Gorgeous! Read the rest

Capcom's Street Fighter is one of the most famous and expansively franchised games in history, rolling mercilessly on since 1987. RAE compiled an exhaustive collection of miscellaneous details, from hidden inspirations to the importance of Bill Cravens to game history.

Bill Cravens, whose name and image is grafittied on the Block Heads pub in Birdie's stage in Street Fighter, was vice-president of sales and marketing at Capcom USA and, as a distributor, was a key figure in reviving the arcade business following the crash in 1983. He is also said to have sold one of the very first Pong machines at the dawn of arcade gaming in the early '70s. Bill Cravens passed away in 2007 but a kind of immortality is assured by being one of only a very few 'real-life' individuals to appear in the Street Fighter universe, with Mikhail Gorbachev's cameo in Zangief's Street Fighter II endings being the most egregious

From SF2:

The flags in Ryu's stage of World Warrior are the Fūrinkazan, the battle standard of 16th century daimyo Takeda Shingen. The standard is quoting chapter seven of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the full translation is:

Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest. In raiding and plundering be like fire, be immovable like a mountain.

There are hundreds if not thousands of entries in the list. Read the rest

Code Parade (also on itch.io) is developing a "hyperbolic" 3D game engine (download) where a line is not necessarily the shortest path between two places. I was impressed by the tunnels that are longer inside than outside, but the three-roomed house blew my mind. Can't wait for the unsettling haunted-house games to come.

See if you notice anything suspicious as I walk through it. Did you catch it? This four-room house actually only has three rooms, red, green, and blue. This demo surprised me a lot because I originally thought it would be super jarring but actually everyone I show this to doesn't notice it at all unless I tell them that something is off. I guess our brains just aren't used to thinking this way.

I'm looking forward to playing Hideous Abomination [Kickstarter], because it combines two of my favorite things: games where you build something piece by piece out of cards or tiles, and grotesque cartoon creatures that defy the imagination.

Hideous Abomination is a tile-laying game for 2-5 people, aged 12+ (but with simplified rules for younger players), generally running about 15-30 minutes. You’re in fierce competition with the other players to construct and complete an abomination that matches certain criteria - some of which are randomized per game! You’ll take turns rolling the die and playing, stealing and bolting tiles. There's plenty of player interaction and end-game scoring. It's fast-paced fun for social gamers, but the randomized win conditions and variables mean it's deep enough for more strategically-minded gamers, too

Here's how it's played:

The creator, Judson Cowan (previously at Boing Boing) is responsible for the gameplay, the artwork, the milieux, the song in the ad, the everything, which is why it already has such a coherent and finished look to it and why I have no doubt it'll ship promptly.

Hideous Abomination [Kickstarter] Read the rest

Yesterday I posted about Finger on the App, a game in which players must keep their finger on their smartphone screen (and occasionally move it to a new spot indicated by the app, to prevent cheating). The last person to keep their finger on the app wins a prize of up to $25,000. Over 48 hours later, 15 players are still vying for the prize. The game started with 1.3 million players. Yesterday morning about 80 players remained. As of now (12:55 p.m. Pacific time) 15 players are left.

MrBeast is keeping track of the activity.

Below, a "montage of people losing the $25k finger on the app challenge on livestream when viewers trick Siri to open."

A montage of people losing the $25k finger on the app challenge on livestream when viewers trick Siri to open. from r/Wellthatsucks

Image: Twitter Read the rest

Videogame developer Phil Compile and 4-year-old son Ollie made this absolutely wonderful Super Mario stop motion animation using refrigerator magnets.

That’s so good! How long did that take??

— Garrett Cooper (@superdupergc) June 28, 2020

My first moments in Tom van den Boogaart's Bernband (Free Download), a goalless exploration game set in the mazelike city of Pff, led me to expect an empty low-fi walking sim. A drab apartment in a looming building. A window view of city lights in darkness. A spartan hallway leading to an elevator. Then something happened: the elevator's doors spilled me out into a dense crowd of sprites, dozens of people right up in my face, jostling and stumbling around the forecourt. Covid-brain kicked in and I yelped, lurched from the screen, then laughed, amazed that a game had done that to me.

Simple, stark and clear about what it wants to be, Bernband is small in absolute terms but packed with implication. It's experienced in the first person and heady in the way pixelated 3D walking sims often are. All you can do is look around and get lost in the sprawl and its weird connections. There's pubs, a subway station, a schoolroom, a child's recital, a courtyard garden, a chapel, and more, fragments of something vast.

