61 Frames Per Second : video

WTFriday: Pac-Man Vs. France

Bob Mackey — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:45:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

While Pac-Man is usually viewed in a positive light, fans of this old-school gaming celebrity conveniently forget one important fact: he is a remorseless eating machine. Strawberries, pretzels, and even keys disappear into the gaping maw of this urine-colored glutton as he searches for a way to blot out the pain inflicted by his apocalyptic divorce from Ms. Pac-Man (formerly Mrs.). And sometimes, it gets ugly. A recent videos of Pac-Man's latest episode have surfaced (via Kotaku) which features what we can assume to be a PCP-fueled rampage through the streets and golf courses of France. For the following video, parental guidance is strongly advised.

Pac-Man is currently being held without bail in a French prison cell. He has been allowed to make a single phone call, and eat a single baguette. No word yet on if any cheese was consumed.

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Wrestlemania, Botched Flips, and Game Music: Three Great Tastes

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:48:00 GMT

I have a passing familiarity with the men and ladies of the WWE. I don't follow wrestling with any regularity; tonight, my husband is flipping out over the Draft, and I'm content to sit here, type, and insert an “Uh huh” whenever he pauses (he doesn't often).

But even I can appreciate the high-flying antics of Wrestlemania, and I did in fact sit through all of Wrestlemania 25 earlier this month (I also attended the event live when Wrestlemania 18 came to Toronto).

I had fun. What's better than Wrestlemania? Wrestlemania bloopers. What's better than Wrestlemania bloopers? Video footage of said screw-ups (plus other iconic moments) with video game music sprinkled throughout.

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Super Mario's Warp Whistle Mishap

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:40:00 GMT

Observant players of Super Mario 3 (in other words, my brothers, not me) noticed that when Mario tooted on the Warp Whistle, he was whisked to “World 9.” World 9 is simply a portal to the eight worlds below it, sort of a Mario-style Wood Between the Worlds.

But the universe is held together by more than a mere nine worlds. What would happen if Mario's attempt to warp went awry, and he ended up in a place that Homer Simpson once described as “the worst place of all?”

The Tanooki has the answer.

Warp Whistle
by MatthewDominick

Worst place of all, indeed. White Castle! Shudder!

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Mega Man 2.5D?

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:30:00 GMT

I'm automatically skeptical about fan-made games. I will nod at the demos and videos and say, “That's very nice,” but I won't get excited until there's a final product for me to play through.

What can I say. I've seen innumerable projects that began with energy and enthusiasm that surged like Niagara Falls. All but maybe 3% have been dammed up by extended work schedules, “family issues,” or exam season.

For all my adult cynicism, I am hoping that the “Mega Man 2.5D” project survives. It aims to add half a dimension to the classic Mega Man 2, not unlike Super Paper Mario or even (twitch) Bug! for the Sega Saturn.

The demo video looks like the final product would be a lot of fun to blaze through, while at the same time it's a loving tribute to the pinnacle of retro platforming titles. Seems like there's no escape from the disappearing/reappearing blocks.

When I was a kid, I called the disappearing/reappearing blocks “Dustbusters,” because, well, that's what they sound like.

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16-Bit Morals: Mario Threatens Hell Upon Drug Users

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:22:00 GMT

Hey kids! Are you confused about drugs? Are you suffering through relentless peer pressure and questions with no clear answers? Take some advice from the game mascot who consumes twice his weight in mushrooms every time his frilly pink girlfriend gets kidnapped by a giant turtle.

Heroes from video games, cartoons, and anime have been thrust into some pretty awkward PSAs, but unbeknownst to me until now, Super Mario took the “Whoa!” cake. Captain Lou pulled on his overalls and secured his Mario hat on his head before going on the air and informing kids that if they do drugs, they're going to Hell before they die.

Oh, Christ. This would have terrified me as a kid. If I'd had Mario's assurance that I'm going to Hell for touching drugs, I would never have gotten tangled up in that unpleasant incident involving the Yom Kippur bong. Maybe I coulda been someone.

Fear for your soul after the jump.

