Misc Link Post

Calvin and Hobbes

Every so often, I will stumble onto a tribute to Calvin and Hobbes and they are almost always a great read.  This latest one from the AV club is such a one.  While I will always have a certain association with Garfield the Cat, Calvin and Hobbes is, in my opinion,  far and away the best daily comic strip every published.  After reading this article, I thought:  wouldn't it be cool if Bill Watterson quietly released a book of Susie Derkins comics?

Ricky does great fan art but lots of original material as well

Mr. Revenge

While I’m on the subject of comic strips, I’d like to mention that an old friend of mine has started selling his art.  I first met Ricky working at a Movie Theater when I was 19, and he was a fantastic artist even then.  He has since developed his abilities further, and is really one excellent illustrator.  Check out his stuff on deviant art as Mr. Revenge, or look him up on facebook under Ricky Romero.

Tetris

I found a note I made to myself at one of my recent jobs as an Executive Assistant.  It says: "It's not like Tetris per se, It's like two games of tetris at once, and they speed up and slow down erratically."  This was my attempt to describe my job working for two different executives and managing their calendars and travel plans.  I actually think it might be really fun to play two different tetris games at once.  To that end, I decided to look for one, and I found an exhaustive list of Tetris Variants, including one interesting website:  chesstris.

-Dcom

Zelda and Final Fantasy Mashup Fanart

An Artist called Shattered Earth made a series of Legend of Zelda title screens in the style of Final Fantasy.  They work out really nicely, my personal favorite is the Links Awakening one for how cool the wind fish looks. 

Have a look!

-D

Webcomic Post: Homestuck

I tried to post about Homestuck over a year ago, but I couldn't narrow down my thoughts.  This bulleted list helps. 

Oh, it starts innocently enough...

Things you should know about Homestuck:

• Homestuck is not a video game, it is a webcomic, but it will be a video game soon!  
• Homestuck is hilarious and features a great number of jokes about data structures in the first Act
• It also makes lots of jokes about video games.
• The story is very long and vast and absurdly complex.  More so than any rpg I've played except maybe Xenogears
• Homestuck has really great cinema scenes
• It also has a really good soundtrack
• Homestuck is free to read and all the music is free to listen to.  
• Homestuck is mega-popular with the next generation* 
• Homestuck has a devoted and loyal fanbase and huge catalog of fan art. 
• Homestuck might just be the Ulysses of the Internet
• My favorite characters are Jade, Dave and Karkat and Terezi
• I took my font choice from Homestuck
• Prior to Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures produced Problem Sleuth, which is also hilarious, imaginative and epic.  But less overblown and more lighthearted. (and not nearly as long) 
• Homestuck has recently begun updating again after a year-long pause.  It should be finished by the end of next year.  

Basically, Homestuck is everything the best jRPGs are, but it's not actually a video game.  I recommend it to everyone who likes jRPGs and has a few dozen hours to waste reading it.  Once you get in, it's really tough to put down, even though it will make you sick sometimes when it meanders around for aeons.  Have fun!

-D

*there are some who would call them... Tim?  or 'millenials,' --actually, I prefer Tim, I'm going to call that generation Tim from now on

Tetris and More Tetris

(I found this post in the attic, dusted it off, and now I'm sending it back out to you.  Tetris art really is a topic that keeps on giving)

Now that I've taken the lid off of the Tetris-can, I have lots more to cover on Tetris.  I'd like to mention that it was a family-fun-time game.  In that, I remember that we rented it one day, probably from placer, and everybody played it.  Or at least my dad did.  He really loved it, and the next day, he left to return the game, and came home with a newly purchased copy for us to have.  He didn't play a whole lot, (not like a certain Tetris Genius I know)   but it was a pretty sweet gaming experience - very rare. 

Tetris fashion:
Now, I don't know much about fashion.  ... ... or color schemes or anything, but I've always been a big fan of the NES version of tetris and it's various color combinations.  I remember designing a series of izod style shirts with my friend 'Lary, using the tetris shapes and color combinations.  She's an artist, so the fact that she agreed with me on the color combos was all the validation I needed.
If you look at the different levels of NES tetris, it's easy to see like a pants, shirt, tie combination in any of the three-color palletes.  orange, grey, white. level 9 done.  And the black background is like a safety if you need to mellow it all out a bit.

