H. G. Wells reviews Metropolis. I’d describe his general tone as ‘pissy’

Professor Layton no doubt relieved to have ‘only’ been accused of giving children rickets in the papers this week.

David Simon interviewed on the Journal. Well worth the time.

If I ever have to own a gun, I’m going to get me one that fires owls like this one.

The World’s Most Important 6 Second Drum Beat:

“If I’m lucky…Mr. Talent…will rub his…tentacles on my art.” Cartoons are funny!

Main quest or mini-game. The eternal dilemma…

If you were in any doubt about Unity being the most exciting middleware tool in gaming right now, read this.

Wutang vs. The Beatles. Properly amazing. (Very subtle use of the latter, in case they annoy you.)

It was Martin Luther King day last week. Here’s a cute, poignant story about why that matters.

The first level proper in MW2 and parts of Episode 2 of Generation Kill are frame for frame identical. Someone should do a side by side comparison! Exhibit A.

Candyman: the David Klein Story. “Spilling the beans”. A good day in the office for whoever came up with that tagline:

First Person Tetris. Will make you sick in 20 seconds max.

1983 comic themed around computer games. This is genuine treasure. Go look.

Suki’s pretty upset with game journalists this week. If you wrote a dumb/ over-reaching review of Bayonetta, ready up.

“Self-potato?” Amazing incorrect answer on Wheel of Fortune.

Wooden recreations of extinct animals. I had a panda toy when I was a kid. They said it’d soon be extinct so I’d sniff it so I’d always remember the scent when they were gone. *ahem*

12,000 years of population growth in a single graph.There’s no room at the inn.

Link of the Week

The Eurogamer 2009 Score Analysis. Like games? Like statistics? You’ll like this! Turns out I am soft on games; soft on the causes of games.

“Uncharted 2’s success may take us away from the potential that videogaming has twitching in its womb.” Best of 2009. But in which medium? Contains a few of my thoughts.

Power Glove + Arduino + Unity3D. Yowzers.

Mario vs. Bowser, inspired by Alan Moore. The league of extraordinary plumbers.

30 beautiful/ terrifying Christmas short. Let’s just hope this idea doesn’t get into THE WRONG HANDS.

Thing I’m gonna read in 2010. That Chabon endorsement on the front cover is the best endorsement ever.

15,740 self-proclaimed social media gurus on Twitter. You become one too if they touch you! Like zombies, but shit.

“We’re looking for a songwriter to create lyrics for a theme song to our next game” A job for the Doyouinverts?

Tiny Cartridge’s ‘09 handheld recommendations are good. Also, that screenshot at the top (from the brilliant Retro Game Challenge) makes me cry a little

Exhaustive breakdown of Pitchfork scoring in ‘09.

DieHard Battery vs. Reggie Watts. This is an excellent advertisement:

Woah. This is the best chiptune I’ve heard. Simultaneously the soundtrack to the past AND the future.

Brandon Boyer’s list of games to look forward to in 2010 is useful and typically leftfield.

A Flash game. Superb execution.

When I finally go, can it be in the claws of a GIANT EAGLE?

Castle of Cagliostro scale model. Probably the best anime for non-anime dorks, right?

Playing card spheres. A Christmas project if ever I saw one.

Capitol Records sues Vimeo over lip-dub videos. Because they are colossal, near extinct twits.

Extended US Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks TV commercial. A brazillion times better than the European one:

I really like this poster for Disney’s Mulan.

Robotic Doppelgangers For Sale. $223,000. AND WORTH THREE TIMES THAT.

Now that’s a kill screen.

Cowboy vs. Batman? Short, sweet post from Tom Armitage on how our approaches to game puzzles are tied to the imagination

Guitar Hero with 21,268 Christmas lights:

“Prominent blog Kotaku said that the ‘boobs smorgasbord’ was a ‘pathetic attempt at enticing people to play‘”

Whereas, a ‘boobs smorgasbord’ is perfectly acceptable when trying to get people to “read”…

Martin Sheen’s in Mass Effect 2?! WOAH.

Politicizing game rewards: “Earn Farmville cash by writing to Congress to oppose US Health reform” This is how the world ends, FYI.

Dave Eggers on selling out. Awexome.

The Citizen Kane of regrets: “I’m ashamed of Rosebud… It’s kind of a dollar book Freudian gag”

Ghosts of Shopping Past. A collection of still images of America’s abandoned malls.

“The hit detection is extremely hit or miss” In other words: perfect, then.

The peerless Phoenix perform 1901 in front of the Eiffel Tower for French site fantastique, La Blogotheque.

“The spiders are harnessed … held down in a delicate way.” Tapestry woven from the silk of a million spiders.

Link of the Week

On finding the single unknown fighter who boxed Ali. When I grow up, I want to write about videogames like this.

Continuity is an AMAZING flash game

Muscle March coming to the West. The best homoerotic gaming since Cho Aniki/ Gears of War?

50 awesome things about Tokyo. Hott tips.

The brilliant 25 Times a Second gives up AAA games: “No more grinding. No more 15 hour stories that aren’t worth 15 minutes.”

Sin and Punishment 2 box art. I would marry this artwork in the face.

YouTube Piano. Neat, if ultimately useless, idea.

FAO: Nepalese chickens. Might be time to emigrate.

The DeLorean Motor Company in its heyday. If you already saw these then travel back to a time when you hadn’t.

