Latest ‘Quantum Conundrum’ Trailer is Also a Science Lesson

Quan­tum Conun­drum , the upcom­ing first-person action/puzzle game from Air­tight Games  (and designed by Kim Swift, one of the lead design­ers who gave the world the amaz­ing­ness that is Por­tal ) has a new trailer out today that will give you a very sci­encey les­son about time and physics.

It’s SCIENCE!

There’s a Dimen­sion for That…

In Quan­tum Conun­drum, you’ll play as a 12-year old boy vis­it­ing the man­sion lab­o­ra­tory of your eccen­tric mad sci­en­tist uncle–Professor Fitz Quadwrangle–who dis­ap­pears after an explo­sion. You then dis­cover a spe­cial glove called an Inter­di­men­sional Shift Device (or IDS) that has the power to change dimen­sions, which you’ll use to solve physics puz­zles and fig­ure out what hap­pened to your Uncle.

The game will be out some­time this sum­mer, though an offi­cial release date hasn’t been set yet.

Brutal, Stunning New Trailer for ‘The Last of Us’

Top­ping my list of most antic­i­pated con­sole games this year is  The Last of Us , Naughty Dog’s upcom­ing highly-anticipated post-apocalyptic thriller for PS3 (exclu­sive). Every screen­shot and teaser we’ve got­ten for this game keeps out-doing itself in terms of visu­als, which are among the most gor­geous for any game I’ve ever seen, even sur­pass­ing (dare I say it?) the Uncharted series.

This lat­est new trailer–which has a bru­tal surprise–is no exception:

Don’t get too excited yet, though–the game is still await­ing an offi­cial release date.

Beautiful Bass Guitar Covers of ‘Gray Matter’ & ‘Gabriel Knight’ Themes

Music is one of the most mem­o­rable things about Jane Jensen’s dark and mys­te­ri­ous adven­ture games, espe­cially the music in Gray Mat­ter and Gabriel Knight . Both games’ musi­cal scores were com­posed by the extra­or­di­nar­ily tal­ented Robert Holmes, who also hap­pens to be Jane’s husband.

Cur­rently the pair are wrap­ping up the final three days of their Kick­Starter project for Pinker­ton Road –Jane Jensen’s new community-supported game stu­dio that will soon be bring­ing us the all new meta­phys­i­cal sci-fi adven­ture game thriller,  Moe­bius .

To help gen­er­ate extra buzz dur­ing these last few days of the cam­paign, Pinker­ton Road sup­porter Ale­jan­dro Tis­cor­nia , a very tal­ented musi­cian, released these sim­ply gor­geous bass gui­tar cov­ers of songs from Gray Mat­ter and Gabriel Knight .

Gray Mat­ter “David’s Theme”

An ethe­real, haunt­ingly beau­ti­ful ren­di­tion of “David’s Theme,” which can be heard dur­ing Gray Matter’s title screen as well as echoed as a recur­ring theme through­out the game:

Gabriel Knight “Lake Pontchartrain”

A groovy, edgy (and dare I say sexy?) ver­sion of “Lake Pontchar­train,” the theme you hear when Gabriel is inves­ti­gat­ing the crime scene around the lake of the same name:

Although the Pinker­ton Road Kick­Starter has already sur­passed its orig­i­nal $300,000 goal, Jane has promised some amaz­ing extras if pledges reach $400,000 and beyond:

• If we get to $400K: We’ll add a longer, fully cin­e­matic open­ing sequence / trailer that will blow you away and help us get peo­ple lin­ing up to buy the game, set­ting the tone for this new Pinker­ton Road series. PLUS Moe­bius on LINUX!
• If we get to $450K: All the above, plus an extra 1000 lines of dia­logue to flush out the game and we’ll record the main theme with a live orches­tra (Bob is drool­ing over that one).

If you’re a fan of Jane Jensen’s games, or a fan of clas­sic point-and-click adven­ture games in gen­eral and are hear­ing about this project for the first time, please con­sider pledg­ing ! For only $16 you’ll get a copy of what’s shap­ing up to be one of the best adven­ture games ever made.

The ‘Kingdom of Loathing’ Creators Have a KickStarter Project. You Should Back It! [Word Realms]

Hey, remem­ber King­dom of Loathing –the sim­plis­tic but fun (and funny as hell) free online RPG-that-makes-fun-of-other-RPGs drawn with stick figures?

Well it’s cre­ators have started up a new project on Kick­Starter called Word Realms , a mas­sively mul­ti­player online RPG that’s also a word game. Sounds crazy, right? You’ll do bat­tle by mak­ing words out of let­ter titles–think League of Leg­ends meets Words with Friends except with the kind of silly, self-referential geek humor KOL is known for.

You’ll prob­a­bly also be inter­ested to know that the game will fea­ture puz­zles, mini-games, expan­sive sto­ry­lines, mul­ti­ple end­ings, plenty of Easter Eggs, and awe­some music by Gminor7 (of MC Frontalot  nerd­core  fame).

Though the game has been in devel­op­ment for four years, its cre­ators have turned to Kick­Starter as a final fundrais­ing push to final­ize its pro­duc­tion and trans­form it into an MMO. They’re hop­ing to raise $100,000–a mod­est sum com­pared to most games on KickStarter–to make Word Realms a real­ity. Pitch­ing in just $11 will earn you a copy of the game.

Hard to believe The King­dom of Loathing has been around for over nine years already–the Level 12 Disco Ban­dit I made some­time back in 2003 is still lurk­ing some­where on the KOL servers…

15 Dope Sega & Nintendo Rap Lyrics from Back in the Day

(By the way, are white girls allowed to say “dope”?)

