THE TANK and 8BITPEOPLES are pleased to present the Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of over 30 international artists exploring the untapped potential of low-bit videogame consoles and home computers used as creative tools. Familiar devices are pushed in new directions with startling results — Nintendo Entertainment Systems and Game Boys roaring with futuristic floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melody, art-damaged Sega hardware generating fluctuating and abstracted video patterns — and that’s only the beginning. An exploration of the chiptune idiom and its close relatives, the Blip Festival is the biggest and most comprehensive event in the history of the form, and will include daily workshops, art installations, and nightly music performances boasting an international roster larger and more far-reaching than any previous event of its kind. Small sounds at large scales pushed to the limit at high volumes — the Blip Festival is an unprecedented event that is not to be missed.

How can I be there now?

You’d think I’d be Final Fantasy’d out, but here’s another one nonetheless. While CP readers will likely scorn any official console magazine, it’s worth mentioning that The Guardian gamesblog’s Keith Stuart has had a hand in re-launching Playstation Official Magazine in the UK. A preview first edition is in shops now but the first issue proper (with reviews et al) arrives in early January. Keith asked me to write their lead review for Final Fantasy XII which elicited various responses in me – not least fear. A freelancer setting the tone for a lead review in a first issue is a risky proposition for any editor but I’m thankful that Tim Clark et al had faith in me and that we mercifully both seem to think the resulting six-page discourse is pretty and interesting. Anyway, the new magazine is beautifully designed and sets a more serious tone than previous incarnations so, if you don’t work at Future and can’t pick one up off a nearby desk, take a look in W H Smiths in a few weeks – I doubt I’ll be allowed to put the words here.

Things are quiet on the site because, between writing the cute script for a new Sega game at work (under the delightful editorship of Ste Curran) and working up various design documents, I’m busy writing furiously for various sites and magazines in an effort to cover myself lest my six month contract isn’t renewed by the developer. In between all the addicting busyness, my 18-month-old daughter is learning to say ‘pasta’, asking me to read her the brilliant ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ 6 times in a row, and falling in love with Noo-Noo, the purple vacuum cleaner from Teletubbies. So, despite life’s inevitable uncertainties, things are pretty sweet.

In the days before Sony started making videogame consoles and Sega stopped, when Microsoft made Windows and Nintendo made millions, when games came on cartridges not discs and there were no such things as ROM files or emulators or IPS fan translation patches, and buses ran on time and children were seen and not heard and don’t you know I fought in two world wars you ungrateful etc.

At that time, the only way this freshly pubescent correspondent could play and understand Final Fantasy V was to traipse over to a shady import shop in London, hand over £60, trawl whatever Internet search engine we used to have before Google and print out 400 pages of badly translated dialogue from a text-only website run by a Spanish man with terrifying dyslexia. Then painstakingly, I’d play the game using one of those foot high Super Famicom adapters on my SNES and try and keep track of the narrative on the A4 print out.

Which was harder than you’d think what with the streams of kanji on screen seemingly condensed into the kind of wounded-pigeon English I’d probably speak if I were a pig farmer from Latvia who learned the language from the ingredients checklist on the back of a bootleg can of Coca-Cora. PS3 delayed until March? Boo-fricking-hoo. Seriously, you kids don’t know you’re even born these days.

So, for all these reasons, you’re bloody well going to be grateful that today, fourteen years after it first launched, you have the opportunity to play Final Fantasy V on your GBA without the need of a sabbatical and government funding for the privilege. Of course, all of this could have been avoided if Square-Enix had bothered to release the game on the Super Nintendo in the West in the first place, but we’ll forgive them that as they’ve clearly learned their lessons now what with being so prompt in bringing over Final Fantasy XII to us Eurogamers. Oh. Right.

You can read the article here

The Reduced Shakespeare Company found success in taking one of the esteemed bard’s plays, condensing its narrative, characters, subtlety and form to a 20-minute script, and employing two or three actors to perform the whole thing dressed in little more than tights and eyeliner. Balancing just the right amount of irreverence and respect for the source material, the company has thus managed to expose new generations to the prose of England’s most venerated playwright.

The works of George Lucas are perhaps only comparable to Shakespeare’s in that they both employ words and actors, and, to be honest, Star Wars has never been short of new generations to sell merchandise to – but nevertheless, Lego Star Wars II succeeds with a similar remarkable transformation.