The amazing photographs of Barry Underwood.

Accidental geography. For people who see maps in the unlikeliest places.

Pentecostals vs. Drum and Bass: This is amazing.

Social media sites as substance vices. At this rate I’ll be dead by 31.

How biologists leave their wives.

Read the micro-poem ‘Troths’ by Carl Sandburg again. The last two lines win poetry. Also: my heart.

TheJapanese are better at barcodes than you.

Scientists Create Bacteria that Glows to Reveal Land Mines. Hope they develop some that works on lost car keys.

Things Magazine writes about the GTA4 time lapse videos uploaded by Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry. Good stuff all round.

Link of the Week

What Philip K Dick thought of Blade Runner. An amazing document.

Kieron Gillen on ‘No Russian’, the controversial level from Modern Warfare 2. Pretty much the last word on the subject.

Last week the eloquent, anonymous ex-London call girl, Belle de Jour, revealed her identity. Here’s an excellent side story about a blogger who figured it all out years ago, and how he helped keep her secret from the press.

Someone forgot to consider the SUN when designing this wall.

The 100 best quotes from The Wire:

Veteran video game writer Susan O’Connor (Far Cry 2) on ways to advance the craft of game narrative.

Matthew Wasteland writes apologetically about Citizen Kane and videogames. Great stuff.

LEGO Architecture Series: Empire State Building

‘Space Invaders explores the increasingly blurred boundaries between videogame spaces and real spaces’. Let’s all definitely go.

A lawnmower being controlled by a Wiimote. We are basically three steps away from F15s being controlled by Guitar Hero.

Two kite surfers jump over Worthing pier: THEY JUMP OVER WORTHING PIER.

Turns out Russia’s the airport massacre level of Modern Warfare 2.

Three guesses as to whether this Tipalet cigarette slogan was conceived by a man or a woman.

‘Broken Things’, an exhibition by Chilean artist Livia Marin. Sort of want to eat these…

The French are better at zombies than you. Braaaaiiiiiinnnnsssss-a-hon-hee-hon.

Gaming will eat itself.

The UK trailer for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno looks INCROYABLE: Let’s all see this, OK?

Quizipedia. Excellent multiple choice quiz generated from Wikipedia scrape data.

Jordan Mechner’s 11 tips for designing narrative-driven games. Concise and brilliant.

Howl’s Moving Castle, recreated in Lego.

iPhone developers troll Tim Langdell.

Link of the Week

Readers, meet Josiah James Parkin. Look around son. One day, all of this could be yours… (He is the reason for the sporadic updates in the past fortnight. Apols but, y’know…)

Hey, Obama! Dude, you won already…

Succeed blog. Positively wonderful.

I am a grown man. I have responsibilities and dependents. And yet this squat chocobo tat steals my heart. Idiot.

“Many gamers would rather take a beating if they think that they are accomplishing something” Nice little post.

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of pictures of Japanese men pulling silly faces.

Awesome ‘No Smoking’ ads.

The batman. Sort of.

Long live the author. Good thoughts, well-expressed.

Slightly incongruous message but super sweet 3D work in this short animation from Tronic Studio:

Vehicle smashing minigame returns to Street Fighter. Oh! My car…

How to use an apostrophe. A useful chart.

Chiddy Bang’s first record is out. And free! Hyper sweet Philly hipster-hop.

Lichtenstein’s iconic blond made flesh.

Paper sneakers. Good in the sun. In the rain, not so much.

Knitted Panda ski mask. Combine with www.banknotes365.com for criminal win.

This comment on Gamasutra about defining the role and purpose of a game designer is brilliant.

A death on the line.

Wataru Itou: better at origami than you.

Banner ads literally tied to flies: Oh advertising…

Link of the Week

The disappearing man. Excellent at hide and seek. Providing you count to five thousand before going looking.

One Night Left, final lineup announced. I’m on from midnight-ish I think. Will probably post up the mix after the event.

‘Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party‘ Like a good Onion headline, you almost don’t need the rest of the content…

I AM THE CLIENT! Insights into the mind of a marketing commissioner.

Dubstep remix based on samples from SNK’s Last Blade. Warning: could give you a nosebleed. HAJIME!

Hip-Hop Medley using the new Stylophone Beatbox:

Blizzard Twitter-source game design for Diablo III. Presumably the number of characters in the game will be limited to 140.

‘I wish I was in your arms full of faith or that a thunderbolt would strike me.’ Careful what you wish for, Keats.

John Walker’s analysis of the recent World Of Goo sale. Excellent stat porn.

Hyper-real oil paintings are hyper terrifying: I mean, what if YOU’RE just an oil painting and I didn’t notice?

A reminder.

Japan, going too far.

Japanese arch-cruelty in game shows is long-established. But they’ll never top what happened to poor old Nasubi.

Artist’s forensic reconstruction of famous fictional skulls. Fun.

Isaac Asimov describes the sky. From the brilliant ‘Letters of Note.’

Comic Sans’ creator speaks. Inspired by Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns (?!). Who knew?

“In the context of [the Daily Mail], Moir’s journalistic crime is merely one of insufficient art.” And that’s a KO.