When Mario started going on about “your Priest, Rabbi” and “Mom and Dad,” I thought he was going to tell us a joke.

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WTFriday: GameStop's Guide to Women

Bob Mackey — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

I don't shop at GameStop, mainly because of their policy of treating customer like pieces of human excrement who deserve to be murdered on the spot if they don't happen to want a magazine subscription. The last time I wandered into a GameStop was out of necessity; I wanted to pick up a Game Boy Player for my GameCube, and was promptly treated like the biggest asshole on the planet for assuming one existed in the store--even though one did. My constant mistreatment at the hands of people stuck in terrible retail jobs (I speak from past experience) has made me a devoted Amazon.com customer, but more importantly, it's also made me wonder how retail monoliths like GameStop treat their casual customers when they show such contempt for devoted nerds like you or I. Thankfully, a GameStop training video recently leaked to the Internet may just provide an answer to this query.

Behold, GameStop's "Understanding and Selling to Our Expanded Audience," or, "What to Do When There's a G-G-G-G-Girl in the Store." Like all employee training videos, it's extremely patronizing, both to the intended audience and the subject itself. Most of the advice is just common sense, though it all comes packaged in a glorious corporate creepiness that involves tapping into the deepest fears and insecurities of your customers. Let's watch.

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Mega64 Calls On the Elite Beat Agents

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:46:00 GMT

The world would be a better place if the Elite Beat Agents could fly at our everyday problems singing and dancing. Flat tire? Beautiful voices can re-inflate that. Broken vase? The Elite Beat Agents can coax those pieces back into place. Failing with your girlfriend in bed? Maybe not. She might run away with Agent Spin (I know I would).

Game-related comedy troupe Mega64 has catapulted to nerd fame by videotaping themselves bouncing around in a kuribo, performing stealth operations in a grocery store as Solid Snake, and wandering around PetSmart as a lonely Tetris L-piece looking for a corner to lean on. This time, the group dressed up as the Elite Beat Agents and tried to bring joy to Californians by the ocean. Unfortunately, Californians seem immune to joy. Actually, given the demographic of San Francisco, they've probably just learn how to politely step around crazy people the same way suburban dwellers have learned to step around piles of dog poo.

Video after the jump.

Watching this makes me nostalgic for Elite Beat Agents. It was a great game with a fantastic localisation, but it wasn't the Nintendogs successor Nintendo was obviously hoping it would be. Despite careful retooling of the source title, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, the sharp anime art style was still a bit intimidating for mom and dad.

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Nintendo Customer Service Training Video Gives Disturbing Look Into the World of Retail

Bob Mackey — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Thanks to my friends over at the Retronauts Twitter, I've recently been made aware of a disturbing piece of Nintendo history--well, it's only disturbing because I once worked video game retail. I was never forced to watch any training videos, as the company motto of "badger all customers into buying whatever you want them to" was simple enough to remember without any formal brainwashing. However, if you happened to work as a Nintendo rep in the early 90s, a multimedia experience was necessary to inform you why Nintendo was infallible and all of your customers were wrong. Let's just forget the fact that the way old NESes loaded cartridges eventually caused most systems to stop reading them entirely--everything can be solved with a cleaning kit! And soon you will see how.

Customer relations should be fun!

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What Faith of Mirror’s Edge Really Looks Likes

Joe Keiser — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Someone’s gone and created a third-person camera mod for Mirror’s Edge. Doesn’t that sound just awesome? Faith is after all a totally badass parkour superhero; certainly those smooth animations and perfectly chained motions would look great on the entirety of her lithe body, right?

The video’s after the jump, but a word of warning—this will make you feel like that time you were shown a video of yourself and came to the horrifying realization that actually, you can’t dance at all:

Yeah, you're not supposed to play the game this way, but man. I can’t even begin to imagine what the gunplay looks like.

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Survival of the Knittest: How To Make Better LittleBigPlanet Challenges

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Media Molecule's LittleBigPlanet delivered on its promise of providing players with all the tools they would need to design their own dream stages. Unfortunately, we then all learned that building a satisfying game level is pretty damn hard. Thankfully, a few of the cool kids from Media Molecule's design team put together this very helpful tips video, reviewing everything you need to make your survival challenges successful as compelling game experiences. They even show a few examples of excellent user-generated survival challenges to show what those people are doing right:

So, lots more switches, basically.

