Triptych: Demazing!

"Bioshock (NES)" by BadassBill

"Warcraft (CGA)" by João Victor G. Costa

"Metal Gear Solid 4 Demake" by kYn

Showcase: Brian Miggels' Atari Modern Classics

"Portal"

"No More Heroes"

"God Of War 3"

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl"

The theme of the day, if you haven't guessed, is demakes. I was really pleased to stumble across Brian Miggels' website, because although I've posted his art here before after it was featured on the defunct Minus-World website, I never actually knew the source.

[Brian Miggels' Atari
Modern Classics]

Triptych: I See You

"Still Alive" (t-shirt) by Tom Trager

"Run Chell, Run" by Olaya Valle

(Click for full-size)
"GlaDOS Awakening 8-bit" by the everlovin' BrokenHAX

Indiesplosion!

A trio of indie games I've been meaning to post about for a few weeks: Stealth Bastard and Gunpoint are stealth-based 2D platformers, while Retro City Rampage is kind of a satirical 8-bit GTA demake.

STEALTH BASTARD: TACTICAL ESPIONAGE ARSEHOLE
Curve Studios
(PC, free download)

Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole has been described as the unholy spawn of Super Meat Boy, Portal and Splinter Cell. I'm not 100% certain what makes the protagonist such a bastard\arsehole, but robots and lasers definitely seem to think he's kind of a dick, and wish all sorts of ill upon him. Stealth Bastard offers 28 levels, a level editor, and is completely and unreservedly free.

Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole Trailer

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GUNPOINT
Tom Francis (Pentadact)
(PC, December 2011 release)

Gunpoint reminds me a lot of an updated Elevator Action, if that game was a lot more violent and had Batman's detective mode from Batman: Arkham Asylum (called 'rewiring mode' here). The game's not out yet so I haven't had a chance to try it out, but it looks fantastic and seems to have a pretty unique gameplay mechanism. The video below is a talk\playthrough of an early, very rough version of Gunpoint which nevertheless contains all of the basic elements of the more polished upcoming version.

Gunpoint Early Talkthrough Video

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RETRO CITY RAMPAGE
VBlank Entertainment
(WiiWare, XBox Live Arcade, release date TBA)

Retro City Rampage is insane. Lots of carjacking and criminal activity and random acts of violence, all in glorious 8-bit. It also looks highly referential, and packed full of classic videogame in-jokes and sight gags: everything from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game to Metal Gear to The Legend of Zelda II get satirised. The game world is huge, and the designers promise over 20 available weapons and 30 available vehicles (including but not limited to the TMNT van, the A-Team's van, and Doc Brown's DeLorean). I'm looking forward to this finally getting released.

Retro City Rampage Trailer

Showcase: The Minus-World's Box Art Demakes

The Minus-World website is now sadly defunct, but in their heyday they were sort of an Onion for the gamer set. They had some genuinely talented and hilarious writers and artists at their disposal and could have had a significant impact on the videogame blog scene if they'd stuck around a little longer. To my chagrin, I discovered them about a week before they went down for good; subsequently, I spent months trying to track down the above series (which I had browsed through just the once) until I finally found an archival Minus-World post somewhere on the internets. I know this sort of thing tends to get done a lot these days, but if Minus-World weren't the first to pixelate Sackboy and Isaac Clarke, they were at least one of the best.