a very rupee christmas and a starry new year...

shiny things :), originally uploaded by spugmeistress

...and coins for anyone who doesn't celebrate either! (wouldn't want you to miss out on displaying your 8bit love to the world)

i've been playing around with the larger (well, normal sized to everyone else) hama beads recently to come up with some new christmas tree decorations / holiday hangers in time for the impending festive season. if you don't have a tree, they also look good in windows where the translucent beads really catch the light nicely.

you can get a super mario star, super mario coin, red rupee or green rupee (or both!) or one of each in a super retro videogame christmas decoration gift four-pack. of course, they're also available on folksy for UK people, and as always i'm happy to do things in different colours, combinations or quantities if people ask nicely :)

i'm also always up for suggestions or requests - festive 8bit videogame sprites were a bit thin on the ground as i was researching, even from the snow-laden super mario levels, so i ended up going with generic shiny things in festive colours. maybe 5 gold rings from sonic the hedgehog would be a good next project? but if you can think of any christmas-themed videogames of a suitable era, let me know! either here, or on the OMEGAZOID facebook fan page and if you come up with a good enough idea, i might make you a prototype!

if you like the look of these, but want something a little bit more wearable, i've got some jewellery/accessories lined up ready to be listed so look out for those soon...

game city 5 and other such distractions

Pac Notts originally uploaded by Game City

wow, it's been nearly a year since my last post... since then i've changed jobs at work, joined a roller derby team, broke my wrist (yes those last two are connected...) and there's been another Game City festival in Nottingham, which was just as awesome as last year's! the photo above shows us playing pac-notts - live action running around pacman on the streets of nottingham, controlled by frantic mobile phone directions and a non-GPS enabled custom map back on laptops at HQ - run by the very lovely and very fun people from Pac-Lyon. too many other highlights to write about, especially as i was too busy having fun to tweet half as much as i did last year, but you can see some more about the week (and hunt for familiar faces in photos) here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/nov/01/gamecity-highlights
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/02/gamecity-humanises-gaming
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1520480@N24/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamecityfestival/
http://twitter.com/spugmeistress/game-city


apart from catching up and testing whether this thing still works, i just wanted to check in to say that i'm currently working on restocking both the etsy shop and folksy shop in time for the holidays, and if you want to join the Facebook page for (hopefully more frequent) updates, you can Like OMEGAZOID here :)

free games for free(?!) time

Mario´s Picross (Man!ac 6/95), originally uploaded by Kantenflimmern.

there's been a slight slow down again round these parts due to the usual pre-christmas insanity, but also exciting things afoot in the future of crafty/gamesy/internetty stuff - you'll hopefully hear more soon :)

in the meantime, i thought it might be good to provide some flash game links to distract everyone from the lack of blogging:

Small Worlds is an exploring game. some people have said that it only takes 30 mins to complete, but as someone who is sadly lacking in the basic videogame skill of jumping, i've obviously gotten more value out of it and still have only seen 3 of the gorgeously pixellated worlds that lie through the mysterious teleports.

Continuity is a weird one - it's like they took a really simple game and watch level and turned it into one of those slidey puzzles (which, for the record, i hate. i absolutely suck at them and still haven't completed the ones in professor layton, even with walkthroughs.) it's immensely clever, although takes a while to realise the nuances of why exactly you aren't allowed to go through the wall to the next screen yet, and soon ramps up the difficulty - just wish it had a save game.

but mostly i've just been playing Wii Picross. now i've finally completed Picross DS, and 3D Picross isn't out over here quite yet, this completely free website is keeping me more than occupied - I'm addicted to the daily puzzles and their advent challenge is proving quite interesting this time (is it sad to realise i've been playing this site long enough to remember the last two years' worth of christmas specials?) i bought a book of puzzles recently to carry round but the majority of them are logically incomplete, full of mistakes, or plain broken, which makes me appreciate wii picross even more. have to say i much prefer to use it on the pc than to the wii browser though.