Rap’s love affair with video games is noth­ing new . Rap­pers have been drop­ping video game ref­er­ences since back in the day, which for me began in the late ‘80s and lasted through 1999, the year I grad­u­ated high school. Dur­ing that time I was raised on a steady diet of Sega and Nin­tendo, and when my par­ents weren’t pay­ing atten­tion (which was often) I lis­tened to a whole hell of a lot of explicit rap and hip hop. (I think I turned out OK.)

Back then it wasn’t nearly as cool to be a “gamer” as it is today–especially if you were a girl. It was amaz­ing how quickly the pop­u­lar kids would scat­ter when you said things like “I’m really into RPGs.”  That’s why I always found it inter­est­ing (or per­haps it secretly made me feel a lit­tle cooler) when­ever I heard video game ref­er­ences pop up in my favorite rap and hip hop songs.

That was the era of Nin­tendo vs. Sega–much like the East Coast/West Coast feud –where kids had to choose their alliances care­fully. It’s no sur­prise, then, that Nin­tendo and Sega made fre­quent appear­ances in rap lyrics.  With­out them, rap­pers wouldn’t have any­thing cool to rhyme with “innu­endo” and “Schwarzenegger.”

Here are fif­teen of my favorite Nin­tendo and Sega lyrics from rap & hip hop songs back in the day:

Warn­ing — Most of these audio/MP3 clips are NSFW!

House of Pain “Jump Around”

Year: 1992
Album: House of Pain

This song, par­tic­u­larly this ver­sion of this song, never fails to get me up off my ass to dance like a total idiot while rap­ping along. And I nerd­crush a lit­tle every time Ever­last drops the Sega reference.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I’m the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig ’cause a pig is a cop
Or bet­ter yet a Ter­mi­na­tor, like Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger
Try’n to play me out like as if my name was Sega

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo “Bad to the Bone”

Year:  1990
Album:  Wanted: Dead or Alive

Man Schwarzeneg­ger was a pop­u­lar rap lyric. That, or House of Pain totally ripped off this rhyme.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I run the game like Sega
Go to war like Nore­aga, hit like  Schwarzeneg­ger
Excitin’ when I’m fightin I’m fright­enin’
Stick chicks slick in quick like greased light­ning

K7 “Come Baby Come”

Year:  1993
Album:  Swing Batta Swing

This is one dirty, dirty song. And you know some­thing? It’s fuck­ing great. I don’t know what­ever hap­pened to K7, but before he faded into obscu­rity he at least gave the world one hell of a sex anthem–and a new pickup line for gamers everywhere.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Come and get some of this
Don’t for­get the innu­endo
Play me like Nin­tendo
Never ever let go

Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. feat. 2Pac “Juicy”

Year: 1994
Album: Ready to Die

Big­gie had so much money he owned both sys­tems AND played them on a 50″ screen. Prob­a­bly pretty impres­sive for back then. Too bad he didn’t live long enough to see the next gen.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Super Nin­tendo, Sega Gen­e­sis 
When I was dead broke, man I couldn’t pic­ture this 
50 inch screen, money green leather sofa 
Got two rides, a lim­ou­sine with a chauf­feur 

2Pac “Fake Ass Bitches”

Year: 1997
Album:   R U Still Down? (Remem­ber Me)

Find­ing this pic­ture of Tupac play­ing Sonic the Hedge­hog was worth the effort of this blog post alone.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Fly how I fade her
Played her like a game of Sega
Fuckin’ with the player that done made her

Ras Kass & Coo­lio “Drama”

Year: 1996
Album: Soul on Ice

This song is already awe­some, but it’s made even more so because Ras Kass admits to lik­ing Sega CD . I keep telling peo­ple there was once a time when Sega CD was awe­some, but nobody believes me.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

On a three story house, drive a four door Ac
Favorite song of all time Mobb Deep’s “Hit it from the Back”
Then jet, I turn a bitch into my favorite
She know my name cause I got more game than Sega CD

Das EFX “Some­body Told Me”

Year: 1998
Album: Gen­er­a­tion EFX

From the group who gave us the sage advice “Chiggedy-check yo self before you wriggedy-wreck yo self.”

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

In the crib I bought the leather, plus a movie screen
So my team can play Sega 

Dr. Dre “Shit­tin on the World”

Year: 1996
Album: Dr. Dre Presents the Aftermath

Dr. Dre is totally an old school gamer. He doesn’t need no mutha­phukkin 32-bits.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Eat me, freak me, take your hand and leave me
All I wanna say is I don’t really give a fuck
‘Cause most he be mega
Copped the PlaySta­tion but still play the Sega

Jer­maine Dupri “Get Your Shit Right”

Year: 1998
Album: Life in 1472

Or, the demise of Sega as told by rappers.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Goin once, goin twice, every­day, livin nice
In the grey wit the ice, makin money rollin dice
Livin the life, that y’all dream of
Puttin niggaz outta busi­ness like Sony did to Sega

LL Cool J “Clap Your Hands”

Year: 1989
Album:  Walk­ing with a Panther

Or, the demise of Sega as PREDICTED by rappers.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

LL Cool J, and the J is for Jeremy
So BUFF ME, James Todd the earth­quaker
That’s right my brother, you’re goin out like Sega 

Method Man “Ele­ments”

Year: 1998
Album: Tical 2000: Judge­ment Day

Well that’s def­i­nitely an N64 ref­er­ence, but what Sega con­sole is Method Man refer­ring to? Sat­urn? Dream­cast? THIS IS IMPORTANT INFORMATION I NEED TO KNOW.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Ya’ll broth­ers laugh now and cry later
I rap from Alpha to Omega, sixty four to Sega
Whoopin’ that ass, walk you dogs through the lookin’ glass
Been burnin’ MC’s since cookin’ class

Ice Cube “Fri­day”

Year: 1995
Album: Fri­day (Orig­i­nal Motion Pic­ture Sountrack)

Oh yeah–Super Nin­tendo also rhymes great with “smokin indo.” Leave it to Ice Cube. (Sadly I couldn’t get the explicit ver­sion for this MP3 snip­pet so you’ll have to make do with “like a Pinto.”)