Link of the Week

Super amazing pop-up book of the Kyoto temple Kinkaku-ji, made from LEGO: I can’t fathom the sort of mind that could work this out. (Thanks Alex H):

E Honda is so fat, even his hair is big-boned (Via Gril)

Cigs on the Queen’s bed. Chris Donlan pointed out that this provides an excellent premise for the next Jonathan Blow game: wandering dark corridors, eating cheese, finding out your Queen is always in another bedroom…

Scribblenauts made hideous flesh:

Google turns making adding 3D buildings to Google Earth into a sort of game.

The full range of career choices for girls, according to Ubisoft.

Did the Higgs Boson go back in time to prevent its creation? The very best of the theories.

My life in oranges.

There are a couple of critical holes in your argument…

Sonic vs Fiddy. Green (hill) with envy:

Earlier this week London was (quite rightly) up in arms over Trafigura. Meanwhile, Eastbourne chose the moment to introspect.

FAO: scriptwriters, material for Catch Me If You Can II in the making.

Leather speedos on Etsy. All rush at once.

Marge poses for Playboy. “[It's reminiscent] of another first, in 1971 when a black woman appeared on the cover.” Um, sort of…

How humanity defines itself, via Google searches.

“The Beatles rejected several game ideas before accepting the Rock Band offer.”

“I HATE MY VILLAGE” Amazing, unsettling hand-drawn film posters from Ghana.

Something for the shmup fans.

Fascinating Reddit Q&A with a victim of Scientology. Made me think that exploring the parallels between Scientology and MMO-style leveling would probably make for a useful explanation of its appeal.

Thought the Daigio parry vid was the pinnacle of 3rd Strike showboating? It has competition. 6:00-7:15 in particular.

Michael Moschen performs The Triangle. Dude must be something pretty special when it comes to Peggle.

Robert Kirby, string arranger for Nick Drake died this week. This is one of my favourite pieces of his:

A couple of weeks ago things at Boing Boing’s Offworld fell quiet. Here’s the story (or half of it, at least) from editor Brandon. ☹

Sumo Digital are more Sega than Sega these days. “I’m looking for some sailors. ON THE RACE TRACK”.

Twadges: achievements for Twitter.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, analysed.

Art made from parcel tape. Better than you’re expecting.

The inimitable and essential Demon’s Souls is out in the US this week. Here’s the Edge review.

“IKEA Heights is a melodrama shot entirely in the Burbank California IKEA Store without the store knowing.”

Sufjan’s as yet unreleased ‘Joy to the World’ makes everything a little brighter.

Flipbook animation x 1000 (sorta). Coming soon to an ad agency near you…

‘Draw a sketch, label each item, and PhotoSketch will autocreate a composite image‘ What? WHAT?!

Left4Dead Teletubbies mod. Brilliant and terrifying.

Fish in a squirrel suit taxidermy. No, really.

The Most Controversial Magazine Covers of All Time. Edge’s midriff shot from DOAX: Beach Volleyball not included.

4-years-old recites the ‘Miracle on Ice’ locker room speech. Awesome.

Link of the Week

Always worth re-watching. ‘Some of the pets I have lost’ by the lovely and brilliant Jon Blyth.

‘There are 12 reporters in Columbia whose work is critical to that town, trapped inside a burning business model‘.

8-bit Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Regretsy.com tracks the most questionable offerings on Etsy, like this Pokemon menstrual pad.

How videogame producers roll.

Videogame character Facebook status updates. *titter*

Katy Perry’s Hot n´ Cold on Mario Paint Composer. Amaze!

“The best, most forward-reaching magazine covers of the 50s were commissioned by Fortune magazine’s Leo Lionni.”

What thing do you wish you could have, but cannot? WELL GET SOME PERSPECTIVE.

‘When AR glasses come in designer frames that’s when things get really interesting from a mass-adoption perspective.’

Wired’s 10 Best Things We’ll Say to Our Grandkids.

EA moves to revoke all of Tim Langdell’s ‘Edge’ trademarks.

36 skaters take to San Fransisco at night to create neon game of Tetris. Awexome:

William Safire’s speech prepared in case the first moon landing went awry. Very good writing.

Replacing ‘wand’ with ‘wang’ in Harry Potter. Puerile but revealing: wands were often synonymous with, um, ‘members’ in classical literature, no?

Eric Idle’s Gamesmaster-esque Call of Duty tips make him the new Patrick Moore. Sort of.

He-Man characters as dressed by American Apparel.

Steven Poole’s being awesomely feisty at the moment. This week it’s the New Yorker’s turn. Be very afraid, writer kids.

Beetles + scientists + electronics + shaky ethics = death of the RC car industry:

Bustler: Winners of the 2009 Architectural 3D Awards. I CAN’T TELL WHAT’S REAL OR NOT ANY MORE.

Building Rome in a day.

Link of the Week

Nabokov edits the first page of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. A bit like spying on two gods having sex.

Voxel art creator. Show and tell, if you make something special.

The Vending Times on why arcades may yet see a resurgence.

Starite-vending machine breaks Scribblenauts? Reads like a hardcasual headline, but it’s not.

If all the games consoles in the US formed their own city, that city would use as much power as San Diego.

Woody Allen wins breaking the fourth wall.

‘Son: we need to have a chat about the birds and the bees and HOW ROADKILL IS MADE‘

Not sure the 8-bit aesthetic adds much, but still, this video-based Choose Your Own Adventure is fun.

