[GameRatty] tag: child

LocoRoco game designer talks about his little blobs of fun

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:30:15 +0000

Who can frown at these round, bouncy, smiley, critters? Apparently, some people can. Crispy Gamer puts LocoRoco game designer Tsutomu Kouno in the spotlight and got some info about his cute creations, and critics that call them racist, even going as far as claiming they look like penises.

So what exactly are they? Called a "yellow garbage bag" by a Crispy Gamer interviewer in jest, Kouno clarifies that his funny creation isn't a waste receptacle. "No. He's not a garbage bag. He's nothing," he says, adding that it's alright if LocoRoco is seen that way.

Apparently, a yellow garbage bag is not the only thing that these guys look like. Critics have gone as far as claiming that the innocent little blobs are "racist" and they look like penises. "Honestly? I haven't thought about that at all. In fact, the characters that some people have said are racist are among my favorites," he said. "If the characters make people uncomfortable, I feel sorry for them. Me, I just think they're really cool."

As far as the market goes, Kouno doesn't mind that Sony's LocoRoco has cute competition out there, saying, "I think that there should be more simple games like this out there. We should have a lot more of them." It's also possible that LocoRoco can come to the PS3, but that hasn't been decided yet.

Inspiration-wise, Kouno recalls that there was really no basis from his life experiences that led to the creation of LocoRoco. When asked if there was anything at all that might've contributed, this was his reply:

You know, honestly, I don't think so. I've just loved games since I was very small. I started writing little programs when I was very young. I think maybe the only constant outside influence for me has been music. And my love of music came from my mother, so maybe that would qualify. Ever since I was a child, I've loved to create things. So every time I create a game, I get that same sense of satisfaction. My two goals are to feel that sense of satisfaction, and to surprise people. Whenever I make something, my goal is always to surprise people with something new.

There you have it - LocoRoco is a fun game born out of fun, and a gamers love for video games. To me, they look like blobby smileys with ears. As far as penis-resemblances go, well, don't blame the game if your member is yellow and swollen.

Ask X3F: Treasured memories edition

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Filed under: X3F Features

Geez, kids, we've got more questions than we can shake a raw hunk of undead flesh at. Trust us when we say that we're capable of shaking a hunk of undead flesh at a lot of questions, but this is overwhelming even to us. Are we to believe that you actually want -- possibly need -- our sage advice? We're truly touched. This week in Ask X3F, we cover child account promotion, saved films, achievement tracking and more. Now please stop touching us. It's creepy.

Got a question for Ask X3F? Maybe you have a story or some information you'd like to share? Send it all to ask [att] xbox360fanboy [dawt] com.

Continue reading Ask X3F: Treasured memories edition

Ask X3F: Treasured memories edition originally appeared on Xbox 360 Fanboy on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dragon Quest returns to DS

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:12:47 +0000

Square-Enix today announced the forthcoming release of the next game in the Dragon Quest series. Based on the Japanese-only SNES RPG Dragon Quest V, Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride - released next Spring - is the follow-up to this year’s superb The Chapters of the Chosen.

The press release announces that the game is ‘considered to be one of the best games in the entire series’ but I’m sure Square-Enix said that about the last one, too. Though if it is as good as COTC, it’ll likely offer more excellent old-school role-playing with some amusing regional accents shining through in the written dialogue.

The story features three generations of the same family, with your protagonist starting the game as a child, following his father around the gameworld. You’ll get the chance to recruit monsters to your party to assist you in battle, and a new feature for this DS remake is the Exotica Net, which enables you to transfer items to and from other players wirelessly on your travels - a little like the ‘mingling’ system in The World Ends With You.

It’s the second of the so-called Zenithia trilogy, which concludes with the forthcoming Realms of Reverie, which could well be out before 2009 is over. Hardcore RPGers have plenty to look forward to next year, then.

Bookmark to:

Foldschool Heroes takes on the Commodore and more with Series 3

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:20:00 +0000

While the Foldschool Heroes project is not "hot breaking news," as people sometimes like to shriek around the Dtoid offices when a big story breaks, the work of Marshall Alexander has been making people smile for some time now. In his most recent papercraft series, he offers up his childhood memories in foldable form, as evidenced above.

Check out his site to download the free templates for these -- they're easy to make, unlike some of the papercraft creations out there, and they can bring a little bit of cheer to your desk, especially if you were a child of the '80s like me.

Eternity's Child Still Coming to WiiWare but with Improvements

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:47:33 +0000

Back when Eternity’s Child was announced for the PC, it was also announced that the game would be headed to WiiWare sometime before Christmas 2008. Well, the holiday is almost upon us and no word about Eternity’s Child heading to the Wii was anywhere to be found. That is, until WiiWare World got official word from publisher Alten8 that the game is indeed still coming. However, there is still no set release date.

Alten8 is currently in the process of recoding the game to fix some of the issues that were prevalent in the PC version. The creator of the game, Luc Bernard admitted in the comments section of WiiWare World that while there were indeed issues with the PC version, the WiiWare port will be different because Alten8 has “redone the game mechanics and changed the controls in a good way. [It] basically controls now like a normal platformer. Alten8 have been spending months making a good control scheme and also redesigning levels, so the both products will only share the name and graphics.”

That is great news, because all things considered, it is probably one of the prettiest games out there which is only a testament to Luc’s enormous artist talent and creativity. Luc is a super nice guy, and I wish him the best of luck with the revamped version of Eternity’s Child.

In the meantime, you may wish to check back with us often because Alten8 will eventually set a release date and you won’t wanna miss out.

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GameSetLinks: Welcome To The Otherland

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:00:00 +0000

All kinds of happy goodness on GameSetLinks, this time out, headed up, at least visually, by the completely bonkers 'cyberpunk' PC MMO Otherland, which is the only game I've seen that makes Second Life's mandelbrot chic excesses look visually tame.

Luckily, there's some other stuff in here to make your brains explode less, including the latest instalment of the adorably quiffed Kenka Banchou series, classic Chris Crawford game box scans, the case against art games (rise up, artisans!), and quite a few others besides.

Man of mystery:

NCSX Import Video Games & Toys: Kenka Banchou 3: Zenkoku Seiha - New Import, In Stock
An interesting cult schoolyard brawler series that's Japan-only gets a third instalment: 'The new protagonist in Kenka Bancho is a fresh-faced youth named Takashi Sakamoto who's living on the wrong side of the school yard. He's tough, fast, and has got a serious problem with authority figures. To that end, he gets into fights with other toughs and bristles in the presence of teachers.'

Old Paradigms and a Podcast | How They Got Game
The Stanford Cabrinety Collection has some really interesting scans of early Chris Crawford simulation games for Atari - not just Scram, which was the nuclear-related one I knew about.

Feature: 15 Indie Games for the Holidays - Big Download Blog
Great selection, and another example of people caring about the indie scene, hurray.

One more past blast: Enigma - The Gameshelf
Andrew Plotkin knows good puzzles when he sees them - so I direct you to Enigma, an update of Atari ST puzzle classic Oxyd.

gamebunny » Blog Archive » Otherland: What In The World?
The PC Gamer screenshots/info made it look MMO-bubble cuckoo in the best cyberpunk ways: 'Singapore-based developer, Real U is bringing author, Tad Williams' sci fi novels to life, where varied virtual worlds are lorded over by the super rich. One moment you are traipsing across a “steampunk Mars world”, the next, a “Through the LookingGlass” environment where Oz is “over-industrialized” and out of control.' [UPDATE: Wait, GamesRadar has the preview up, with suitably Bladerunnerneon screenshots.]

Game Design Advance » The Case Against ‘Art-Games’
It's sorta fun we're having this discussion, even if it all seems a little definitionally random: 'The prevailing wisdom may be that games have not achieved the vaunted status of ‘art’, but perhaps the problem isn’t with games. Perhaps the problem is with our own ability to recognize their artistic merits.'

GAMBIT: Updates: Introducing Ochos Locos and the Locos Engine!
'Ochos Locos is a tiny game with a tremendous goal: get players of all ages and nationalities playing and, eventually, creating together. Developed in Python, Ochos Locos was originally created for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO laptop and is also now available for Windows and Linux environments.'

Free Pixel » Looking into Shadows - should Machinima be interactive?
Excellent piece on the PS3 demo: 'Linger in Shadows tries to make exactly this activity, the play with the material of the projected image, accessible to the player. When I shake the PS3 controller, I shake the image, break the sound and continuity of the “film” clip, and find the space in-between. Like the momentary blackness between two projected film images we explore the space between individual visual
moments.'