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Smokin indo
Playin dat Super Nin­tendo
Hear a rat tat tat on my win­dow

DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince “Then She Bit Me”

Year: 1989
Album: And in This Corner…

Remem­ber when Will Smith made good music?

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

No, really I saw him. 
He was play­ing check­ers. 
No, Nin­tendo. 
Ok, I’m lying. 

Pub­lic Enemy “Bed­lam 13:13″

Year: 1994
Album: Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age

Hid­ing weed inside a Super Nin­tendo? GENIUS!

Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

Good e nuff to know no indo
Threw it out tha win­dow
Along wit tha Super Nin­tendo

Eazy-E “Sorry Louie”

Year:  1996
Album:  Str8 off tha Streetz of Mutha­phukkin Compton

I got noth­ing inter­est­ing to say about this lyric, so I’ll just leave you with a pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment in Eazy-E’s honor:

Wear con­doms, kids.

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Sega/Nintendo Lyric:

I grabbed my bat and ran around the back yo
He’s at my win­dow, thinkin I’m playin Nin­tendo

Go Exploring in Mysterious ‘Gone Home’ Game

The upcom­ing Gone Home is an awfully adventure-ish look­ing  game by the newly launched Full­bright Com­pany , which was started by three ex-Bioshock devel­op­ers. Gone Home has been in devel­op­ment for sev­eral months and will be the company’s first game.

I say “adven­tureish” because the game is described as “a mys­te­ri­ous explo­ration game set in a mod­ern, res­i­den­tial locale” that has “an empha­sis on inter­ac­tion, where play­ers are able to open every drawer and exam­ine the small­est details of their envi­ron­ment to unravel what hap­pened there.”

The com­pany released this pre-alpha (read: very rough around the edges) game­play footage today, which looks a bit like Amne­sia: The Dark Descent or Penum­bra , if you’re famil­iar with those first-person explo­ration titles.

You can check it out here:

The screen­shots aren’t much to look at, pri­mar­ily being close-ups of some of the objects and doc­u­ments you’ll be exam­in­ing in great detail, but then again, that’s what this game seems to be all about.

I love mys­tery games, explor­ing big, mys­te­ri­ous houses, first-person per­spec­tive, and obsess­ing over tiny details–basically a check­list of all the things Gone Home seems to have going for it. I’m offi­cially putting this game on my radar.

Rumor: Is ‘Gabriel Knight 4′ in the works? [Mystery Game X]

In her lat­est video update for Kick­Starter, adven­ture game designer Jane Jensen dropped a huge bomb­shell on her fans:

Her new community-supported game stu­dio, Pinker­ton Road (which recently achieved a $300K fundrais­ing goal on Kick­Starter to pro­duce its first game  Moe­bius ) will be pro­duc­ing a sec­ond game this year, code-named “Mys­tery Game X.”

Rumors are fly­ing among fans of Jensen’s Gabriel Knight series of games that Mys­tery Game X = Gabriel Knight 4, a much-anticipated and long-awaited sequel.

Of the announce­ment, Jensen said, “I’m really not try­ing to be coy or eek out the sus­pense. I would love to tell you what this game is. But, this deal is so new and really we want to wait until we have some fan­tas­tic assets to go along with the announce­ment of this game. So it’s not going to hap­pen before the end of our [Kick­Starter] cam­paign on May 18th.”

But Jane did give us a few other hints to go on.  Here’s what we know so far about Mys­tery Game X:

• It will be a 3rd per­son adven­ture game
• It’s a “dark mys­tery” of the type you’d nor­mally asso­ciate with Jane Jensen works
• Jane says “You’re going to be excited about it.”
• It will be cooler than “Mys­tery Game Y” (Haha!)

Sounds like a Gabriel Knight game to me! Actu­ally, it sounds like any of Jane’s games, but I’m thrilled with this news even if the announce­ment doesn’t turn out to be about Gabriel Knight 4. Why? Because Jane Jensen makes some seri­ously kick-ass games , that’s why.

For sup­port­ers of the Pinker­ton Road Kick­Starter who pledged at the $50 and up level, this news means that you will be get­ting not one but TWO Jane Jensen games this year! If you’re a fan of Jane Jensen’s games (or adven­ture games in gen­eral) who is still on the fence about pitch­ing in to her Kick­Starter, this lat­est announce­ment should give you all the rea­son you need.

The ‘Perfect Strangers’ Video Game You’ve Never Dreamed Of

Have you ever dreamed there was a video game based on the odd­ball ‘80s sit­com Per­fect Strangers ? Yeah, me either. But now that there is one I’m inclined to believe I just never dared to dream big enough.

Thanks to a designer named Jason Oda, the world of video games just got a lit­tle bit more Balki.

You start the game by telling it your per­sonal dream. What dream? Any dream. My dream is to build an island fash­ioned out of air­plane bits, so I put that. With your dream entered, Balki takes over and urges you on to achieve it.

Which… you do by run­ning down a fairly hilar­i­ous path­way, gath­er­ing stars while the  Per­fect Strangers  theme plays and its lyrics fly past. (At one point, you fly.)

(via Kotaku )

Sit­coms from the 1980s had such won­der­fully  inspi­ra­tional, fab­u­lously cheesy theme songs and the theme to Per­fect Strangers (“Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now”) was one of the best.

The free-to-play game Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now  is a cel­e­bra­tion of said theme song, com­plete with Larry pop­ping up to play the open­ing har­mon­ica number.