Naked, ice-age themed Trails HD in Flash. If that’s not a sell, I don’t know what is.

Kurt Vonnegut Reads Breakfast of Champions live in 1970.

“Rumsfeld had to be talked out of editing his own entry on Wikipedia” Confessions of a Bush speechwriter.

A fully-functioning Lego Cello.

How to introduce an Emmys award ceremony.

Biscuit keyboard stop-frame animation. We’ll get bored of these soon. But for now, OMNOMNOMNOMDANCE.

A smart, eloquent (anonymous) $30 million jackpot lottery winner answers questions on reddit. Interesting window.

Eyebrows. More important than eyes, basically.

Set lasers to *shun*

‘The fear is of extremism, but in order to create a climate of fear…it whips up extremism of a different kind.’

Many mock Dan Brown’s prose but few attempt to redeem it. Brian Joseph Davis’ tracked edits are excellent and useful.

“If Jedi walk around our stores with their hoods on, they’ll miss lots of special offers.”

Elite was released 25 years ago. Gillen digs out a stand out track from the, um, Elite musical to celebrate.

Link of the Week

The Rock, Paper, Shotgun team walk us through how to throw a successful Windows 7 launch party:

(Sign up for a party pack here…)

Game designer on ‘Triple-A MMO’ starts an anonymous and frank thread on Reddit. Some interesting stuff in there.

PlayStation 4 concept art.

Post-medium publishing. This is a quick and brilliant read.

Sweden Invaders. The jumper you wouldn’t mind unwrapping at Christmas.

‘Good thing I have two extra lives‘

Why life increasingly feels like a constant state of low-level mourning

The marshmallow test. Kid told: ‘Eat it now or, wait till I get back and you can have another.’

Why realism in games sucks. I love this. Someone should definitely do a series.

“Makeup-gun-set-to-hooker” Nice work, .psd

Am I alone in being unable to hazard a guess at the age of women from the 1950s?

Very nice little Flash game, Time Fcuk.

“Actually, Kath, it’s not gibberish.’ His eyes brightened again with the thrill of discovery. ‘It’s…Latin.” Dan Brown’s back with, um, style.

In decrying Dan Brown’s writing technique, Geoffrey Pullum requires not one but FOUR adverbs. Real classy.

Laundromat ‘em up:

Minifig arcade. Can I have one of those titchy Astro City cabs please?

“One out of every three New Jersey conservatives think that Obama could be the anti-Christ.” Jesus wept.

Lovely, lovely Flash beatbox mixer.

This guy’s e-mail on structured play vs. unstructured play is super interesting, esp. in relation to music games.

Giant child-eating bird found in New Zealand.

Someone buy Apple some new adjectives, ASAP.

3D Dot Game Heroes. With this and Demon’s Souls, From Software emerge as Japan’s most interesting developer/ publisher right now:

“The dog has some mysterious aggression problems” Oh wow.

The man who cured his asthma by deliberately infesting himself with the intestinal parasite hookworm.

Super Potato. A videogame fanzine.

Steven Spielberg’s son’s game design resume on LinkedIn.

LaGuardia cracks down on seasonal-themed terrorism.

“There are 46 conditions that can result in individuals having male and female characteristics” ( And your mum has them all)

“It’s worse than becoming one of them. He’s one of them pretending to be one of us” John Walker on Derren Brown

Link of the Week

Giant pink knitted bunny found in the Alps. Sort of like the stoner’s Yeti.

Dan Savage on the disconnect between the US religious Right’s opposition to universal healthcare and the teaching of Jesus.

The ice men cometh. (For about 30 mins, at least)

Achewood on the danger of E-mail lost to spam.

Street Fighter II tokens on eBay. The price!

(You are not my) Daddy Day Care.

‘The lion used in the MGM logo killed its trainer the day after it was filmed’. Learn something everyday.

A collection of Architecture Projection Art videos.

Augmented Reality Pool. When videogame systems come to life. (from 2:00 min onward)

NYC poster campaign to stop people drinking so many fizzy drinks. CONVINCED

Tetris makes your brain bigger. Or “thicker”, at least. Whereby “thick” is a good thing. Um, TETRIS MAKES YOU HOTT.

Canabalt. Lovely little procedurally-generated Flash escape-from-giant-robots game.

“Banksy should have been put down at birth. His work has no virtue.” Art critic Brian Sewell shows game critics how it’s (not) done.

Stunning new poster designs for the superlative gaming podcast ‘A Life Well Wasted’ by Olly Moss.

I love listening to older/ elderly obsessives. This 12 min soliloquy on sodas is well worth the 12 minute asking:

Beatles stand to make $50 million from new Rock Band if sales match expectations. Yikes.

Life advice from old people, including some from Jon Voight.

Great article on how to get into Japanese games biz from Brian Ashcraft. Includes advice from NanaOn-Sha’s Dewi Tanner

The complete Weekly World News, now on Google Books. Bat boy!

Goodbye games. Blistering truth from (ex-?) comrade McCarthy.

Link of the Week

How do you illustrate a bear sighting when there’s no footage available? Fox and learn:

Keep calm.

Who hasn’t confused a “schwanz” with a “schwanz” before?

Hyper-sweet Scott Pilgrim poster based on Capcom’s Gem Fighter. He’s going to be so famous this time next year. +

360° video makes my brain do a little hurt. If I want to point something out I give a time stamp AND a compass point?