In this new PSP incarnation, you’ll whiz through the plots of the most popular series of modern science-fiction films, taking charge of all of the mythology’s treasured characters albeit now dressed in the diminutive clothing of Lego blocks.

Thus Luke, Leia, X-Wings, Ewoks, lightsabers, Yoda, and that most likeable of dark-helmeted heavy breathers are all cheekily and, erm, blockily represented (and, crucially, playable) as you race through the first trilogy’s storylines scene by scene.

You can read the rest here

If videogames are metaphors then Every Extend Extra is suicide bombing expressed as an abstract puzzle game set in outer space. The mechanic is exactly shared: you must detonate yourself at the optimum moment in order to cause as much destruction as possible by triggering a daisy chain of explosions.

Where the concepts happily separate is that in this, the PSP’s most hyper-colourful, super-sexy, sonically pulsating title since Q-Entertainment’s earlier superlative puzzle effort, Lumines, you are instantly reborn to continue your pursuit of perfect destruction.

Of course, Every Extend Extra is more graceful and pretty in its execution, too. Each detonation triggers sprays of light beams and dissipating clouds of luminous colour rather than corporeal debris, and videogame mechanics of high scores and chains play a key role in success here.

By detonating your ship at the most advantageous moment in each of the game’s nine levels, you cause any nearby enemy ships to explode in turn. Any other targets subsequently caught in those blasts similarly combust, thus continuing the chain as a sequence of rainbow dominos outplays.

You can read the rest here

How do you relax after a day at the office working on creating the next greatest rhythm action game yet committed to pixel and plastic? Spend the night working on creating a podcast to promote the current greatest rhythm action game yet committed to pixel and plastic of course! erm – I forgot to tell you about the first one that was released last week – so, sorry!

This is what PR man Simon Byron has to say about the second in the series of four:

“The second Guitar Hero II podcast is now available from iTunes, or directly from the following link: www.onelifeleft.libsyn.com

Once again produced by the team behind Resonance FM’s One Life Left radio show, this week’s adventures see the gang meet up-and-coming band LunarMile, with Ste and Robert Howells “sticking it to the man” on stage by playing Rage Against The Machine badly.

As well as tips from the real band on how to be a rock star, LunarMile’s brilliant track ’4AM’ is aired. The full EP is also available from iTunes.

Guitar Hero II will be released on November 24th 2006, and the third of four official Guitar Hero podcasts will be published next Friday.

And this is what goz has to say about it:

“Buy some freaking microphones that don’t buzz like the whispering gallery stuffed with livid wasps with reverb units and megaphones strapped to their wings, Team OLL.”

If you haven’t already you really should preorder the game. If you use this link I’ll get 10p too. See you!

Skateboarding and sand don’t mix too well. Perhaps it’s this reason – the physical incompatibility of rubber wheels and grip tape with ten million grains of purchase-less crushed rock – that has ensured the world of professional skateboarding and that of the poncho-clad, revolver-toting, rotten-toothed cowboys are yet to meaningfully converge.

Nevertheless last year, undeterred by this tradition of thematic segregation, developer Neversoft took a break from its relentless output of Tony Hawk skateboarding games to work on a Wild West themed shooter. And quite the success story it turned out to be, too, boasting a surprisingly good story, a well-crafted and believable world of 1800s yee-haw America, and some impressively realised good, bad and ugly, stubbly men shooting each other to win the affections of beautiful hitch-high skirted women.

The transition from console to handheld has been handled by Rebellion, who has seen fit to not just transport the desert grain pixel by pixel on to the small screen, but to also add in a fair few impressive tricks and flips of its own.

You can read the rest here

I’ve less time these days (which is not an excuse so much as a cry for help) so you’ll have to get this in two doses. Sorry.

These are the ten best things that have been a part of my life this autumn. They should probably be a part of your life too if they haven’t been already and here’s why.

Song

For The Widows In Paradise; For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti – Sufjan Stevens

I’ve loved this song for a year now but it wasn’t until wilfully-obscure-band promoter James Melley (il presidente tours and promotions) pointed out that it’s the closest to musical perfection he’s ever heard that I realised just how good it is. Listen closely as the intertwining left/ right panned banjos cushion safety/ before the perfectly understated half-chords of a dusty piano throw a warm blanket of sunlight over your head.

Sufjan makes incredible music at an incredibly prolific rate – the kind of music that takes months to fully reveal its intricacies and depth. I hope I die before he stops making music so that his is a story never fully told to me.

Listen here, fall in love, give him money.