My dream:

As you guide Balki down the majes­tic rain­bow road to achiev­ing your dream, your senses will be delighted by scenery that changes with the lyrics (which con­ve­niently flash across the sky so you can sing along!) and there’s even a cameo from Jen­nifer and Mary Anne, who cheer you on from the sidelines.

You should really go play it right now.I mean, have you ever seen any­thing more inspi­ra­tional than this?

The next time I play, I plan to dream for a sim­i­lar game based on Who’s The Boss .

‘The Hit Squad’ to be the World’s First 8-bit Feature Film

So, a cou­ple of ridicu­lously attrac­tive guys  (that was for the ben­e­fit of my female read­ers) known cre­atively as the Super Pixel Bros . are in the process of mak­ing the world’s first 8-bit fea­ture film called The Hit Squad .

As if that doesn’t sound rad­i­cal enough, The Hit Squad will be a throw­back to 1980’s com­edy films like Back to the Future, Teen Wolf, Bev­erly Hills Cop– insert your favorite cheese­ball ‘80s movie here–with “Fam­ily Guy style” humor and pix­elly Nin­tendo aes­thet­ics. Basi­cally every­thing I blog about.

Here’s the syn­op­sis, which sounds very East­bound & Down meets Spinal Tap :

Roddy Stones and his band ‘The Hit Squad’ were the worlds biggest band in the 80s, now they’re in 2012 they have run out of money, dig­nity and cocaine. They haven’t released a hit record in years. The world has moved on and the cor­po­rate Scourge Stu­dios are going to buy The Hit Squad’s stu­dio unless the band can raise $1 Mil­lion within a week.

To fund for the project, Super Pixel Bros. have turned to crowd­fund­ing plat­form Indiegogo (the hip­ster ver­sion of Kick­Starter) where they are attempt­ing to raise $25,000 by June 3rd.

Here’s creator/director Chris Blun­dell intro­duc­ing the project and  lookin’ all hot while he grubs for money humbly ask­ing for your gen­er­ous dona­tions so that film­mak­ing his­tory can be made:

Pitch­ing in at the $25 level earns you a dig­i­tal down­load of the film, and for $60 you’ll get a phys­i­cal DVD signed by the direc­tor and cast, plus a dig­i­tal sound­track. For just $5 you’ll get a per­son­al­ized “thank you” video on The Pixel Bros.’ web­site and your name on the film’s IMDB page. And if you want to be immor­tal­ized as an 8-bit back­ground char­ac­ter in The Hit Squad , it’ll set you back $200. But that’s a small price to pay for pixel­lated fame.

I’m a lit­tle tapped out right now between the other crowd­funded projects I’m sup­port­ing , but some­time within the next 39 days I def­i­nitely plan to throw some money at this thing.

Some Awesome Guy Edited All Three ‘Uncharted’ Games into Movies

Love  Uncharted but can’t wait for the upcom­ing film that’s tak­ing Hol­ly­wood a painfully long time to make? Here’s some­thing to tide you over:

Red­dit user mor­phi­napg who is totally fuck­ing awe­some, accord­ing to my offi­cial sources, had the good graces to edit all three Uncharted  games into feature-length movies.  He did so by splic­ing together all of the cin­e­matic cut scenes along with the least amount of game­play pos­si­ble to flesh out the plot.  And he put them on YouTube for all to enjoy–including you grumpy non-PS3 own­ers who always <a href=“https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=don” onclick=“javascript:_gaq.push([’_trackEvent’,‘outbound-article’,‘http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=don’]);“t+own+ps3+uncharted#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=why+isn’t+uncharted+on+xbox&oq=why+isn’t+uncharted&aq=0&aqi=g1&aql=&gs_nf=1&gs_l=serp.3.0.0.1020.3364.2.4011.19.12.0.7.7.1.197.904.10j2.19.0.SHHWN-rT7nE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=a366a72422fd9740” target=“_blank”> go around bitching how you’ll never get to play these amaz­ing games.

Obvi­ously if you’ve never played the Uncharted games, the videos below con­tain gigantic-ass spoil­ers so pro­ceed at your own risk.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune

Run­ning time:  114 min­utes

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Run­ning time:  178 min­utes

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

Run­ning time: 196 min­utes

This is way bet­ter than Mark Wahlberg Talks to Trea­sure –the Uncharted film that we almost got .

‘Ni No Kuni’ is One of the Most Gorgeous PS3 Games I’ve Seen

Seri­ously. Just look at these Ni No Kuni screen­shots and try not to drool:

More screen­shots at IGN here  and the game’s Eng­lish trailer is here .

Ni No Kuni  has been out in Japan since last Novem­ber, but sadly the game’s West­ern release has been delayed as Kotaku reports:

Orig­i­nally sched­uled to appear later this year, pub­lish­ers Namco Bandai have pushed the game’s Amer­i­can release back to 2013 (it was orig­i­nally “Win­ter 2012″, ie Decem­ber). In doing so, it should be out at the same time as the Euro­pean ver­sion, which was always due in early 2013 anyways.

(via Kotaku )

I’m a big fan of Level 5 games, which are always high qual­ity.  This one’s def­i­nitely going on my short list of must buy PS3 games for next year.

The story of Ni no Kuni revolves around thirteen-year-old Oliver, a res­i­dent of Hotroit City, whose mother, Arie, sud­denly dies after res­cu­ing him from drown­ing. A doll, given to Oliver by his mother, is brought to life from his tears and reveals itself to be a male fairy named Shizuku, who gives Oliver a book that allows him to use the power of magic and enter the world of “Ni no Kuni,” a real­ity par­al­lel to his own. In Ni no Kuni, Shizuku says, Oliver may be able to find his mother, Arie.    Using the new­found power of magic, Oliver and Shizuku ven­ture into Ni no Kuni. There, he befriends Maru, Gyro, and other alter­nate ver­sions of peo­ple (and ani­mals) he knows.

