Apocalypse POW!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Showcase: Ty Lettau's Videogame Models

[Ty Lettau (soundofdesign)]

Thursday, September 8, 2011

MC Frontalot and Adventure Games

Did you know that MC Frontalot is designing a text adventure game? Did you know that he's been working on it for, like, ten years? This is sure to excite only a small fraction of my already-quite-miniscule readership, but let me tell you, text adventures are what I cut my gaming teeth on, and I can think of no better proponent for the genre than the eminent Frontalot. I wait with bated breath and fingers poised trembling above keyboard for his ridiculous-sounding adventure game to drop. For the time being, you can read a bit about it over at Adult Swim, where Front is interviewed on the topic of this very thing. Here's my favourite bit:

From your point of view, do people who grew up playing Gears Of War care about adventure games? I'm in a position where I end up talking to the "young people" about video games rather frequently. I have not met very many young folks who even know what an adventure game is, or if they have some kind of recognition of the term, they'll be like, "Oh, you mean Monkey Island? I know that retro stuff. My dad showed me Space Quest." Those games were an affront to adventure games when they came out because they asked us to trade out our imagination and all that great writing. I'm supposed to trade that up for these horrible VGA resolutions, barely-animated dudes walking around to the four edges of the screen and trying to click on the right pixel? Of course now, even those games evoke some kind of nostalgic reaction in me. [Laughs.] Time heals all bitterness. But I always in my heart will think of text adventures as the pinnacle of imaginative gaming.

And for good measure, here's MC Frontalot's video for "It Is Pitch Dark":

["Celeb-Nerdy: MC Frontalot Is Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue"]

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Showcase: 8-Bit Zombie

There's so much going on with 8-Bit Zombies' awesome product promo cards I don't even know where to start. They're riffing on those bastions of '80s grossness, Garbage Pail Kids cards, to begin with; printed (for the most part) in lo-fi four-color schemes that remind me of '70s and '80s-era home-printed 'zines; and touching on an array of nostalgic subjects, from movies like Ghostbusters and The Never-Ending Story to videogames like Ninja Gaiden and Kid Icarus. Maybe best of all, the cards featured above (not to mention twice as many more, viewable over at the 8-Bit Zombie website) are not the final product (and in fact, are not even available for purchase, sad to say) - they're just the storefront promos for even cooler images printed on t-shirts and caps. Definitely go check out their online store and maybe even buy something!

[8-Bit Zombie]