61 Frames Per Second : bringing sexy back

Bringing Sexy Back: Rebecca Mayes's Musical Game Reviews

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Game People is a blog that has been amusing me for a little while now, playing to the idea that there are many different types of gamers out there (there are) and that they deserve to have their opinions on games heard (they do) because they're interesting and insightful (they are!). They've got a sports gamer and a teen gamer and a family gamer and even a haiku gamer who reviews games with haikus and origami. It seems the contributor drawing the most attention, though, is Rebecca Mayes, Game People's "audio gamer".

Like so many people we know and love, Rebecca is new to the world of video games. She does not have a pedigree in Metroid, Rebecca is just diving into a mysterious pool of beautifully uncertain water and hoping she'll float. She does this by doing what comes naturally to her, writing and recording quaint little pop songs about whatever she's playing. If ever a genre was formed of "twee gaming," I think Rebecca and I would be right there in the same boat of uneasy wonder, she plucking her guitar strings and me thumbing my kalimba. What? Sorry, I seem to have drifted off there for a moment... As is, they're rather delightful jaunts. Check out her newest one for Flower (sorry, the embeded player doesn't seem to work on our blog). The sound is somewhere between Imogen Heap and a hushed Neko Case, for anyone to whom that sort of thing matters.

She's also got some rather amusing ones for Hello Kitty, Okami and Wii Sports, but easily her best ballad to date is this ode to Kyle Hyde, the shifty hero of Hotel Dusk: Room 215:

Rebecca makes me long for the days of adorning my beret as a patron of our local open mic night eight years ago, writing stream of concious songs during the day and performing them at night...except her's are all charming and about video games. Keep an eye out, she seems to do these on a roughly monthly basis.

Previously on Bringing Sexy Back:
The Nintendo DS Spa
Toshihiro Nagoshi
Retro Controllers of the Future
John Carmack
Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!
Susan O'Conner
Yoji Shinkawa

Also:
Soulja Boy on Braid: "BWOOOOOOOP!"

Bringing Sexy Back: The Nintendo DS Spa

Joe Keiser — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I have often had elaborate fantasies involving my Nintendo DS and professional massage therapy—who hasn’t right? And that’s okay, it’s fine, it’s not like that makes you some kind of weirdo or anything. But it’s not a dream that I expected to get the, shall we say, Nintendo Seal of Approval.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Quarter to Three forum poster Bahimiron has provided photographic evidence of the Nintendo DS spa, a seemingly officially endorsed traveling mall version of all your dreams come true. And it gets better: check out the descriptions of the various, ahem, products on display. If you can read it not in a deep throaty voice and not to imaginary porn music, you have more willpower than I do.

Playing New Super Mario Bros while enjoying the pleasures of a lower back massage: it’s not just for places that aren’t the middle of the mall anymore.

Related Links:

Bringing Sexy Back: Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!
Bringing Sexy Back: Susan O’Connor
Bringing Sexy Back: John Carmack

Bringing Sexy Back: Toshihiro Nagoshi

John Constantine — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I mentioned it earlier today, but Sega’s been making me feel all tingly on the inside lately. It’s been a goodly while since Sega made my heart flutter, but they just keep making all the right moves. More than anything else from the publisher, Yakuza 2 has been the real inspiration behind all the tinglyness. No bones about it, I freaking love that game. It is awesome. But I got to thinking today, to whom do I owe my thanks for all the warmth inside? Well, certainly crime novelist Hase Seishu. His careful pen is responsible for Yakuza’s ongoing and thoroughly entertaining story. But producer Toshihiro Nagoshi certainly deserves a heaping spoonful of thanks as well. And you know what else? He is sexy as hell.

Taking Sega’s lumbering play model from Shenmue and turning it into a focused crime RPG like Yakuza is sexy. Creating a game like Super Monkey Ball, a game in which monkeys go into balls, roll around, and make funny noises, is also sexy. But even beyond that, look at the man! A few years back, he looked like this:

Then he started making games about badasses like Kiryu Kazuma and ball-monkeys and he transformed into this guy:

I wish I was the one giving him flowers.

Previously on Bringing Sexy Back:

Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!
Susan O’Connor
John Carmack
Retro Controllers of the Future
Yoji Shinkawa

Bringing Sexy Back: Retro Controllers of the Future

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Take a gander at this metal USB game pad from Dream Cheeky. It features all the buttons of a SNES controller and none of the ergonomics, but honestly, who cares? Look at how shiny it is! Look at how smooth and sleek it is, like your 24th century android girlfriend, with the tiny L and R buttons as her perk nipples and a rubberized grip as her toned synthetic hips. She has a six foot USB cord so as to not smother you, and she even swings both ways with both PC and Mac support. Sure, she doesn't have as many features as the Logitech pad that's been loyal to me for years, but I'm willing to sacrifice function for form when its a form like this.

There, now that your PC games have an extra dash of Björk's "All Is Full of Love," let's see what we can do about the sexiest home console around, Nintendo's Wii.

