Art of Oddworld Inhabitants online!

I have a soft spot for artbooks - though unfortunately I rarely had funds to buy them. On the top of my list of coveted items was The Art of Oddworld Inhabitants: The First Ten Years (along with Imaginary Friends Studios artbooks bundle - too bad it sold out). Unfortunately, the price tag of 60USD made it quite problematic for me when I was still a student - and probably I was not alone.


Well, cheapskates of the world, I have good news for you: you can find this wonderful artbook on Google Books project. Wihle of course good number of pages are not available for viewing, there's a good deal of the book is viewable. If you are into graphic design, game art or simply interesting visuals - do yourself a favour and have a look.

If you haven't ever come across Oddworld Inhabitants, if name Lorne Lanning doesn't ring any bells, then why are you even reading this? Click the links above, watch this animation, join the ranks of fans of Oddworld and pray that Citizen Siege sees the light of the day some time in 2009...

Also, tits

The flood of PSP titles has recently diminished to a trickling stream and now is reaching drought status. This is going to be my excuse for describing two incoming PSP titles that I am itching to check: Ikkitousen Eloquent Fist and Moe Moe Niji Taisen Deluxe.

The first one looks like a simple scrolling beat'em up game with added RPG elements and "pantsu flashing". The game's name contains a pun, since in Engrish "eloquent" becomes "ero-quent" (check here why this is funny to some). Still, graphics are cool even if somewhat NSFW. I think I'm going to give it a try, if only to check whether the actual game part is worth anything (and train my Japanese, of course).



The second one is a mixture of strategy game, World War II and breasts. As much as I don't think Nazi references should meet with some extreme retaliation unless the context suggests they are being used in their real evil meaning (Nazi propaganda), I also feel a little uneasy about the game with cute little Nazi girls.


I personally can't forget visiting Japanese izakaya where Iron Cross was hanging on the wall in a central place, right above the little altar. Not that I was angry or anything, but it seemed a little, hmm, tasteless to have Nazi decoration out there. So this game is a little on the risky side for me - but I do not condemn it, it's only somewhat tasteless entertainment after all.


Nevertheless, now you know what PSP games I am waiting for, having already finished God of War and being stuck in Crisis Core. And I've brought it to your attention in order to just signal certain cultural differences in approach to digital entertainment.

Return of the Spy Hunter

Accidentally, I have stumbled upon this Pontiac commercial:



For the convenience of younger viewers who might not get the reference, please find the movie below:



Yes, that was a real computer and arcade game - Spy Hunter. I am writing this for those of you who are less than thirty years old.


For me it has a special place in my heart, because it was one of my first ZX Spectrum games. I actually have totally different memory of how it looked, but it was due to ZX Spectrum version limitations - click here if you want to see the version I played as a kid. Also, if you remember Blues Brothers, there is C-64 version with some familiar music in the background.

And if you feel like trying your luck with it, you can play it here (courtesy of World of Spectrum).

N + 1

Having a knack for retro old-school games, I am impatiently waiting for this little jewel :

Appearing for Sony PSP (as seen above), Nintendo DS (see the trailer for this version here) and Xbox Live!, the game is cryptically entitled N+. The title stems from the fact that the first version was an online flash game - don't forget to give it a try, just not at work, if you would like to keep it - so this is an updated remake (hence N+, as in C++, get it?). You can read more about the game and differences between different versions on Siliconera and on Metablog, be sure check official The Way of the Ninja page as well (contains a ton of screens and downloads!).

Obligatory PSP screen

The fiendish difficulty level of the original version prevents me from playing it too much, but it has a lovely minimalistic retro touch to it. So even though there are some A+ class titles to come out in march (I'm looking at you, God of War... drooling), I will be sure to keep an eye on this title, as it seems very interesting for an old-school guy like myself. Ah, the good ol' tiNes...

Atari ST versus Amiga

"Humans have always hated dwarves and elves", as Witcher has it, while in the real world Amiga and Atari ST users have always hated each other. I myself was always Amiga fan, even though I didn't even have one (aww...), but I have actually played Starblade on Atari ST once.

Amiga fanboys accused Atari ST of having inferior graphical and sound capacity, Atari ST folks were bashing Amiga users. I never actually did in-depth comparison (I am too lazy), but I have accidentally found a video on YouTube that compares different games' title screens, detailing number of colours and resolution.

It is a very interesting comparison (its author promises similar one for gameplay as well). After seeing this I admit that Atari ST had less colours a its disposal, but on the other hand programmers made really good job dithering them to obtain very similar results.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Despite the title, this post won't have anything to do with Pokemons (phew!).

Just recently I have stumbled upon a really cool drawing (a little dated, but still), depicting a whole lot of classic computer games' heroes. You can find it here and I uploaded it on Blogspot for your convenience.