There is also a DS ver­sion of the game, but from what I hear it’s a dif­fer­ent ani­mal. Besides, a game as beau­ti­ful as Ni No Kuni deserves the big screen high-def treatment.

Will ‘Moebius’ be Jane Jensen’s First Pinkerton Road Adventure Game? [Yes]

This week­end, back­ers of Jane Jensen’s Pinker­ton Road Kick­Starter project  (who pledged $16 or more) are vot­ing on which adven­ture game the stu­dio will pro­duce first.

In the run­ning are three titles:

• Moe­bius –  A meta­phys­i­cal sci-fi thriller in the vein of Dante’s Equa­tion and Gabriel Knight
• Gray Mat­ter II: The Ties that Bind –  The sequel to Jane Jensen’s much antic­i­pated Gray Mat­ter
• Anglophile Adven­tures (work­ing title) – A his­tor­i­cal mystery/romance set in the Cotswolds in 1800’s Regency England

As much as I adored Gray Mat­ter  and would be thrilled to have a sequel, I voted for Moe­bius because I would love to see Jane do some­thing new and the story sounds really intriguing.

Malachi Rec­tor is an antiq­ui­ties dealer who hunts down arti­facts all over the world.  After los­ing every­thing in a fire, he’s hired by a Man­hat­tan mil­lion­aire to inves­ti­gate a series of events and doc­u­ment them in his metic­u­lous way.  But Rec­tor soon real­izes that the events hold a bizarre sig­nif­i­cance, as does his own exis­tence.

Here is some early con­cept art for Moebius:

Vot­ing will be open until tomor­row (Sun­day, April 15) at 11:59 PM.  If you’ve pledged this project on Kick­Starter, don’t for­get to vote!  And if you’re a fan of Jane Jensen’s games but haven’t yet pledged, I urge you to con­sider back­ing this project on Kick­Starter  so that Jane can con­tinue to bring her fans amaz­ing games like the  Gabriel Knight  series and Gray Mat­ter .

Vot­ing Results

Moe­bius is the win­ner!  Here are the final poll results:

Moe­bius — 61%

Gray Mat­ter II — 21.9%

Anglophile Adven­ture — 17%

My Top 10 Favorite Nintendo Game Soundtracks

Some­one asked me on Twit­ter today what one of my favorite Nin­tendo game sound­tracks is. And true to form, I couldn’t really make up my mind. My favorite NES game sound­track?! You might as well ask me what my favorite episode of Dark Shad­ows is (Answer: all of them .)

Any­way, it got me think­ing. If some­one were about to cut my heart out with a spoon and I HAD to make a list of my all-time, absolute favorite NES sound­tracks, which games would make the cut?

It was a tough series of deci­sions, but here’s what I’m going with:

#10 — Batman

And “The Sound­track is Bet­ter than the Game Award” goes to… Bat­man. Not that Bat­man  was a ter­ri­ble game, though. It was actu­ally quite good for a NES game based on a pop­u­lar fran­chise (see also: #1 on this list), even if it was some­times frus­trat­ing as hell.

I never actu­ally owned Bat­man  until I was an adult and started col­lect­ing NES games, but when I was young there was a boy who lived a few doors down from me who had this game. We spent count­less hours in his base­ment play­ing this and Dr. Chaos  (which also has awe­some music ). That story didn’t really have a point, sorry.  So anway, yeah…  Bat­man . The music is really good.

#9 — Shadowgate

Ahhh good ‘ol  Shad­ow­gate , the first adven­ture game I ever played! This game is full of mem­o­rable music–dark, mys­te­ri­ous and dis­turb­ing music–but memorable.

Con­fes­sion time: When I was a lit­tle girl, Shad­ow­gate used to scare the hell out of me. Espe­cially when your last torch is burn­ing low and the “OH SHIT!” music starts play­ing. To be hon­est, Shadowgate’s music  still gives me the creeps a lit­tle bit. Espe­cially this theme , which is a piece of music I’ve heard more times than I care to admit.

#8 — Dragon Warrior

The music of Dragon War­rior is actu­ally pretty good, but any music gets annoy­ing after you’ve had to lis­ten to it a few thou­sand times–and if you played this game you undoubt­edly did. Once that repet­i­tive over­world theme bur­rows into your brain you might as well go kill your­self.  But the rest of the themes are really quite enjoy­able, espe­cially the Town music. Hast thou seen Nester?

#7 — Lit­tle Nemo: The Dream Master

Bet you didn’t expect to see this game on the list. You may not have even heard of it. Back when video rental stores were around,  Lit­tle Nemo: The Dream Mas­ter was one of my top Nin­tendo game rentals. It’s not the great­est game, but it’s super cute, fun to play and has really won­der­ful, whim­si­cal music.

#6 — Metroid

The Metroid music gets under your skin the moment you power on the Nin­tendo and hear those unmis­tak­able low-frequency tones that sound like a dis­tress sig­nal from deep space.  The entire game is full of weird, spacey music that really makes you feel iso­lated and uncomfortable–even more uncom­fort­able than when you found out you were play­ing as a girl the whole time.  It’s dark, deranged and com­pletely awesome.

#5 — Gauntlet

I don’t know what it is about Gaunt­let ‘s music that makes it so great, but man is it fuck­ing great. Maybe it’s the light clas­si­cal, faux-harpsichord ditty that’s starts off all prim and proper but out of nowhere goes totally fuck­ing bananas , laps­ing into an arpeg­gio of rapid fire bleeps and blips before com­pletely com­pos­ing itself and car­ry­ing on as if noth­ing ever hap­pened. It may be repet­i­tive, but it’s catchy as hell. Just ask MC Chris .

