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Let’s see, my favorite game was probably the original Legend of Zelda, so:
You have carried a piece of string cheese behind your ear for a whole day.
Not the whole day, but certainly longer than was socially or hygienically acceptable. (via @tcarmody)
On the 40th anniversary of the seminal game’s invention, Chris Stokel-Walker looks back at the history of Pong and why it was such a big deal for the gaming industry.
On Nov. 29, 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here’s how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today’s tech moguls.
MoMA has acquired 14 video games for their permanent collection. Presumably they paid more than MSRP?
We are very proud to announce that MoMA has acquired a selection of 14 video games, the seedbed for an initial wish list of about 40 to be acquired in the near future, as well as for a new category of artworks in MoMA’s collection that we hope will grow in the future. This initial group, which we will install for your delight in the Museum’s Philip Johnson Galleries in March 2013, features…
The games include Tetris, Passage, The Sims, and Katamari Damacy. No Nintendo games on that list, probably due to ongoing negotiations with Nintendo.
Polygon visited Harmonix to learn about the process for Gangnam Style to become a part of their Kinect game Dance Central 3. The result is partially a look at the challenges in that process, but also ends up being a good profile of Harmonix. The “cat cow” move was particularly hard to put into the game.
The “cat cow” requires the dancer to get on hands and knees, thrust their hips and swing their head from side to side. It is but one of a handful of ridiculous moves in a dance inspired by playing cowboy and humping things, but throughout the day we will hear from almost everyone we talk to that in spite of how ridiculous it is, it has been hellish to recreate it in the game. A lot of magic has been thrown at solving the problem of the cat cow.
With Typing Karaoke, instead of singing the songs, you type along to the lyrics and get points for lack of errors and how well you keep up. Too fun!
I only downloaded Letterpress about 10 minutes ago but I am already hopelessly hooked. The game is a combination of Boggle and Go and was made by Loren Brichter, who made Tweetie back in the day. This is the sort of app that makes me weep because it’s so simple and polished yet endless. Brichter is some sort of iOS wizard and we should have him burned at the stake for his wonderfully addictive magic.
The halftime show of the OSU vs Nebraska football game featured the OSU Marching Band’s tribute to classic video games. This is a 9 minute video, and I surprised myself by watching the whole thing. Tetris at 1:25 is fantastic, and the running horse at 6:00 EXTRA fantastic.
(via @wilw)
Ok, I’m gonna point you to the article discussing the whole thing but based on my years of extensive experience as a kid, I can tell you that blowing into the cartridge absolutely did work. Zelda in particular always needed a good blow before playing. (via @djacobs)
Even after reading this rave review of 10000000, I was skeptical about trying it.
The best part of my job is randomly stumbling across a game no one knows about, by a developer no one has heard of, and have it absolutely blow my mind. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it results in drained batteries and dropping everything to get something on the site about it while I wait for my iPhone to charge only to return to the fray.
It just didn’t look that fun. But I did try it. Once, twice, three times. And it didn’t grab me. Then I picked it up last night and ended up playing for two hours straight. It’s taking all my self-control right now not to play it all day. In conclusion, you should totally not download this game because it will completely disrupt your entire life.
The new version of Kingdom Rush for the iPad includes two new levels. Love this game and still play it way too much.
This seems like a Soviet version of Mario:
Get the game here. (via bb)
Illustrator Jed Henry takes video game characters and draws them in the style of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Here, for example, is Mario Kart:
If that tickles your fancy, Henry is collaborating with woodblock printmaker David Bull to make actual woodblock prints that are available via Kickstarter.
Free idea for iOS game devs: for just about any iOS game I’ve played for the more than 60 minutes, I would pay dearly (like $10-15) for a God-mode option that let you play the game infinitely long without dying. The type of God mode would depend on the game. For Tiny Wings, it would be as simple as removing the sunset. For Ski Safari, ditch the avalanche. For Kingdom Rush, God mode might be something like starting any level with unlimited gold and unlimited enemies. (For KR, I would probably pay $30 for an unlimited mode.) And perhaps God mode purchase option only unlocks after a certain amount of gameplay. It wouldn’t work for any game…e.g. I can’t think of what God mode for Angry Birds would be like. But for a certain type of game, God mode would be a great way for experts to explore more of the games they love.
