Pixel Art: Surreal RPG Party

An RPG party; somehow I find this picture creepy.

Pixel Art: Adventure Island NES High-Res Wallpaper

Resolution 1280x1024. 9 screenshots from the game. Straightforward and simple.

E3 2011: Super Mario 3DS World 1-2

NintendoWorldReport posted some videos of gameplay for the new Super Mario 3DS game. The results are unimpressive: Nintendo is using the same Mario sprites, engine from New Super Mario Bros. and updating it into 3D. Level design looks awkward. Gameplay looks slow.

Nintendo! We would have bought New Super Mario Bros. 2! Add some new power-ups and think of some new environments and the fanbase loves you! I don't get them.

Watch the official Trailer on IGN if you want.

Reggie's a little confused in the trailer, saying that this is the first "mario platformer created from scratch on a handheld."

Clearly he just forgot about New Super Mario Bros., my favorite Mario game--of all time, I said it! Yes, I think it actually improves on SMB3 and SMW and is a worthy successor. 3DS, of course, is using textures and everything else from NSMB!

Anyway, best of luck to Mario 3DS, I never really enjoyed this kind of 3D platformer, but I'll try it out on a store display hopefully

b :D b

Super Castlevania IV Nintendo Power Scans

Scans from the January 1992 Nintendo Power covering Super Castlevania IV. I still love the layouts and the artwork they worked into their magazine spreads.

Super Castlevania IV is the shit, what more can I say? It's got the smoothest whip action in any 2-D Castlevania, a ridiculous amount of levels, great difficulty curve, amazing music, and if you haven't played it you should probably do so immediately. Don't even read the last paragraph, you could be playing Super Castlevania IV.

Anyway, enjoy the gallery! Click the images for the full size.

Cool NES Romhack

Cool NES romhack. Master Higgins has cool glasses and wears his hat backwards. Gameplay otherwise unchanged. Honeygirl got an update as well.

All of the other sprites looked too good to change.

Anyway, most hacks look absolutely horrible. I wanted to make something that people could actually play--mod to the classic that I'd actually play. I'm pretty happy with the results!

All the sprites are changed, no loose pixels or weird/strange/cheap graphics.

Download Cool Advent Isle

Development time: 4 hours. Check out the screenshot:

Pixel Art: Mite

A pixel painting inspired by Chinese art.

E3 2011: Wii U Controller Revealed

Iwata claims this isn't meant to be a portable gaming system, but you'll be able to play Wii games on the go and Wii U games without the TV.

This was a natural evolution in systems. Nintendo claiming it's not a portable system is only because of the stigma that goes along with handheld gaming being a generation behind console gaming.

It's possible you'll still need the Wii-U to be turn on and hooked to the internet for this thing to work, but perhaps not.

Nintendo calls it the future, but this thing is already the past. The Dreamcast had a portable memory card with a primitive screen, so it's hard to get excited about this thing.

Also, to be blunt, using an iPad in the store last year was enough to convince me that I never wanted another touch-screen product that didn't work as well as Apple.

As the entire world moves toward cloud computing, the idea of consoles strikes me as incredibly dated. The best games over the last few years have all been downloadable titles or indie releases (usually both). If there is one thing almost all E3 commentators have in common this year, it's the idea that somehow the industry doesn't get gamers.

The video game industry, more than anything, simply knows how to advertise. They know how to sell. They don't exactly know how to make good games because they never stopped to ask, "What makes a game good?"

"What makes a good game?" is a very different question from "How do I impress the average reviewer?" All reviewers seem to demand is big-budget appearance, "fun-factor," and "playable." What if, to be a good film, it simply had to be "fun"? Or simply "watchable"? Why don't game developers take their job more seriously? Why are most videogames, intellectually, regressing even further and reinforcing stereotypes and cliches that were barely acceptable in the '80s? Why does any philosophical discussion in a video game feel 200 years old? Why are there so many cutscenes? Why are the games so easy?