#4 — Blaster Master

Two facts:  1) Blaster Mas­ter is an amaz­ing NES game.  2) Blaster Mas­ter has truly awe­some music. It would have ranked higher on my list for just the music alone, but I have to fac­tor in things like nos­tal­gia and num­ber of times played (accord­ing to mean­ing­less rules I just made up), and the games in my Top 3 have this one beat–but not by much.

Every­thing about Blaster Mas­ter is cool, from its non­sen­si­cal premise (I lost my pet frog down a hole and now I’m dri­ving this badass tank around bat­tling mutants! LOLWUT?) to its curi­ous com­bi­na­tion of sidescrolling and top-down 2D action.  It is one of the most mem­o­rable gam­ing expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had on my NES and its music holds a spe­cial place in my heart.

#3 — The Leg­end of Zelda

It was unavoid­able. The Leg­end of Zelda’ s music, along­side that of Super Mario. Bros ., pretty much defines Nin­tendo to me, as I’m sure it does for every­one else. It’s an instantly rec­og­niz­able clas­sic and thus deserves a high spot on my list.  Just hear­ing the Hyrule over­world theme brings me back to child­hood and puts a huge smile on my face.  It’s also the great­est mobile ring­tone in the world, espe­cially when paired with the “Secret!” noise for incom­ing text messages.

It’s a secret to every­body.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

#2 — Mega Man 2

True story: I had a boyfriend once who was really obsessed with Mega Man 2 . Like, I mean really obsessed . He played it all the time and forced me to lis­ten to  enthu­si­as­ti­cally extolled the virtues of the game’s sound­track.  I remem­ber he was par­tic­u­larly fond of the Bub­ble Man theme, which still plays in my head when­ever I think of him.

The funny thing is, I actu­ally suck at Mega Man 2 . In fact I suck at most Mega Man games. With­out hav­ing wit­nessed said boyfriend beat the game over and over again, I might not have ever devel­oped the fond appre­ci­a­tion I have for the music of Mega Man 2 , which is really quite fantastic–even after it’s been drilled into your brain sev­eral hun­dred times.

#1 — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

An odd choice? Per­haps; but I’ll attempt to explain. Aside from the fact that I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid (and still am), Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  on NES was one of those rare games based on pop­u­lar fran­chises that didn’t suck.  No, it wasn’t a GREAT game, but it was decent and the music kicks ass. It was also unrea­son­ably hard–as if the devel­op­ers were pur­pose­fully stick­ing it to all the crazed lit­tle kids who loved TMNT. “Haha you dumb shits will NEVER be able to beat this!” And to this day, I never have.*

So why does this game deserve the #1 spot? Because for me, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles (the NES game, not the actual Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles) rep­re­sents the ultimate–but ulti­mately elusive–victory. It is the game I would play over and over and over again just try­ing not to get my ass kicked. And when you’ve played a Nin­tendo game that many times, the music does things to your head. And in my head ,  this game’s music plays relent­lessly on repeat, even today, over 20 years later.

*But I sure beat the shit out of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles II: The Arcade Game!

Extra Boss Stage!!!

Super Castl­e­va­nia IV

Yeah I know, this is tech­ni­cally cheat­ing because it’s a Super Nin­tendo game.  But the music of Super Castl­e­va­nia IV kicks so much ass, if I didn’t some­how include it I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

The ‘Reading Glove’ Project = Real Life Adventure Games?

Via  Scoop.it  —  Shezcrafti

Have you ever wished it was pos­si­ble to play point-and-click style adven­ture games in real life–using real loca­tions and real objects? (No? Am I the only one?) The Read­ing Glove is an amaz­ing tech­no­log­i­cal research project that might make “real life adven­ture games” a real­ity one day.

If read­ing a book or watch­ing a movie in 3D isn’t immer­sive enough for you to get a kick out of mys­tery sto­ries, The Read­ing Glove might be just what the doc­tor ordered. Com­prised of a rec­om­mender (a dis­play), objects and a glove, The Read­ing Glove sys­tem enables users to expe­ri­ence a whole new level of sto­ry­telling by being part of the story. Users pick up objects which then trig­ger a non-linear nar­ra­tive that clues them in on what objects they have to pick up next in order to move the story for­ward. Think of it as a point and click adven­ture – except that you’ll be a char­ac­ter in the game as opposed to a per­son behind the screen.

Via ubergizmo.com

But how does it work?   The Read­ing Glove  is an adap­tive, tan­gi­ble sto­ry­telling sys­tem con­sist­ing of a custom-built wear­able RFID reader glove used to inter­act with a set of tagged objects and a table­top dis­play.  Here’s what it looks like up close:

The Read­ing Glove  is a col­lab­o­ra­tive project between  Karen Tan­nen­baum  and her hus­band  Josh Tan­nen­baum , both PhD stu­dents of the School for Inter­ac­tive Arts & Tech­nol­ogy (SIAT) at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity. Karen’s research inter­ests include arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, ubiq­ui­tous com­put­ing, tan­gi­ble com­put­ing, inter­ac­tion design, design phi­los­o­phy and design fic­tions. (I don’t even know what some of those terms mean, but it sounds impressive!)

“We wanted to see what hap­pened when we gave peo­ple a story that was embed­ded on real, phys­i­cal objects that could be played with and moved around. Our orig­i­nal vision was an entire room that told a story when you explored it, respond­ing to objects you touched or moved via light and sound responses — sort of like a haunted house, but intended to tell a spe­cific nar­ra­tive rather than just be spooky,” Tan­nen­baum explained in a recent inter­view with O’Reilly Media.

