Triptych: What The Glob, Finn?!

"Thumbs Up Finn" by Evan Henry
Life-sized (4'6") and consisting of over 4,000 wooden cubes

"Adventure Time 8-Bits" by VIP 8bits

"Adventure Time Gang" by Lovemi

Cthulhu Cthursday: Horrors Of The Deep Edition

"Cthulhu's Kid" by bubbyeater

"Tintin In R'lyeh" by Murray Groat (check out Murray's full series of Tintin\Lovecraft mashups, they're all spot-on)

"For Beginning Readers: The Call of Cthulhu" by DrFaustusAU (It's an actual book! Read the whole thing!)

"Tentacle Face" by Travis Perkins

"El Cthuluchador" (t-shirt) by Andy Hunt

"H.P. Lovecraft" by Ghoulish Gary

Super Mario Bros. 3 - Vancouver Skytrain Map

(Click for full-size)

Dave, of Dave's Geeky Ideas, recently posted this very excellent map of my hometown's Skytrain routes in the style of Super Mario Bros. 3. If you aren't a local, you may not appreciate all the intricacies here - not the least of which is that Dave has pretty effectively converted the geographical layout of Vancouver and the Lower Mainland into the grid-like structure seen above. In other words: all those rivers and land-masses are more or less accurate to real life, there is a giant Hammer Brother between Main Street-Science World and Broadway, and as I live right next to Oakridge-41st, I can confirm that the hills with eyes overlooking that general region not only exist but are creepy as all hell.

Dave's got a ton of other cool stuff featured on his blog over at Dave's Geeky Ideas, which you should definitely check out. I may be showcasing more of his work in the future because, seriously, Game of Thrones hockey jerseys? Shit just got real!

[Dave's Geeky Ideas]
[Vancouver Skytrain Map]

Triptych: Consequences (Webcomics Editions)

Nuclear Delight (01/06/2011)


Cat Ghost Comics (01/25/2011)


ManEggs (08/05/2010)

Videogames: fun to play, hard to live through.

48 Pac-Man Ghosts

"48 Custom Pac-Man Ghosts" by coleman811

Cheat-sheet under the cut.

Drunk Moogles, Tipsy Chocobos, Hammered Metroids and More.

The Drunken Moogle, maintained by Mitch Hutts and Travis Broyles, explores one very specific arena: the space where drinking and videogames meet. From Mitch's own description of the site, The Drunken Moogle is:

... a blog devoted to what might be the two best things this side of Hyrule: video games and booze. Though the generation of gamers who grew up with Mario, Sonic, and Final Fantasy gains new interests, some hobbies never change. We at TDM are dedicated to bringing the evolving gamer the perfect pairing between gaming and drinking culture.

While this is a noble endeavor on the whole and one which I endorse heartily, the true genius of The Drunken Moogle are the gaming-inspired cocktails which Mitch and Travis have compiled, if not concocted themselves. I have yet to apply my own not-insignificant barcrafting skills to any of the recipes below, but rest assured I will do so in due time and report back on the results.

---

THE BLANKATINI (Street Fighter)

Blankatini (Street Fighter Cocktail)

Ingredients:
1.5 oz. green apple vodka
1 oz. melon liqueur

Directions: Pour both ingredients into a cocktail glass and stir. Line the rim of the glass with orange sugar or cotton candy and garnish with a lemon peel. Drink and try not to get electrocuted.

The GAF Collection

The GAF Collection, Collected has compiled roughly 400 videogame covers created by the members of the NeoGAF forums, done in the style of the Criterion Collection. Like Criterion covers, they're classy, artful, and often very clever.

Below are a few of my favourites, and just a sampling of the hundreds to be found over at TGAFC,C.

Shadow of the Colossus (PS2), Katamari Damacy (PS2)

Two of my favourite games for the PlayStation 2. In both games, you control a positively tiny protagonist and the overall theme is one of largeness. Each of these covers emphasises this by offsetting your character against a backdrop of a massive Colossus\Katamari of which only a portion is shown. Both Colossus and Katamari seem overwhelming to the point of being nearly insurmountable.

