scribblenauts
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Fans recreate favorite characters in Scribblenauts style
Scribblenauts has inspired something wonderful over at NeoGAF: fan-created images of popular game characters and other pop-culture figures in the game's adorable, understated style. It's as if you could summon, say, Phoenix Wright in the game.We've picked out some favorites from what has become two threads of Scribblenauts fanart. It's pretty hard for us not to just post every single piece of fanart from both threads! Trust us, there's plenty in both threads for you to discover, and since the artists have started taking requests from other GAFfers, there will continue to be more for a while.Above: Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey, Tomba, and Kirby, by SpacePirate Ridley; Lost's John Locke by MrCheez; surfing Raichu, Travis Touchdown, Optimus Prime, and Manny Calavera by Divvy. Look at all the greatness that has already been brought into the world by Scribblenauts, by people who haven't even played it!%Gallery-39784%
Uncharted 2 crowned Best of E3 in Game Critics Awards
The winners of the annual Best of E3 Game Critics Awards have been announced, with Uncharted 2 taking home the gold as "Best of Show." Not only that, but the game was also awarded "Best Console Game" and "Best Action/Adventure Game," taking the lead with three wins. Check out the trailer above (yes, again) for a good indication of why Uncharted 2 was handed the grand prize. Meanwhile, Scribblenauts also got the recognition it deserved, coming in second with two awards for "Best Original Game" and "Best Handheld Game." No other games received multiple awards, though Valve recaptured the "Best Online Multiplayer" award with Left 4 Dead 2 a year after its predecessor did the same in 2008. While EA's Brütal Legend is nowhere to be seen in the list of winners, EA did take home more wins than any other publisher (three, if you're curious). And while the PS3-exclusive Uncharted 2 took top honors, from a console perspective the Xbox 360 edged out the PS3 by a single win, at eight versus seven. Check out the full list of winners after the break and, for more granular stats, check out the breakdowns at the Game Critics Awards website.
5th Cell had five people research words for six months for Scribblenauts
In Scribblenauts, you can manifest basically anything. Whether it's a skateboarding god fighting Cthulhu, or hilarious internet memes involving cats, it seems like this game has endless potential. We're anxiously anticipating the game's arrival, with a gigantic notebook full of ideas that we can't wait to try out. As confident as we are that we'll be able to best the game, it's tough when developer 5th Cell admits to G4 that it had five people reading just about everything for six months. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and Wikipedias are just a few of the sources these folks scoured for juicy words to add to the game's enormous lexicon. Check out the video past the break, where 5th Cell's Jeremiah Slaczka and Matt Cox detail how much work went into building this game's robust vocabulary. %Gallery-39784%
Celebrate a legendary Scribblenauts moment with this wallpaper
The two aspects of Scribblenauts that get the most attention are its absolutely irresistible concept, and the robust lexicon that backs it up. But one underappreciated aspect of the game is the art. Not only is there artwork for those myriad items in the database, 5th Cell's Edison Yan has developed an eye-catching style for the game that highlights, rather than hiding, the jointed nature of the sprites. On top of that, he's given the main character a rather quirky, memorable look.Yan created this image in celebration of the vaunted "Post 217" of a NeoGAF Scribblenauts thread, in which poster "Feep" regales the forum with a tale of bringing a dinosaur through a time machine to fight robot zombies. As a result of this searingly awesome chain of events, "Post 217" has become a sort of shorthand for the infinite possibilities in Scribblenauts. As a gift to the NeoGAF community, Creative Director Jeremiah Slaczka had Yan whip this up. It's now available on IGN in wallpaper form, and we predict that it'll be on your desktop in about ten seconds.%Gallery-39784%
E3 2009 highlights: The Nintendo roundup
Nintendo E3 2009 checklist: Mario? *check* Zelda? *check* Metroid? *check* Are we missing something? Head past the break to find out!
Skateboarding god versus Cthulhu in Scribblenauts
We don't know which god the "god" in Scribblenauts represents -- in our eyes, he's vaguely Zeus-esque. But we do know, thanks to this demo given to IGN by 5TH Cell's Jeremiah Slaczka, what would happen if this god got into a fight with Cthulhu. While on a skateboard. And holding a shotgun.We also learn what happens when a villain sees a full moon: he transforms into a werewolf. Obviously. It's worth noting that none of these things helped get the Starite out of a tree, which was the actual objective of the level. That's going to be the biggest challenge in Scribblenauts: actually playing instead of just screwing around.%Gallery-39784%
Hands-on: Scribblenauts
There's a growing sect of Joystiq writers who are walking away from E3 2009 with the same title constituting their Game of the Show. Surprisingly, it's not a big-budget blockbuster, or a groundbreaking advancement in storytelling, or a bold new method of how we interact with our video games. It's Scribblenauts, an unassuming DS puzzler with a massive lexicon, charming gameplay and, as far as we can tell, a large infusion of impossible technowizardry. The premise of the game is simple -- you play as Maxwell, who must solve various puzzles to obtain Starites spread across 220 different levels. To execute the aforementioned solving, you write words to create objects in the world that your cartoonish hero can interact with. It's a simple concept that's bolstered by one astounding accomplishment from developer 5th Cell: Anything you can think of is in this game. (Yes, that. Yes, that too.)
Play Scribblenauts off, keyboard cat
While trying to stump 5TH Cell's Scribblenauts, it was suggested to us that we should try typing some Internet memes into the game's interface and see if they'd materialize. Our first experiment: Longcat. As it turns out, Longcat is in the game ... and he's looooooong. Equally long, but not pictured, is Longcat's nemesis Tacgnol. Seriously. Get ready to declare your game of the show after the break. You'll forget all about Splinter Creed or whatever once you see the player character, sitting in a mech, next to a mecha, watching 5TH Cell's creative director breakdance to the musical stylings of ... Keyboard Cat.