Here’s a video of Karen and her team demon­strat­ing The Read­ing Glove  with a sam­ple mys­tery puz­zle game about espi­onage and betrayal:

You gotta admit this is freak­ing cool, even if you’re not a fan of adven­ture games.  If The Read­ing Glove tech­nol­ogy were per­fected and its capa­bil­i­ties real­ized by game devel­op­ers and cre­ative sto­ry­tellers, just imag­ine the potential.

What ‘Game of Thrones’ Looks Like in 16 Bits

From the “I wish this were a real game” department:

That mag­nif­i­cent bas­tard  Doc­tor Octoroc , the video game artist and musi­cian who gave the inter­webz such gems as the 8-bit Saved by the Bell game and 8-Bit Break­ing Bad  (among lots of other assorted kick­assery) has done it again with 16-bit Game of Thrones .

The hilar­i­ous YouTube video, which was another mashup orig­i­nally cre­ated for Col­lege Humor, man­ages to cap­ture the 16-bit Super Nin­tendo aes­thetic perfectly:

Beware of MAJOR SPOILERS though if you haven’t yet seen the show or read the books!

Straight Outta Console: Nintendo-infused Nerdcore Hip Hop

Straight Outta Con­sole: The Nin­tendo Thumb Mix­tape is a fresh as hell nerd­core album by rap­per Heath McNease that sounds like what was born after your Nin­tendo banged a hip hop CD.

No, really–it does!  Have a listen:

“I did it all for Tanuki?” Come on now, that’s some clever shit.

Actu­ally, the whole album is full of nerd­tas­tic Nin­tendo word­play and McNease raps the hell out of it.  The rhymes come at you fast and furi­ous and are ridicu­lously smart and witty. What’s also strik­ing is how sur­pris­ingly clean they are–you know, for hip hop.  In fact I’m pretty sure there’s more pro­fan­ity in this para­graph than there is in the entire album.

And of course, because its nerd­core there’s plenty of gamer in-jokes ( Kon­ami Kode! ) and pop cul­ture ref­er­ences ( The Wiz­ard! ) lay­ered over those famil­iar 8-bit themes from your favorite Nin­tendo games ( Castl­e­va­nia! Mega Man! Paper­boy! ).

Among the 19 (yes, 19!) tight tracks you’ll hear:

• Sick hip hop beats by  For­Beat­sSake
• Sound bytes from the movie The Wiz­ard 
• Tur­tle Van Damme , a whole song ded­i­cated to Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles com­plete with Ninja Rap sam­ples and nods to the ‘80s car­toon theme song
• Lots of famil­iar Nin­tendo sound effects

Though the album was released back in July of last year, it some­how man­aged to escape my ever expand­ing web of awe­some* ’till I ran­domly saw this post over at Ghetto Manga.

McNease is pretty fly for a white guy and clearly a gifted rap­per and lyri­cist.  I was sur­prised to learn from his bio page that he’s also an emphatic live per­former who does over 250 shows a year.

Besides rap, his eclec­tic back­ground includes musi­cal the­ater, improv, and folk music, which sounds like it would make for quite an enter­tain­ing evening. If he ever comes to my neck of the woods I’ll def­i­nitely be buy­ing tickets.

*Yes, I’m well aware of the fact that I overuse the word “awe­some.” I’ll try to work on that.

Jane Jensen Launches New Game Studio ‘Pinkerton Road’ & KickStarter Project

Jane Jensen , the leg­endary adven­ture game designer who brought us the incred­i­ble Gabriel Knight series of games and Gray Mat­ter (my per­sonal favorite adven­ture game of the past few years), has launched a new game stu­dio called Pinker­ton Road out of her Lan­caster, PA farm.

To fund the new com­pany and its upcom­ing game projects, Jane is reach­ing out to fans on Kick­Starter –the same fundrais­ing plat­form that recently helped Dou­ble Fine Adven­ture achieve mete­oric suc­cess .

Jane hopes to raise $300,000 for what she describes as “CSG” — Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Gam­ing.  Rather than raise money to fund a sin­gle game or project (e.g. Dou­ble Fine), Jane wants sup­port­ers to become an invested part of the studio’s total cre­ative output:

Our CSG will work in a sim­i­lar way. Sign up as a Pinker­ton Road CSG mem­ber, and  you’ll get all of the awe­some games we pro­duce for one year *. The CSG model will help our stu­dio sur­vive finan­cially so that we can make the kinds of games that YOU and WE want to play (not what some big publisher’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment has decided will be the next big hit).

But, let’s be hon­est, this bril­liant idea goes beyond that!  We want our cus­tomers to feel like part of our stu­dio fam­ily (as many did in the Sierra On-Line days). As a CSG mem­ber,  you’ll get  reg­u­lar video updates  on what we’re doing, peeks at the newest art, glimpses of our games in devel­op­ment and  the inside scoop what it’s like to oper­ate a game stu­dio.  It’s like you’ll have a vir­tual desk right next to ours.

Being a huge fan of Jane Jensen’s work, I’ve already donated to the cause and can’t wait to see what she’s got in store for us.

How to Show Your Support:

(Because I really want to see Jane Jensen’s new ven­ture be a huge success!)

1.  Donate to Jane’s Pinker­ton Road Kick­Starter Project . She’s accept­ing dona­tions in any amount of $1 or more.  For $16 or more dol­lars, you’ll get to own at least one of the games the stu­dio will release its first year, and for $50 you’ll get to own all of them.

2.  Like Jane Jensen on Facebook.

3.   Tweet this  and fol­low @jensen_jane on Twitter!

‘Adventures in Pixels’ is an Illustrated Album of Chiptunes Music

If you enjoy chip­tunes music–and ever spent hours on end crawl­ing dun­geons and slay­ing 8-bit dragons–then you’ll want to check out Adven­tures in Pix­els  by song­writer and musi­cian Ben Lan­dis .