Update: Several people of Twitter mentioned The Mighty Eagle as Angry Birds’ God mode, which is close. A couple of others also suggested unlimited birds of your choosing on every level…good idea!
Uh oh, this is bad news for my productivity after this Thursday…Andreas Illiger is set to release the sequel to the mega-fun Tiny Wings on July 12th. In the meantime, watch the adorable handmade trailer:
In the amount of time I have spent playing Kingdom Rush on the iPad, I could have completed a second or even third college degree. So it is with some relutance that I have been made aware of the iPhone version of Kingdom Rush, out today. It’s the same game, optimized for the smaller screen on the iPhone and only 99 cents. Maybe the reason the whole “can’t use the iPad/iPhone for creation” thing persists is that everyone is using the damn things to play tower defense games instead.
After reading Noah Davis’ piece in The Verge about Tetris, Aaron Cohen collected a bunch of other long articles about Tetris.
Also worth watching is this hour-long BBC documentary on Tetris.
Alexey Pazhitnov, a computer programmer from Moscow, created Tetris in 1985 but as the Soviet Union was Communist and all, the state owned the game and any rights to it. Who procured the rights from whom on the other side of the Iron Curtain became the basis of legal wranglings and lawsuits; the Atari/Nintendo battle over Tetris wasn’t settled until 1993.
And there’s always the kottke.org tag for Tetris.
Ski Safari is an iOS game that’s kind of a cross between Tiny Wings and CycloManiacs…which is to say that I love love love it. Here’s my high score, about which I’m very ashamed and proud at the same time:
(via @gavinpurcell)
A Super Mario Summary is a abbreviated version of the original Super Mario Bros game in which each of the levels has been squeezed into one screen. For instance, here’s World 1-1:
(via waxy)
From what I can tell, the Museum of Soviet arcade machines is an actual physical museum in Moscow but you can also play one of the games (called Morskoi Boi) online. The museum has around 40 machines, about half of which are playable, including Repka, Safary, Vozdushniy Boi, Duplet, and Snezhnaya Koroleva.
Judging from the sheer number of you who sent in this link, it might be the kottke.orgest link in the history of the internet. In it, Sam Anderson goes long for the NY Times Magazine on casual games (like Angry Birds, Tetris, Bejeweled, etc.).
In 2009, 25 years after the invention of Tetris, a nearly bankrupt Finnish company called Rovio hit upon a similarly perfect fusion of game and device: Angry Birds. The game involves launching peevish birds at green pigs hiding inside flimsy structures. Its basic mechanism - using your index finger to pull back a slingshot, over and over and over and over and over and over and over - was the perfect use of the new technology of the touch screen: simple enough to lure a suddenly immense new market of casual gamers, satisfying enough to hook them.
Within months, Angry Birds became the most popular game on the iPhone, then spread across every other available platform. Today it has been downloaded, in its various forms, more than 700 million times. It has also inspired a disturbingly robust merchandising empire: films, T-shirts, novelty slippers, even plans for Angry Birds “activity parks” featuring play equipment for kids. For months, a sign outside my local auto-repair shop promised, “Free Angry Birds pen with service.” The game’s latest iteration, Angry Birds Space, appeared a couple weeks ago with a promotional push from Wal-Mart, T-Mobile, National Geographic Books, MTV and NASA. (There was an announcement on the International Space Station.) Angry Birds, it seems, is our Tetris: the string of digital prayer beads that our entire culture can twiddle in moments of rapture or anxiety - economic, political or existential.
But the real lily gilder here is that you can play Asteroids right on the article page…you can shoot almost everything off the page aside from the article itself — ads, comments, navigation, etc. This in-article game is based on this JavaScript hack that will let you play Asteroids on any old web page. Pretty cool. (thx, everyone)
Don’t know why exactly, but I am loving the hell out of Happy Wheels. The game is pretty simple — it’s a cross between CycloManiacs, Line Rider, and Jackass — you ride on a bike or Segway or mobility scooter through a course avoiding obstacles and trying to reach the end. Which is fun enough except that when you hit something hard, you body flies apart and blood sprays all over the place. Hilariously. Like this Skate 3 video, which is also inexplicably gut-busting. (via mlkshk)
Been a few months since we’ve had one of these. Constellations is a simple game where you shoot jellyfish at stars and shoo fish out of the way. What, I was just playing that for 30 minutes? Oof.
