Incredibly Strange Games

Science fiction author Mike Berlyn created some of the seminal adventure games that helped define the early game industry. He’s probably best known for Suspended which has the distinction of having possibly the creepiest and most fragile packaging ever made:

I won’t spend too much time talking about his other work, because I need to cut to the chase: Mike needs money for serious medical bills. Sadly it turns out that being legendary or creating works of videogames that people will be discussing in 100 years doesn’t pay the bills, especially when you have cancer. 

Talking about how game creators – especially early ones – frequently failed to profit from their work and ended up hosed later is a topic for another day, but if you ever pirated a game, or felt you got more than you paid for a game – any game – or you just want to honor an under-appreciated pioneer of the game industry, right now would be an awesome moment to give back by making a contribution to defer Mike’s expenses: http://www.gofundme.com/skb9h3c. 

While I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Mike, his game Infidel was the first game I ever owned, and Suspended has been a huge inspiration to me in my life. I even have Once and Future, from his short-lived Cascade Mountain Publishing company. His gameography shows that he is a creator who is always striving to innovate, and he’s done some amazing things so far.

So, please, go donate! http://www.gofundme.com/skb9h3c

Hey I saw this story on GameInformer. Ireland has new videogame stamps. Cool!

I like the fact that they used the old character models for Sonic and Mario!

There were some really cool games at Pax Prime, but nothing really stood out as weird or anything. What did stand out was two pieces of sweet cosplay.

This lady basically won PAX for this awesome Isabelle cosplay. After I took this picture she set off some small fireworks and then clapped politely. 

The next day while trolling street passes on floor 2, I met this lady, whose dark Nook cosplay revealed that he’d been busted for extorting players out of their money! Another excellent effort.

I wish I’d thought to ask her to remove her badge for the shot. It probably doesn’t matter anyway, given the quality of the image. (I was rocking a little 3MP burner phone during Pax because my 15 billion megapixel Lumia 1020 took a dirt nap while skateboarding right after Gamescom.)

Anyway, if the world had more Animal Crossing cosplay, it would be a better place.

Oh I guess there were one or two semi-strange games on display. First was this game I keep calling CAT-ASTROPHY but is actually called CATLATERAL DAMAGE by Chris Chung in partnership with Fire Hose Games. It’s a first person game where you’re a cat and you wreck stuff, like a cat.

It’s pretty cute, although I think CAT-ASTROPHE would be a better name.

The other game was called Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which is a pretty cool name for a game. The game is neat. One person wears a VR headset, enabling them to see and manipulate a bomb none of the other players can see. The other players have a (paper) manual, which the VR person can’t see. VR person describes the bomb while the rest of the team frantically searches the manual for disarming steps.

So you get a lot of people screaming things like “can you see wires? which wire is on top? is it yellow? Cut the blue wire now!” and stuff like that, all as a timer clicks down.

It’s exactly like solving a math story problem, which, if you like math story problems (and I do), is really, really fun. There are some things the game does to keep it from being a simple exercise as well, which is pretty neat.

NOTE: For some reason links aren’t working tonight, so… no links.

[UPDATE!! Someone commented and directed me towards the creators of Not Tetris and Not Pac-Man, the awesomely named team Stabyourself.net!]

I love videogame tradeshows and conventions. You never know when you’re going to turn a corner and be like “holy cow, what the heck is that!?” and be exposed to some crazy new (or old) game.

So of course at Gamescom I head straight to Hall 10.2, home of old reliables like the crazy German Pac-Man board game, the 24 hour CaseMod Challenge, a new-every-year-and-always-amazing diorama of a retro desk setup that caps off a *fantastic* retro section, and this year, Not Pac-Man and Not Tetris.

Kinda makes you want to throw up, huh? The pieces rotate freely, out of your control, bouncing off each other with Box2D physics and turning Tetris from an orderly game of planning and compacting into total anarchy. That screen has no glitches, you frequently “clear” just pieces of blocks. Having been trained by years of Tetris, I found Not Tetris extremely difficult to play, and even harder to grok. Horrifying and awesome!

In contrast, Not Pac-Man was almost pleasant, adding steering controls and gravity and enabling players to rotate the screen to move around the maze. This video captures my second play through, and I was already getting the hang of it, even playing one handed while recording. You can see a little Not Tetris in there as well.

Those were the two weirdest things I played at Gamescom, although there were some neat LED-based large scale games in a few booths, and some really interesting looking experimental things in the student area.

Oh, and I thought this Europe-only Magnavox Odyssey 2 with a built-in black and white TV was pretty neat too. I want one! (Its Euro name was called the Phillips Videopak g7200)  

I was too dazed by the games and dazzled by the flyers for JagFest DE (The German Atari Jaguar gathering) to get any contact info for Not Pac-Man or Not Tetris, sorry! YOu can get a little more Videopak g7200 info here.