201 Mega Men: A Sampling

~captainslam has created a massive compilation of 201 videogame protagonists done up in the style of MegaMan, and it's a thing of beauty to behold. Above you'll find a few of my personal favorites, which is only a tiny sampling of the overall piece. Lookit that little PipBoy!  Adorable.  And DEADLY.  Radiation deadly!

Click on the image to be taken to the full-sized (6948x4032) images.

A Cautionary Tale.

The fear of doing this probably crosses my mind half a dozen times each day.

half-real: a critical study of gaming

One of the things that's taken my attention away from Apocalypse POW! this summer is a website I'm in the process of putting together, half-real: a critical study of gaming. It's the first part of a sort of interactive thesis that I'm writing on the history, cultural impact, and development of gaming, and I figured it might be of interest to those of you who read Apocalypse POW! on a regular basis.

half-real is currently broken up into three categories: the sociological perspective on video games, the cultural perspective, and the industry perspective. Right now, this is about one-quarter of what I plan to incorporate -- eventually there will be chapters on Design, Marketing and Production; Studio vs. Independent Development; and Traditional vs. Emergent Gameplay. It's very much a work in progress, so if you have any feedback or comments, feel free to contact me.

Here's an overly-wordy sampling:

The cultural study of video games tends along a spectrum, with one extreme termed Ludology and the other Narratology (as defined by Gonzalo Frasca). In their purest forms, Ludology focuses on rule-based game systems, while Narratology focuses on story-based game systems. In other words, Chess cannot be studied from a narratological perspective, as the game functions entirely as a rule system. Similarly, a work of interactive fiction, for example Infocom's 1980 text-based adventure game Zork, is difficult to assess from a ludological perspective, as it operates as a story delivery system with a minimal imposition of rules (which can be summed up, essentially, as "don't die" and "complete the story".) That said, most games today contain a roughly-proportional division of rule systems and story devices, allowing for multiple approaches to critical analysis.

[h a l f - r e a l : a critical study of gaming]

Hadouken!

Following up on Hipster, Please!'s Doctor Who mixtape I linked to the other day, I thought I'd offer up another free download - this one somewhat more relevant to Apocalypse POW!'s usual theme: Akira the Don's full-length Street Fighter II remix album. And, if you'd like to hear it before you pay zero dollars (or whatever you like) to receive high-quality mp3s straight from the Don himself, he's put the whole thing up as an embeddable stream.

Akira The Don - ATD23 - The Street Fighter Mixtape by Akira The Don

And here's the tracklist:

Akira The Don – ATD23: The Street Fighter Mixtape

Produced, engineered and mixed by Akira The Don at Don Studios IV
Cuts by DJ Jack Nimble
Extra guitars by Jeremy Allen

Tracklisting:
Waking Up
Theme From Ken
Entertainers ft. Littles
Be Brave
The Title
Winners ft Envy
The Victory Boogie
R.Y.U.
Ending 1
Nomad
VEGA
Street Fighter (I Will F U Up) ft Big Narstie, Littles & Lickel P
Steal The Show ft Littles
Congratulations
BONUS: Ken Will F U Up

Assorted Miscellany: Our Man On The Inside Edition.

Life has a tendency to get in the way of the things I'd much rather be doing, like blogging about videogames. However, I have a few key articles of news to report today that can't wait any longer. Frankly, I can't believe I left them as long as I have.

First and foremost - my good pal Mister Horrible recently lucked into a cherry position at the Redmond, WA offices of none other than that paragon of family-friendly interactive entertainment, Nintendo. This is awesome on roughly seventeen levels. Not only will he be able to supply me with insider news (which, I'm sure, will invariably come along with the condition that I in no way leak said information on my blog,) but I will also be able to suggest game ideas to him and pretend that they will be passed along to the appropriate departments.

Supposedly Nintendo has already anticipated my incoming deluge of brilliant pitches, because according to Mr. H, the employee handbook explicitly states the following:

Each week, Nintendo receives hundreds of questions and suggestions about our games and systems. While we appreciate the enthusiasm, due to the volume received, we simply do not have time or resources to process them. Accordingly, it is Nintendo's policy to NOT accept unsolicited game ideas.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I'm nevertheless convinced I can wear them down. Anyway, props to Mister Horrible! If nothing else, I look forward to scouring the Nintendo employee tuck shop and picking up Invincibility Stars at cost.

