Nintendo Box Art Jam

"Bionic Commando" by Lerms with original for comparison
(Click for full-size images)


"Castlevania III" by HanzTheBox with original for comparison
(Click for full-size images)


"Super Mario Bros." by PuggDogg with original for comparison
(Click for full-size images)

The Legend of Busting Up People's Stuff (or, Why Link Is A Jerk)

A trio of Zelda-related videos for your enjoyment.



Really makes you wonder about Link's priorities. I mean, the dude picks the worst possible time to go fishing. Then again, what's up with villagers handing out pointless busy-work to Link when there are clearly more important things to be focusing on? They should know he's got the attention span of a ten-year-old on a sugar high.



Crazy red-eyed Link ineffectually smacking a chicken with his sword makes me bust a gut every time.



I don't know why this is a thing.

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.

First Person Tetris.

You should play First Person Tetris. Here are some glowing first impressions from people who have happened to stumble into the room while I've been playing it:

"No. That hurts my brain."
- Cait (my roommate)

"It satisfies some strange primal adaptive mechanism... That part of the brain that separates us from the reptiles..."
- Doctor Strange

[First Person Tetris: A Dizzying Take On The Classic Puzzler, via terminalgamer.com]

MegaDoomMan Deathmatch

While I would suggest muting the volume for the first fifteen seconds or so (that Bot-loading blip noise seems deliberately designed to drive one completely mad) and I'd love to see a non-Deathmatch version with some classic MegaMan enemies thrown in, I can't fault this modder's attention to detail - nor the admirable lunacy they must possess to undertake this in the first place. Cutman, the interloper responsible for this, claims on the mod's webpage that

"The plan is to eventually have all the levels and weapons from Megaman 1-6 (and maybe 9)."

That is the sort of thing I can get behind 100%.

[WIP: Megaman 8-bit Deathmatch, via Kotaku]

Demade, As Per Your Requirements

Demakes. By now you're probably familiar with the concept: take a contemporary game and remake it as it might have appeared on an earlier platform. The term and concept, coined by Phil Fish over at the TIGSource forums (THE definitive repository for independent demakes!), are a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the whole short-on-ideas-but-big-on-fan-franchises mentality of today's game development industry - It's hilarious to imagine Mirror's Edge on the Atari 2600 or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on an XT with EGA graphics, but at the same time, we're still playing the latest Castlevania, Metroid or Wolfenstein. If games can be updated, why can't the reverse also be true?

And truthfully, there's some very impressive work being done in the indie demake quadrant - again, much of it stemming from The Independent Gaming Source's Bootleg Demake Compo in the summer of 2008.

So without further ado, I give you a small sampling of games dragged kicking and screaming into a generation of hardware limitations they were never meant for.


Megaman 4kb (C64 Demake of Megaman)

Hold Me Closer, Giant Dancer (Shadow of the Colossus Demake for the TRS-80 III)

Final Fantasy 7 (Demake for the NES)

Codename: Gordon (Half-Life\Half-Life 2 Sidescroller Demake, available on Steam)

Soundless Mountain II (Demake of Silent Hill II for the NES)

Portal: Still Alive (Flash-based Demake of Portal)

ASCIIpOrtal (ASCII Demake of Portal)

Super 3D Portals 6 (Atari 2600 Demake of Portal)

A list of the games being demade by the guys over at TIGSource can be found here, as well as the official catalogue over here.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fantastic Gameboy demake mockups, in glorious grey\green\beige, by the folks over at wayofthepixel:

(Bioshock, by CroM)

(Psychonauts, by HMC)

(American McGee's Alice, by Arachne)

(Okami, by Doppleganger)

(Sam and Max Hit The Road, by KhrisMUC)

(World of Warcraft, by Arachne)

(Resident Evil 4, by Bouzolf)

And then, of course, you have the other side of the coin: remakes of retro games, a designation which apparently only requires that the game in question be updating to a platform released subsequently to the one the original came out on. Retro Remakes has a great list of remakes both current and in development. This deserves a post in itself, but in the meantime I'll leave you with this, from the as-yet-unreleased Maniac Mansion remake by German-based indie developers Vampyre Games (and which looks downright brilliant):