Kinect Star Wars has a Galactic Dance Off mode where you can “dance to modern songs remixed with Star Wars lyrics”. After watching 30 seconds of this, you may not be able to get “I’m Han Solo” out of your head. It features dance moves like “The Speeder”, “Chewie Hug”, and “Trash Compactor”.
Kind of amazing, but not surprising, that the Star Wars universe has come to this. As one YouTube commenter noted:
I just felt the death of Star Wars. It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Here are some of the lyrics:
I’m feeling like a star,
you can’t stop my shine
I’m loving Cloud City,
my head’s in the skyI’m solo, I’m Han Solo,
I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo. Solo.Yeah, I’m feeling good tonight,
Finally feeling free and it feels so right, oh.
Time to do the things I like,
Gonna see a Princess, everything’s all right, oh.No Jabba to answer to,
Ain’t a fixture in the palace zoo, no.
And since that carbonite’s off me
I’m livin’ life now that I’m free, yeah.Told me to get myself together
Now I got myself together, yeah.
Now I made it through the weather,
Better days are gonna get better.I’m so happy the carbonite is gone.
I’m movin’ on.
I’m so happy that it’s over now.
The pain is gone.I’m putting on my shades
to cover up my eyes
I’m jumpin’ in my ride,
I’m heading out tonightI’m solo, I’m Han Solo,
I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo. Solo.I’m picking up my blaster,
put it on my side.
I’m jumpin’ in my Falcon
Wookie at my side.I’m solo, I’m Han Solo,
I’m Han Solo.
I’m Han Solo. Solo.
It’s at this point that Lando comes on and gets jiggy. Amazing. (via ★ironicsans)
Eating a flower gives you the power to spit fireballs. Bullets have faces. Stars make you invincible. In addtion to being video game, maybe Super Mario Bros is a surrealist masterpiece.
Mari0, the Super Mario Bros + Portal mashup I posted about last August, is now finished and available for download for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Daft Punk already sort of sounds like they make their music using vintage video game systems but Da Chip is what that would actually sound like. Better than I expected. (via @shauninman)
Martin Amis, one of the greatest living British novelists, published a guide to video games in 1982 called Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addict’s Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines. It has an introduction by Steven Spielberg and Amis has barely acknowledged its existence since its publication.
It’s a deeply strange artifact: an A4-sized, full color glossy affair, abundantly illustrated with captioned photographs, screen shots, and lavish illustrations of exploding space ships and lunar landscapes. It boasts a perfunctory introduction by Steven Spielberg (“read this book and learn from young Martin’s horrific odyssey round the world’s arcades before you too become a video-junkie”), complete with full-page portrait of the Hollywood Boy Wonder leaning awkwardly against an arcade machine like some sort of geeky, high-waisted Fonz. We’re not even into the text proper, and already its cup runneth over with 100-proof WTF.
I was addicted to this tower defense game awhile back as an in-browser Flash game, but the iPad version is even better. It’s like the iPad was made for games like these. (thx, jim)
ps. Can you hear that sound? That’s Kingdom Rush sucking all your free time away this weekend. You’re welcome.
The quantum levitation videos I showed you a couple months ago are pretty cool, but scientists scienticiens at the Japan Institute of Science and Technology have upped the game by using QL CGI to build a real-world Wipeout track.
Say it with me: science!! Also, do Rainbow Road next! (via ★interesting)
Update: Say it with me: advertising! Or some other such nonsense. Several people have alerted me that this video is a fake…you can see vapor trails passing through walls, etc. Boo. Boo-urns. (thx, all)
An increasingly frustrated lizard plays a game called Ant Crusher on an Android phone. He’s pretty good, but is no less hungry than before he started.
(via stellar)
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