Wednesday 18 November 2009

pixels and parappa at game city day 4





and day 4 of gamecity starts like this...

just about to head into town for more @gamecity, anyone know when live @onelifeleft is going to be? Do i risk going to curry sessions?


the answer was yes. gotta love mystery twitterer (although he wasn't entirely sure what i was on about) and the status updates from two of the OLL presenters saying they were still on the motorway, but yaaaaay, it was so worth making it to the final curry session - all worked out to be timed quite nicely in the end :)



The pixel ani curry session w/spiteyourface & alaskanmilitaryschool @gamecity was ace, want to go get out the lego and gameboy camera now :)


alaskan military school are the genii behind the 15 pixel gamecity idents (play the game, see how many you can guess!) which i absolutely *love*. spite your face are the genii behind the whole lego stop motion animation phenomena, and the dudes who did lego camelot which appeared on the monty python & the quest for the holy grail dvd (2nd favourite film ever). one of the spite your face guys managed to 'play' music from the gameboy chunky camera which wasn't exactly a pop sensation but nonetheless impressive. i still have my [sister's] gameboy camera somewhere...


i love how both of them managed to distil such vast things into pixel form (either literally, or in lego pixels) and still be so recognisable and powerful. simplification of pixel art seems to bring out the sheer quality of things sometimes i think. but then i would say that with my hama bead obsession ;)



is sat in front of jonathan smith watching @onelifeleft @gamecity :)


it's quite bizarre seeing one of your favourite podcasts being recorded live, but i was glad i finally got the chance after missing them 2 years ago (when i was yet to be a listener, but had just heard about it from ste curran's talk). even bizarrer to turn around and see jonathan smith from TT games (mr lego everything) sat behind you, enjoying the show! i wonder if he's started work on lego sweeney todd yet...



really enjoyed Mr matsuura's majestic march @gamecity - much fun with kazoos and now i *need* to play vib ribbon :)


this was the warm up for masaya matsuraa's keynote the next day, but was possibly actually way more fun. we got given kazoos on the way in and practiced warming up a bit by going through every sci fi theme tune we could possible remember (old school star trek and stargate themes probably worked best out of the bunch - imperial deathmarch does not suit the kazoo and super mario bros is too hard...) the reason for all of this was two-fold - first he was promoting his new wiiware game, Major Minor's Majestic March, which looks hella fun to play. matsuraa-san is the king of rhythm action games (i learned) as he was behind stuff like vib ribbon and parappa the rapper (both of which i should really hunt out and play properly sometime), but i really like how he's managed to evolve the gameplay when so many people seem to be doing the same old thing. the majestic march doesn't require you to stick to a pre-determined beat and test your accuracy - it lets you keep your own tempo, and change it according to the needs of the song. way more like real music performance than mere karaoke :)

the second reason we got kazoos was for our mass performance of hey jude together. brilliantly smily moment, harkened back to when i got linked to this hey jude lyric flowchart diagram when i got back (absolutely genius)



Watching gamers dance to chip tunes is funny (i fully include myself in this)


nerdiest party/night out i think i've ever been to, but at least there *was* dancing, which i wasn't entirely expecting! i have to confess i'm not the hugest fan of chip tunes, but syphus was pretty cool, sabrepulse played the blockbuster theme tune and i had an excuse to boogie :)



fun times partying with @onelifeleft @gamecity, dancing to knights of triforce muse/zelda mashup was immense :)


i think this is the closest i can find to the song in question, but i'm sure the version @byronicman played was far more remixy/mashup than badly played guitar cover. if anyone can find it, link me up - i *need* that mp3 in my life :D



No comments: