Original Pac-Man sketches
Toru Iwatani recently showed his original sketches for Pac-Man at a Dutch gaming festival.
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kottke.org posts about video games
Ragdoll Cannon 3
Got sucked into this game for more than a few minutes: Ragdoll Cannon 3. (via buzzfeed)
A four-year-old plays Grand Theft Auto
He spends much of the time arresting criminals, taking people to the hospital in an ambulance, and putting out fires.
At this point my son was familiar with the game’s mechanics and hopped into the ambulance. As he put the crime fighting behind him, he wondered aloud if it was possible to take people to the hospital. I instruct him to press R3, and then he was off to save a few lives. He was having a blast racing from point to point, picking up people in need, and then speeding off to Las Venturas Hospital. During one of his life saving adventures, he passed a fire house with a big, red, shiny fire truck parked out front. He didn’t want to let his passengers down, so he took them to the hospital and then asked if I could guide him back to the fire truck.
Dear Leader meets Sim City
A 22-yo architecture student from The Philippines has “beaten” Sim City 3000 by building a city with the largest possible population that sustains itself for 50,000 years. The city, called Magnasanti, is not somewhere you would want to live.
There are a lot of other problems in the city hidden under the illusion of order and greatness: Suffocating air pollution, high unemployment, no fire stations, schools, or hospitals, a regimented lifestyle — this is the price that these sims pay for living in the city with the highest population. It’s a sick and twisted goal to strive towards. The ironic thing about it is the sims in Magnasanti tolerate it. They don’t rebel, or cause revolutions and social chaos. No one considers challenging the system by physical means since a hyper-efficient police state keeps them in line. They have all been successfully dumbed down, sickened with poor health, enslaved and mind-controlled just enough to keep this system going for thousands of years. 50,000 years to be exact. They are all imprisoned in space and time.
Update: In 1922, Le Corbusier designed an “ideal” city with 3 million inhabitants. (thx, diana)
A pixel art documentary
Pixel is a short documentary film exploring the artistic use of pixel-style animation in contemporary video games.
(via waxy)
Cursed Treasure
This tower defense game is really really addictive. Like don’t start if you want to get something done today. (via buzzfeed)
Super Mario Bros, 2010 version
What if Super Mario Bros had been designed as a typical circa-2010 networked game? It might look a little something like this:
The site’s a little slow right now…check back later if you can’t get the page to load. (via waxy)
Super Mario Bros remixed
Oh, man. Now you can play the original Super Mario Bros game as Link from Zelda, Mega Man, Samus Aran, and others. Really really fun. The only thing that could make this better is if you could play as NHL94’s Jeremy Roenick or Tecmo Bowl’s Bo Jackson. (thx, will)
Asteroids record broken
The current record for Asteroids is 41,336,440. It was set back in 1982, making it the longest-held record in video gaming.
[Fifteen-year-old Scott] Safran, who had been practicing nonstop at the game for the previous two years, agreed to play a marathon session of Atari’s popular outer-space shooting game as part of a charity event in Pennsylvania. His mother drove him to the event and lent him a quarter, which he dropped into the machine Nov. 13.
Why has the record held so long? Because Safran’s game took three continuous days to play with minimal breaks. Now, a new unofficial record has been set by John McAllister; he played 58 straight hours and beat Safran’s record by just over 2,000 points. Oh and those minimal breaks I mentioned:
When he needed a bathroom break, he stepped away from the machine and shed a few lives until his return. It got a little scary towards the end, because he started to run alarmingly short on extra lives as a result of his final bathroom break. He recovered well shortly thereafter, but not without giving all of us onlookers quite the scare first.
For reference, the contest in Hands on a Hard Body lasted 77 hours.
Video games attack NYC
Pixelized video game characters lay waste to NYC.
Give it a few seconds to get going…things get good right around Tetris time.