Scribblenauts gets more awesome with level creation, sharing
We already know that developer 5th Cell's ambitious DS project Scribblenauts will keep us distracted with its purported ability to let us conjure up anything simply by writing its name on the screen. What we didn't know is that the game will also let us confound others by letting us edit and share levels. Seriously, is there anything this cute little game can't do? In Scribblenauts, players will be able to create and share custom obstacle course-style levels with other players, as well as dictate how objects in these levels behave. We might create a whale who loves honey, or a rainbow that attracts flies. Or, as Kotaku's Totilo puts it, things could get weird when Scribblenauts pencils in all of our free time this fall. [Via GoNintendo]
Scribblenauts coming this fall, thanks to Warner Bros. [update]
[Update: New trailer! Go watch it!]5th Cell's completely insane "write anything" platformer Scribblenauts just got one step closer to release: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that it had acquired the publishing rights to the game and will release it in North America this fall. Hopefully WB can spare some of the money it's gathered in its nine decades of business to advertise a DS game!In case you'd somehow forgotten about one of the coolest DS game ideas ever, Scribblenauts asks players to discover and reach hidden "Starites" in levels using items generated by written words. Check out the new screens WBIE sent with the announcements! Apparently you can make a band.%Gallery-39784%
Joystiq interview: Scribblenauts' Jeremiah Slaczka
Following Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest, both ambitious DS games with an emphasis on the player's ability to create the in-game world, developer 5TH Cell announced its next, even more ambitious -- downright crazy, honestly -- DS game concept: Scribblenauts. Combining a text adventure and a graphical puzzle game, Scribblenauts allows players to create any object to help them solve environmental puzzles and acquire out-of-reach or hidden "Starite" items -- simply by writing the name of the object. We spoke to 5TH Cell's Creative Director, Jeremiah Slaczka, about the impossible-sounding game, doing our best not to just list hundreds of objects and ask whether they are all in the game (of course, we did a little of that). In addition to discussion about the game's structure and narrative (or lack thereof), Slaczka sent us three exclusive screens! %Gallery-39784%
Actually finishing Scribblenauts might be a problem
So, um, here's the problem with a game like Scribblenauts, in which you can make any item appear on screen, simply by writing its name: rather than solving puzzles and making actual progress, people like us are just going to get distracted, and spend all of our time assembling hilarious scenes of non sequitur chaos that amuse our feeble brains. The latest screens at IGN display the potential for this perfectly. There's a shot featuring protagonist Maxwell playing volleyball with a penguin, who is both a fan of iced tea and the proud owner of an igloo with satellite TV. Another sees Maxwell facing up to zombies, blocking his way to an escape helicopter. Then there's the bizarre cook-off you see to the right. The distractions are ... kind of endless.%Gallery-39784%
Scribblenauts passes the Totilo test
Scribblenauts is absurdly ambitious. Almost unbelievably so, in fact. It may look like a fairly standard puzzle-platformer, but it has a major twist: the player can conjure up any item they wish, simply by writing the object's name on the touchscreen. Again, for emphasis: any item.But ... isn't that sort of, well, impossible? MTV's Stephen Totilo had his suspicions, so rang game designer Jeremiah Slaczka with a list of obscure items to test the veracity of 5th Cell's claims. Would we be able to summon cake mix, Totilo queried. Yep. How about an hourglass? You bet. Pushpins? A briefcase? Lint? Yes, yes, and yes.Slackza does warn us not to expect "some eastern mountain Bolivian dish," (sorry, fans of Charque de llama), and has already ruled out licensed products or vulgar terms. Aside from those understandable exclusions, however, Scribblenauts really does seem to match the hype; it passed the Totilo test, at least!%Gallery-39784%
5th Cell announces next DS project: Scribblenauts
Developer 5th Cell is known for their unique use of the Nintendo DS touch screen in their titles, which include Drawn to Life and Lock's Quest -- however, their next project makes those two titles seem like the creative equivalent of Madden 09. In a recent interview with IGN, 5th Cell creative director Jeremiah Slaczka gave a brief run-down on Scribblenauts, which will have players traversing puzzle-filled worlds, spelling nouns to make objects appear that will help solve said puzzles. For instance, in the first gameplay trailer that 5th Cell provided (posted after the break), Maxwell (the game's protagonist) is trying to collect a "Starite" from a treetop. Writing "ladder" will provide the vertical assistance needed to reach the Starite, but you could just as easily create a "football" with which to topple the Starite from the tree. Then again, you could spawn a "beaver" to chew the tree down. Or maybe you could summon basketball superstar (and crically-acclaimed actor) "Shaquille O'Neal" to grab it for you. Okay, we made that last one up -- but if the possibilities are as endless as the trailer suggests, we better see some Shaq functionality in the final product. [Via DS Fanboy]
Infinite items: 5th Cell's Scribblenauts
Um, wow. 5th Cell (Drawn to Life, Lock's Quest, radness) just revealed their newest game to IGN. Like the last two, it's for the best platform evar (the DS). Also, similar to the previous works, it involves creating elements of the world. But this new game, Scribblenauts, might be the most ambitious. To solve the puzzle-based levels in Scribblenauts, you write a noun. And then the named item appears. According to 5th Cell creative director Jeremiah Slaczka, there won't be any limit to what you can create. "People won't write half the things that exist in this game because they're so obscure, he told IGN." The team created a data-entry program to streamline the process of adding metadata to objects, and they've been scouring encyclopedias for months.Scribblenauts is still very early, and doesn't have a publisher yet, but it's already shaping up to be the most ambitious game on the DS. Check out the trailer above and be sure to read the full interview at IGN. And then try to wait to see more.
