(no subject)

[tamakun]

I seem to be holding off on my Christmas post, and here's further news that I'm procrastinating: I have way too many tabs open, and I'd best get through them today, while I have the day off. :P

First off, I'll preface this by noting that I've seen quite some odd "visual novel" games recently. One was Hatoful Boyfriend, a game where the main characters are pigeons. ("Haato" is "Heart" in Japanese, "Hato" with a shortened "a" is dove, or pigeon, in this case.) An English patch was released, and someone went through the "demo" version of the game with several different endings, including a School Days-type "where the hell is this game going" ending. I figured I'd also include this image captured during the gameplay since davidn and kjorteo may get a kick out of it.
(Off-hand, ravenworks posted some adorable parrotlets animated .gifs. SO CUTE)
The other strange visual novel that I never expected to get off the ground was Katawa Shoujo, a game focused on girls with physical disabilities. The strange thing is that this was originally conceived on a 4chan board, and released exactly 5 years to the day from when it was thought-up. 4Chan truly is a Mos Eisley of the Internet... they have done some strange , horrible things and yet, when people come together, they can create some incredible stories. Did I ever link to the TEDTalk with 4chan's moot? It's actually not as bad as you think.

During the summer, Christine and I had visited the CNE, where I happened across a Showbot. This robot glided about the hall fairly effortlessly, talking and mingling with everyone. He reminded me of VidKids' Computerman. ANyhow, after looking up their website, I discovered that they have quite a few Droidz, and even had done a few Photoshoots. This reminds me of those covers of Heavy Metal with the Sorayama robots. (On an unrelated note, I had no idea he created the first design of the AIBO robots!)

Does anyone have any idea if People For Good is being run by a company, or if it's just a volunteer-funded project? The fact that I see billboards, TTC Bus ads, and even radio ads make me believe there's some ulterior motive, but I can't help but love the concept of being a good person. I don't like the fact that we're in a world that we have to be reminded to do good, though...

A co-worker told me about a game called To The Moon, a "game" that tells a story about fulfilling a dying man's wish to visit the moon through changing his memories. Even the trailer made me tear up a bit. I really think I need to try this one out.

A collection of Easter Eggs that took forever to find. The Arkham Asylum Easter Egg was particularly tricky, but I love that they planted the seed in the first game. Speaking of which, did they ever reveal what that Easter Egg in Mega Man 9 was?

Yesterday I was looking at my desktop calendar and wondered if I could make a one-a-day calendar that would be videogame-related. I got as far as "Samus' Birthday, Miyamoto's Birthday, Master Chief's Birthday, Electronic Arts founded, Activision founded" before I just stopped. :P In any case, it's on my phone in case I eer want to revisit it.

That's all I got for now. Maybe I should load some C64 ROMS into my smartphone. :P

Comments

[kjorteo]

That screen is easily the best part about an already amazing (in the sense of "holy crap, someone made this, that is amazing") game.

It's a sad thing that your pigeon romance has ended here!!

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Just when you thought you've seen it all... the internet continues to amaze/stun.

[davidn]

The Shadowgate picture is inspired, but... completely eclipsed by the game itself! I can't even look at it without thinking that I'm either in a dream or have gone insane - a combination of the slightly 'off' high-resolution visuals and the way that I'm supposed to be talking to pigeons.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

And that the game doesn't stray from this thought - there are human counterparts that can be unlocked, but they are just there only to reinforce that they are pigeons and that they don't look like that in reality.

The translation is impressive, too... they keep referring to the characters as "anybirdie" or "everybirdie".

[davidn]

Wow, and here I was thinking that the whole 'pony' thing was bad enough.

I read to the part where the interface changed to "HURTFUL" last night and was absolutely terrified - it really looks like a game straight out of a nightmare, changing as it feels like it and trying to tell a story that only makes sense deep within dream logic.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Those easter eggs were fantastic. I love the ones where the creator just gave up and told people XD Though that just makes me wonder how many might NEVER be discovered...!

.... Woo.. just got a little creepy, thinking about how many secrets might still exist in things all around me :P The internet's gotten so good at taking the mystery out of life, I guess it's nice to remember that it doesn't apply to everything!

Did you see the one about stuff hidden in albums? (Man, Cracked has some great stuff!)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Even sites like The Cutting Room Floor (which you introduced me to) seems to be discovering new things all the time - they found that if you press the A button over 30,000 times (http://twitter.com/#!/CuttingRoomWiki/status/154608820319031297) you'll warp to the final room of Takeshi's Challenge. You'd think that people would've discovered this years ago, but all it takes is someone to hunt through code ;P

Okay, that music stuff is DAMN surprising! I knew about the "three-sided record" for Monty Python (that seems pretty apt for them) but the stuff about Tool and well... every other album on that list is just nuts.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Also, I think that page-a-day gaming calendar is a great idea.... you could just crowdsource it! And heck, prominent games' release dates would fill it up really fast.. the top 20 games for each console, or something?

Actually, now this is making me wonder - is there any kind of platform for people to generate free online page-a-day calendars that other people can view? .... actually, I guess now that I think about it, I'm pretty much describing Twitter or Tumblr ;)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Tumblr lets you schedule things, right? That might be a good place to at least start things. The thought about making the calendar came from a compilation created on Passive Aggressive Notes (http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/), which was the calendar that Christine got.

I know that my gaming knowledge would not be as varied as, say, people from Joystiq or Kotaku, but crowdsourcing could definitely fill out the FPS, JRPG and countless other genres that I've neglected recently ;P