[Continuing a set of interviews by Game Developer magazine EIC Brandon Sheffield for GameSetWatch, he talks to Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago on a multitude of neat topics regarding downloadable games and the Flower creators' future.]

Kellee Santiago is cofounder of Thatgamecompany, known for genre-shaking downloadable titles such as flOw and Flower, which both push the boundaries of games and their emotional resonance, but also give Sony something to point to in the way of artistry in the PSN space.

Thatgamecompany has been growing, slowly but surely, to where Santiago can now step out of the defacto-production role she often held on top of her studio running duties, so that she can now look externally, to see how TGC can potentially help other smaller indies, or expand the company's offerings in targeted ways.

We spoke with Santiago recently about changes within the company, the potential of a Flower expansion, PSP Go and Project Natal, as well as the viability of a TGC game based on an emotion like rage:

Continue reading "Interview: Kellee Santiago Talks Thatgamecompany's Road Ahead" »

Posted by Simon Carless at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an engaging retelling of his time at Atari, former programmer (now a principal software engineer at Microsoft) Landon Dyer revealed that there was a yet-undiscovered Easter egg in the Atari 400/800 version of Donkey Kong. Though he described the hidden message as "totally not worth it", the fact that he couldn't remember how to bring it up anymore surely compelled a few gamers to try and find it themselves.

Sixteen months later, Don Hodges has posted details on how he uncovered the Easter egg (displaying Dyer's initials), though he didn't find it after suffering hundreds of playthroughs. Rather, he activated the game's debugger and sifted through over 25,000 lines to find the relevant subroutine.

According to Hodges, of all the game hacking he's previously done, this find was the most rewarding and enjoyable for him. Here are his instructions for bring up Dyer's initials:

Continue reading "Easter Egg For Atari Donkey Kong Found 25+ Years Later" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The vector art cover for Telltale's PC DVD edition of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (which collects all five episodes of the series) is attractive enough, but pulling out and reversing that cover will reveal a fantastic alternate Atari 2600 version bullet-pointing the adventure title's notable features: pointing, clicking, and pixels.

Sure, the Venture Brothers third season DVD set pulled a similar stunt with its jacket several months ago, but that homage didn't sport a huge Videlectrix logo on the back (or the lurking, sinister shadow of Trogdor, the "beefy-armed dragon of legend "):

Continue reading "Strong Bad's Cool Reversible PC Game Cover For Attractive People" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In this round-up, we highlight some of the notable jobs posted in big sister site Gamasutra's industry-leading game jobs section this week, including positions from Blizzard, Microsoft Game Studios and more.

Each position posted by employers will appear on the main Gamasutra job board, and appear in the site's daily and weekly newsletters, reaching our readers directly.

It will also be cross-posted for free across its network of submarket sites, which includes content sites focused on online worlds, cellphone games, 'serious games', independent games and more.

Some of the notable jobs posted in each market area this week include:

Continue reading "Round Up: Gamasutra Network Jobs, Week of July 3" »

Posted by Simon Carless at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After three years of putting on Blipfest -- one of the world's biggest annual chipmusic events -- in New York City, Manhattan arts organization The Tank and artist collective 8bitpeoples is bringing the festival across the Atlantic to the Danish city of Aalborg, where they will put on a two-day version with Danish art and technology venue Platform4.

Taking place from July 24 - 25, Blip Festival: Europe will include U.S. acts like Nullsleep, Minusbaby, and Glomag, but almost half of its lineup will consist of European musicians such as Bodenständig 2000, La Belle Indifference, and Rabato. Japanese artist Hally will also deliver a set. I've included a flyer listing most of the acts slated to appear after the break.

Along with the nighttime music performances, the European event will have other attractions during the day such as a film screening of chiptune documentary Blip Festival: Reformat The Planet, a workshop on creating visuals with an NES presented by Don "No Carrier" Miller, and more.

Says organizers, "The goal of the festival is the same as earlier incarnations, to inform and to rock, to push this nascent scene beyond its underground roots and into its rightful place as one of the worlds most exciting and dynamic electronic music movements."

You can find more information on the event and purchase tickets at Blip Festival: Europe's official site.

Continue reading "Denmark To Host Blip Festival: Europe" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

['@ Play' is a monthly column by John Harris which discusses the history, present and future of the Roguelike dungeon exploring genre.]

We've discussed the information-heavy balance of the game Nethack before. How, once the player learns enough about the nature of the game world, all of the difficulty turns out to be front-loaded, before the player has had the chance to build up experience levels and equipment.