That reminds me, I really need to finish that stage I started building with my sister over the holidays. I left off swinging from the biplane onto a rocketing unicorn... but how am I going to get li'l sackboy over to those shooting star cars before the dragon breathes fire all over the cloud platforms?

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A Lesson From Balloon Fight: Your Life Is Meaningless

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:31:00 GMT

According to this video, put together with the aid of the Talking Heads, the only thing more meaningless than the toil of digital characters is the drudgery of our own lives. Think the Balloon Fight guy is so wild and free, drifting over the ocean? Think Jack from Harvest Moon is accomplishing something with the sweat of his brow? Yeah, keep on thinking that.

Inicidentally, I can name all the games used in this footage, but I'm stumped on one. Who's the blonde haired harpy who evidently likes to blow George Jetson's money at the shopping mall?

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Mega Man Dies and Goes To Robot Hell For His Sins

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:01:00 GMT

Wise people are known to furrow their brows, stroke their beards and wonder why Doctor Wily just doesn't throw his entire stable of robot jerks at Mega Man. There are two answers to that question. First, there is certainly something psychological with Wily's slow trickle of Robot Masters; the even distribution gives Mega Man a challenge, but doesn't overpower him. This, in turn, leads to some rambling theory about every human's need to chase a Questing Beast.

The second answer is probably the right one: if Mega Man had to fight every Robot Master at once, his games wouldn't be much fun, stupid.

Gee, the guy who put together this video makes it look so easy. In fact, there's something primal and just a little sexual about this nine-man confrontation.

Just when you thought we'd never see another interesting Robot Master, here comes METBUBBNEAANAASOMANKNANWOAOAAIR Man.

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Seven Minutes With Mega Man 9's Music

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:48:00 GMT

What are you thankful for this year? If your answer isn't "Mega Man 9" and "Bitchin' guitars," I don't want to talk to you anymore.

At this point in your life, you've no doubt heard Mega Man 2's "Doctor Wily Stage One" remixed on every instrument from the jew's harp to some dog's armpit. It's high time we start running Mega Man 9's fantastic soundtrack into the ground. Let this Freddie fellow lead the revolution with this lovely seven minute compilation/remix of every tune in the game.

Be wary of last boss spoilers if you're like me and haven't bested Wily yet. Ugh, the shame.

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Mega Man Fan Movie Trailer

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:25:00 GMT

Okay, well...

So...

Um, I really do admire the gentlemen who play Thomas Light and Albert Wily in this upcoming(?) Mega Man fan movie. Imagine asking your dad to roleplay as a dude who hangs out with a giggly female robot all day, or as a power-hungry German man (anyone who speaks German can't be power-hungry). Imagine his reaction.

"You want me to do what? While wearing a lab coat?"

I'm also digging the designs for the original six robots. Looks like someone spent the extra thirty cents on the fancy brand of tinfoil.

I've seen a lot of Mega Man fan movie trailers come and go. I kind of hope this project sees its way to fruition just so I can stop feeling I belong to the most shiftless fandom on the Internet.

The Mega Man Robot Club
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Stupidity

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:47:00 GMT

The Legend of Zelda cartoon was one of the more competent game-based television series to foul up the '80s. That's not saying much, I suppose, especially when you recall some of the show's more ridiculous traits. Here's ten minutes of The Legend of Zelda, as collected and sewn together by The Switcher. Guaranteed to make you cringe and say, "Oh Christ above why did I love this? No wonder nobody ever came to my birthday parties."

I don't think I was ever aware that the Zelda cartoon had a considerable amount of innuendo. Dude, Link tried to ambush Zelda on her bed. If I were the king, I'd turn that impish rogue out on his bum and just set down some fly paper around the Triforce of Wisdom.