12-year-old playing Sakura in SFIV TV ad, 16-year-olds deemed too elderly

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:22:00 +0000

I think this must be some sort of Japanese dream: A 16-year-old schoolgirl portrayed by a 12-year-old schoolgirl. In essence, the perfect crime.

It seems that Capcom couldn't find any 16-year-olds that looked child-like enough to play Sakura for the Street Fighter IV TV spot, so they are doing what many other Japanese businessmen do, and have turned to girls in puberty for the answer to their frustrations. I am joking of course, not everyone in Japan is a pedophile. Just all the adults.

Still, for all the light-hearted quasi-bigoted stereotyping I'm doing, I can't help but feel that least ten responses to this article will contain the word "delicious," and at least half of those comments will be sincere.

Desert Bus for Hope 2 rolls on for Child's Play

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Filed under: Culture

As a reminder to those of you who like either helping sick kids or bearing witness to the most boring things in existence, the crew from LoadingReadyRun has just launched the second annual "Desert Bus for Hope" campaign. You can watch as they raise money for the Child's Play charity by playing the astonishingly boring "Desert Bus" mini-game from the unreleased Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. How long they'll play is entirely up to you.

They're already guaranteed a 71 hour run, but by giving cash you can force them to go even longer. If there's a better way to spend your money than helping charity while simultaneously making a group of grown men die a little bit inside, we haven't heard of it.

Desert Bus for Hope 2 rolls on for Child's Play originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All your motion was a lie

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:19:31 +0000

Hey Nintendo, what’s going on? I know you’re busy raking in those gobs of cash with that Wii thing taking over the world, but I think you might want to have a looksee over here. No, not at the child without a DS in his hands. Right over here, where the company Sixense might have made a huge stride in motion control technology. If you’ll note the video embedded above, you’ll see the tech — entitled TrueMotion3D — being shown at NVISION08. The technology doesn’t rely on accelerometer, and instead it uses a magnetic field to track your hand motions in real time, with a 10 millisecond refresh rate. So here, I’m just going to give you a little tip Nintendo, and this one is for free. You buy this man, and tell LucasArts to finally come out with the that f***ing lightsaber game. Simple-as-that.

Give someone else a reason to be thankful

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:08:00 +0000

Happy Turkey Day to you USA-ians out there! Us Canucks had ours more than a month ago. Copycats :P

Regardless of where you live, I'm sure that most of you have many reasons to be thankful. So while you're thinking about how grateful you are, why not pay-it-forward a bit?

Child's Play has started it's annual donor drive. Most gamers are familiar with the charity started by Penny Arcade where people can donate toys, books, movies and games to local children's hospitals. Sick kids who are stuck in the hospital over the holiday will get to keep some of the gifts donated. Game systems and some other items will stay at the hospitals so that sick kids can escape from their pain and loneliness for a while.

The One Laptop Per Child Foundation has brought back their Give One Get One offer where one amount will buy you 2 laptops, one that's sent to you and one that's sent to a child in a developing country. While they haven't yet reached their $100/laptop goal, they're pretty close. Your contributions will not only help a kid connect to the world, but will help the foundation continue its work.

Not all of us have been so fortunate this year that we have room in our budgets for charitable contributions. The economy has brought hard times for a lot of people. But you can still give from the heart. Literally. I've posted here several times about how to become a Stem Cell Donor. I've posted this because it has hit home to me and making the importance of this issue known has been a huge fight for my friend and neighbour, Tamu.

Less than a year ago, her brother was diagnosed with leukemia. He died 2 weeks ago. Minorities are especially under-represented on the donor registry, the numbers are frightening. He was lucky enough to find a match. Not only that, but the graft was successful! Unfortunately, it came too late and the cancer was too strong. He lost the fight a few weeks later.

But because Tamu and Emru raised awareness, the number of registrants this past year saw a significant spike. And already a few of the people they know have been contacted by the registry because they are a match for someone else. So please make the difference in someone else's life (and for their family too) and sign up to be a marrow donor. Scared it'll hurt? Think it's dangerous? Maybe you should check to see if what you know about marrow donation is a fact or a myth.