Tetris Dreams:  (The Tetris Effect)
Also - there's probably more to be said on the subject of tetris dreams.  That is, 'the tetris effect' which describes any sort of dream which is like a tetris dream.  I definitely had this while playing Final Fantasy, recently.  And usually when I return to an RPG type game after a long break.  Or any sort of 'build a character' time game.  Sim City did it to me when I really got into it:  I would daydream about building a city, and different approaches I would take.
Tony Hawk was the last 'new innovation' type game that did this.  After playing Tony Hawk, I wanted to grind every edge of every surface I encountered.  This effect was even stronger when riding in a car.
No, wait, scratch that.  Starseed Pilgrim is the last game to give me Tetris Dreams.  

Tetris Art: 
The other thing I want to talk about is Tetris Art.  Jaconian made a comment about a cross-stitch idea, which I think would work fantastically with tetris designs.  And, really, the great thing about cross-stitch is that it's a physical thing, so you get to hold it in your hand, which is awesome.  Below I've listed about a million different examples of art inspired by Tetris, and there are many more out there!

Tetris Art Links:  

http://blog.thegiven.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tetris-art2.jpg

construction cranes

http://www.walls360.com/v/vspfiles/photos/19441-1.jpg

pretty square

http://dailyinspires.com/tetris-wallpapers/

tetris wallpapers

http://walyou.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/01/Tetris_Gadgets_and_Designs_21.jpg

origami tetris cube

http://setofvectors.com/free-vectors-eps-ai/tetris-patterns-vector/

website for above image

http://www.fodrizzle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Tetris-World.jpg

world map in tetris

http://www.feeldesain.com/feel/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/feeldesain-tetris-world-map-open.jpg

bigger world map tetris

http://a1.s6img.com/cdn/box_004/post_14/488567_7600214_b.jpg

smb mushroom tetris

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/522276

TuperTarioTros

hooooooooly shit!  Mario/Tetris crossover.  This is the greatest thing ever!!

http://www.firebox.com/product/916/Tetris-3D

Actual tetris game.. like, phsyical game.  I wonder how it works. 

http://maglipid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Nail-Art-Design-Tetris-500x375.jpg

Tetris finger nail paint

http://cdn.unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/tetris_design_4.jpg

Tetris shoes, I want

http://inhabitat.com/images/TetrisShelvesNEW2.jpg

tetris stacking shelves.  Boy, I want. 

http://bp.uuuploads.com/pumpktris-playable-tetris-game-inside-pumpkin/pumpktris-playable-tetris-game-inside-pumpkin-1.jpg

tetris jackolantern

Wow, what a Vomitous pile of Tetris Art.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

-D

Hyrule Warriors

Update:  Nintendo really is paying attention, check it out:

From the "Hyrule Warriors" trailer at E3.   Looks a bit like this fan art, donut?  

Legend of Zelda Clockwork Empire

I understand that there has been a buzz for a Wii U Zelda game, especially since E3.  But what interests me just as much is this proposal for a new Zelda game, put together a year ago by the webcomic artist Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak.  As a proof of concept, this game design looks pretty good, in my opinion.  Diaz' art style lends itself to the Legend of Zelda, and his idea of swapping Link and Zelda's roles is a good one.  

As a matter of fact, it looks like the Zelda-is-the-hero idea may come into effect in the upcoming Wii-U Zelda game.  At least, that's part of the buzz, and I welcome it.  There have been a bunch of Zelda games, and the series is long overdue to be reworked.  The gameplay trailer looks fantastic, so I am pretty excited to see more.  

-D

Further Links:  (Or Zeldas)

• Also, the guy (Aaron Diaz) who put together the game proposal also is planning to do an illustrated Silmarillion.
• Zelda starring Zelda is a continual theme among Legend of Zelda fans.  Examples of sweet Zelda Hero art abound.
• The Brainy Gamer is a thoughtful video game professor, blogger and podcaster who loves Zelda, and has spent a great effort thinking about the future of Zelda (back in 2008).

Zelda Fan Art

Well, I don't have a post for you all, so I thought I'd just go through some of my bookmarks for some sweet video game art.  Fan art, on a whole, is an incredible thing.  Some amazing stuff bubbles to the surface on the internet.  Like that sweet Ganon picture up there.  Isn't it totally awesome?  That image is part of a series of of Legend of Zelda images I found over at this place called the Zelda Dungeon.