On another note (one which is easily as geeky as my usual fodder, but for once not game-related) I'd like to point you all in the direction of Visitations: A Musical Tribute to Doctor Who over at Hipster, Please! - Z.'s put together a pretty sick Who-themed nerdcore compilation for your time-and-space-voyaging, Dalek-outwitting, sonic-screwdriver-wielding enjoyment.

And while you're at it, take a look at his write-up on Doctor Octoroc's chiptune-and-video project reimagining Doctor Horrible as a classic 8-bit NES game. I was going to post on this myself, but thankfully Z. got there first and saved me the trouble.

And then go here and watch the video in glorious full-screen Flash animation for yourself.

Retro Roots: How Did You Get Started?

Inspired in part by this post over at Kotaku, not to mention the urge to prove to myself that I have actual readers beyond search engine spiders, today I’m opening up the floor (or at least, paying more attention to the comments than usual) and asking the question: What was the first gaming rig or console you ever owned? 

I suppose 90% of gamers out there got the bug with their first NES, and rightly so – for me, although I was staunchly a member of the Nintendo Generation, my first post-arcade pixellated experience was two-fold and pre-dated the household NES by about a year.

My first console, or at least ostensibly mine, was the ColecoVision, around 1984.  My grandparents, suddenly burdened with half-a-dozen grandsons between the ages of six and twelve, did the only sensible thing they could think of (and in doing so, were nigh prophetic in the grandparent-grandchild-videogame interrelational framework which exists to this day) and purchased a ColecoVision and handful of games to keep us occupied while the grown-ups drank coffee and, I dunno, made borscht or something.  I only recall playing two games on this console, but I played them harder than any young boy had a right to – The Smurfs: Rescue In Gargamel’s Castle and Donkey Kong.

The Smurfs game was horrible, insanely hard, and tedious.  Like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong or any of the other classic games from that era, there seemed to be an endless number of levels, patterned thusly: daytime meadow, scary night-time forest, Gargamel’s castle.  If you could get past even the first meadow, you were treated to a round of cheers and astonishment from the collective cousins, but you quickly discovered that the greatest gamer in the world could not BEAT this god-damned Smurfs game.  And the music… Christ, it haunts me to this day.

Donkey Kong, on the other hand, struck a chord with me from the very start, and I presume I hassled my parents for my own videogame system almost immediately.  Never quite trusting new, hyped technology (my dad got burned in the whole Betamax fiasco) they opted for an Atari 2600 over the just-released Nintendo Entertainment System.  While the NES thus became the ever-untouchable Holy Grail for my brothers and I, the 2600 did an admirable job of keeping us entertained over the next year.

I don’t recall the complete list of cartridges we owned, but a few will stay in my memory until my dying day.  Yar’s Revenge was easily my favourite, along with Atlantis and Dig Dug.  I logged my requisite hours with Adventure and Joust, though I could never figure out the point of the latter.  I made my little brother cry whenever I played E.T. (which wasn’t very often.)  And although I could not now comment on its overall quality as a game, I remember making my mother take me to K-Mart to pre-order Desert Falcon and then shell out $59.95 upon its arrival (subsequently, whenever I was being a pest, her typical exasperated response to me was, “Why aren’t you playing that $60 game I just bought you?!”)

Around the same time, my parents latched onto the firm belief (which was admittedly widespread in the ‘80s) that Computers Were Our Future, that it was their responsibility to expose their kids to the wonders of personal-computing technology, and that somehow, Pac-Man on a Commodore 64 was more educational than Pac-Man on an Atari.  Thus began the near-constant stream of computers into our household: A Timex-Sinclair 1000 with a cassette-tape drive my father could never quite figure out how to make work; a used C64 that broke after six weeks; an Apple IIe; and countless others.  Somewhere in the midst of this, we adopted a Trash-80 Model III.

The TRS-80 Model III was notable in exactly one regard: it was a complete unit, housing CPU, drives, keyboard and monitor.  It also had one other quality that allowed it to survive in a household of reckless, overexcited boys.  It was virtually indestructible.  I swear to God, it lived in our garage, amongst my dad’s power tools, dune buggies and engine parts, and it worked beautifully up until the day someone accidentally rested a welding gun on its frame.  The thing had some serious silicon balls.

