “
Notes from Will Wright’s keynote at SXSW 2007. “Movies have these wonderful things called actors, which are like emotional avatars, and you kinda feel what they’re feeling, it’s very effective. Films have a rich emotional palette because they have actors. Games often appeal to the reptilian brain - fear, action - but they have a different emotional palette. There are things you feel in games - like pride, accomplishment, guilt even! - that you’ll never feel in a movie.”
Popular Science has a lengthy interview with
Popular Science has a lengthy interview with Will Wright about Spore, which gets into a bit more detail about the game than I’ve seen elsewhere. See also: Will Wright’s bibliography.
A group of people who are interested
A group of people who are interested in preserving video games as culturally and historically important artifacts has chosen their list of the top 10 most important video games of all time: Spacewar!, Star Raiders, Zork, Tetris, SimCity, Super Mario Bros. 3, Civilization I/II, Doom, Warcraft series and Sensible World of Soccer. Sensible World of Soccer?
Simlish is the fictional language spoken in
Simlish is the fictional language spoken in the Sims games. Several music artists have recorded songs sung in Simlish.
Dance Dance Immolation is a lot like
Dance Dance Immolation is a lot like Dance Dance Revolution except that if you miss a step, you get a flamethrower right to the face. (via wonderland)
The Golden Ratio and its appearance in
The Golden Ratio and its appearance in the music of Nintendo’s Zelda games.
Slang suggestion: “bang the bricks” as a
Slang suggestion: “bang the bricks” as a euphemism for getting money from an ATM. “Everybody knows how Mario from the Super Mario Brothers is getting money: He bangs against a brick with his head.”
The Nintendo Wii, and the bowling game
The Nintendo Wii, and the bowling game in particular, is a big hit at an Illinois retirement community (average age: 77). “‘I’ve never been into video games,’ said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach last week as her husband took a twirl with the Nintendo Wii’s bowling game. ‘But this is addictive.’”
Virus 2 is really simple but fun game…
Virus 2 is really simple but fun game…to win, “infect” all the tiles with the same color.
I missed this somehow, but Nintendo has
I missed this somehow, but Nintendo has an extensive series of interviews up on their site between Nintendo’s president and the Wii development team. A fascinating look at the Wii’s development process. (thx, zacharie)
Walking through the Union Square subway station
Walking through the Union Square subway station is like playing the Star Wars arcade game. I go through that station every single day and I never noticed that. For shame!
Cool Missile Command-like Flash game, but with
Cool Missile Command-like Flash game, but with some physics and gravity.
Putting the game back in video game
Steven Johnson has written up some thoughts on the Nintendo Wii. His fifth point is especially interesting and I can’t help quoting almost the entire thing:
Wii Sports trades the onscreen complexity of goals and objectives and puzzles for the physical, haptic complexity of bodily movement. Since the days of Pong, games have been simplifying the intricacies of movement into unified codes of button pressing and joystick manipulation. What strikes you immediately playing Wii Sports — and particularly Tennis — is this feeling of fluidity, the feeling that subtle, organic shifts in your body’s motion will lead to different results onscreen. My wife has a crosscourt slam she hits at the net that for the life of me I haven’t been able to figure out; I have a topspin return of soft serves that I’ve half-perfected that’s unhittable. We both got to those techniques through our own athletic experimentation with various gestures, and I’m not sure I could even fully explain what I’m doing with my killer topspin shot. In a traditional game, I’d know exactly what I was doing: hitting the B button, say, while holding down the right trigger. Instead, my expertise with the shot has evolved through the physical trial-and-error of swinging the controller, experimenting with different gestures and timings. And that’s ultimately what’s so amazing about the device. Games for years have borrowed the structures and rules — as well as the imagery — of athletic competition, but the Wii adds something genuinely new to the mix, something we’d ignored so long we stopped noticing that it was missing: athleticism itself.
He’s not exactly right — for example, drifting in Mario Kart is difficult to do until you develop a “touch” for it and is not easy to explain to others — but the Wii does take it to a new level.
A Wii-themed Valentine’s Day card. “Will you
A Wii-themed Valentine’s Day card. “Will you be my player 2?” More here. (thx, nicholas)
Rosemarie Fiore’s awesome time-lapse photos of video
Rosemarie Fiore’s awesome time-lapse photos of video games. Reminds me of Averaging Gradius. See also Jason Salavon’s work.
This just in: Conan O’Brien defeats Serena
This just in: Conan O’Brien defeats Serena Williams at Wii Tennis.
Bubble Bobble street art in London. BB
Bubble Bobble street art in London. BB is one of my favorite arcade games ever. (via wonderland)
Video: web designers Jeffreys Veen and Zeldman
Video: web designers Jeffreys Veen and Zeldman fight in Wii Boxing. More web designer Miis here and an explanation here.
Six weeks ago, a blogger began a
Six weeks ago, a blogger began a Wii workout regimen to see if he could lose weight by playing Wii Sports. He lost 9 pounds and almost 2% body fat.
A California game company purchased the rights
A California game company purchased the rights to Line Rider and plans to release versions of the game for the Nintendo Wii and DS. (thx, selena)
Perched on top of Time magazine’s list
Perched on top of Time magazine’s list of best video games for 2006? Wii Sports.
Holy crap: playing the Wii on a
Holy crap: playing the Wii on a huge movie theater screen!
Update: Here’s how they did it.
Addictive little online games
It’s the Friday before Christmas weekend. Stop pretending you’re trying to get any work done today. Your boss is either off on vacation already or has her feet up on the desk, waiting for the appropriate hour to sneak off for a “late lunch” and never come back. To help you in your final hours of pre-holiday work, I compiled a list of some addictive online games, easy to play but hard to master. Have hours of fun. Go on, you deserve it.
Line Rider - You know it, you love it. This is the new version, just released.
Winterbells - Jump a bunny from bell to bell.
Finger Frenzy - How fast can you type the alphabet? (My high is 8.54 seconds. (Slow typer.))
Sober Santa - Steer drunk Santa away from the rails.
Falling sand game - Part game, part physics experiment.
Throw Paper! - This would be more fun on the Wii.
Bejeweled - Billions of collective hours of productivity lost.
50 states map challenge - Place the US states on a map. (I got 92% accuracy.)
Cursor Thief - The short little dude wants to steal your cursor.
Mini golf - 18 holes. (Another version.)
Collapse - Kinda like Columns, if you’ve ever played that.
Fly the Copter - A simple one-button game.
Pingu Throw - Wherein a Yeti hits a penguin with a club to see how far it will fly.
Mission in Snowdriftland. Like Super Mario Bros, but with a snowman.
DoubleJeu - Balance a ball while playing Pong.
Chaos Theory - A bit like a chain reaction Missle Command.
Troyis - A chess-like puzzle game.
MotherLoad - I’m telling you, don’t get started on this one. Like crack, it is.
Domino Pressure - Knock down the dominoes to squish the tomato.
Dodge - Dodge the blocks with your mouse.
High scores to share? Other neat online games that people should know about? Taunt my slow typing skills? Leave ‘em in the comments.
Here’s what kottke.org looks like using
Here’s what kottke.org looks like using the browser on the Wii. The browser is from Opera and is available for free by going to the Wii Shop Channel, then Wii Ware, and then click “Download”.
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