One of the most surprising films in the sort of "Holy crap? What the heck?! This is cool!" vein to come out of SXSW film festival earlier this year was Blip Festival: Reformat The Planet. It's all about chiptune music and the performers, and is beautifully shot. It's hard to imagine Nintendo thinking people would be hacking into their Game Boys in order to create full-fledged concerts, concerts that would one day spark a feature documentary and an entire genre of music.
For one week, you can watch the impressive documentary at Pitchfork.tv. It's even broken up into bite-sized chapters for you. Give it a looksee and you'll find yourself toe-tapping along to the addictive 8-bit music throughout the film. It's beaten Wizard Rock as our current favorite geek music of choice.
We think the ESRB is, as a rule, pretty OK. They make it so the kids of good parents can't get adult games and the bad parents at least are forced to walk all the way into the store, which is just fine by us. But sometimes they can keep you from seeing perfectly good, perfectly surreal video game ads such as the one above made by our friends at Mega64 for an "unnamed DS guitar game" (spoiler alert, it's Jam Sessions).
The most heartbreaking thing, as revealed at the end of the ad, is why the video was rejected, which we can guarantee you won't guess. But, always obliging, the guys also made a "safe for the ESRB" version, which you can find just after the break.
[Update: Hey gang, the ESRB says they never saw the ad. We're not sure what the confusion is. The ESRB isn't specifically named in the ad, but we don't know who else they could have been referring to. We'll try to get to the bottom of it for you.]
When we get really frustrated by Geometry Wars 2 (and we do) we deal with our anger the only way we know how: We become physically abusive towards loved ones and pets. But not Matthew McCarthy. No, Matthew McCarthy just picks up a guitar and channels the rage into a song about why he hates all those stupid, cruel shapes.
We tried to ape McCarthy's far healthier anger management, but after picking up our guitar we just used that to be physically abusive to loved ones and pets, which really isn't much better, when you think about it.
Yesterday, Alison Carroll was revealed as the latest promotional Lara Croft flesh-model for the Tomb Raider franchise. Today, there's a couple videos of Carroll talking (boring) and doing flips in short-shorts (wheee!). OK, before the feminists have a freak out, we're totally semi kidding. To her credit, Carroll used to be a gymnast, so she actually can do some of Lady Croft's more stylish moves.
If hearing Carroll's British accent ups the Tomb Raider heroine's sex appeal and gets you to buy Underworld this November, then the girl's done her job. The videos of Carroll's meeting with the press can be found after the break.
Bungie could have strutted all the way back to home base with the "2nd Annual Halo 3 award for Interactive Innovation" without saying a word, but the developer was graceful enough to record an extremely cool acceptance video taped somewhere within the Halo universe. And it looks like it's filled with some new Halo goodness.
Are these some teasing tidbits about a possible Map Editor? Check out that last shot when our soldier pal lobs a plasma grenade towards the camera. Verrrrrrrry interesting. It's definitely a lot more robust-looking than Halo 3's Forge editor. Also, those look like new AI models of past cast members ... including Cortana. Playable models? In-game NPCs that'll be on your squad? Cats and dogs, living together? Who knows. What's for sure is that Bungie is saying "the ride isn't over yet."
As Hollywood continues to deny us the Vin Diesel-starring Pac-Man feature film we all know is coming, amateurs have filled in the gap with their own takes on how gaming's pizza-shaped patriarch could make the leap to the big screen.
We've already seen Pac-Man the action hero, now Tyler Russel and Stanley Wong bring us a much more honest, unflinching vision: Pac-Man unstoppable force of saffron terror. Watch what happens when four innocent ghosts are terrorized by the insatiable yellow menace, but be warned: It isn't pretty.
Straight from QuakeCon 2008 come some piping hot Wolfenstein goodies from the upcoming game, namely the trailer and a gallery of images. It might look like The Ghostbusters Meet Hitler, or the opening scene of the first Hellboy movie, but we're excited about the supernatural side of World War II. Thank you for that, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This is a lot more footage than what we saw at Activision's "Not An E3 Event" event earlier this month, and it looks like it has some potential. The paranormal parts look decent, but why does some of it make us think of Call of Duty... 1? Hopefully we'll get some better looks in the coming months ahead, culminating in some Halloweenalicious spooky soldiers.
What if an army of large-breasted female warriors, Darth Vader, and Yoda still weren't enough to satisfy your most illicit fanboy fantasies? Mathematically speaking, that puts you in a very small percentile but, never one to back down from a challenge, Namco has included a character creation tool in Soul Calibur IV to fill in whatever gaps you may feel are inexcusable.
