This is neat: a debug window border that was used in Pokémon Trading Card Game (for the Game Boy), with an 8x8 overlay grid designed to test Super Game Boy colourization regions.
This is the first part of a little project I will work on while traveling. I will take reader input on where to go next, and we will see where this goes. Updating from my phone so apologies for any awkwardness.The beach is worn smooth and hard and the ocean is cold. Confused winds bring alternately sea-salt and the smell of smoke from somewhere inland. Before you jut black rocks like fingers. Two towers stand, skeletal, in the distance.
What do you do?
My Famicase Exhibition 2013 entries
Meteor, our favorite video game shop in Tokyo, began hosting its annual Famicase gallery last week, displaying nearly 90 Famicom cartridges for fake games dreamt up by artists. It looks like more Western artists than usual participated this year, and judging by the messages we received, a lot of our readers heard about the show from our posts and participated! Congratulations! You might remember that we had our own piece featured by Famicase not too long ago.
I’ve picked out my favorites from 2013’s submissions for the images above. Yuko Yano’s Cat Takes The Breakfast sounds like a game idea JC and I kicked around back in the day — the goal in Yano’s imaginary game is to wake up your master to serve you breakfast. ExedStarSoldius曼蛇Xevi ForceZone 頭脳BeeType is also neat, mashing together of a dozen shmups.
BUY Famicom stuff, upcoming games
I don’t mean to impugn the integrity of The Quick And The Mad marketing crew, it just, y’know, makes one wonder
‘Sympathy’ by Sleater-Kinney
See @juliascheele tweet that it’s a Sleater-Kinney day and decide to join her.
Yuko Ota & Anath Paragariya’s Johnny Wander is the real deal, so I wrote about it
I also quote raps to answer a question about who Superman should belong to
“Burger Time is out of control,” Elliott blurts out, pointing to the rare cabinet off to his right. “Burger Time is from a moment when we had no idea what video games were. … Just the freedom of the time when these games were getting designed, I feel drawn to that part of [game design].”
“There’s obviously the nostalgic value,” says Kemenczy. “For me, just playing Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man and stuff at the Greyhound station in Detroit. I would get stuck there so often, because the bus schedules would have me there for like six hours and I would just wait for the next one to come by. There’s that kind of history for me. … It’s a frustrating situation to be stuck in a Greyhound station and to be playing a really frustrating game.”
After a moment, Elliott seems to find the thread again. “I love this game Dune. … Did you ever play that? Dune didn’t know what it was. It follows the plot of the first book, and the film. It actually follows the David Lynch film pretty closely. The characters even look like the actors in the David Lynch film. … You play Paul Atreides and you have … multiple choice conversations, like an adventure game. You walk around between rooms like Myst, and then you have this strategy thing where you have to fly to different little [towns]. … So it has a bunch of these different parts in it and none of them really dominates. … And then there’s these moments where you have to be just walking in the desert and have this vision. It just really felt like it didn’t know what it was supposed to be.
“And then [game mechanics] started getting really codified over time, like now we have a pretty good sense of what a strategy game is and stuff, the genres that get really calcified into shapes.”
For Cardboard Computer, this work is more than a game. Elliott and Kemenczy are artists doing what artists do best; illuminating meaning and telling stories. Kentucky Route Zero is its own thing. They know where it’s going. Players need only lean into the dashboard and enjoy the ride.