I could definitely write an essay on why this cartoon is wrong.

Oh wow. Mr.Aaahh! on iPhone is TOTALLY SWEET.

The (manga) art of the Cappuccino.

Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs. The ending in particular is quite special.

The fiery bombast of teenage rebellion, betrayed by a gentle squeeze of the hand: ‘I love you, Mom.’

Picasso wisdom.

I really like the ambient soundtrack in the new Japanese PlayStation 3 Slim ads:

Robert White at the NYT seeks to reconcile believers and atheists. This is really good.

Must pop words. No really, you must.

Late to this, but Moonlights is lovely.

‘Now I know how Crazylegs Crane felt’. This made me giggle a whole load.

I hate you. Charitable advertising at its most striking.

xbox360achievements.org is now the top hit in Google for ‘achievements’. Go human race!

Oh gosh. Heights. This turns my stomach and makes me feel as though I’m falling into the screen.

Bottom feeders.

Shop owners trying to sell food that is past its best could be undone by new packaging design.

Know your type. The stories behind our favourite fonts.

Hipsters + Lego + Time + OCD + 8-bit Aural Orgasm. You’ve seen this already by now, of course, but even so…

Re-coloured 16mm home movies of Disneyland, 1956. Reminds me a little of Pleasure Island from Pinocchio.

Forgot about Dre Ft. Eminem from 8bit Collective. Oof.

Fig. 8. The loveliest browser-based PC/Macintosh game I’ve played this year.

Trans-media storytelling is Hollywood’s franchise future. Good or bad for games? I’m not sure.

Mecha-Pikachu. Not listed in my Pokédex.

Wired’s Best Science Visualization Videos of 2009.

To boycott or not to boycott. Christian Nutt on whether to judge a game by its maker?

Prairie dog holiday pic crasher now well on his way to memesville.

Link of the Week

Ukraine *does* have talent:

‘Time moves faster when close your eyes.’ Lies I’ve told my four-year-old recently.

‘Launch missiles!’ WARNING: difficult to look away. Also: possibly NSFW if you, um, work with robots.

Elephant Fail.

So, who’s going to get themselves some Langdell-wear?

Playmobil Michael Jackson and Bubbles. None more plastic.

‘A line of Street Fighter IV cellphone straps that shout out a character move when a button is pressed.’ Shoryureppa!

‘Florida man blames cat for downloading child pronography’ Just look at that whiskery paedo face

The zen-like height of Street Fighter competitive form:

Compare and contrast: Wong (US) beats Daigo (JP) – Daigo (JP) beats Wong (US) Hmm.

Color Pencil Sea Creatures. Impractical for colouring in.

Obama is literally Hitler. A useful guide.

‘The Audi Nose Team is prohibited from wearing scents to work, including perfume or aftershave and may not eat garlic’

How faith varies by Church size. Totally fascinating research.

Car wash fail: Right, that’s it. Me and water are totally through:

There’s more to life than Helvetica. Cute (if misleading) shirt design.

Game Over. It comes to us all.

Crow Dad. Can’t wait for the Hollywood adaptation.

Gameboys make us lonely. Rika Kayama on the psychiatric effect of personal devices. Nonsense?

The Portal you never knew. Anyone played this?

Skaters / Desolation / Spike Jonze. Persevere with this.

‘Starving geisha at noodle-eating contest’ Photograph circa 1892.

Link of the Week

How to skewer a trademark/ patent troll. Apropos of nothing in particular.

• Best Photoshop Disaster yet.

• Insane Japanese rice field pictures. The Hokusai wave!

• ‘The task set for students was to come up with design solutions for a better way to remember the dead.’

• Working NES Monster Sculpture/Puppet on eBay. Want.

• ‘I replaced your DNA with Fruit by the Foot.’ Sweet advert. Literally.

• Chris Dahlen’s new Edge column: ‘How will online gaming work from Mars? I pester NASA to find out’

• Popcap sends up those ubiquitous Evony Flash banner ads< .a>. Very droll.

• Goodness. Amusement magazine has got to be the most beautiful games publication.

• Five Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH. Sideshow novelties or seeds of an interactive revolution?

• Predator vs. Tintin. Billions of blue blistering barna-*thwup*.

• The saddest cup lid.

• Flash conversions of classic arcade games. With embed codes! Super sweet.

• Awesome church advertising for St Matthew-in-the-City, Aukland.

• iPhone camera lens attachments. Equal parts awesome and ridiculous.

• Building demolition, Katamari-style.

• Michael Cera’s mixtape, with annotations.

• You Only Live Once – A game about Permanence and perma-death.

• House of the Dead: Overkill alternative covers. This is great packaging design.

• Longest videogame name ever? Beat that, nerds.

Link of the Week:

• Woah, this is an amazing music video. (Apols about everything else though, obv.)

• Handerpants. Good idea except your skids will be more visible, no?

• The best .gif you’ll ever see this week.

• Space Invader.

• Just a Game. That is a fine poster.

• Trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox is up. Love, love, love the style.

• Standup comedian Richard Herring defends his ‘Hitler Moustache’ act. A strong and handsome article.

• Amazon collates an .mp3 list of all tracks in Guitar Hero 5.

• Cute 3D Japanese Flash game.

• “”I’ve got a man working on a flushing Lego lavatory. We think it’s possible.”