It’s an album full of delight­ful chip­tunes accom­pa­nied by a comic of orig­i­nal art­work that illus­trates each song with added humor that only gamers can appreciate.

Here’s a sam­pling of just one of the 20 tracks:

With song titles like “Ter­ri­ble Taran­tu­loid” and “May­hem in the Vil­lage” , Adven­tures in Pix­els  harkens back to sim­pler times when we spent our days tra­vers­ing vast pixel maps and gain­ing XP one ran­domly gen­er­ated encounter at a time.

Many of the tracks sound like they could have come straight out of your favorite old school RPG.  For exam­ple, “Voices of Expe­ri­ence” is one of my favorites.  With its arrange­ment of  sooth­ing strings and whim­si­cal flute, the first half reminds me of the For­est music from Zelda: A Link to the Past .

Adven­tures in Pix­els is avail­able to down­load for free from Ben Lan­dis’ web­site through April 9.  If you enjoy Ben’s music and want to sup­port his work, you can also name your price to pur­chase the album.  The full album is also avail­able on Spotify.

The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ Meets Mario Paint

Feast your eyes and ears on this delight­ful ver­sion of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” made with Mario Paint.

Yeah, I know there are tons of Mario Paint videos out there, but this is one of my favorite songs and I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed that it has less than a thou­sand views.

It was cre­ated by YouTube user The­Bat­dorTrog­man  (awe­some name, btw) who says it took “over the course of about five days, on and off.” I think we can all agree it was a wor­thy and pro­duc­tive use of his time.

Want to make your own Mario Paint com­po­si­tion but don’t have a work­ing Super Nin­tendo lay­ing around? You can down­load this free Mario Paint Com­poser soft­ware by UnFun Games and cre­ate your 16-bit wave­form masterpiece.

Now will some­one please go and make me a Mario Paint ver­sion of “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa?

Are casual games getting better, or am I just getting older?

A wor­ri­some thought struck me the other day as I lay in bed play­ing Cut the Rope on my Droid:  are these casual games get­ting bet­ter or am I just get­ting older?

Why is it that I’m sit­ting here play­ing a casual game when I still haven’t fin­ished Skyrim , or even unwrapped my copy of Sky­ward Sword yet? Or that lately my favorite game plat­form hap­pens to be DS/3DS? Mean­while I’ve been lust­ing after these casual iOS-exclusive games while resent­ing the fact that I know inevitably I’ll have to break down and get a damn iDe­vice of  some sort just so I’ll be able to play them (a pur­chase I’m try­ing to put off for as long as I can).

My point is, these days casual games like Plants vs. Zom­bies , Pro­fes­sor Lay­ton , Phoenix Wright , and  Drawn  are suck­ing up more and more of my atten­tion while games like Skyrim wither on my shelf. Why is that? What is it about these “fun size” games that make it so Id rather spend my very lim­ited free time with them?

I can’t help but notice that these thoughts seemed to have mate­ri­al­ized shortly after turn­ing 30. Had you asked me a few years ago what I thought of casual games, I might have chalked them up as not being for “real gamers” and went on about my busi­ness with the belief that casual games are for kids and old people.

But the rise of in pop­u­lar­ity of casual games has ush­ered in a new era where sud­denly every­one seems to be a gamer, no mat­ter what types of games they play. Accord­ing to one recent study, 44% of peo­ple liv­ing in the US are gamers , or con­sider them­selves to be gamers, thanks to social gam­ing com­pa­nies like Zynga churn­ing out Far­mVille and its ilk.  We have G4 call­ing 2011 “The Year of Casual Games” and Escapist Mag­a­zine hail­ing iPhone as The New NES , draw­ing com­par­isons to the orig­i­nal Nintendo’s role as the plat­form that inau­gu­rated a whole new gen­er­a­tion of gamers in the early 80’s.

Today we have an almost over­whelm­ing amount of choices when it comes to casual gam­ing. Smart­phones, 3DS, iPads, even e-readers like Kin­dle are get­ting in on the action  (and I can’t help but won­der if Sony has the right strat­egy with Vita’s launch , which is emerg­ing as the anti-casual hand­held gam­ing device).

The explo­sion of both casual games and casual gam­ing devices are forc­ing us to re-define what it means to be a gamer.  What was once a niche mar­ket that catered to a very spe­cific demo­graphic (pri­mar­ily 18 — 35 year old males, and girls like me were in the minor­ity) has become a mas­sive indus­try that is, in many ways, best­ing the film and music industries.

That kind of growth has also led to an evo­lu­tion in the games them­selves. The games are  get­ting bet­ter in terms of graph­ics and every­thing else, to the point where even casual games look amaz­ing. But now we have games like King­doms of Amalur and Dark Souls that are arguably  over-delivering on con­tent. Gamer­Sushi recently asked: Are 100 hour games nec­es­sary?

Side­bar:   About a year ago I quit World of War­craft for good, hav­ing sworn off MMORPGs that offer no end in sight to all your hard work and ded­i­ca­tion while hap­pily drain­ing your time, energy and bank account. I’ll always have fond mem­o­ries of my adven­tures in Aze­roth and the peo­ple I’ve met there, but since quit­ting the game I’ve gone on to do so many other more impor­tant and worth­while things with my time. I can now say with cer­tainty that the “ham­ster wheel” approach to gam­ing isn’t for me.

Are we as busy work­ing adults—who jug­gle full time jobs (and in many cases kids)—simply too stressed out to com­mit our­selves so com­pletely to mas­sive games like  Skyrim ?  Nobody seems to be able to define exactly what the ideal length of a game should be, but it seems fair to say that casual games are on the extreme oppo­site end of the spec­trum from games like Skyrim .  In my case, the short length and low level of com­mit­ment are exactly what make casual games so appealing.

Or it could just be that I’m offi­cially get­ting Too Old For This Shit™.