Beating dad’s high score
Troy DeArmitt shares a fond childhood memory of competing with his father for the household’s high score on Mega-Bug, a game for the TRS-80.
the next time i sat down at the computer, on a tablet of paper was written a number with an emphatic underline beneath it. it was in my father’s handwriting and it took me a moment to realize it was a score, his high score, to the game. it was also higher than my highest score to date.
Mega-Bug is available to play online…Troy has the full instructions in his post. I played this game when I was a kid too…it was called Dung Beetles on the Apple II and was one of my favorites.
Steambirds
A fun dogfighting game; here’s the premise:
1835: Sir Albert Pembleton accidentially discovers low temperature fusion. His invention changes history. A nuclear hotbox is installed in an early aeroplane. Super heated steam, the technology of the age, drives all the systems.
(thx, nick)
Old school arcade games show
If you’re into old school video games and pinball, the place to be in mid-July is at California Extreme, a classic arcade games show. Tickets are $60 for the weekend but the relevant pullquote here is:
Everything is on free play. You can play from the moment you arrive until we shut off the power at closing — Play as many games as you want, in whatever order you want to. There are *HUNDREDS* of games, all set to play for free. This is a your chance to try those older games, or the newer games that you’d never put money into in an arcade. There are also many games that never got produced, and are very hard to find.
I went with some friends several years ago and it was a lot of fun.
Taberinos one-click game
Oh, I can see where this game would get maddeningly addictive after awhile, especially if you like to shoot pool. (thx, marc)
The gameification of everything
In this 28-minute presentation, Jesse Schell talks about the psychological and economic aspects of Facebook games and what that means for the future of gaming and living. If you make products or software that other people use, this is pretty much a must-see kinda thing…the last 5 or 6 minutes are dizzying, magical, and terrifying.
Alphabet Shoot
A strategy shooter game that gets pretty hard in the later levels…like level 19, my nemesis.
Record Tripping
You’ve gotta have a scroll wheel (or trackpad) to play Record Tripping, a game in which you utilize DJ scratching to solve little puzzles.
Glitch is the new Game Neverending
Stewart Butterfield and his ex-Flickr co-founders have revealed what their company, Tiny Speck, has been working on for the past few months: a game called Glitch. A CNET reporter has been embedded at Tiny Speck for the past few months and has more than you probably want to know about the new company and game.
Twitch clicking game
From Casey Reas, a quick Chrome-only mouse-only game called Twitch. (thx, david)
Creeper World
Build your network, set up your blasters & mortars, get some energy stores in place, and try not to play Creeper World for like 12 straight hours. And this is just a demo for a downloadable for-pay game with more than 50 missions. (via buzzfeed)
Pictogrid
Pictogrid starts off deceptively simple but is difficult to stop playing after a few rounds. (via buzzfeed)
Bubble Tanks Tower Defense
I didn’t think much of this one at first (yet another tower defense game, right?) but the megatower wrinkle helps make Bubble Tanks Tower Defense almost unputdownable.
Oh, and there’s a level with unlimited money to spend on towers and upgrades to defend against unlimited enemies (it’s the last board in the top row). I built up the board as much as I could and let it run overnight. After 10 hours or so, the game got to level 2758 before all 20 lives were gone.
First person Tetris
Completely trippy version of Tetris where pushing the rotate button ROTATES THE WHOLE WORLD. (thx, ryan)
Hoshi Saga
New Super Mario Bros Wii may be difficult, but the simple Hoshi Saga had me tearing my hair out way more than Bowser’s minions.
And call your hairdresser because there is also Hoshi Saga 2, Hoshi Saga 3, and Hoshi Saga Ringo. (via buzzfeed)
Endless Migration
Endless Migration is a fun Flash game where you control a flock of geese while dogding airplanes and weather systems. (thx, neil)
I suck at online basketball too
A simple but oddly compelling multiplayer basketball game…after each shot, you’re shown how you’re doing against everyone else (~1000 players when I was playing). (via waxy)
Guitar Hero with 21,268 Christmas lights
This is possibly the most American thing I’ve ever seen:
Such ingenuity combined with such conspicuous waste. (via waxy)
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