Buddy of mine suggested the other day that the Move controller could use a little more Star Wars, a little less Umbra.

I concur.

Above, we are pleased to link this fantastic little editing project by Mark Dury.

I’ll let him explain it in his own words:

I was in the mood to make something silly. Or maybe I just wanted to destroy something beautiful. Either way, the finale from A New Hope ended up getting digitized into my edit suite, and in very short order my suspicions were confirmed: I could make it look like Luke missed his chance to blow up the Death Star. After sifting through the footage I realized there was a treasure trove of moments that could be exploited. Mark Hamill was just so expressive in his role. Sometimes just a quick glance, or the way a phrase was uttered could be put into a completely different context and really change the outcome of the whole sequence.

It isn’t perfect, far from it, but I think it stands up pretty well, and there is plenty in there for the fans to enjoy. Special thanks to Ryan for his input as well. It would have been a mistake to leave Tarkin out. Hope you like it!

I still don’t know how the fuck he cut around the music.

Cross-posted from Perpetual Geek Machine.

… as you can see (on a computer, anyway. Phones and various other mobile things still get WPTouch).

Not sure if I’ll keep it, but the old one was getting rather stale. It’s not finished either so don’t mind the edges.

It seemed fitting in that I have now moved everything to a cloud. I rent a cloud. For my website. That’s all I know.

Click here to download the MP3. Or you can subscribe in iTunes or Zune.

Be sure to check out the Perpetual Geek Machine site as well, because Dan’s show notes are the stuff of legend.

(And hey, if you enjoyed it, we would be forever grateful if you could spend 30 seconds and say nice things about us on the iTunes store comments. Or tell us how much you want to kill us. I leave it to you.)

Context, such as it is.

Proving once again that I’m a whore for both art and developers, I will be buying this next game even though I know nothing about it aside from seeing a few screenshots and knowing who the developer is.

thatgamecompany, creator of last year’s wonderful Flower is at it again, though with what looks like a more traditional game if the screens are anything to go by. These shots leaked two days early and there will be an official presentation later in E3. For now, feast your eyes on these:

It’s looking like an adventure game with an emphasis on exploration with grand vistas in the tradition of Shadow of the Colossus. And I want to buy it already.

This game should have been a major presentation at the E3 conference. Yes, I know I’m biased.

Seriously, these are big, so… forewarned, etc. It’s worth it.)
(more…)

protip: you see me sassin’ you back there? you guys cant be takin’ shit like that day 1. its like prison, you gotta fuck somebody up and make an example out of em before these NPD thugs and the OT religion thread people start thinking you’re soft

A short time ago, some new video surfaced on the web showing a family from a family-type magazine playing a pre-release Project Natal game called River Rush.

This video looks ridiculous. Ridiculous enough that it quickly was transformed into an animated GIF, which made the rounds on various videogame fora, like a parade of stupid, honking and gyrating for all the kids to see. Go ahead and click.

Yeah.

It sums up the main image problem for Natal right now in a particularly succinct way. Basically: I Am Supremely Silly and Seem Un-Fun.

I want to pay particular attention to the kid in the red shirt in the front. This is the most honest reaction I’ve ever seen. He starts moving as (presumably) instructed, is instantly confused, and then looks around at his family to see what he’s doing wrong. They are all flailing like idiots, but smiling while they do it, so he kind of smiles and goes along.

Now, to be fair, you already look stupid playing videogames. Any videogames, motion-based or no. But calling attention to the particularly spectacular level of stupid – again, unrelated to actual fun – engendered by motion control (“waggle”) amplifies this sensation. Natal is going to be hard to sell, because it really makes you look stupid. Now, this wasn’t a big problem for the Wii. But at least you were holding something that presumably needed to be swung around. This GIF, above, is almost disturbing, transforming this nice wholesome family into seizure-prone mimes. It may not be a gameplay issue, but it is absolutely an image / PR issue. Someone on NeoGAF mentioned that this is “the world’s hardest GIF to spin”. Those are real people, in the target audience, playing a real Natal game on a real (albeit pre-release) Natal 360 system. It’s not contrived, it’s not a marketing video. It’s honest. And that’s what it looks like.

This GIF might be the toughest uphill marketing challenge the Xbox people have had to face since the whole RRoD issue. They desperately need a hit game to connect to this thing. After examining it for months now, I am still stumped as to how they are going to make this work.

But then again, maybe I am so far outside the target audience that I can’t even comprehend it.

Microsoft’s Cirque du Soleil-headlined “open to the public but closed to the internet” Natal demo is this happening Sunday night. I will be peering into the twitterstream that evening to see what impressions are like.

…
Update June 11 – here’s another one. Yeesh.

Not too much going on these days but I felt the need to share this screenshot with basically everyone in the universe. If I do this right, clicking will embiggen. If not, I just suck.

Yeah. That’s a brand new Contra game for PSN and XBLA. In 2D. And in HD. With traditional hand-drawn art. It’s from the folks at Arc System Works, developer and publisher of such games as Guilty Gear and BlazBlue.

You’re welcome.