News Blips: Mario Marathon 3, Sony's HD Collections, Tetris Creator on Multiplayer, and More

Someone should play through all of the obscure Mario games for charity...but that'd probably be a lot less eventful. Who wants to watch 24 seconds Mario Is Missing, let alone 24 hours?

News Blips:

Gamers undertake Mario Marathon 3 to raise money for charity. Several young men are currently playing through the various Super Mario Bros. games to raise funds for The Penny Arcade's Child's Play. Check out their website where you can watch their progress and make a donation. As of this writing, they have raised over $50,000. I can't help but wonder what type of Mario-themed dreams these guys will have when they finally go to sleep.

Sony plans to release more HD upgrades of PlayStation 2 games for the PS3. Speaking to IGN about the God of War Collection, Sony Computer Entertainment's Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida said that "there were a lot of positive reactions from consumers in doing that, and now we get a lot of suggestions for types of packs they'd like to see...so we are looking to continue to do these HD conversions." Duh, Sony. Nintendo has been making bank off of rereleases for years now.

Tetris' creator is not satisifed with the multiplayer modes of the various games in the series. Alexey Pajitnov, cofounder of The Tetris Company and creator of the definitive block-stacking game, recently told Gamasutra that he's been working on a multiplayer version of Tetris for more than 10 years: "I've been trying to design it. I should admit that we are not quite there yet." I'm just going to pretend that those comments didn't just totally invalidate the countless hours of my life that I've spent competing against my friends in Tetris.

Advocacy group urges Best Buy to move mature-rated games to a higher shelf. The Parents Television Council recently asked the electronics retailer at a shareholder's meeting to place games intended for adults "out of sight and reach of...younger customers." Makes sense, but what about tall children and short adults? [Consumerist]

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Janelle Hindman

June 29, 2010

Interesting about the multiplayer Tetris. I remember really loving Familiss, from Super Tetris 3 on Super Nintendo. Up to four players could play,and while each players' block screen was narrow, completing a line would have various effects, detailed by a constantly changing flashing tile at the bottom (such as All+, P3-, P1+). If you made a match at the wrong time, you could wind up adding rows to your own screen!

It must be really obscure, I can't even find any screenshots of it. Just this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12ZjAXkW_ko

I've been waiting for a modern version of Familiss on a handheld or console for ages.

Alejandro Quan-Madrid

@Janelle, that mode sounds like a lot of fun. Was Super Tetris 3 one of the few SNES games to make use of the multiplayer-controller adapter? I was a big fan of direct one-on-one competition in the Nintendo DS version of Tetris, myself.

I like the dinosaurs in the background of the Familiss video.

July 01, 2010

@Alejandro, yeah, it was one of the games on the short list of multi-tap compatible games. And I won't deny that half of Familiss's charm is the dinosaur background and folksy polka music! I've never played Familiss with four players, but I would love to.