I really appreciate the art style, and I also appreciate that it is all images from the original Legend of Zelda game on NES.  We've waxed about nostalgia for this series before, and about the potential it may have lost over the years.  Images like this remind me of that potential, of how these simplistic critters could look totally sweet and how there could be a rich mythology behind the happenings in the Zelda games.Also, it reminds me of all the cool names the baddies in Zelda have:  Gleok, Dodongo, Keese.

The artist is called Deimos-Remus at deviantart.com.

Also at Zelda Dungeon, I found an interesting article about Skyward Sword that used terms like 'skill scaling'   'sub optimal dominant strategy' and the like.  I love this game theory stuff, and I harbor dreams of being that kind of a smarty pants and getting to talk about video game design all day.

The writer for this article GaroXIcon, and I like him so far.  In addition to the above article, he pitches a direct sequel to A Link To The Past, and says that Majora's Mask is his favorite game of all time.  How do you like that?  GaroXicon is my new video game critic crush.  and Deimos-Remus is my new video game art crush.

-D

Read my chips - books and video games, vs or co-op?

Of all media, my first love was books.  Before I'd ever seen an 'Intendo' or played Atari, or, as far as I can tell, even watched TV, my Mom would read to us kids every night before going to sleep.  And I don't mean to brag, but she was a fantastic reader.  My Mom always loved children's lit, and she read with great enthusiasm.  It didn't hurt that she had tastes suited to her particular talents, the two favorites being Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss.  Highly lyrical writing, my Mom would read these to us over and again in her bubbly, sing-song reading voice, and we grew to love and anticipate reading time.  She would hold the books open for us to see, and I would follow my mom's voice and the words on the page, slowly decoding them as I learned to read myself.

The first career I ever wanted was to be a novelist.  Long before I knew anything about what it was like to have a job, or support myself, I was sure I wanted to write books.  The earliest effort I can still recall was a story about Dragon Warrior II (fanfiction!).  I borrowed the plot, setting, names and most of the action from the game, but I filled in the details.  I seem to remember I finished the first chapter and it was maybe ten binder pages long.  It involved the main characters being sent on their journey by the king, and then going to the weapon and armor shop to buy their gear, then going to the Inn to sleep.  Pretty generic, I know, and yet I still remember what the town looked like in my mind, the real-world variation on the 8-bit Dragon Warrior graphics.

The power of the imagination is really amazing to me;  even (seemingly) generic, unoriginal thoughts have their own unique qualities.  And books have an amazing ability to bring this out in people like me.  Even a writer who spends very little time on character description - my mind will simply insert a character of my own making based on... it's own arbitrary decisions, I guess.  Nothing can quite do this for like a book.  I'm not sure why, but I think it may be the fact that there are no pictures.  That through words, only, my imagination builds a world of depth.  (I'm really going to begin speculating here, so... consider yourself warned.  )

If the internet explosion of fan art is any indication, other people get their own inspired images video games and other media.  Not to mention my own example of Dragon Warrior II.  However, that example was informed by the act of writing, the imaginary world took shape as I wrote about it.  I am tempted to cite the lower-detail, symbolic imagery of DW II and other 8-bit games, not to mention comics and cartoons-- in an effort to claim that the more realistic graphics of movies, tv and modern video games somehow dumb down the imagination and don't challenge it as much.  But that's probably bullshit.  I mean, there is intuitive sense there, but I have seen plenty of movies and had dreams about them, and seen new worlds of creativity using the imagery contained within.

It's not like I can measure this shit, but I am wildly tempted to place video games and books in a Versus context, instead of co-op, as I did with my DW II writing as a young'un.  Am I just aggressive and cantankerous?  Or is there something there, and I can't quite figure it out?  Whatever the case, I do know that I'm prone to asking rhetorical questions, so that must count for something.

In conclusion, I haven't been playing a lot of games lately, and I feel like what I really need is a good book.  I'm thinking Murakami.  I also think that books and games are fundamentally similar, and obviously different.  I'm mostly interested in how they are similar, and I'd like more of that part, please.  Thanks.

-D