kottke.org posts about games
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. “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.”
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 the Sims games. Several music artists have recorded songs sung in Simlish.
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)
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 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…to win, “infect” all the tiles with the same color.
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)
Cool Missile Command-like Flash game, but with some physics and gravity.
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.
Bubble Bobble street art in London. BB is one of my favorite arcade games ever. (via wonderland)
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 to Line Rider and plans to release versions of the game for the Nintendo Wii and DS. (thx, selena)
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 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”.
Awesome. Director Michel Gondry recently posted a YouTube video where he is pictured solving a Rubik’s Cube with his feet. A few days later, this response debunks Gondry’s effort as a stunt. When I read the title, I half-expected the person to claim that Gondry had used CGI to fake the solving, but that wasn’t likely because Gondry doesn’t like to use special effects in his films. The actual answer is decided low-tech and clever, just like his movies. BTW, here’s someone solving the Cube with one hand in 20 seconds. (via cf)
Update: Regarding the CGI, then again…. (thx, oscar)
How do motion-sensing video game controllers (like the Wii remote) work? “The accelerometers used in the Nintendo controller are thinner than a penny, small enough to fit twelve on a postage stamp, and sell for under $6 a piece. They can accurately measure forces more than three times stronger than the pull of gravity in three directions - up and down, side to side, and forward and back.”
Update: The folks at Spark Fun Electronics took the Wii remote apart to see how it worked. (thx, david)
From over 220 entries in the Celebrity Mii Contest, the judges have selected their favorite celebrity avatar created with the Nintendo Wii. And the winner is Dave Curry with his Zach Braff Mii:
Judge Spencer Sloan of Goldenfiddle said of this entry: “What’s beautiful about this one is the truth in this piece. Yes, Braff, you’re a nose and some lip. Bravo to the artist for taking a risk.” Judge Jen Bekman of the Jen Bekman gallery said of the Braff: “There is this eerily human quality - I mean it really looks like him, as a person, in a weird way.” The Braff Mii was not the most faithfully rendered celebrity Mii but with a few broad strokes, Curry created something more than the sum of its parts and ventured close to art. Well done. As the winner, Dave will receive the Wii game of his choice and a 3-D statuette of the Zach Braff Mii provided by Fabjectory.
Here are some other entries the judges felt strongly about (i.e. the runners-up) with commentary:
Jack Black by both Brandon Erickson and Shane Walsh
Jen: “Faithfully rendered.”
Spencer: “The artist really captured Black’s unsettling feline qualities with confidence and skill, and for that he/she must be congratulated.”
Condoleezza Rice by Alex Chang
Jen: “The Condi one looks like her and also is a caricature at the same time, embodying the devil-essence that surely corrupts her soul.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Stephanie Goins
Spencer: “This one is like the Mona Lisa. I cannot escape her glazy stare, try as I may. She’s perfect in every way.”
Woody Allen by Adam Preble
Jen: “Great, immediately recognizable, somewhat of an easy target though.”
Frida Kahlo by Adriana Tatum
Vito Corleone by Benjamin Lim
Jen: “Don Corleone came close to being my top pick before I decided that he too, was a bit too easy.”
Steve Zissou by Mark Husson
Spencer: “Nice work on the hat, I guess, but the moustache is weird. Plus, no pock marks. And Stevie definitely needs him a frown.”
Admiral Ackbar by Eric Eberhardt and Mike Boccieri
Spencer: “Admiral Ackbar is fantastic, obviously, because I immediately knew who he was, and maybe you didn’t. I’m interested to find out whether the artist went in with Ackbar in mind or saw him in some of the available features. Very well done, indeed.”
Klaus Nomi by D.J. Ross’ girlfriend
Spencer: “The Klaus Nomi is a strong work but possesses little confidence. This Klaus is all fear.
More timid mime than weirdo alien swagger.”
And here are the rest of the finalists that the judges had to choose from. You may notice a few excellent cartoon entries…the judges felt that while they were worthy finalists, they did not merit the top spots because of a lower degree of difficulty involved in their construction (i.e. making a cartoon character with what is essentially a cartoon editor).
From top to bottom, left to right: Velma from Scooby Doo, Hannibal Lecter, Jack Skellington from A Nightmare Before Christmas, Dick Cheney, Tom Cruise, Hulk Hogan, Jennifer Wilbanks (aka The Runaway Bride), George Costanza, Charlie Brown, and V from V for Vendetta.
Missing from the finalists are the multiple Michael Jacksons, Hitlers, Satans, Walter Sobchaks, Beatles, and Kim Jong Ils. So many Mii versions of all these people exist online that it didn’t feel right including them in the final round because they were both too easy and too easily copied from elsewhere.
Finally, a personal favorite that didn’t make it into the final round:
David Foster Wallace by Nick Maniatis
I get the feeling that in the Maniatis household, there are a lot of Wii Tennis matches pitting Wallace and Hal Incandenza against Tracy Austin and Michael Joyce. Awesome.
Thanks to everyone who entered and to the judges for deciding amongst such a strong field of entrants.
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