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Sailing the Internet Seas, Historical Preservation, and The Great Rumble Roses vs. Silent Hill vs. Metroid Dance Party Throwdown

Posted by John Constantine

Beware! Sail too far to the east, brave soul, and you will come upon that most dangerous of seas. The sky changes to a sickly fresh bruise color, all angry purple and yellow, and the waves will toss madness and froth against the bow. Even the sturdiest ship, the steadiest mind, will be shaken by the foul humors waiting for them beyond the horizon. Ye have been warned. Beware! Beware the internet!

I got lost in an internet vortex this afternoon. It all started innocently enough. Smooth sailing, reading Multiplayer’s interview with Steve Papoustis about Dead Space: Extraction. This led to Matt Hawkins’ Fort 90, and that’s when things started to veer off course. For anyone unfamiliar, Matt’s one of NYC’s great games journalists, but he’s also a madly prolific renaissance man. Fort 90 is a dangerous place, dense with images and text. It’s an easy place to lose your bearings, and that’s what happened to me. Matt linked to the Garry’s Mod work of one MrWhiteFolks. MrWhiteFolks made some spectacular high resolution images of No More Heroes character models stripped of their cel-shading. Very cool stuff. He also made this:

Oh there’s more. Much more.

The internet vortex is perilous, but when you’re hounding for anything and everything related to the videogame landscape, it reveals riches just like MrWhiteFolks’, erm, folk art. That’s what you call this right? That’s what you call it when Heather from Silent Hill 3 dance battles Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 in front of the assembled casts of Halo, Metroid, Rumble Roses, Dead or Alive, Gears of War, and Resident Evil 4?

I would like to close with pointing everyone to Edge’s recent feature on preserving videogames’ cultural history. It’s so easy to lose yourself bouncing between one article, one review, one preview, one speedrun, one ROM hack, one actual game to the next that it’s hard enough to process it all when you’re experiencing it in the moment. How do we even begin to preserve things like MrWhiteFolks’ creations? Do we preserve them? Are they important parts of gaming’s history?

Bet you’re all as lost as I am now.

Related links:

10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill
Resident Evil Arguments that Need to Die
Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective

+ DIGG

+ DEL.ICIO.US

+ REDDIT

Posted Feb 26 2009, 06:30 PM

Filed under: john constantine, metroid, no more heroes, resident evil, silent hill, gears of war, halo, resident evil 4, dead or alive, dead space, mtv, silent hill 2, dead space extraction, gmod, silent hill 3, rumble roses, fort 90, garry’s mod

Comments

Roto13 said:

Apparently MrWhiteFolks doesn't do the actual hard part of ripping character models. He just re-skins them. (He was pretty quick to correct me when I said he was the one actually ripping the No More Heroes models on The Tanooki. :P)

February 26, 2009 7:04 PM

ZPS said:

Just as in my real life, between the waist and mid-thigh, a woman's body transitions into unknowable blackness.

March 2, 2009 8:00 AM

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.