Sunday, December 16, 2007
Arcade Flyer Art Saturday Takes a Hiatus
11:00AM Flynn De Marco | When I went to the The Arcade Flyer Archive today to start the rigorous search for this week’s flyer to feature I saw this note from TAFA’s tireless founder, Dan. There is no Arcade Flyer update this month because after posting 300 flyers a month since April I’m just plain burnt out. Stay tuned in January when the regular updates resume. Happy Holidays everyone! Looking back over the past year I realised I had written over forty different AFAS features and that I was feeling a little burnt out myself. Poring over the hundreds of flyers documented, you come to realise that not every flyer has artwork worth posting and often times the really good ones contain absolutely no information about the game itself. So in a Flyer Art Solidarity pact with Dan, I too am taking a flyer hiatus until the new year. Don’t forget that TAFA is going to be selling off a large portion on their collection at the beginning of next year for a paltry $US 1 a piece. So, while you’re waiting for AFAS to return next you, be sure to peruse The Arcade Flyer Archive site and see if there’s any of them you might want to take home with you. My bet is that you’ll at least find one. More »
Atari Pac-Man Commercial
10:00AM Flynn De Marco | RetroGameVideos.com is just a treasure trove of these great videos that I love to post. This one is for the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man (which incidentally is one of the worst versions ever) and features the hideous eighties novelty song “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner and Garcia who brought us such other hideous video game themed hits as Do The Donkey Kong, Ode To A Centipede and the enduring classic Goin Berzerk. “Drop Atari Pac-Man into your Atari video computer system and you’ll be playing the hottest game since Space Invaders!” Indeed. More »
Tales from the Road: A Touching Wish for a Wii in Amarillo, TX
9:00AM Flynn De Marco | One of my stops on the way across the country was Amarillo, Texas and it’s famous roadside attraction The Big Texan Steak Ranch. This is the place they spoofed on The Simpsons that will serve you a 72oz steak. If you eat in within an hour, the steak is free but you have to eat the whole thing plus the salad, roll and baked potato that comes with it. But, big slabs of meat are not what this story is about. On this particular day, I happened to be wearing my Reggie-as-a-muscle-guy Wii T-shirt that came out at launch last year. We sat down and when our waitress came out she immediately noticed my shirt. “Oh, the Wii!” she exclaimed. “Do you know what that is?” I said that I did and she went on to tell a tale that still has me thinking about it nearly two weeks later. More »
Toys “R” Us Offers Buy 3 Get One free
8:00AM Flynn De Marco | Kotakuite Jose sends in news of the most recent Toys “R” Us game deal. In this week’s circular they are advertising a Buy 3 Get 1 Free deal on their entire stock of video games. The sale runs from tomorrow, Dec. 16th through Dec. 24th. This is a great opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in your collection or pick up some games for holiday gifts. The offer is also good online so you won’t have to wade through the crowds of stressed out parents and unruly ankle biters to get to your favourite titles. Sure, it’s not the greatest gaming sale that ever was, but free is free and that’s all good in my book. More »
Official Plush Weighted Companion Cube Sells Out
7:00AM Flynn De Marco | In less than 24 hours, cube crazed gamers burned through Valve’s entire available inventory of plush Weighted Companion cubes. The highly sought after bibelots went on sale around 4pm on Friday and by noon on Saturday they were completely sold out. I’m not really sure how many of these things they actually had sitting in the warehouse, but it’s an impressive feat nonetheless. One would assume that the supply will be replenished soon in an effort to avoid the angry crowds of Portal fans storming the Valve offices with torches and pitchforks. [Thanks MushroomBoy] More »
Behind the Design of Viva Piñata
6:30AM Maggie Greene | Gamasutra has a great article up on the development of Viva Piñata from pretty bland garden sim to the piñata-filled paradise of bright colors, cute animals, and irritating helpers. It’s an interesting look at game design from concept to execution, and some of the decisions that go into what stays, what goes, and what needs a major overhaul – from initial concept art to packaging. And we discover how those piñatas got so damn cute: Not fully happy with his pastel creations, concept artist Ryan took a step back and began drawing inspiration from many places. He looked at ancient cave paintings with their simplified shapes, Aboriginal patterns and the art found in Aztec culture. He then progressed to looking at the Mexican Day of the Dead festival with all the associated costumes and bright colors. At this point memories of childhood were sparked, and visions of piñatas gave him an idea. I’m feeling inspired to check in with my piñatas – I spent a solid, jet lagged week after moving back to the US up with VP. I still hate flying from Asia to the US and vice versa, but cute piñatas were an excellent way to get over a twelve hour time difference. Rare’s Viva Pinata: Giving The World Buzzlegums And Fudgehogs [Gamasutra] More »
Win a Wii… and a House… and a Car… Wait, WHAT?!
6:00AM Flynn De Marco | We’ve all seen some crazy auctions on eBay before. Organs, porn, super rare vintage games, entire gaming collections and overpriced gaming console bundles, but this Wii bundle really takes the cake. How would you feel if I offered to sell you a Wii for a mere $US 9,876,543.00? Ok, now what if I threw in a fully furnished, two story North Carolina house and a BMW? This is exactly what eBay auctioneer kyleselectronicsplus07 is doing at this very moment. It is made quite clear in the description that the price is for the Wii ONLY and the rest of the goodies are free bonuses. The seller seems to have a good reputation and 10% of the sale goes to Charlotte ReStore – Habitat for Humanty. Certainly an admirable cause, but could this truly be for real? And what exactly is the story behind someone willing to give up their entire life over eBay, although at that price I suppose you could afford an all new one a couple times over. The auction has nine days to go and in news that will surprise no one, it currently has no bids. I’m going to continue watching this just to see exactly what happens with it and I’ll report back on it next weekend as it gets closer to the end of the bid. Check below for the full description. More »
Steal Code in China, Get Jail Time
5:30AM Maggie Greene | Chinese game companies have been going after law breakers pretty aggressively, at least when it comes to domestic problems – a former Giant Interactive employee who was accused of stealing code from Zhengtu, one of China’s really popular MMOs, and reselling it for 130,000 RMB (a little more than $US 17,000), found himself on the losing end of a court case. A year and a half of jail and a 50,000 RMB fine was his punishment; two of the people he sold the code to (and who went on to resell the code) were sentenced to jail terms, as well: WANG Yuchuan, a former employee of a network company, was yesterday sentenced to one and a half years in prison and fined 50,000 yuan ($US 6,757) for copyright infringement of a popular online game. Wang stole the computer code of the game “Zhengtu” and sold the code to some buyers for 130,000 yuan. Two of his buyers, Wang Yan and Tang Shuai, sold the code again for 200,000 yuan later and were caught by police when trading. They were sentenced to one year and 10 months’ jail respectively. Steve at PlayNoEvil opines that “In general, this is good news. This is a clear case of protecting intellectual property in China.” Too bad they only seem concerned with domestic issues – I suppose you have to start somewhere? Worker jailed for stealing game [Shanghai Daily via PlayNoEvil] More »
The Kotaku PS3 Theme
5:00AM Flynn De Marco | Do you love Kotaku? Do you love it so much that you must customise everything you have with our pink and green colour scheme and fancy lettering? Well thanks to Playstation Universe poster Shawn, you can make your PS3 Kotaku-tastic with this custom theme. So far twelve users have risked the pointing and laughing and downloaded the custom theme and are presumably showing their love to the world at this very moment. Will you be lucky number thirteen? Thanks Shawn, we are most flattered. Kotaku PS3 theme [PlaystationUniverse] [Thanks, Justin] More »
