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two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
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The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Nerve Blog-a-log: kid_play
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Our newest Blog-a-logger.
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Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
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A Demi in search of her Ashton.
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Almost everything you want.
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Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
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A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
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Nerve's TV blog.
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61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
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A Demi in search of her Ashton.
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A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.

61 Frames Per Second

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  • Sony Fans, Meet Your New Totem: Sackboy

    Your dear mother has undoubtedly told you at some point, "You need to have a wife. It's good to have a wife." Maybe you agree or maybe you disagree, but either way, singles feel pressured to hunt down a mate even while insisting to themselves that the single life is totally rad.

    Sony's adopted your mother's stance on companionship, but instead of spouses it's talking about mascots. "Every system needs a mascot. It's good to have a mascot. Here, Sackboy now represents Sony."

    "Gee Sony, Sackboy is awfully cute, but is it a good idea to make him the spokes...doll for the company? We don't actually know how LittleBigPlanet will sell. And honestly, I'm okay with Sony's lack of a mascot--"

    "It's good to have a mascot. Now start making babies."

    If you feel wary, it's okay. Sony's previous attempts to match us up with digital companions resulted in lukewarm relationships before sputtering out: Crash Bandicoot, Lara Croft, Kratos. Even Microsoft fared far better by branding itself with Master Chief.

    Read More...


  • More Downloadable Remakes! More, Says I!

    Bionic Commando Rearmed is apparently excellent, not like there was ever any doubt (well...maybe just a titch).

    Chances are good that Mega Man 9 will be playable as well, which leads me to believe that Capcom has a pretty good idea about how to handle its remakes. I would like to see more.

    On one hand, the state of the gaming world is making me brood like Yahtzee. Why are the most exciting games of today remakes and sequels to old franchises? Am I a dirty person for being more excited about ancient gaming lore than Mirror's Edge?

    I don't know if there are any rabid Osamu Tezuka fans among us, but the whole ordeal reminds me a bit of the Phoenix manga series. In it, mankind's progress sputtered and stalled because he became nostalgic for the past instead of trying to innovate for the future. Eventually, the human race decayed and crumbled before the master computers running the world burnt civilization to the ground with hydrogen bombs. Gamers' pining for the past might be a grim prophecy. We should tread carefully and be wary.

    On the other hand...hey, Bionic Commando Rearmed!

    Read More...


  • Introducing Mrs Radd Spencer

    1UP.com posted an excellent interview with Ben Judd, the producer of Bionic Commando Rearmed. Judd's insight is interesting, especially his revelation about Rearmed's story connecting to the next-gen game coming out for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3:

    "Making the story for this was great. It was a lot of fun, actually, because you have a little bare-bones story from the NES. (...) One of the things we added in was that the main character has a wife. And you find out that his wife left him when you're talking to different people in the game. He says, "I don't know why she left. Maybe she doesn't like a military man." Later, you find out something happened to his wife, and you find out in the next-gen -- it ties into the next-gen game."



    Maybe I'm too much of a girl sometimes, but I'm always very interested in the emotional aspect of video games. I thought, Radd Spencer has a wife? What does she look like?

    I hope you appreciate the concept sketch behind the jump. I put many backbreaking hours into it.

    Read More...


  • 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...


  • Where is The City of Metronome?



    Back in 2005, Swedish developer Tarsier came to E3 with a big game they’d been cooking up called The City of Metronome. Metronome, even three years later, remains a visual feast, its faceless characters, early 20th century fashion, and twisting cityscape sitting somewhere between Edward Gorey and Pixar, Ralph Bakshi and Alex Proyas’ Dark City. Tarsier had also created an exciting foundation for play in Metronome; every action was based around sound. A player could control the city’s citizens, alter architecture, and even fight using sounds recorded in the game. And recording wasn’t just a clever twist on item collection either, as the player could create their own noise to record by interacting with the world (breaking glass, having a conversation, etc.) Few games in the past five years have been as conceptually exciting or strange as Metronome.

    Read More...



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  • 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.

    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 Led Zeppelin/Talking Heads/Police/Replacements-covering power trio called Shovel, and will gladly rock your world if you so desire.

    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.

    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's prized possession is a 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.

    Send tips to 61fps@nerve.com