Be sure to click image for a full view

The question is : how many games can you distinguish in the image?

With some folks from my company and also from a computer board (Polish only, sorry) we have managed to pin down most of them, but there is still a couple missing. See here if you are not afraid of spoilers (and if you find any new ones, please let me know via comments).

I am particularly proud of my contributions, such as Bioforge, Messiah and Metal Mutant (on the other hand these ones made me feel old - how many people even remember those games?) or combination of Dune and Earthworm Jim.

These people's identity remains unknown.
If you know them, please help us identify them.

Some other puzzles put me to shame, for example the Morrowind dude - I actually got it because I realised that dots on his face are Dark Elves' tribal tattoo, but afterwards I felt like an idiot for not deciphering the meaning of "No more winds".

This has totally made me laugh.

A couple of drawings are so-so (how is one to guess that Deus Ex one without knowing Russian is beyond me), but some are brilliant - such as protagonists of Grim Fandango, Dungeon Keeper and Undying together with scythes.

Reaper Men

All in all, it was really fun and I encourage you to have a look at it as well. Perhaps you'll even be able to pinpoint something I might have missed.

PSP flOw

It has been officially confirmed that flOw is coming to the PSP. It is good news and if you haven't heard about flOw before, read on.


Wikipedia defines "flow" as "the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing". Jenova Chen (a very gaming name indeed) had the idea to create a game applying this concept. You can read more about it here, but reading is one thing and experiencing it is quite another, so the best way would be to actually play it on its homepage.

Then it has been announced that a PS3 version was being developed. The game received some graphical and gameplay enhancements, but the core gameplay remained the same. Now, PSP is about to get this enhanced version as a downloadable game.

PS3 flOw trailer

Personally, I am very pleased that Sony is finally taking advantage of the PSP online capacity and expanding its downloadable content lineup. First Beats, now flOw, in future Echochrome - life is good.

PS. The only minor spoiler for me is the fact that I am having problems downloading these games to my Custom Firmware PSP. If anyone has a suggestion concerning solution other than going back and forth between Custom and Regular Firmware using Pandora battery - please share it with me.

If you don't have money for a tablet...

I know I haven't given much love to Nintendo DS on this webpage. What would you expect, me having a PSP and whatnot. Anyhow, apparently there is a whole homebrew scene on DS too, something that I have shamefully ignored up until now.

The application that has just caught my eye (through Drawn! blog) is called Colors! - it is a homebrew program that changes your DS into a miniature Wacom Cintiq. Well, not really, but close enough. As you might know, I dabble a little in digital drawing and even bought cheapy Toshiba M200 for that purpose. But Nintendo DS is an even cheaper solution to get your feet wet in digital painting, therefore I've found this news interesting enough to bring it to your attention.

Some of the art created with this program looks really neat.

Also, while investigating the topic, I have found two interesting programs that are similar to Colors!, but their purpose is more animation oriented : Inchworm and Animanatee. Be sure to check them out too!

Evil Mario author found

Long time ago I wrote a sarcastic note about how Mario is evil. I have illustrated it with the following image :

Note : the image I used back then was neither watermarked nor signed.

Ever since I have been trying to find who the author of that artwork was. I finally got it a couple days ago. The author is Jose Emroca and you can visit his webpage here.

Cat, princess and the airstrike!

Out of nowhere (OK, not really - check here) I was struck by this game :

...and to think people say they don't make original games anymore!


The game in question is Garden Gnome Carnage - download it here. Give it a chance and watch at least until you see the above screen. Trippy!

Little wishes come true - in green

In my last post about PSPCAP32 and Amstrad Schneider CPC I mentioned that probably the only thing that might make this program a little more perfect was the monochrome display option, just like on the old green monitors.


And voila! Christmas is approaching and my wish was granted! Zx-81, the man behind porting of this emulator (and a handful of others, too) to PSP, heard my cries and added this feature to the newest release, which, by the way, happened just a couple of days after the last one. That's what you call support!


So thanks to Zx-81 you can now see these games the way I have experienced them for the first time. For me it is yet another trip down the memory lane, for younger readers unique opportunity to see how gaming used to be long time ago. I bet there are one or two other guys out there who have just shed a tear of nostalgia as well. At least I hope so, otherwise this means I am really weird.


Oh, and if you were able to tell the name of the above games based on the screenshots, you're a geek over thirty.

Answer : Knight Lore, Fruity Frank, Boulder Dash.

Amstrad CPC on PSP

Long time before I actually got my first personal computer (we would call them microcomputers back then), which would be ZX Spectrum+, my sole contact with the emerging computer science would be to implore my Dad to take me to his work, where his friend, Mariusz Smoczyński, worked on Amstrad Schneider CPC 6128. Thus begins the tale of my digital fascination, born in the green light of the monochrome screen in the 8-bit times.