• “These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in old books I buy for my store”

• Use Wikipedia to cheat the Rorschach test and we’ll shove your head in a deep fat fryer, say psychiatrists. Sorta.

• FAO: Hollywood. I don’t think anyone’s watched or cared about anime for like 7 years or something. Just saying.

• Russian pilot ejects at Mach 2.

• ‘“She’s changed my life” Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg. Nemutan doesn’t really have a leg. She’s a pillowcase‘ And, the subsequent backlash against the NYT.

• One of Hollywood’s biggest prop houses has gone bust and is selling off all their stuff in an auction. Can someone in LA pick me up this mounted shark from Malcolm in the Middle, please?

• The extravagant world of child beauty pageants. Warning: you cannot un-see these children.

• Thinking about distant things can make us more creative. Think Pluto, paint Sistine Chapel.

• ‘SEEKING: Woman. Mature & sophisticated looking. Fit, beautiful & aspirational but REAL looking’ Nintendo advertise.

• You thought we wouldn’t notice. Graphic design plagiarism blog.

• Gary Cutlack: Shiny Media – My bit part in its downfall.

• Rubik’s Cube Sandwich. Can be solved with noms.

• SekaiCamera for iPhone. Real world info tags. Hyper sweet.

• “Every step taken toward mastery brings with it an increased risk of mastery’s curse.” Malcom Gladwell writes for the New Yorker.

• What makes girls cry? A brief survey from 1950s-era romance comics.

• Complete Game and Watch collection on eBay.

• Flight patterns of bugs under a street light. Like light trails from a child’s sparkler.

• Google Classic. “Please allow 30 days for Results”

• India’s Got Talent, ultraviolet Mario: Judge thinking: “I’ve no idea what’s going on here but the crowd seems to get it”

• The robot 10 commandments. Mark for attention of Mecha Moses.

• Space Invaders on moleskin, in which we learn that all videogames look better played on the back of a mole.

• Thinking of doing this with my Twitter followers.

• Middle-class and excited about Where the Wild Things Are? Let Stuff White People Like take the wind from your sails.

• An almost-live feed of pics currently being uploaded to Twitter. (Warning: it’s hard to look away).

• Compilation of insane Ryu combos across the series. The SF4 combo at 5:36 against Ken is the sickest. thing. ever.

• Ellie, being awesome: “Do you ever look at CliffyB and think, ‘I, Mark Rein, would like to be a bit cooler?”

• It’s Chibi-Robocop everybody!

• Look, I’m sorry, OK?

• “Everything you own, it’s on the backs of millions of poor people whose lives are so awful you can’t begin to imagine” Fake Steve Jobs speaks truth to power.

• Miss you. Come to think of it, single paddle Pong is basically Bit.Trip.Beat, right?

• Fast food mascots re-imagined as mob bosses. 2 for 1 cheesburgers? An offer you literally can’t refuse.

• Rick Grohl’ed

• 3-yr-old boy floats 12km down Peace River. on toy truck “His mom said he really likes driving through puddles.”

• Orwell’s 1984 used as Kindling. Just wow.

• “Accept that everything you say will be forgotten and ignored but write as if you and your words are immortal”, “There is no career ladder. Only a downward spiral from the first thrill of seeing your name in print” On writing about music/ videogames.

Link of the Week:

• Vanity Fair sub-edits Sarah Palin’s resignation speech.

• Upgrade your typography. Totally sweet free fronts from Fontfabric.

• Rock Band opening track creation/sales to home users. Big news.

• Advertising fresh fish, literally.

• ‘”Heart of Steel” — huh? Then why aren’t these tears metal? Why do they burn so?’ (Whatever, Superman…).

• The September Issue. Forthcoming documentary on the making of Vogue’s biggest yearly issue.

• The Noam Chomsky Show. “…You are NOT the father of post-structuralism!”

• Janey Thomson’s Marathon. A 26-mile marathon simulator in the 8-bit style. There’s no pause!

• How Twitter killed blogs. This piece is going to be written more often in coming months.

• Star Wars Uncut. Sign up to film one of the 472 15-second clips needed for this crowd-sourced remake.

• World’s fastest people at all kinds of different stuff. You should watch this, quick.

• Toynbee on the pervasive, evil power of Rupert Murdoch. Dude’s the devil in a suit and you’re his consumer.

• Ban this sick filth. Wired looks at games for pubescent girls and the values they teach.

• Shadow art created from junk sculptures. Definitely the best thing you’ll ever see today.

• Good grief.

• If you’ve not seen Anvil! The Story of Anvil yet then you should totally put that right.

• Street Fighter II: CE in your browser.

• On the near impossibility of rating Scribblenauts.

• A metaphor.

• Light breakfast.

• “Kitty stylus pen makes you a sweet girl even when you play games”

• Shipwrecks, sailors and on being forced to eat your dead friends. Quite the yarn.

• Independent Games Festival 2010 now open for submissions. I’m on the judging panel this year so send your biscuits and backhanders this-a-way.

• Press get pervy over Emma Watson at the Potter premiere. They’re so slow! I was saying this stuff like 6 years ago etc.

• ‘Gief, is that..you?

• Seitei Watanabe, Mouse with Carrot.

• Hawk Jones:

• The Daily Mail turns over a new leaf? They’ll be printing on coloured paper soon. /droll

• Lego Castle Crashers.

