IGF

Check out the The Independent Games Festival for games less than ordinary. Reported in The Hollywood Reporter Video Games column for April 6th.

Games and companies mentioned in the article:

• Terminus
  
• Tread Marks
  
• Wild Earth
  
• Oasis
  
• Alien Hominid
  
• Introversion Software
  
• Valve Software and
• Steam
  
• Moondance Games
  

searching for an original game

I'm searching for games that don't follow the typical map of Nintendo Mario games, where you walk around jumping on things or collecting things, or first person shooters where you do the same from a three dimensional perspective. Inspired by Nintendo's upcoming Brain Age for the Nintendo DS and the latest pet simulator, Nintendogs, I've begun a search on the craziest, weirdest, most oddball games around, in the hopes that the game industry will soon grow to adding to these titles.

Currently in the news:

Nintendo urges game makers to innovate(3/24/06, Reuters UK)

Brain Teasers(3/27/06, Wired News). See also: Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson and PQ: Practical Intelligence Quotient from d3 for PSP.

You May Unrot Your Mind(3/28/06, Washington Post)

Nintendo DS Brain Age. Available in the US April 17th.

Brain Age Nintendo site.

Google search for "weird Japanese games":

Intelligent Artifice post on Happiness Controller, from Sony. GamePro article about it.

Intelligent Artifice post from 2003 about innovative games. Post from 2003 about strange Japanese games, part 1, part 2.

rant, whine, 'splain, espouse... link to japanese flash game site.

GamePro article about Uo, a game where you play a fish.

Finny the Fish & the Seven Waters. The Sony Uo game where you play a fish, described by ign.com.

Games * Design * Art * Culture post about the state of the gaming industry.

Eidos Fresh games.

Fluid. A music making tool/game.

Baby Universe. Image-making tool/game.

It came from Japan: Volume 9 from gamespy.com. The second installment of this column's look at Japanese game oddities, from 2003. Interesting genre: management sims. After reading that the game consisted of being a sports manager, I was less interested as I would have been had it instead been some radical game about being a middle manager at some no name company. There is something sublime about playing a game based on mundane tasks.

refuse

Digital Technology will soon litter the streets like paper.

On Hiatus.

Boomselection has closed up shop, but GYBO is going strong. Check them out for the latest and greatest. I've moved on from mashes and mixes for the moment and revisited old '90s music, Tricky, Martina Topley-Bird, Thievery Corporation, Mazzy Star, etc.

On Break.

Here's a picture.

Rigorous Intuition: Correspondence and sanctuary (Part One)

Rigorous Intuition: Correspondence and sanctuary (Part One)

Essential Mix

Ended up buying the Essential Mix 2003 summer mix from eBay. Get it if you can. Great mix.