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• Sony Gives Thanks Via Charming PSN Deals

  We here in the United States celebrate our nation's Thanksgiving tomorrow, one of the great national holidays where just about every office is closed as we gather with family and friends to eat, drink, be merry, and prepare ourselves for the brutal holiday shopping season that starts the very next day. Sony, who usually update their Playstation Store on Thursdays, saw fit to treat us to this week's updates a couple of days early to save us the trouble of fighting tryptophan-induced grogginess, and oh the treats they have in store! First, of course, is the weekly free costume for LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy, a turkeyface. Hilarious, yes? No? Hmm, well maybe these next few items will give you something to be thankful for... Read More... Posted Nov 26 2008, 01:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: little big planet, playstation 3, derrick sanskrit, sony, super street fighter 2 turbo hd remix, the last guy, eden, echochrome, thanksgiving

• Whatcha Playing: Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!!!

  It's always a curious thing when games are sold exclusively at one chain of stores. I can understand if, hypothetically, Big Box Store shells out big bucks to have the exclusive sales of Frat House FPS Sequel. The built-in fanbase will want the game and rush to the nearest Big Box Store, that store makes enough money to profit from their initial investment, and the publisher still got their game out there to the masses and made some extra cash while they were doing it. What bothers me is when smaller, somewhat unknown or niche games are exclusive to one store, making it harder to find and less likely that curious gamers unfamiliar with the property will give it a chance. I was worried when this happened last year with the long-awaited Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol which found its way exclusively to Wal-Mart shelves, but thankfully that game turned out wonderfully. And so now, some three months after its release exclusively to Toys R Us, I have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Soul Bubbles for the Nintendo DS. I can't say whether it was worth added trouble of having to go find it, but I can say that so far it is one of the most enjoyable DS titles I've played in months. Read More... Posted Sep 23 2008, 03:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, boom blox, nintendo ds, derrick sanskrit, lost winds, eden, eidos, soul bubbles, locoroco, mekensleep

• Quickies: Homestar Ruiner

  While we were all ridiculously pumped for Bionic Commando: Rearmed last week, there was another highly-anticipated downloadable game to tide us over for the first half of the week: Telltale Games' point-and-click WiiWare adventure Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode One: Homestar Ruiner. Odds are good that if you're on the internet you're already somewhat familiar with the world of Homstar Runner and its brash luchador masked star Strong Bad, and, if you're anything like me, you were with them from fhqwhgads and quit right around Cheat Commandos. A quick glance through the Toons section of the site shows that, like The Simpsons and Family Guy, I'm probably better off for having missed the past few years of redundancy. How does this bode for the first official H*R video game? Read More... Posted Aug 18 2008, 05:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: derrick sanskrit, wiiware, adventure, eden, bionic commando rearmed, cartoon, homestar runner, strong bad, telltale games

• Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher

  So you think PixelJunk Eden is a deliciously freeing, genre defying romp through psychadelia but that the whole experience is vaguely familiar somehow? Maybe that's because Eden was designed by the same dude who programmed Star Fox back on the Super Nintendo. In fact, a quick look at Dylan Cuthbert's history in game design shows a pattern of smashing game genre conventions, all the while producing addictive works of beauty. Way back in 1992, Dylan designed and programmed X, a first person shooter/puzzler that showed off wireframe 3D graphics on the Nintendo Game Boy, a feat that had never been achieved on the clunky grey box before OR after. Based on this exciting new style of gameplay, Nintendo hired Dylan's team at Argonaut Software to develop a 3D arcade shooter for the brand-new Super Nintendo. Read More... Posted Aug 11 2008, 02:00 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: playstation 3, game boy, derrick sanskrit, playstation 2, star fox, super nintendo, eden, pixeljunk, fun fact

• Chiptune Friday: Little Sound Disko

  It's hard to believe that this track by Japanese Chiptuner USK was composed on a Game Boy. It's not because of the limited sounds and effects, oh no, that all works just fine. It's because this song clearly requires many more colors than even the Game Boy Color was capable of producing. I present to you the Game Boy rave stylings of USK's "Little Sound Disko#05" Read More... Posted Aug 01 2008, 02:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: game boy, derrick sanskrit, chiptune friday, 8bitpeoples, eden, pixeljunk, USK

• Far Out, Man

  When the demo for PixelJunk’s latest play on genre convention, Eden, went live on the Playstation Network late last week, I was still knee deep in a country spanning jaunt, my only real gaming time devoted to quick sessions of Shiren the Wanderer and Phoenix Wright: Justice For All. I’ve been following Eden closely since Dylan Cuthber and Q Games started showing it off earlier this year, intrigued by its subdued yet dense pop-art visuals, deep house soundtrack, and its peculiar momentum-based play. Now that I’ve spent some time with the free appetizer hosted on PSN, I am, like Derrick, entranced by Eden. Beyond the basic satisfaction of moving through Eden’s gardens, its central theme of growth – your actions bring life to the environment resulting with subtle shifts in each garden’s music – is emblematic of the shift in the way games broadly can be classified. Read More... Posted Jul 31 2008, 12:00 PM by John Constantine with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, derrick sanskrit, everyday shooter, phoenix wright, Playstation, psn, shiren the wanderer, eden, pixeljunk, echochrome

• Whatcha' (Wish You Were) Playing: How Does Your Garden Grow?

  Last night, PS3 owners got a special treat in the weekly Playstation Store update, and no, I'm not talking about the Street Fighter IV system theme – a downloadable demo of the newest game in the PixelJunk series, Eden. While I am enthused by the PixelJunk concept of innovative idea-based reasonably priced games, Racers and Monsters just didn't grab my attention. With my first playthrough of Eden last night, however, I was instantly smitten. In this garden-building action-puzzler, the player controls a small "Grimp" character, swinging on silk threads and jumping from calligraphic leaf to calligraphic leaf of thoroughly modern stylized garden. Crashing into pods releases clouds of pollen, which is gathered in seeds which can then be activated to sprout new plants, which allow you to travel farther, to even more seeds, pollen, and techno-organic bliss. It sounds complicated, and at first it feels like it too. I'm not ashamed to admit that I failed the first garden miserably (twice!), but the environment and surprisingly compelling physics were just so captivating that I couldn't stop. Read More... Posted Jul 25 2008, 03:30 PM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with no comments Filed under: whatcha playing, derrick sanskrit, ps3, eden, pixeljunk