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Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Jerry Lawson, the ‘father of the video game cartridge’
Google is honoring gaming pioneer Gerald "Jerry" Lawson with an interactive Doodle that lets you play as Lawson and create your own levels.
Today's Google doodle is an anime-infused sports game
Google's latest doodle marks the start of the Tokyo Olympics with an interactive sports game that lets you play table-tennis and skateboarding.
Cult classic movie 'Turbo Kid' is getting a video game adaptation
Outerminds is making a Metroidvania based on the gory homage to Saturday morning cartoons.
'Alt254' is a Zelda-style adventure where you play as a pixel
It's about as low-res as games get these days.
Wandering the quiet digital halls of Habbo Hotel
"I'm Unicorn_farts and welcome to your official Habbo Intelligence Agency Training Session!" I was in a strange room filled with black couches, ebony walls and various elevators trapped behind glass gates. It would have felt like a bank or government building were it not for the ice-cream stand and Easter memorabilia, which included a giant rabbit plush and some egg-shaped statues with human-sized chicks inside. Many spaces in Habbo, a virtual world created by Finnish developer Sulake, feel like this one. The platform is loosely modeled after a hotel, but its user-designed chat rooms span a broad set of themes. Jungles, high schools and coffee shops -- they're all in here.
World of Tanks introduce pixel-tastic Winter Showdown
Ready to take on some blocky other tanks in blocky arenas with your own blocky tank? World of Tanks wants to endorse your readiness, not block you. The development team behind the game has announced the approaching Winter Showdown mode, an homage to the simpler games of youth -- assuming that you were growing up between 1985 and 1995 and the games of your youth featured online connectivity and pixels rendered in three-dimensional space, anyway. This mode is more than just a simple graphical overhaul, featuring three exclusive tank types, platoons of five tanks, and special gold rounds that hurt enemies or heal your allies. If you can't wait to start rolling in your pixel-based tank, good news: The mode will be available for play starting on January 26th in the United States. Take a gander at the trailer just past the break to see the blocky action in... um... action. [Source: Wargaming.net press release]
Pixel art controllers coming from Hyperkin this September
We've got a hard and fast rule against caps lock here on Joystiq, but don't think we didn't write at least three unacceptably uppercase headlines about Hyperkin's forthcoming line of pixel art controllers for PCs and Macs. Beyond the aforementioned platforms and the fact that they're slated to release sometime next month, nothing else is known about these double-retro doodads. We're hopeful that the controllers' plentiful angles and corners will somehow tessellate into a comfortable gaming experience, despite what logic and medical science may suggest to the contrary. Still, depending on how much they wind up costing, their comfort index is likely to be completely irrelevant. Update: Engadget got its hands on Hyperkin's pixelated controllers at E3 and found them to be "quite comfortable to hold and use." It's a medical miracle.%Gallery-195792%
World of Warcraft's Spirit Healer recreated in Minecraft pixel art
Nearly lost in the shuffle of patch 5.1's release, this Minecraft pixel art from Paradox (YouTube channel SpoofGaming) appeared on our radar back at the end of November. The recreation of World of Warcraft's iconic Spirit of Redemption took over 15 days of work and over 250,000 blocks (representing pixels) to construct. While the art surely could have been done easier and more quickly in something as simple as MSPaint, it's fascinating to see the build done in Minecraft's game world, which has a far more limited palette and requires manual placement of every single block. If you're impressed by this build, don't miss some of the other Minecraft builds we've highlighted previously such as scale recreations of Ragnaros and the entirety of Kalimdor.