I don’t recall exactly how old I was when the Trash-80 happened along, but I do know that I was young enough that, by all rights, it should not have managed to lure me away from my Atari as successfully as it did.  To begin with: it had no games.  No store-bought, neatly-packaged games with instruction manuals, anyway.  We had exactly one original game for it, which had been thrown in by the original owner, and that was Zork. 

This was my introduction to coding my own games.  First off, the thing had BASIC built into it, meaning I could (and did) scour my local library for books with pages upon pages of reproduced BASIC code for everything from Pong to Chess to god knows what else.  While my pre-pubescent attention span never got further than laboriously typing in the first three or four pages, I did manage to pick up enough of the language to start making my own games, inspired by Zork and whatever Saturday morning cartoon show I had just finished watching.  Thus, I undertook to design my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles text adventure – and though I devoted dozens of hours to it, it sadly remains unfinished to this day (and is probably still sitting on a 5.25” floppy in one of the melted drives of the defunct beast to this day.)

Of course, soon after its demise, we acquired an XT with a modem and everything went downhill from there.  The sheer availability of easily-obtained pirated software by that point deterred me from the necessity of programming my own entertainment, and sadly it’s a skill I have long-lost.  But I still remember that Trash-80 as my very first gaming rig, and it will always have a place in my heart.

Now it’s your turn.  What was the first game you remember playing?  When, where and how did you get hooked? 

The Science Gets Done and You Make A Neat Gun

Days like today, you realise how beautiful a place the Internet has the potential to be.

Yesterday, Valve released a Steam update for Portal, containing one new achievement and a couple dozen short audio files which play on peripheral radios throughout the game. The fact, I guess, that Valve would bother releasing an update with such minimal content got fans of the game thinking, "There has to be something else going on here."

Naturally, they got to digging, and it turns out their suspicions were right. Here's the quick rundown of what they found:

1. Hidden in the audio-file data were Morse code transmissions and SSTV (Slow Scan Television) encoded images;
1a. Some of the Morse code data were easily translated and contained a username and password;
1b. One in particular was Morse coded Morse code for 'LOL';
1c. Another was an MD5 checksum string.

2. The SSTV images looked like framegrabs from security cameras from inside Aperture Science, along with a handful of close-up shots of keyboard keys and black\whiteboards, emphasising certain digits, characters and equations.

So far so good. This is starting to look like an adventure, Encyclopedia Brown!

3. After applying the presumably Hogwarts-acquired spell Mathemagicus to this information, smarter people than I came up with a random string of characters, which itself turned out to be, wait for it...

3wtf. ...An encoded phone number for a BBS.

4. Dialing up this BBS and logging in with the given username and password provided access to the old Aperture Science board, and an impressive amount of oft-hilarious infodump, most of it written by witch-hatin' Aperture Science founder, Cave Johnson.

A short sample of one of Johnson's typical missives to his employees:

"Science isn't about why, it's about why not. You ask: Why is so much of our science dangerous? I say: Why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won't hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired."

Anyway, here's the thing: amongst the witty little system responses like "ERROR: ERROR NOT UNDETECTED" and "WARNING: BIOS INSUFFICIENTLY BASIC", company memos from the 1970s detailing policy on "Low Risk" Human Resource Acquisitions (summary: Hobos good, Orphans even better, Psychiatric Patients and Seniors unencouraged,) and low-rez ASCII art renderings of various photos and diagrams...

There's a fair amount of teaser information for Portal 2 and, quite possibly, Half-Life 3.

To begin with, the above-mentioned memo seems to delve into the reasons for GlaDOS' fractured, passive-aggressive personality more than ever before. The founder of Aperture, "Cave Johnson", is introduced. And there's one ASCII image in particular, of two robots holding hands, that hints both at potential new enemies for Portal 2 and Half-Life 3, and suggests some kind of backstory for the Aperture Science\Black Mesa animosity.

Here are a handful of screengrabs for you to pore over and try to make sense of. Click through to embiggen.

Hey, Valve? Y'all are magnificent bastards. But I like your style.