Recently, a couple of variants have arisen in order to remedy this perceived problem. Two years ago was the release of Derek Ray's Sporkhack, and only this past month saw the release of another, UnNethack, created by Patric Mueller.

Nethack's mysterious Dev Team is presumably aware of the problem, and though it is known that they're still around, updating bugs and answering email, and thus we assume are still working on the game, it has been a very long time since the last version. It has been over five years since the release of Nethack 3.4.3, the latest version of the game.

A rising current of opinion on rec.games.roguelike.nethack is that the Dev Team has abandoned the game. Even if they haven't, a few of the more irksome characteristics have survived for multiple versions, long enough that it begins to look like the Dev Team is perfectly happy leaving them in.

Both are games that, to the many characters who die in the earliest regions of the dungeon, seem almost unchanged from the original game. While not any unfriendlier to a new player than vanilla Nethack, most of the changes in these games are aimed at the experienced hacker. Unlike uber-variant Slash'EM, neither seems to be interested in radical reinvention of the game.

Continue reading "COLUMN: @Play: Introducing Sporkhack and UnNethack" »

Posted by John Harris at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Official BioShock site The Cult of Rapture has posted another batch of concept art for the upcoming sequel, this time for the series's second most iconic characters, the Little Sisters. "They may be small in stature," the site explains, "but their glowing eyes and eerie, echoing voices tell a very large and memorable story."

The shots above show a Little Sister before she's saved in the game (left), complete with a syringe gun, and after she's saved. 2K Marin also shared close-ups of a Little Sister from the chest-up, and some thoughts behind the character's outfit:

Continue reading "Little Sister Concept Art Harvested" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

As we saunter happily into a long weekend in the States (yep, that July 4th thing in full effect), let's bust out a new set of slightly extended GameSetLinks, headed by the latest GAMBIT/MIT Game Lab student title, which continues their customarily interesting attitude to experimental student games, with an oldskool adventure twist, even.

Also in the latest set of links - looking circumspectly at Okami, examining a book on ethics in video games, high-heeled claws, Japanese audio games, the apparently drifting delights of Afrika, and iPhone costume hijinks from the Dead Or Alive ladies, oh dear.

Yay hooray:

GAMBIT: Updates: Introducing Rosemary
More interesting student games from MIT GAMBIT: 'Rosemary is a point-and-click adventure game whose core mechanic is remembering events of the past in order to uncover a mystery.'

Critical Distance | Ōkami
Another super-nice round-up of critical reaction to the notable Clover Studios title.

Print Screen: The Ethics of Computer Games > Troy S. Goodfellow > | Crispy Gamer
'Though many in the serious games movement have consciously worked to invoke reflection and emotion, it's doubtful that the makers of Manhunt were driven by a desire to make a meditative commentary on violence.'

Costume GET!: Costumes of DOA Blackjack Kasumi
On the weblog that 'discusses the finer points of videogame character costumes', Tecmo's blackjack iPhone app gets a lookover.

The Brainy Gamer: Safari with me
'In Afrika, you take photographs of animals and other wildlife. That's it. That's the whole game. I'm calling it a game. You may decide to call it something else.'

Acid for Blood: A Few Quick Thoughts on the Aion Beta
'Asmodians don't wear shoes because they have these big fucking claws on their feet. This is cool. The females don't wear shoes either. Because: really big claws. So, naturally you would think that their heels look just like the males -- a flat fleshy pad on the bottom of their foot. But no. They have a bony protrusion there that looks like the pointy heel of a high-heeled shoe. They have HIGH HEELED CLAWS.'

The Weird World of Japanese "Novel" Games from 1UP.com
'In Japan, there's a long history of games that are pretty much just reading, and can only really be considered "games" due to what they're being played on, and that they allow some choices from the player.'

Posted by Simon Carless at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Atari 7800 ProSystem's release, the Atari Historical Society has unofficially released the source code for over a dozen of the system's games such as Centipede, Xevious, Robotron, and more.

According to the Atari Museum site, the games were rescued from Atari ST format diskettes that were thrown out when Atari shuttered one of its offices in 1996. "I hope these will be great learning tools and the basis for code for many coders to develop on the 7800," says Atari Museum founder Curt Vendel.

He continues, "And just as the Atari 2600 developers have stretched the boundaries and created games no one would've imagined in their wildest dreams, it is my hope that this same enthusiasm can carry over to an open and active 7800 developers community and bring forth games that would make even a NES owner envious."

