If you haven't cried enough this year, artist Daiki Sugimoto's look at what Mario might be like later in life is sure to get you choked up. Mario is now a battle-damaged old man going through all the memories he's gathered from a life full of adventures.
Page by page, Old Super Mario increases the heavy notion that you should never forget to savor youth while you have it.
I've included another page after the jump, but you will need to go to Sugimoto's blog for the painful finale.
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DJ Cutman pays homage to Nintendo’s latest console with his instrumental album Wii U Grooves. This self-described “lifelong fan” of the Big N samples various songs from the new console’s games and operating system and flips them into a bunch of different music styles. Regardless of what you think about the Wii U, I think we can all agree that these remixes are pretty chill.
DJ Cutman put together some spacey hip hop, chillwave (more laid-back beats), bouncy 8-bit chiptunes, and even a couple of reggaeton tracks. I really appreciate all the cute titles -- my favorites being “Remain Calm & Adjust Your Settings” and “Ask Your Parents for Permission.” The actual melodies in the latter don’t sound anywhere near as mature as the name suggests.
Some of the rhythms get a little repetitive, but I can’t really blame the producer since the source music is intended to play in the background while players explore the Wii U’s games and applications. If you dig Wii U Grooves, you can name your own price to download a copy from DJ Cutman’s Bandcamp profile.
Read more >>A video game film that butchers the source material? I'm shocked! Shocked! Well ... not that shocked. In this fascinating analysis, Leigh discusses the recent flick, Silent Hill: Revelations, comparing it to the series' inadequacies as a whole.
Silent Hill: Revelation appears to have little understanding of what made its source material compelling enough to warrant a cinematic adaptation in the first place.
While the first film was far from perfect, it at least captured the forlorn isolation that pervades the best entries in the series. These games tormented players with haunting sights and, more effectively, sounds, to create locations steeped in atmosphere that were deeply unsettling. For a time.
The first two games are widely recognized as landmark titles -- both within the horror genre and video games as a medium. They both feature broken, guilt-ridden protagonists descending through a hell of their own design, populated by antagonistic manifestations of their deepest fears.
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Mega Man is one of my favorite gaming series, but even I didn't know all of the obscure facts presented in Did You Know Gaming's newest, trivia-filled episode. I certainly didn't know that Capcom was originally going to call the game The Battle Rainbow Rock Man. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Anyway, you can discover all of the interesting Blue Bomber trivia for yourself by watching the video after the break.
Read more >>Sometimes our favorite games just never seem to catch on with everyone else. We're often left thinking, "How can people not be playing this?!" Jesse has given the subject some thought and offers insight into just why some titles never reach the acclaim they deserve.
In the video games industry, like any other, few dominant factors always draw in the masses and dictate popular opinion. But for every hit, an unappreciated gem flies under our radars.
It’s a shame, really, because many of these games are true masterpieces. They do not deserve to go unnoticed. So how do these games fail to acheive such acclaim?
Read more >>Most video games exist primarily as a thrill ride ... enjoyed in the moment and forgotten soon after. But even the biggest franchises now recognize that the best, most memorable games are the ones that get under your skin.
Games let us escape from the doldrums of our everyday existences. But when those same titles inspire people to act positively in their real lives, that’s something even more powerful.
I had some pretty ambitious fantasies growing up. Building a fortress, flying a spaceship, and getting bit by a radioactive spider, to name a few. All the cartoons, video games, and movies I enjoyed probably fueled those thoughts. If my younger self played Halo 4, he’d daydream about becoming a Master Chief-like Spartan.
That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, naturally. I still prefer unrealistic games, but I, like many other gamers who’ve grown older, have accepted that I’ll never be in a position remotely resembling that of a video game hero, nor do I want to be in one. Nowadays, my dreams are more simple and realistic. I want to travel to a few countries, stay in school as long as I can, and make lots of money writing about games (hah!).
But Forza Horizon makes me conjure up fantasies. It’s probably because the title is fairly grounded in reality. No aliens, nukes, or evil villains, just some fast vehicles and gorgeous environments. Unlike other racers, Horizon doesn’t demand that you enter a race to cruise around. You don’t have to avoid police, crash into other vehicles, or even win head-to-head matchups. You don’t play as some badass street racer either. He’s just some quiet guy in jeans and a t-shirt. I pretty much cosplay him every day.
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After spending countless hours perfecting your massive mountain cave or 14-floor skyscraper in Minecraft, you probably want to show it off to your friends. But, if you have friends like mine, they're likely going to destroy your buildings if you share the world file with them.
Minecraft Reality is the perfect solution for people who don't want to risk seeing their structures destroyed or pay for expensive 3D printing.
This app can upscale your creations and place them in real-world scenarios, and it's actually officially endorsed by Mojang, the developers behind Minecraft. The downside is that only newer iOS devices can utilize the app, so you'd need to have an iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, new iPod touch, or a 3rd or 4th gen iPad. But, if you do own one of those devices, Minecraft Reality will only set you back $1.99.
[via Technabob]
Read more >>Based on the reasons he gives here, I don't really blame Benjamin for taking a pass on this generation. I've played a ton of great games in the last few years, but I can only count a handful that have really shown me something completely new.
Why? Because of polish.
Is polish bad? No, not at all. It's helpful when a game actually works, so you can properly enjoy its content (you know, the reason you bought a game in the first place). But, over time, polish has slowly risen on to a pedestal over all other aspects of development. That means less attention has been given to areas like creating new ideas or taking things in clever directions. You can easily see this transformation from generation to generation.
However, it feels like we've gotten to an extreme. Eventually, I just sort of stopped bothering with most modern games, and looking from the outside in, the whole system cycle turned into a blur. Numbers would change on the end of franchise names, but the games would stay the same. Even some new IPs would borrow so many elements from other titles that they looked just like sequels with different coats of paint. Sure, many of these games were spotless, but it's like we're getting the same big hits year after year. The developers are spending too much time on polishing existing ideas, and not enough on creating new ones.
Trevor makes the argument that gaming -- as a medium -- needs to grow up. The industry gives us plenty of exploding heads and buckets of blood to satisfy our thirst for carnage, but we're missing nearly every "mature" theme that doesn't involve violence.
At this point in time, the gaming industry faces several truly juvenile problems that do not befit its status as one of the premier forms of entertainment in the world.
For example, rating systems have yet to be properly implemented, with many games being banned from certain countries when films and books with similar content are given a free pass.
Even in the United States, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has some problems with their designations. In my opinion, their ratings are not properly delineated to encompass all types and ranges of mature content.
"I tell you one thing -- working police in Liberty City ain’t like it is anywhere else. And it ain't like you see on TV -- I tell you that."
I’m in a squad car with Officer Mike Cabroni of the Liberty City Police Department. Cabroni has policed these streets for six years and is one of the few LCPD officers willing to publicly discuss the city’s enduring one-man crime wave.
No one in local law enforcement seems to know this mysterious criminal’s name. LCPD officially refer to him as "Perp 1." Possible street names identify him as "Nicky," "Neeko," and "Cahzin." Cabroni, in his thick Broker accent, calls him, simply, "The Guy."
"I mean, The Guy’s unbelievable. Four years of this shit -- shooting guys in the street, setting fire to people in cars, running them down. Who would want to do that? This is one sick guy we're talking about here."
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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
We're taking the next four days off to spend time with our families and stuff our faces with delicious food. Head over to GamesBeat for regular video game coverage throughout the holiday weekend.
What games will you play today while the turkey roasts?
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