[Original post on Kotaku right here.]

Scott Pilgrim Levels Up

It would be overly simplistic to state that Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim is a comic series about videogames... But on the other hand, it's not NOT about videogames, either. Games are just one of a number of themes woven into Scott Pilgrim that make my nerdy little heart race with glee every time I read it. There's the fact that Scott and his friends are (mostly) Torontonians, so there's any number of casual shout-outs to daily Canadian life (Scott regularly wears a t-shirt emblazoned with the CBC logo, for example.) Or the whole struggling, self-important indie band thing, as epitomised by Scott's band Sex Bob-Omb or rival band The Clash At Demonhead, amongst others. Or the near-constant stream of pop-culture references - Amazon.ca, Trainspotting, The Shins - that never come off as forced or overly cute.

But this is a blog about videogames, and if there's one thing Scott Pilgrim's got in spades, it's videogame love.

To date, O'Malley's released five of his intended six-volume Pilgrim opus, charting Scott's epic quest to defeat his girlfriend Ramona Flowers' seven evil ex-boyfriends (I'm wildly speculating here, but presumably the final volume will come out concurrently with or just prior to the theatrical release of the movie adaptation this August - but more on that in a sec.) In both concept and execution, it's pretty much a comic-book translation of the definitive videogame storyline: the hero must tackle and beat X number of level bosses, go up against the Big Bad, and win the heart of the princess in the end. It sounds incredibly precious, and make no mistake, it is - but O'Malley knows what he's doing, and over the course of the five books to date, he's thrown so many curveballs into the proceedings, and dealt with so many identifiable, grown-up trials and tribulations (like scraping together enough rent money to hang onto your shitty apartment for another month, or navigating awkward and often soon-to-fail relationships) in an admirably deft and even-handed manner, that it's anyone's guess where the story will end up.

Of course, at heart Scott Pilgrim IS about videogames, and there are clever little touches throughout to remind the reader of this fact. Besides the band names, the ex-boyfriends literally drop coins (actual pocket change) and items after they're defeated, and characters transform from average 20-somethings to cartoonish, insanely skilled fighters at the drop of a hat. They operate within a universe that's half-reality, half-videogame, and Scott himself is the quintessential videogame protagonist. And in a weird way, all of this makes perfect sense and actually lends the book a kind of heightened realism (at least for colossal nerds like me): how many times have I gotten through a rough day at work by thinking of it as XP grinding so I can eventually level up, or justified dropping $100 on a textbook by looking at it as providing +1 to INT?

Yeah, it's nerdy. Laugh all you want, but you do it too - we've all been deeply influenced by a lifetime of growing up playing videogames. And the great thing about Scott Pilgrim is that he doesn't just think this way: this is the way his world actually works.

Unless you've been living in a Hutterite colony for the past year and this is the first opportunity you've had to escape the watchful eyes of your elders and get onto the internet, you're probably aware of the upcoming adaptation of Scott Pilgrim, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which - barring global catastrophe - should hit theatres August 13th of this summer. Edgar Wright (who, besides having directed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, was the co-creator and director of the brilliant nerd-love British series "Spaced", which if you haven't seen... you should) is directing, lovable geek George-Michael Bluth is playing Scott Pilgrim, John McClane's daughter is playing Ramona V. Flowers, and the likes of Brandon Routh, Chris Evans, and the incorrigable Jason Schwartzman have been cast as various Ex-Boyfriends (the screenplay was penned by one Michael Bacall who, despite having no major studio credits to his name thus far, is following up his Pilgrim script with a fictional adaptation of the documentary The King of Kong for New Line Cinema - good enough for me.) And it was, appropriately enough, shot in Toronto, which makes it one of the few high-visibility American films I can think of both filmed in and unabashedly set in a Canadian city (seriously, can you think of any? At all?)

There are a ton of movies out this year based on both comic books and videogames. On the one hand, we've got Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, Jonah Hex, and The Losers, while on the other, there's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Resident Evil: Afterlife, not to mention the rumoured Mortal Kombat remake. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World stands as the only adaptation slated for 2010, however, that falls comfortably into both categories, and frankly (based on the admittedly-miniscule amount of information that's trickled out thus far,) it's probably the one film I'm most excited about, in a cautiously optimistic sort of way.