The Atari Historical Society also posted details about a newly discovered prototype of the original High Score Cartridge (HSC), the planned but never released 7800 peripheral that was designed by General Computer Corp. and recorded players' high scores for multiple games. You can see documents and specifications detailing the HSC's design and production here.

Continue reading "Source Code For Over A Dozen 7800 Games Released" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

['Diamond In The Rough' is a regularly scheduled GameSetWatch-exclusive opinion column by Tom Cross focusing on aspects of games that stand out, for reasons good and bad. This week, Tom continues his previous discussion of calls for video game design reform in the areas of narrative and story. In the latest instalment, he begins with a discussion of what "narrative" is.]

Narrative can’t help but have an internally coherent organizational logic (called “plot”). The important things about this logic are that it a) unfolds in time for a reader, that is, has a beginning, middle, and end, b) that the experience of reading is one of reading—of discovery and deciphering rather than production and self-creation, and c), that because of this, narratives appear for readers as pre-existing objects, things separate from a reader that demand to be seen and interpreted.

This last point is critical: narratives happen to readers, and speak of an intelligent, exterior design to readers. This is true even when we tell stories to ourselves (the principle on which psychoanalysis works)—we encounter a structure of meaning, or plot, outside ourselves, and re-narrate it to ourselves.

Narrative always comes first, and unless we’re very clear about what we mean by “story spaces” or “tools for making narrative,” it’s unclear how we might provide readers with tools, rather than pre-existing narratives, out of which they themselves will produce narratives, ex nihilo.

Continue reading "Column: 'Diamond in the Rough': Plotting, Emergent Narratives, and 'Story Spaces,' Part 2" »

Posted by Thomas Cross at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mekensleep's critically acclaimed DS game Soul Bubbles is finally releasing in Japan courtesy of Interchannel over a year after title's U.S. debut, and the placid puzzler has seen some changes from its trip across the Pacific.

The most obvious change is that the game's previously near bald hero now has a lush mane of purple hair. Not so obvious are the game's reworked level curves, interface tweaks, and a gameplay bug affecting left-handed players.

Mekensleep's Omar Cornut also shared other significant changes that might convince fans of the original (or gamers who still haven't tried out Soul Bubbles) to import:

"We increased the number of calabashes required to reach Agartha to 70, because players who skipped the harder fourth and fifth levels in each world usually faced too much of a difficulty spike in Agartha, and it also tends to increase the game duration for those players.

Finally we added a second save profile to the game, as requested by many players. We really wanted to get that inside the original release but only thought about it late in the process and it was too late for QA to accept it into the build. It's my fault and I really wanted to have it fixed for the Japanese release!"

You can watch a trailer for Soul Bubbles taken from the Japanese Nintendo Channel's latest update below:

Continue reading "Japan Receiving Definitive, Hairy Version Of Soul Bubbles" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Online retro gaming mag RGCD has released a new game for the two-decade old Atari STE -- r0x (with a "ready-to-go PC version").

Inspired by the meteor storm bonus stage in Edgar Vidal's Deluxe Galaga for Amiga, r0x has players taking control of the TTA Military Frigate 'Irata' and dodging meteoroids for as long as possible for a high score.

Players can also graze the meteoroids for "serious danger points" and collect treasure, floating cosmonauts, and bonuses (e.g. smart bombs that clear the screen, E-X-T-R-A letters for an extra life). "Maluses", which can reverse controls or instantly kill players, are also scattered in the mix.

The game also has a secret menu (which can be found by reading the messages in the menu screen displayer or by hacking r0x), an in-game playing guide, and a two-player mode in which players compete to collect 20 cosmonauts.

You can see video of an earlier version of the game demonstrated at demoparty Outline 2009 (where r0x was the highest scored game entry) below:

Continue reading "RGCD Releases r0x For Atari STE" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't watched much of the Escapist's Super Smash Bros. parody video series There Will Be Brawl, mostly because I can't bring myself to take web videos starring actors dressed as video game characters seriously (I made an exception for College Humor's Street Fighter: The Later Years), but I can imagine these excellent photos pushing other similarly disinterested gamers to check the show out.

Shot by Greg de Stefano, these photos of the There Will Be Brawl cast will be collected for a "book project in progress." My favorite is definitely the very Ira Glass-esque Lakitu. Captain Falcon, with the gleaming emblem on his helmet and his noble gold scarf, is a close second:

Continue reading "Photos From There Will Be Brawl's Book Project" »

Posted by Eric Caoili at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)