and finally... not exactly a flash game, but i downloaded world of goo recently as part of their 'pay what you want' promotion - at first i was most intrigued by the experiment, and to be honest i still haven't got round to installing the mac version. however, they've also gone on to offer the first chapter as a free demo on wiiware, which *did* hook me in, and i finally got round to realising what i suspected all along: it's ace fun :) highly recommended, and yay for wiiware demos!

i've got the key, i've got the secret

collection of keys, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

it's quite disgraceful that i've been trailing this for over a year, but look, new collection! these keys are taken from various 8bit nintendo games (well, mostly legend of zelda, but one random mystery one in there too) and put on a necklace in order to make cheesy jokes like 'you've got the key to my heart!'. Link would be proud of such a chat up line, i'm sure...

i've always wanted one of the keys from the latchkey project, not only because they look so damn cool, and each one is unique, but also because of the unknown story behind each one - the mystery of knowing that a key must belong to an item that it unlocks and trying to reunite the two. is there a super secret prize at the end of the quest, or is the joy in the journey (that to be honest, i doubt many people have ever completed. but i'm not sure that's the point...)

on the subject of games and puzzles and fun with almost pointless point scoring, i just found out about noticin.gs and it looks awesome. just like with wii fit or singstar - the points/games/rules help give the experience some sort of legitimacy against time wasting, but they're really only a framing device for the real fun - such as shedding inhibitions with friends, interacting with the world around you.

anyway, if you want a key, they're available here:

etsy ($) : gold key necklace, silver key necklace, bronze key necklace

folksy (£) : gold key necklace, silver key necklace, bronze key necklace

game city's last stand - day 5

so I got no sleep friday night... :( horrible stinking cold from being too sociable, talking too much and generally being on holiday, but i wasn't about to let it get in the way of rocking out!

in the big tent @gamecity watching the world's first lego rock festival \m/, hope i can still sing with a stinking cold

they set the giant tent up with astroturf, deckchairs, umbrellas and lots and lots of lego, with giant lego bricks on stage and raina lee being incredibly enthusiastic and lovely. but whilst i waited for the rest of my band to arrive, there was a small matter of matsuraa-san's keynote in the ballroom to go to. there was live music, live playing of brand new rhythm games, lots of general excitement and margaret robertson doing an excellent job of interviewing landing exactly on the right side of the fangirl line.

waiting back stage for our brickstock performance @gamecity to a crowd of thousands (of minifigs ;)

but now it was time... after already hearing quite a few renditions of bryan adams and bon jovi, we decided to give the crowd a break and go for walking on sunshine by katrina and the waves. possibly not a wise choice as it goes on for*ever* at the end with bits i didn't know how to sing, and a bass player who had never played the game before, let alone in public! but we had fun, and rocked out, and Omegazoid seemed to go down well with the crowd :) definitely the highlight that i've been telling people about the most :D

finished rocking out to lego rock band in time to go see jonathan smith ballroom bricks @gamecity, lego alex james is uber cute!

and then straight after playing the game, had to run back to the ballroom to see the lovely jonathan smith talk about lego rock band. i like how the songs were picked to be ones that would make you feel awesome :) i also like how they've managed to take out most of the annoying bits and made the game even more fun, rather than just a change of song list. he told us afterwards that previous rock band DLC will work with lego rock band too which is pretty awesome (dependant on family friendly-ness, understandably, the Lego corp probably don't want their characters singing dodgy stuff). one of my favourite things has been the character design though - lego blur are adorable; i always had a crush on alex james and his lego'd up floppy fringe is incredibly cute - and lego queen follow quickly behind with the immensity that is brian may's curly lego mullet. the whole thing is tempting me horribly into the murky (well, seemingly expensive) world of lego minifig modding...

Also TT are working on lego harry potter! :o going to be aaaawesooome :D next year @gamecity?