AND, because the world apparently is a beautiful place, Ubisoft Montreal is currently developing a videogame adaptation of Scott Pilgrim. Whether it'll hew closer to the film or the graphic novel (or equal measures of both) remains to be seen, of course, but in an interview with Comic Book Resources, Bryan Lee O'Malley has gone on record to state that it'll be a classic, retro side-scroller beat-'em-up.

Just as it should be. A videogame based on a movie based on a comic book inspired by videogames? It's almost enough to make a guy religious.

***

All five volumes of Scott Pilgrim are available in paperback from Amazon.ca for $11.26 each (Canadian funds). That means you can get all five for around $60 Canadian, including shipping! That's how much you spent on Brütal Legend! This is a much better investment, trust me.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (Vol. 1)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Vol. 2)
Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness (Vol. 3)
Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together (Vol. 4)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe (Vol. 5)

Pixified: More Gaming Wallpapers

Hot on the heels of my previous post on game-themed wallpapers, I’d like to formally welcome you to Round Two.  Fight!

Oh Nintendo Is So Cool, by ~Jhny-heat (1680x1050)

NES Gamepad Guts, by Reintji (1280x1024)

WASD, artist unknown (1680x945)

Pixel Pipe, photo by Annamarie Tendler, original artist unknown (1680x1050)

Bioshock, by Jhonen Vasquez (1358x1018)

Big Daddy & Little Sister, Penny Arcade (1600x1200)

Dragon Quest: The Bar

A Dragon Quest-themed restaurant called Luida's Bar has opened in Tokyo's Roppongi District. I'd have more to say but I'm busy booking a one-way flight to Japan as we speak.

(Yes. I plan to live there, in the restaurant itself, lurking under tables and gathering scraps of fallen food until I have enough material to craft a liquid metal sword. You heard me.)

This is simultaneously the greatest news I've heard all day, and the worst. The greatest, because clearly my daily prayers to the Goddess have not only been heard, but answered; the worst, because I promised to sacrifice my first-born child (as yet unconceived) for it to happen.

Pixified: Gaming Wallpapers

A handful of gaming-themed wallpapers, submitted for your approval. Click through or right-click and save for full-sized images.

Megaman by ~ivanev (1280x1024)

Cute, cheerful, simple lines, and I like the background raster effect.

Alice In The Mushroom Kingdom, artist unknown (1366x768)

Wonderland = Mushroom Kingdom.  It's so obvious.  I can't believe I never saw it before. 

Half-Life 2 Evolution, artist unknown (1920x1080)

Half-Life 2 may well be the greatest game ever made, but I'm still confused by the whole "Combine being aliens\mutants\hybrids\from the future\from a different dimension" thing.  This clarifies it only slightly.

Rapture (Bioshock), artist unknown (1680x1050)

On a similar note... Bioshock had one of the most incredible opening sequences ever.  I love the simplicity and Saul Bass-inspired graphics here.  

Pip Boy (Fallout 3), artist unknown (1440x900)

I've been catching up on my PC gaming lately, and Fallout 3 has rapidly risen to the top of my current list.  This image captures everything great about The Vault: the innocent, cheerful optimism of Pip-Boy scraped away by decades of grunge and grime.

If anyone knows the source of the unattributed images above, by all means let me know in the comments.  I hate posting links to artwork without giving credit where it's due.

Assorted Miscellany.

I've been addicted to GameOvr of late. Since I'm out of town for the holidays and don't really have time to post my usual long-winded updates, instead here's a sampling of game-related art that I'm happened across on GameOvr that I thought was worth sharing.

I haven't been able to find a source on this, but it was posted on Danbooru a few years ago by one スラッシュ, who linked to this site (sadly now down, apparently) as the original source.

A t-shirt design from LowRez.de. Classic!

And on a related note, someone ported Tetris to an oscilloscope.

"Urban Mushrooms", by flickr user SHUN(iamtekn).

"Future Fantasy VII" by deviantart user Minor-Interest. Yeah, I'm a nerd.

I could keep going, but there are trees to trim and halls to deck and whatnot. See ya in the new year.