There's a sense of the city's secret boundaries, too, places sealed off by architecture yet full of strangers coming and going (perhaps on the subway trains whose doors never open). As charming as it is, with its cute aliens and flying cars zipping by at hyperspeed, the vibe reminds me of The Bridge and Unthank. Bernband toys with a grim but playful tradition of surreal possibility hidden in impassive urban forms, where ducts and serviceways are the fairy portals offering glimpses of the labyrinth, the places waiting to be remembered. Read the rest

Sugar Heist is a fun-looking new card game from YouTube comedian/animator Alex Clark and TV writer Zach Craley (Heroes Reborn, Marvel’s Avengers Assemble, and Spider-Man) with a simple goal: trade and steal cards so you can build up a giant stash of candy. "We guarantee that Sugar Heist is THE BEST way to bring together family and friends," the creators write, "so you can betray their trust and steal from them."

Here's the epic origin story behind this wacky game:

 Sugar Heist was inspired by Alex’s best friends, Zach and Kat, having twins. When they were born, Alex looked to his wife, Pam, and said: “It’s finally time for our own baby.”  Alex quickly clarified that he meant a tabletop game and thankfully Pam was still on board.

The four of us play games regularly and have always dreamed of making our own, but we also loved putting it off. It wasn’t until the twins were born that we decided to follow through.

Based on their birth, Alex immediately had an epiphany, "What if it’s a game where you collect candy and use it to lure children into your van."

[…]

Based on these convos we realized our idea was wildly inappropriate. While a game catering to that crowd might be a great way to roundup weirdos, To Catch a Predator-style, we knew we’d prefer to reach a wider audience.

We thought let’s do something “not creepy” — What if stealing candy from babies wasn’t always easy? What if these babies could defend themselves?

Itch.io today announced the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, a collection of 744 games worth $3,400. You can download and experience the lot for a minimum donation of $5.

We live in a time of racial injustice, inequality, and police brutality against black people. We hope that everyone takes a stand in any way that they can. We’ve partnered with creators from all across our platform to support organizations that are working directly with those affected.

We reached out to our community and an unprecedented number of creators donated over 740 projects to be part of what we believe is the largest bundle ever. Over $3,400 of paid works are available Pay-what-you-want with a minimum donation amount of $5.

All proceeds will donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund split 50/50.

Please note: No Steam (or other external keys) will be given for bundle purchases. Only direct downloads will be available on the itch.io page.

If you’re looking for more ways to help try here: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/

$234,000 raised in about 6 hours! 😱 I've bumped the goal to $500k. Thank you so much to those who bought the bundle and the those who donated their projects.

BTW, 185 new projects have already been submitted and will be added tomorrow!https://t.co/31vXCJjkk1

— leaf @ itch.io 🙌 (@moonscript) June 6, 2020

The servers seem to be having some trouble: if it doesn't come up for you, drag this URL to your bookmarks and try it again later: https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality Read the rest

Pegged on SEGA's 60th anniversary, the company announced a tiny version of their Game Gear 8-bit handheld console first released in 1990. It will sell for 4,980 yen (US$50). From IGN:

The Game Gear Micro is currently only available to preorder in Japan and will launch on October 6th. At time of writing, there has been no news of a Western release for the device.

The console has a one-inch screen, and will arrive in four colour schemes, each with a different set of four games preloaded...

Game Gear Micro (Sega.com) Read the rest

It's been four years since Cory posted a supercut of video game bathrooms, but the industry hasn't been slacking since. Curious Reviewers posted a series collecting the typically revolting, sometimes deluxe, always weirdly spacious virtual pissoirs of videogaming.

Here are the three episodes, in reverse chronological order. Note that many of the clips show nudity, violence, grossness and other things you might expect to find going on in ludological lavatories.

Read the rest

The Last of Us is a game about surviving in America after a pandemic. The sequel is out this summer, and as part of the marketing effort, Sony is offering a "The Last of Us Part II" skateboard with an attractive "post-pandemic distressing" effect. [via @ckunzelman]

Build a deck with some real character, complete with post-pandemic distressing. Made of 7-ply Canadian maple. Individually cold-pressed.

You wouldn't want the distressing to look pre-pandemic, would you? Read the rest

"NVIDIA GameGAN is a powerful new AI model created by NVIDIA Research and was trained on 50,000 episodes of PAC-MAN to produce a fully functional version of the classic without an underlying game engine." Read the article about it was done here.

Image: Nvidia Read the rest

You've probably seen a biosphere ecosystem before. It's a glass orb filled with water, some aquatic plants, and some small animals like freshwater shrimp. The only input to the otherwise closed system is sunlight, and the goal is to keep the lifeforms inside the glass sphere going as long as possible. When I was at Make magazine we made a biosphere and it remained healthy for over five years.

Orb Farm is a web-based biosphere simulator. You are given an empty glass sphere, and you can fill it with glass, sand, stone, wood, water, algae, Daphnia, grass, bacteria, fish, goldfish, and, er, donuts. The game was created by Max Bittker. Read the rest

Graham Dunning replaced all of the Half-Life in-game sounds with clips of 90s EDM tracks and rave music sample CDs. He basically turned the entire game into a Launchpad so he can play Half-Life like it's a techno orchestra.

(via Waxy) Read the rest