Sure, it was fun two years ago to talk about how much you couldn't wait to get your hands on a smooth white Wii and play games waggling it around, but that novel joke has long since worn off. It is time those white wands received an upgrade in droolworthiness, and Flickr user Joe D! has a steampunk mock-up that just about maxes out the lustable scale:

Black. Wooden. Glowing. Oh god, I'm having trouble breathing. He even included a slot on the back of the remote for the Nyko recharchable battery packs. Somebody pay him and then start mass producing these.

Previously:
Bringing Sexy Back: John Carmack
Bringing Sexy Back: Street Fighter Dress-Up Party
Bringing Sexy Back: Susan O'Connor
Bringing Sexy Back: Yoji Shinkawa

Bringing Sexy Back: John Carmack

John Constantine — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

You’d think I’d be sitting here talking about John Romero, American McGee, or one of the other lookers from the grand history of id software for a Brining Sexy Back feature, but John Carmack is the only one for me. Those penetrating, bespectacled eyes, the sandy blonde quaff that says, “I could have been one of the Duke boys if I hadn’t been an indoor child.” It’s all too much to resist!

John Carmack isn’t exactly what you what call sexy in the traditional sense, though he seems significantly more personable these days. For anyone who has read David Kushner’s Masters of Doom (an excellent page turner. Seriously.), you know Carmack’s come a long way from the “computer with legs” he was described as in his youth. What’s sexy about Carmack is his devotion to a singular goal: making the best damn foundation for a game he can build. Carmack and id’s games have never been beautiful creations, aesthetically or mechanically. The company made a name for itself on the cartoonishly grotesque and through its blunt, aggressive play, a combination that has kept their games satisfying (if not revelatory) for fifteen years. But they have always been elegant creations thanks to Carmack’s engines, from the scrolling animation of Wolfenstein 3D all the way to the still-stunning light-and-shadow play of Doom 3. He remains a master architect in his medium. id’s new game, Rage, and the id Tech 5 engine that powers it, look to continue the trend.

Plus, anyone who tries to make a spaceship by hand is sexy. Except Billy Bob Thorton. It’s stupid when he does it.

More Bringing Sexy Back:

Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!
Susan O’Connor
Yoji Shinkawa

Bringing Sexy Back: Street Fighter Dress-Up Party!

John Constantine — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Yes, this slinky black number that can be unlocked for Chun Li in the imminent and fine looking Street Fighter 4 is an ample slice of cheesecake. It is not, in itself, bringing sexy back in any way, shape, or form. Cheesecake, as our good friend Patrick Alexander over at Eegra so deftly illustrated, is nothing new in fighting games. Nor are alternate costumes for the exaggerated characters that populate them. What is bringing sexy back is the thought that, ultimately, we’re going to be able to play dress-up with our Street Fighter characters as new content is released in both arcade iterations and home versions of the game. Here’s my thinking: that slinky black dress on Blanka. That will strike fear into all opponents!

Many thanks to Siliconera for the fantasy.

Click here for more Bringing Sexy Back.

Related links:

Webcomic Watch: Eegra
For Love of the Game: Street Fighter One
Street Fighter HD Update – Hitbox-O-Rama
Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out

Bringing Sexy Back: Susan O’Connor

John Constantine — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Back in the day, Nerve had a motto: Good writing is sexy. In the past ten years, as Nerve’s grown out of its spunky, firebrand early days and into its current incarnation as a mature, established purveyor of cultural commentary, the motto has disappeared from the magazine. But it lives on in everything we do. Good writing being sexy is a belief we cannot shake, a universal truth that colors all of our endeavors, and it’s at the heart of 61 Frames Per Second.

Painful as it is to say, good writing is still rare in games. Dialogue, expository text, all writing really, takes a backseat to the creation of every other asset in a game. Hell, in some cases, I’ve seen promotional materials better written than the game they’re humping (I’m looking at you Metroid Prime 3. Suburban Commando called, it wants its dialogue back.) That’s why Susan O’Connor is sexy. Recently named one of the most important women in games, the fact of the matter is that O’Connor is one of the most important people working in games, period. She is quickly becoming one of the first truly recognizable writers in gaming thanks to her work on Gears of War, among others. What’s impressive about O’Connor and her writing isn’t her blockbuster pedigree though. It’s her ability to infuse rather tired settings and character types with legitimate humanity. Her work on Bioshock is peerless. When I finally got around to playing Bioshock, I was disappointed by its mechanics; for a game about choice, you rarely have to make difficult decisions about how you play it. But I played through, start to finish, just to hear what every character had to say, to listen to the sad survivors of Rapture tell their stories on decayed tape recorders. Good writing is sexy, great writing is sexier, and Susan O’Connor is the sexiest.

Check out the Austin, Texas native's homepage right here.

Bringing Sexy Back: Yoji Shinkawa

John Constantine — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

When it comes to Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima’s always the first name that springs to mind. Yeah he’s the creator, the designer, the director, the writer of all that dialogue, not to mention that the entire team behind the games is named after the man. But another name springs to my mind as I quiver with anticipation of Metal Gear Solid 4’s release: Yoji Shinkawa. Shinkawa’s expressive illustrations have been the face of the MGS series from the beginning and are, if I do say so, sexy as hell. The vaguely defined faces of his figures, the broad-stroke heavy lines of his characters, the almost melancholic tone of his largely monochromatic illustrations. Shinkawa gets us hot and no mistake.

What do you say, FPSers?