• 32×32 pixel editor app coming for iPhone. Looks hyper-sweet.

• “Babes” of the BNP. “It’s very rare for English people to live [in England] anymore.” So. many. quotations. to. choose. from.

• Take a tour around MJ’s arcade. I’m glad they never went to auction earlier in the year now…

• Muppet Mashup. Free download. Mostly amazing.

• Which reminds me, Feist’s 1,2,3,4 on Sesame Street. Pretty much humanity’s high point of joy, right?

• Huey Long of the Ink Spots dies at 105.

• ‘I don’t want to set the world on fire’ by the Ink Spots, a song re-poplarised by Fallout 3.

• Quarter century old secret discovered in Donkey Kong. Worth the effort? Um, no.

• New stop-motion video from the ever-awesome PES.

(Header image taken from here.)

• The emotional highs and lows of spending $17,500 on a decades-old video game.

• Wikipedia in hardcopy. Good for pressing flowers.

• I love that Capcom are trying this, even though I fear it mightn’t work out.

• What happened when Link booted a chicken into the deep fat frier? The Ocarina of Thigh.

• When PC and health and safety go mad at the same time.

• The death of empathy on the Internet. I only agree with some of what he’s saying, but it’s all good conversation.

• The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain perform the theme from The Good the Bad the Ugly:

• Marilyn glances. She was definitely trouble, right?

• ‘You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style’. I read this page every six months or so.

• Celebrity death TV journalism a comic.

• This makes my house a boil on Britain’s left butt cheek. Still, better that than being pretty much anywhere in France.

• The Human Printer. CMYK by hand. Because life isn’t tough enough already.

• Frog’s porn. (I will never better this pun )

• Rap lyrics deciphered. “If you are unconvinced, ask Puff Daddy.” Amazing.

• Super Mario World Italian Shoes. They have a pair of these in Akihabara’s Super Potato for, like, a brazillion dollars.

• The girl who does not age. That’s quite some way to troll a paedophile.

• “It took me three days to discover the other side to the tape.” Boy swaps iPod for his Dad’s Walkman. Ready to feel old?

• Did you know Tetris was invented by the Romans? Me neither.

• The mono-myth: how Potter, Stars Trek and Wars, Matrix are all the same movie.

• The Architects’ Journals picks out their favourite architecture from computer games.

• ‘Stoned wallabies make crop circles’. I guess they eat opium so they can jump high.

• Asahi ad, 1965. Poster WANT.

• Trailer for Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Ponyo’. Yes.

• Nearly 50% of the top 50 Street Fighter IV players in Japan this week play as Sagat…

• Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, describes the Internet as ‘meaningless, not real [and] in the air somewhere’. Um, no, no and no?

• Geek train (photo).

• 19th Century pregnant Japanese doll. Those four monster babies will haunt your dreams.

• Edge Online put ‘The Making of Final Fantasy VII’ online. Awesome!

• Joey Nightmare’s SunShowers. This is where we live.

• Comedy Gold(steins).

• Those close to us leave an imprint long after they’re gone.

• You too can have a body like Jesus. Perhaps the diet supplement’s ‘bread’… (Eucharist humour FTW.)

• “You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand, because those are the only good things.”

• ‘A game should be something like a skill you should develop… you walk away with something of value’

• Batman rehearsal.

• Garish but awesome hyper-rare PSOne promo item for Elemental Gearbolt. I loved this game back in the day. I miss Working Designs, too.

• Museum of Soviet-era Arcade Machines re-opens. Go look at their full collection. Srsly.

• 100-year-old colour Russian photographs look like they were taken yesterday:

• A little robot girlfriend makes some coffee:

• Yelle’s cover superb of Robyn’s ‘Who’s that Girl’. Is there anything that doesn’t sound better sung en Francais?

• Ever notice the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo? Here’s a load more of those “Huh? wow!” typographical moments.

• Men in parks. (It’s a photo, not a dot com).

• Don’t look now. Children photoshopped to look like puppets.

• Up and away. The girl who held on to life for chance to see a movie.

• The Worst, a magazine to celebrate the worst in life. I *heart* the feature on the worst toys esp. the dogs on page 114.

• You have to teach the penguin how to fly. Play at least 5 rounds, promise? It doesn’t make sense till then…

• Ames’ Window. Extraordinary optical illusion.

• Chiddy Bang having a whole load of fun with Passion Pit’s super-amazing ‘Better Things’

• Onore no Shinzuru Michi wo Yuke’s opening movie. Beautiful.

• So very difficult to look away.

• West bank shadows.

• Just circle the cat already, ok?

• Jerusalem. Newspaper sends journalists home, asks city’s authors and poets to write the news instead.

• Fallen princesses: how things could have turned out for Disney’s female money spinners. Love, love, love the Jasmine one.

• The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English. ‘Waft’ Srsly?!

• Oof photographs.

• The Death of Mario: an Akihabara-based art exhibition – runs till the 26th of the month, you Tokyo-ites.

• When videogames truly challenge us. If you’re not reading this series already (and you are, of course), then start now.

• Birdy Nam Nam. Treacle French Electro plus 80’s Saturday morning cartoon visuals. Mmm.

• Dance Dance Revolution. This is totally what happens every time you get on the tube, right?

• Mean Girls bloopers. This film is totally one of my desert island DVDs, FYI.