Album

IBM 1401, a User´s Manual – Johann Johannsson

I’m fairly sure this is the first time I’ve mentioned Johann Johannsson on Chewing Pixels which makes me an idiot and, those readers who don’t know him yet a little poorer.

The Icelandic composer’s latest is a concept album featuring five instrumentals thematically tied by an ancient computer. Each is played by a sixty-piece string orchestra. It’s the kind of music I try but fail to make in my head.

Concepts rarely come cuter as Johansson explains: “In 1964, the IBM 1401 Data Processing System arrived in Iceland as one of the very first computers to be imported into the country. The chief maintenance engineer for the machine was Jóhann Gunnarsson, my father. A keen musician, he learned of an obscure method of making music on this computer – a purpose for which the business machine was not at all designed. The method was simple. The computer’s memory emitted strong electromagnetic waves and by programming the memory in a certain way and by placing a radio receiver next to it, melodies could be coaxed out – captured by the receiver as a delicate, melancholy sine-wave tone.

“When the IBM 1401 was taken out of service in 1971, it wasn’t simply thrown away like an old refrigerator, but was given a little farewell ceremony, almost a funeral, when its melodies were played for one last time. This “performance” was documented on tape along with recordings of the sound of the machine in operation.”

It’s these recordings (along with his father’s voice) that are incorporated in this album.

Incelandic musicians have a minor chord spirituality that underpins much of their work that seems otherworldly, fragile, complex and alien to my fast-food hearing. Listen and buy.

Videogame

Final Fantasy XII

Nearly all of the reviews of the latest Final Fantasy game for PlayStation 2 (released in the US last Monday) have been fawning.

This is because, along with being extremely polished and pretty, the game is surprising. Conventions so deeply furrowed ione imagined the developers could never climb out have been skipped over and new paths uncovered. The ease and fluidity of the changes to the game’s various systems is certainly arresting. But, as well all know by now (right?), surprising and polished doesn’t necessarily mean good or successful.

The one review that has been less enthusiastic so far complains that in spending so much time on getting the macro changes to the format to work the developer has neglected micro details such as character motivations etc. This, and indeed all the other complaints the reviewer levels at the game, I mostly agree with (although not particularly the awkward way he says them). But, nevertheless, 24 hours in and I’m still finding this game compulsive playing.

I can see the flaws but I’m suckered in. Whether I’ll last the distance to the conclusion Im not sure but, at time of writing, I intend to and, that I’m not already disinterested testifies to some considerable success when set against its competitors.

The inevitable backlash against the game will hit hard and hit soon so if you’re intending to play this I urge you not to read anything more about it. In fact, the more time goes on the more I’m convinced that the best way to enjoy videogames is not to read anything about them at all.

Book

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

I‘ve drooled on about Mitchell long enough for you all to be bored by now but really, seriously, please: things this good traditionally don’t exist.

Mitchell’s ideas are the kinds of ideas I’d like to think I might have if I chose to write a book but I’m now too scared to find out that I probably couldn’t.

Cloud Atlas is structured like six books opened to their centre pages where the staples sit and slotted inside one another. So you read half of the first one then the first half of the second and so on until you reach the halfway point of the collection and start the second halves in turn. The final section completes the very first section if that makes sense.

I’ve nearly finished and am astonished. As one friend said: ‘I can’t imagine anybody not liking this book: just liking it to varying degrees’. If you like Harry Potter or storylines in videogames then read this. Not because they are at all similar but because you’ll see what Good looks like.

Television/ DVD

The West Wing Series 1 – Episode 14

So many years late to the West Wing but, as Sorkin’s Studio 60 coughs and splutters to what looks like will be an inevitable and cold pre-Christmas grave, I wanted to see what made so many people I respect testify to the writer/ director’s genius.

The opening few episodes of Series One seem clunky and awkwardly paced – and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t just due to me being unused to the ensemble cast yet.

But, as the series develops, the dialogue, pace and wit settles and shines and it reveals itself to mostly be one of the best things I’ve seen on TV – even if the dialogue is frequently preposterous.

This particulr episode is comfortably the best drama I’ve ever seen with the American death penalty as its theme. As President Bartlet spends the weekend deciding on whether to commute the death sentence of a man convicted of drug-related murders, the narrative darts between points of valid view before unfurling an unexpected and exquisite conclusion. This screenplay should be required reading for anybody trying to find a view on the issue, as well as those who flick the switch/ drain the needle.