For inspiration, we've got this video from CanoodleStrudel, showing off 24 different handmade fighters. There's a heavy focus on characters from Japanese games – Onimusha, Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, Metal Gear Solid, and Final Fantasy VII – but there's also some Western treats, like Arthas from the Warcraft universe and the Prince (of Persia), light and dark versions. But it's not all video game characters, we've also got Leonidas from 300 and Bruce Lee from ... real life.
So are there technically 24 characters? Sure, but only if you consider armor changes to be unique characters ... and yes, we're including Dante and Nero in the "armor change" category. We wonder how long internet memesters can resist from crafting a Pirate versus Ninja battle ... or a Chuck Norris versus Jack Bauer showdown ...
Comic Con 08 attendees were recently treated to a new, two-minute trailer for the upcoming CGI motion picture Resident Evil: Degeneration. The series' previous, lackluster live action installments enveloped our hard hearts in a thick shell of apprehension towards the new movie when it was first announced -- but after seeing it in action, consider said shell shucked. Not only does it look gorgeous, but it appears Leon and Claire will be voiced by Paul Mercier and Alyson Court, the two characters' voice actors from Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil: Veronica, respectively.
It's also full of valuable Pro-Tips for those playing along at home! Shoot them in the head, eh? Thanks, Leon!
We know what you're thinking, and we're right there with you. The absolute best way to capture the intense horror and gore of EA's upcoming Dead Space for a direct-to-DVD (and Blu-ray) movie is with a cartoon. Oh, that wasn't what you were thinking? C'mon – as if the age gate on this trailer for the flick wasn't enough indication, it's not exactly a kid-friendly affair. No sir. It's nice and gory (as gory as cel animation can get, at least).
Set for release on October 28 (hey, that's right around when the game's hitting ... coincidence?) the film follows the events that occurred on the mining ship Ishimura (the game's setting, in case you're just joining us) and the planet it's lifelessly orbiting (and why it's orbiting said planet lifelessly) before the outset of the game. Think of it kind of like Enter the Matrix in reverse. On second thought, don't think about Enter the Matrix.
Joystiq has obtained a video that's set to air at the start of Gamestop's Gears of War midnight tournaments tomorrow. The video contains an introduction by Cliff Bleszinski as well as "never-before-seen footage" from Gears of War 2. Is your interest piqued? Video embedded after the break.
We're not certain how many months of grinding it took this anonymous cameraman (or woman!) to level up high enough to brave Square Enix's impenetrable fortress, but we do know our hero scored big. Nearly two minutes of Final Fantasy Versus XIII CG footage (shaky as it is) is like the equivalent of all the gil that's stuffed inside the Shinra vault. Better yet, it's aged footage, the type of mana-oozing fluff reel -- note the pretentious, clichéd text in italiano, ovviamente -- that's only ever been eye-balled by suits and trusted VIPs. So let us all take a moment of silence, and push from our minds the gruesome fate that must have befallen our dear hero in the final, and sudden instant that this video is abruptly cut short. Thank you, oh noble ally of the masses, your contribution will not soon be forgotten.
First it was Quake Zero, then it became Quake Live, and now we have a fresh new look at Quake Arena, id's free-to-play, browser-based iteration of Quake III Arena. As you'd expect, the visuals are decidedly simple, but still stylish nonetheless. We noticed a few instances of gameshow-like billboards peppered throughout levels; while they simply read "Quake Live" in the video, it's likely these are placeholders for in-game advertising.
The trailer beckons viewers to QuakeLive.com for more info, but the site is still serving the sole purpose of a gateway for beta signups. From what's shown in the footage, it will eventually become a very robust matching and ranking component of the game. With QuakeCon kicking off in just a couple of weeks we expect to find out more details soon.
The first thing we noticed when we stepped into the Showcase Pavillion at this year's E3: This is really quite small. The second thing we noticed: Everyone seems to be dancing! Everywhere we looked, there seemed to be someone (usually with a Wii Remote/Nunchuk in hand) waggling about to some vary hard-to-hear music. But don't just take our word or it. Check out our video montage of just some of the dancing fools on this year's show floor. See if you can guess which dancers are random attendees and which ones are PR people who've been assigned to pretend to be interested in dancing these same steps ALL DAMN DAY. Fun!
At last year's E3, the place to go to try out games without a behind-closed doors appointment was the "Summit Sotware Showcase" in the relatively tiny Barker Hangar. This year, the place to browse was the similarly small "Showcase Pavillion" in the similarly small L.A. Convention Center's Concourse Hall. Thus, we decided to reprise last year's double-time video trip through the Barker Hangar with a similar, double-time video trip through this year's version of the showloor, embedded below. Can you spot your favorite company/game? Find out after the jump.
_thumbnail.jpg "i am 8-bit: 2008")