• Branded babies.

• A very honest and personal write up of a recent Street Fighter IV tournament from one of its participants. Worth the long haul through it.

• Japanese Magazine covers 1910-1940. Oh my. These are just incredible.

• Penguin Classics: Albums. Where next? Penguin Classics: Social Networking Sites?

Choose your own adventure book as a directed graph.

This interview with newly elected mayor of Doncaster from Monday is quite brilliant. Read it, whatever country you’re from.

Vocational jealousy.

Humans more likely to trust a super confident source, even one with a poor track record. Btw, Killzone 2’s DEFINITELY a 7/10.

We’ve probably all played enough Street Fighter for a while, haven’t we?

Everything is on the record: Innocuous Facebook comment by AP staffer draws reprimand.

Sin and Punishment 2 art = new desktop GET.

Alice and Kev: The Story of Being Homeless in The Sims 3. This is brilliant.

‘The milk-first school brings some strong arguments, but I maintain that mine is unanswerable…’ Orwell weighs in on the quintessntially British question of whether it should be milk before the water or milk after the water when making tea…

…Far more sensible than crusty chef Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s technique that is…well, read for yourself (paragraph eight).

‘The next Jen’. Neat gaming culture shortform fiction, as ever, from Hit Self-Destruct.

‘Next time, try forging a ‘B’. Best giggle of the week.

NASA Apollo 11 Haynes Service Manual.

EDF in tanks.

Tentacle porn…

SO last week, but I really like The Beatles: Rock Band opening animation. It’s Liverpurdy.

Translated excerpts from an interview with Street Fighter IV world champion Daigo Umehara. Excellent drama.

R/C Lego Delorian. The longer you look at this the better is gets.

The Cake is a Metaphor, another big hitter from CP fave, Mathew Wasteland.

Martin Amis: Videogame Journalist Extraordinaire. Woah.

“Hidden beneath Heather’s beautiful dress is a tornado of power.” Who wouldn’t want an r/c Southern belle?

I AM MEEK!! AND I’M HERE FOR MY INHERITANCE.

Life-sized Blue Whale website. They should do one of these for yo momma’s ass. KAPOW!

It’s been a quiet week here at Chewing Pixels, a counterpoint to last week’s flurry of heightened activity. Good happenings behind the curtain though some of which will hopefully take the stage next week. In the meantime, here are the Twitter farm link destinations to fix what ails ya.

• I for one welcome our dope-ass breakdancing robot overlords.

• My Sega Astro City’s screen has now totally died. This is the point at which I regret not being a Japanese TV repairman from the late 1980s. x 5000

• L.A. Noire, Rockstar’s first stab at gaming noir. This is a good setting for those minds.

• There has never been a better panel:

• London Olympics sailing advertisement. Beautiful design.

• Obtuse goose. Not photoshopped!

• Earth is so big! Wait. (Make sure you keep watching).

• Fish is sushi

• This week the number of my twitter followers matched the number of characters one is allowed to use in constructing a tweet. This announcement (‘characters = followers’) led Zen Bullets to suggest a Twitter RPG mod, whereby the number of followers always equals the number of characters available to use in a post. This would force one to start pithy, before working up to essays as you ‘levelled’. Neat.

• “2 very outgoing people under 4’0-4’2 needed to dress in costume and run amock (SP) in LA. You CANNOT be shy.” E3 lol.

• The man who swallowed Satan’s baby.

• Monkey Island for XBLA? After the excellent Director’s Cut of Broken Sword I think I’d prefer it on Wii but still: whoop!

• ‘Laugh at the dreams of a child. I hear that’s how you power your car in hell.’ Brockway on real-life game weapons.

• Facebook gives you face AIDS: Ben Goldacre on Susan Greenfield. Needs a longer post methinks.

• Far Cry 2’s Clint Hocking makes some smart and useful observations about Naruto’s own smart and useful design choices.

• Use of Flash in the new Star Trek movie. Interesting use of the technology.

• (You’ve already seen this by now but still.)

Concept footage of Team Ico’s next title leaks: Just wow. (Also: Yorda’s put on some weight…)

• Wired.com vs Wired magazine. It’s in the comments that things really start to get interesting.

• Spam subject line of the day: “It’s your enemy writing”.

• As Alan Moore grows older, the obscure cultural references in his comics become more conspicuous than the sheer quality of writing. Discuss.

• Old Stereograms as Animated GIFs.

• Super Mario Galaxy is the best game of the last five years. THERE I SAID IT.

• “All the work I have done that’s meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with the client.”

• ‘Dr. Ralph Bunche and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt examine the first “anthropologically true” colored doll’

• But where is the third man?

• Nils Völker’s ‘Drawing Lego Robot’: So, what do you see, Rorschach? A Lego butterfly.

• Hangin’ tough, stayin’ hungry:

• Do they do a Eurovision-type competition for the American states? Because they totally should. If I had time + money + American genes I would totally set this up.

• Where is everyone? Super sweet graphical depiction of media consumption trends from 1800-2020.

• In response to this comment here on Chewing Pixels, Mitch Krpata from the Boston Phoenix makes the shrewd observation: “I own all 3 systems” is the fanboy equivalent of “I’m not racist, but…”

• The sad tale of Connie Converse, whose mistake was to write her songs before Elvis and Dylan wrote theirs.

• Art created from naught but paper folds.