'Home' is a pixel-art horror adventure game from Benjamin Rivers
We've got a bit of a penchant for the macabre here at Joystiq, and as far as we're concerned, horror themes are drastically underrepresented in both adventure games and pixel art. It's a massive oversight in the industry, but one-man indie development studio Benjamin Rivers may fill that esoteric void in our blackened little hearts with Home, a "unique horror adventure." In Home, players wake to find themselves trapped in a strange and mysterious house, with no recollection of how they got there, or who put them there. Beyond its charming aesthetic, Home's main selling point is its dynamic plot, which is said to unfold in a myriad of different ways, depending how the player completes certain tasks, and in what order. No word yet on platform, price or anticipated release date, though we suspect a PC/Steam release to be most likely. Consider our interest thoroughly piqued.%Gallery-137330%
Man uses Tetris to create Luigi, awe
At Joystiq, we're firm believers in the idea that every human being has an instrument to which they are naturally attuned, for self expression and emotional release. In most cases, a person's instrument is a literal instrument; Steve Vai and Regina Carter come to mind as ready examples. Sometimes, however, a person's instrument can be a little more abstract. Shuey187, for instance, is a Tetris virtuoso. As a follow-up to the 90 minute magnum opus in which he used Tetris to create a Mario sprite, Shuey187 has utilized his unique gift for geometrically aligning blocks in order to craft Mario's brother and confidant. It's a truly amazing thing to watch, especially when you consider the fact that he used nothing more than a sprite pattern and raw talent to get the job done. Seeing as the video has no soundtrack, we suggest opening a second window and listening to one of the other two phenomena we mentioned.
Goldfish pixel-art music video is swimming with gaming references
How many video-game references can South African electronica group Goldfish fit into roughly 4 minutes of painstakingly, beautifully animated pixel art? All of them, it turns out. All of the references. We stopped counting after a hojillion. [Thanks, Christopher!]
Pixel artist releases free pack of gaming-related Minecraft character skins
Sure, you've created a working computer in Minecraft, or recreated a Mega Man game, but maybe you should spend a little time customizing the most important part of that blocky world: yourself. Pixel artist Gary Lucken, also known as Army of Trolls, has created a pack of 15 different Minecraft character skins featuring video game luminaries like Mario Link and Viewtiful Joe, plus Street Fighter's Ken and Ryu. The pack also has a few Star Wars characters in it, along with some Halloween and miscellaneous skins. Of course, given that Minecraft is basically a first-person game, you won't be able to tell what you look like, but we're sure everyone else on your server will appreciate seeing you bounding around as a Cactuar. The pack is a free download from Lucken's website -- just grab the skin you want and upload it right into Minecraft to use.
ExciteBike motorcycle built out of wood hits us like a ton of pixels
To say that ExciteBike ate up a ton of our childhood gaming time would be an extreme understatement. In fact, we still occasionally hear that particular "vroom vroom" noise in our sleep. So the fact that someone -- in this case Justin Harder -- cobbled together a 'pixelated' ExciteBike bike, trophy and helmet out of wood in a months-long labor of love is truly impressive to us, and brings wondrous, dazzling feelings of nostalgia. We're also fairly certain that 8-bit Gary's going to be buying one to tool around town on. Seriously, watch the insane video after the break.
Visualized: Douglas Coupland's pixel orca
Douglas Coupland (yes, that Douglas Coupland) created this pixel sculpture which lives outside of the Vancouver convention center. He should meet these guys.
