Develop 2009: The Aftermath

This week I’ve been at Develop 2009, the UK’s annual game developer’s conference, covering the event for Gamasutra. You can read my write ups of some of the sessions at the following links: • Denki Urges Ban On ‘Casual’ Label • Why The XBLA ‘Long Tail’ Disappoints • Sony Home: First Term Report • The ...

Gaming Made Me

Over the past fortnight the team at Rock, Paper Shotgun has been running a series of articles on the games that shaped them called, appropriately enough, ‘Gaming Made Me’. Last week, Kieron e-mailed a few of the collective’s friends to invite contributions on their own formative videogame experiences. Here’s what I wrote: Your mind races ...

Rolando 2 – iPhone Review

Rolando 2′s world is without blemish. Every cloud, tree and roly-poly blob of a character is piped in perfect Pantone, as if someone took away all of Jackson Pollock’s flick brushes and instead made him squeeze paint like icing in steady dollops onto the page. It’s still pure LocoRoco, of course, but somehow LocoRoco with ...

The Week in Links #10

• 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. ...

Kodu Game Lab

In less than an hour I’d made my first game. Admittedly, it was a game in which you drive an unmanned unicycle around an abandoned piece of scrubland while attempting to shoot down a host of flying sharks with some multi-coloured lasers to a custom soundtrack of Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon”. But crikey, ...

Downgrade Complete

The evidence that videogames may yet emerge from their period of extended adolescence comes not from the dizzying realism of the next Forza, nor from the unrivaled spectacle of the forthcoming God of War, nor even the news that Lara’s improbable cleavage is scheduled for a sober reduction in the next Tomb Raider. Rather, it’s ...

The Week in Links #9

• 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. ...

Katamari Forever?

Tekken 6 – Hands On

Long Time No See

Yesterday I stumbled across my life’s work. It took the form of a spattering of magazine contributions, piled high in the dusty belly of a Soho thrift store, 25 pence an issue. There amongst the musty clothes, yellowed comics and cracked DVD casings I read my old words, partially unfamiliar and somehow estranged, like photographs ...

You Are Not Enough People

The Week in Links #8

• ‘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 ...