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WTFriday: Mega Man A Cappella

Bob Mackey — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

Every Friday, I spent literally tens of minutes--and sometimes dozens of minutes--searching for something stupid and hopefully video game-related to share with my beloved readers. But some Fridays, links to substantially goofy content fall right into my lap--like today! 61FPS Reader Nathan Avilla was so kind as to forward me a Mega Man 3 game play video with all of the music/sound effects replaced by human wailing; it's shrill and taunting, yet somehow enchanting. I'd have preferred that the composer applied this idea to Magnet Man's stage, as science has proven that he has the best music in all of Mega Man 3--but still, I'm impressed:

Mega Man 3 'Vocal BGM' clip

And unlike most wacky online videos, this is definitely something you can do at home; all you need is a microphone, and to be castrated. But make sure you ask your parents' permission before buying an expensive microphone.

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The Angry Video Game Nerd Says a Bad Word: Deadly Towers

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:04:00 GMT

Sons and Daughters of the 8-bit Gods, it is time. The Angry Video Game Nerd has summoned the power of his inner heart and our contributed swears to bark back at the evil that eclipsed our Nintendos so long ago: Deadly Towers.

Note that the audio on this movie is Not Safe For Work in any regard. Things get pretty raunchy at record speed.

Personally, I think I would have preferred a complete review instead of a bunch of strung-together swears, however foul (wait, I am talking about the Angry Video Game Nerd, right?). Deadly Towers is a game that doesn't come by often. It's as rare as Dracula's centennial resurrection and fifty times more frightening. Most "bad" games are merely mediocre, or they fail for very obvious reasons like making the controller come to life and bite you on the thumb. You say to yourself, "This game is an unfair piece of crap" and you throw it out the window in good conscience.

But when you play Deadly Towers, your brain goes numb. You know you're playing a terrible game, but you're helpless to turn away. It's like those nightmare stories about paralysed patients waking up on the operating table and lying frozen while the scalpel cuts into them.

When you turn on Deadly Towers, you're subject to a long and rambling story that's obviously been translated by apes with twisted optic nerves. The graphics are grey and washed-out. The challenge is indescribably hard and the bonging MIDI music will drive you naked into the street, brandishing a butcher knife. But a lot of NES games can be described as grey, forgettable adventures that are difficult to navigate. Somehow, Deadly Towers takes all these adorable traits, amplifies them by a thousand and throws them all together to mate in an orgy of flying cock-swords that stab you in the ear twenty times before you begin to fathom what's going on.

In other words, the Nerd has put up with a lot in the past by playing all the way through games that no one wants to touch. It's obvious he couldn't bring himself to pass Deadly Towers' initial Pit of Horror and Dispair (aka Level One) and I'm not about to hold that against him.

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Star Wars: A New Halo

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:32:00 GMT

Some people might consider this irrelevant, but The Escapist hosts more than Yahtzee and Zero Punctuation. Kung Fu Grip, a foul-mouthed theatre of action figure puppetry (think Robot Chicken) also nests on the site. Videos featuring game characters being violent, vulgar and nailing anything that moves isn't really new, but Kung Fu Grip has a few videos worth watching. Consider the series' latest, Star Wars: A New Halo, which replaces the bumbling Storm Troopers from Star Wars with the git-r-done good ol' Spartan boys from Halo. You won't be taking them down with Jedi mind tricks, nor will they waste time pounding on a locked door when they could be blowing it up.

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"Honus Wagner Card Man?!"

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:42:00 GMT

The Internet is more or less a traffic jam (some might liken it more to a pile-up) of videos dedicated to gaming culture. Most of these videos are testosterone-driven frenzies with bad picture quality and fuzzy sound that rattles like a drowning man's lungs. They're vital contributions, though: who else is going to declare "hahaha miyamoto did sooo many drugs before he made Super Mario Bros--there's, like, mushrooms everywhere!"

Still, it's nice when game fans take the time to dedicate themselves to something truly funny and worth watching. I will now direct you to The Last Days of Doctor Wily, an Old Rich People tribute to Mega Man's evil nemesis.

The ending more or less sums up the thoughts of anyone who's ever played a Mega Man game.

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