eBoy's FixPix iPhone game available now for $1.99 (video)
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/apple/eBoy_s_FixPix_iPhone_game_available_now_for_1_99'; It's out! eBoy's $1.99 FixPix iPhone game christened "the greatest game ever made" by a certain Engadget fanboy is available now from the iTunes App Store. If you fail to understand the value of piecing together eBoy pixel art by manipulating the iPhone's accelerometer, then gawd help you... you're already dead. Gameplay video after the break. [Thanks, William]
eBoy: an ode and introduction
I don't know where my love for eBoy springs from, but it definitely has something to do with a childhood of 8-bit video gaming and young adult years of raving till dawn. Regardless, if you haven't been introduced to the pixel art collective, then hopefully this will kick off your education. The designers -- Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig, and Svend Smital -- have been producing some of the most distinctive and nuanced modern art in the world since 1997. As you can tell by even a casual glance at the artist's pics (we've rounded up some in the gallery below), their work is incredibly vibrant -- almost information overload -- and filled with the kinds of minute details that make looking at eBoy images less of a passive activity and more like a scavenger hunt which rewards the dedicated viewer. The eBoy team have expanded their work to run the gamut from album covers, books, advertising, clothing and footwear, and even a forthcoming iPhone game. As masters of the micro, they've built what amounts to a mini-empire. Whenever I get a new device (typically when I'm reviewing something for the site), the first thing I do is tack eBoy images onto the wallpaper. Usually I have to crop them down or otherwise customize them for the platform at hand, and as a result I've ended up with a metric ton of tweets and emails asking where they come from. I figured as a public service I would .zip everything I could find on my hard drive to give to you, the reader. If you've been wondering where and how these came to life, wonder no more. Of course, it's eBoy's world -- we're just living in it. And yes, that's me up there. Thanks guys! Download: jt_eboy.zip %Gallery-93493%
Get 8-bit on your fridge with Magnetic Pixels
A cute idea for homes without small children, the Magnetic Pixels box comes with 1400 10mmx10mm colored magnetic "pixels" from Kikkerland for $30 (or buy directly from the creator). In the right hands, we can imagine some inspired 8-bit art covering those blank white canvasses known as refrigerators.Here's actually where we could use your help: Is there a repository of 8-bit character design? Like, you see that piece of graph paper in the picture? Is there something like that on a website somewhere for people to easily fill in cubes with colors and save for easy reference? There's Favicon.cc, which works well and has a search, but isn't ideal. We're talking something super simple, please don't mention complex apps. Otherwise, we'll have to come up with our own idea on how to fix this inspiration issue, cause lord knows -- especially by looking at our photochops -- we don't have an artistic bone in our barely literate bodies.[Via OhGizmo]
Mario wall art invades UNCC campus
University of North Carolina, Charlotte student newspaper The Niner is reporting on the surprising appearance of chalk-based Mario pixel-art on the brick walls of campus buildings. Knuttz.net has pictures of five of the six works of art, which include a Koopa Troopa, Cheep Cheep, Pirahna Plant and Super Mushroom (not pictured, according to The Niner's description, is a character called "Bob-Boom." Are you looking for Bob-omb, perhaps?) The article gives no hints to the creator of the spontaneous works of art, which use each brick as a pixel to create life-size versions of the familiar characters. What's worse, despite receiving no calls or complaints about the drawings, campus authorities say they plan on washing the chalk off the walls "as soon as possible." Why bother? All these works are doing is adding a little whimsy and fun to the days of some no doubt terminally bored students. Besides, it's not like the artist did any permanent damage to the buildings -- the chalk will wash itself off during the next rainstorm anyway. Let the magic last until then, at least. [Thanks, Matthew] [Update: Joystiq reader Jamie had seen this pixelated wall art before. Actually, he and his wife snapped some pics (like the one above) last week, which he just sent in for us to enjoy. Thanks, Jamie!]
Arcade Daze from the Iconfactory
I usually don't write about new icons, but when they are so... iconic I feel it is my duty to share them with the good readers of TUAW (I am too kind, I know). Arcade Daze from the Iconfactory revisits those halcyon days of yore when one could fritter away the afternoon, and a roll of quarters, in the local arcade.Mario, Pac Man, and several others make appearances in this free (for personal use) icon set. Get it while the getting is good.
10 steps to a pixel art masterpiece
Derek Yu, one of the members of the soon-to-be award winning Thompsonsoft, has made a "10-step tutorial, [which will] teach you how to create a "sprite", which is a stand-alone two-dimensional character or object." Covering everything from lines to anti-aliasing, watch Derek create "the Lucha Lawyer, the ass-kickin'est wrestling attorney around, as [his] model! He could be in a fighting game, or something, with moves like the 'Habeus Corpse Blaster.'" The amount of labor necessary is amazing, for only one frame![UPDATE: The link is redirecting to a Russian MP3 site, so hold off trying to check out the tutorial. We'll let you know when, or if, we know anything else. Sorry! Everything seems to be working again. Apparently Zangief was hosting his site!]