Fruity Frank - in that innocent times people were
not afraid to give such name to the game...

A little anecdote here. Many years later, when I was still a student at the Technical University of Lodz and had laboratory classes in one of too many laboratories where time has stopped, we were supposed to calculate some viscosity coefficients using ... Amstrad CPC with a prepared and preloaded program. I was the only one who knew machine, so after we had finished our task, I broke the program and wrote some simple animation in Basic that would scroll our names on the screen instead of boring program. Boy, was that nerdy, but you can't beat that feeling.

Ghosts'n'Goblins - there even exists a PSP remake now.
History has made a full circle.

It is therefore understandable that I have a special place in my heart for this machine, like some have for their first girlfriend. Fortunately, the development of everything digital has allowed me to have it in my pocket, more precisely on my trustworthy PSP.

The emulator that allows me to relive my childhood adventures in other worlds is called PSPCAP32 and it's author Zx-81 has just recently released yet another version that has transformed it from a very good emulator into a perfect one.

PSPCAP interface

The emulator runs very fluidly (50fps), has nice interface, is very configurable and user-friendly. It is enough to select a disk with a game (speaking of which - all Amstrad games are legally free) and the game will load automatically. I have not yet found any game that would be incompatible. They are just like I have remembered them and I am flooded with nostalgia (if you have read Barts' News for some time, you already know I have a soft spot for good, old times.).

Green Beret - one of the hardest games back in the day

The only thing I could think of in terms of features I would like to see would be to implement some filter to make the games monochrome, as seen on the green monitors back then. But this is a very bizarre request, stemming from the fact that I played these games this way. Apart from that, PSPCAP provides the ultimate Amstrad experience on the go. Thank you Zx-81!

Drill down

Just when I thought the PSP homebrew scene is dead, I found another gaming gem. The game is called Mr Driller and I was expecting some crappy port of Drill Dozer from Gameboy Advance. Fortunately, I have decided to give it a try first.

The game turned out to be really cool. The idea is simple - player controls a character that has to drill down through multiple coloured layers, while paying attention to their oxygen levels. Air can be regenerated by collecting capsules of oxygen, but they are usually blocked by blocks that are very hard to drill through. When drilling down, player must be very careful not to destroy blocks that support other blocks, which in turn will cause rocky avalanche and flatten our hero down. So simple and yet so amusing.


The game is not perfect - there is no music, sounds are few and far between, animation is simplistic, there are no saves, game can be damn frustrating later on. Still, the most important factor, meaning gameplay, is there. This game is actually fun to play and quite addictive too. As an additional plus, it plays well in short bursts, for example on the bus. Highly recommended!

Post Scriptum for Old Geezers

And now lengthy post scriptum with a personal twist. When I was playing the game, I had a feeling of deja-vu - irritating impression that I have seen it somewhere, some day, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Fortunately, I work with other guys that started their adventure with computers in the eighties, and one of them just glanced at the game and shouted "Kret!".


Kret (meaning The Mole in English) was an old shareware game (for Dos, meaning really old) where idea was somewhat similar. I started looking for the game over the net and finally have found it here. It is abandonware anyways so feel free to give it a try. Mr Driller does not actually steal the idea, it is in fact quite different, but the mechanics of blocks falling and supporting each other looks familiar, which explains my deja-vu.

On a side note in order to make matters even more twisted, there exists a port of DosBox (Dos emulator) for PSP, so I think it should be doable to run Kret on the PSP.

Aquaria

Just a short post to present a game the development of which I have been following for quite a long time ever since first reading about it on John Bardinelli's blog (whose slideshow with screenshots I have shamelessly stolen, see below) : Aquaria.

Aquaria is beautiful, slightly eerie and makes me recall Ecco the Dolphin. It's trancey and looks like the kind of experience that would grow on the player in a way similar to Flow. The guys behind it are Derek Yu and Alec Holowka - you can read developers' blog here. Have a look at the screenshots (thanks John!) and at the video, to see how it looks in motion :

I really can't wait to see what comes out of it!

Street Fighter II Overdose

My first contact with Street Fighter II consisted of playing it on my friend's Amiga during his birthday when I was more or less 12 years old. I played Dhalsim (reasoning that long arms and legs would help me win), and I lost (the winner chose Blanka and was just repeatedly pressing fire). It was one of the greatest computer games I have known for a long time - it had beautiful graphics, interesting characters, great gameplay (even if a little unbalanced - take Dhalsim for example...).


I had played the numerous variants of the game later on : crappy PC port, then cool PC Turbo version, some arcade machines (on one of them Ryu's fireball would fire FIVE fireballs at one, dunno what weirdo tweaked it), then Zero/Alpha series, the last one on my PSP.

I was excited when I learnt that the game is going to be redone in HD (High Definition) meaning high resolution sprites, more animation frames and essentially the same gameplay. I was even more excited that the guys doing the graphics are going to be studio Udon that I know as the creators of SFII comics and also from watching art of some of their artists on DeviantArt. But my scepticism kept me from getting my hopes up too much - it is so easy to spoil


Just recently I saw full screens and I think they look gorgeous. Of course, the final verdict can only be made based on the final product, but so far the screens look both great and surprisingly faithful to the original game.

Indeed, Street Fighter II has gone a long way...

The interesting fact is that already the whole process of converting and redrawing the characters into HD was causing quite some controversy. Capcom never replied to this and as far as I know. Personally, I like new looks and feel a little ambiguous about possible art copying. Anyhow, seeing screenshots of the new version flooded me with memories of playing it as a kid, which felt almost like re-reading a good book after years and finding out that it is still as good as before (I wanted to put some metaphor about women, but it would be risky and inaccurate, so I gave up).


On a side note, this reminds me that some time ago I have stumbled upon (probably via Kotaku) a very funny series of movies called Street Fighter : The Later Years - it's hilarious, especially if you are a fan of the series (like me).

As always, I intended to write a short note about the new HD version Street Fighter II and I ended up mentioning all sort of SFII-related stuff that came to my mind. At least I hope you could find out something interesting in it.

Space Invaders Extreme hands-on impressions

Space Invaders is one of the all time game classics that any gamer simply must know, even if they missed on early 8 bit era. If by any chance you don't know what I am writing about, read about it here and play it here (also, be ashamed and hand over your gamer's licence).


At Tokyo Game Show Taito has just presented Space Invaders Extreme, a remake of the original title for Nintendo DS. The game formula has been severely altered, which is a good thing, since the original was, to put it diplomatically, not the most complicated game in the world. The game was given major graphical overhaul in the vein of Q Entertainment's recent games - different skins, different weapons, special effects flashing on the screen, combinations of strange colours and crazy electronic music made me think of Gunpey or Every Extend Extra.


The few minutes I have spent with the game went by quite fast and the game seemed to be enjoyable. I don't know, however, how about the playability and replayability of the title. I mean how long can you shoot to rows of aliens?

Oh, and while on the topic of Space Invaders - someone please get me these shoes :

Patapon hands-on impressions

Patapon was one of the incoming PSP games that I hoped to become yet another addition to the variety of truly original titles available for the system (Loco Roco, Crush, Mercury). Sadly, I was totally disappointed.


Contrary to Brian Crescente's impressions, I didn't like the demo at all. The basic idea is that player has to tap combinations of button presses in order to make the little creatures visible on the screen (Patapons) follow his order. Pressing the combination of Square, Square, Square, Circle makes little fellows chant "Pata, Pata, Pata, Pon" and march forward for a moment. If player gets the timing right and chains two sequences together in a combo, Patapons will run for a while longer. Other combination causes small warriors to attack enemy.

And here we come to my main problem with the game - it is plain boring. Yes, it is charming, but being limited to just two actions is pain in the backside. It's like being forced to chose between a series of Yes/No questions with the only thrill being that sometimes player fails to perform combination of button presses in correct timing. Playing the game just dragged for me. You can see it for yourself in the following video :

Maybe the final game will be different, but so far I was left unimpressed. Okay, the graphics had a cool sense of style, similarly to Loco Roco. But, as I have written on Kotaku : I also didn't like Loco Roco.

Exit DS

No, it's not what you think. DS is here to stay, but there is an incoming game that bears that name. It all started with the PSP game called Exit. I picked it up in Japan and sold it shortly after coming back to Poland. Why?

PSP version screen

Although I definitely dug its graphical style and the general concept, I was so annoyed by slow character movement (especially the animation of climbing the stairs) and other little quirks, especially in control department, that I finally gave up on the game.


Still, it looks like DS owners will also get a taste of Mr Exit adventures. I just wonder how the stylus controls will work (didn't have time to check them today)?

UPDATE : played it today. The controls are terrible, and the game is molasses slow, just as PSP version. Count me out.

Lumines goes mobile

Lumines is easily one of my favourite games of all times. Q Entertainment have decided to make it available not only to PSP users, hence the Xbox Live! version and now the mobile version too.


I have to admit that there is some of the shininess of the original that is lost in translation, but on the other hand the game is still as enjoyable as always, and seeing how everybody in Japan has their keitai (mobile phone), I am pretty sure there is a market for this game.


Although as you know, I definitely prefer the original Lumines to about anything else...

100 Amiga games in 10 minutes!

For nostalgics like me - a must. One hundred Amiga games flashback - I recognized so many of those...

There are similar videos on Youtube with early PC games - if anyone is interested, let me know through comments and I'll post them here as well. Enjoy!