*how* excited am i about this?! it seems it had already been announced and so wasn't new news to anyone but me, but yay! i wanna do magic spells with my wiimote with the same ease and pure joy as lightsabre fighting in lego star wars. and then, that was it... hometime for me, as i'd not booked a hotel room for saturday night due to not realising there was another party that night, and to be honest, the cold was getting the better of me anyway. would've loved to stay and get dressed up with professional makeup to do Left For Dead: Live, not to mention to see how they were going to manage StreetFighter: Live (something like this maybe?) but it was sadly not to be...

til next year :)

sadly having to leave @gamecity before The End party (bah illness n lack of sunday trains) but thank you for an absolutely brilliant week :)

p.s. one of my tweets is in Edge! check out their gamecity round up (slightly more concise than mine, but not half as interesting hopefully ;) in the christmas issue out now :)

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

lambs, flowers and girls with guitars on day 3

Night Blooms at The Arcade Exchange - 11, originally uploaded by nottinghamgamecity.

day 3 started with even more gaming of the non-video variety at gambling lambs, a group of lovely people who meet at lee rosy's tea shop to play games together every month. if only MK wasn't so far away...

Playing medieval cards at gambling lambs @gamecity - i am the greater dalmuti!

firstly we were introduced to dalmuti. i realised i'd played it before with standard cards as president (which in turn is based on an old chinese game, dai hin min) but the new deck and setting made it even more fun as the power struggles soon got people into character :)

playing last night on earth: defend the manor house, i am the zombie lord \o/ @gamblinglambs @gamecity

i'd also played last night on earth before (a zombie board game that feels kinda like an interactive movie), but not this scenario. it was fun, but complicated, and we never did really finish the game, but had some interesting storylines come up along the way at least - far more hilarious than expected ;)

we left last night on earth in a mess of inappropriate zombie orgies, won at werewolf and now at @gamecity u panel for a breather :)

more werewolf, albeit in a bigger group and i had to be a wolf this time (which i hate cos i suck at it, amazed i lasted as long as i did...) - we were having so much fun we missed the start of the gamecity U stuff, but decided to go along for the afternoon session with rex who did the art on little big planet, babsy from papermint and robin hunicke who now works for thatgamecompany. not sure what i expected from a games design panel, but it was inspiring stuff - just frustrating that some of them were lucky types who were arty and visual (like me) and still managed to find teams to work with to make videogames despite a lack of technical knowledge (also like me). there had been some previous talk about games as creative, and how children love being creative from a young age, but it seems the barrier to games design is just so much higher than that of art or music: kids can experience either of those and then go and instantly make them themselves , even if it is just a crude attempt at finger painting or banging pots and pans - what's the games equivalent? how do people who have ideas, but not the mad coding skills, get a chance to do anything with them?

with this still on the mind, we went to a curry sessions debate on taboo in games, although it wasn't particularly debateful or indeed audible from where we were sat.

is about to experience flower: night blooms @gamecity :)

robin hunicke came back for the big live art performance of Flower in the exchange arcade. again, not sure what to expect, and on paper/screen it might even sound a little disappointing, but it really was a little shared moment between all involved. flower is a ps3 download game that i'd heard about but not played before - basically you are the wind, picking up petals and, in the words of robin, 'spreading love throughout the world'. one of the things that was particularly cool was how there was no words, no text or dialogue, in the whole thing - reminding me of one of my favourite comics, owly, in both how accessible it becomes to children or people who speak other languages, but also in how it makes the reader/player put their own emotion into the gaps.

Watching flower played big isnt quite like a film, better than video art installation, live dance with petals as ballerinas maybe?

the previous day, david braben and lord puttnam had both talked about videogames not yet reaching the stage where they can make people cry - as if this pinnacle of emotion is a sign of artistic legitimacy - but robin clearly proved them both wrong by admitting (and demonstrating) how emotional the game made her feel. all we, the audience, did was to stand, sit or lie down and watch someone else play a videogame, projected onto wavy muslin, but it was a unique and moving (in an undefinable sorta way) experience. (insert something about games as art, except i think that perhaps the more we go on about something is already blatently real, the more gamers as a whole sound as if we're just on the defensive...)

Also: wind turbines as things of beauty; colour reminiscent of Hero; and nice to see a bunch of gamers chilling out and soaking it in

and on that note, and later than planned, we moved on the 'world of wordcraft' event to see rebecca mayes (of gameswipe fame) play live, and also maybe listen to people talk about games writing too.

i have to say at this point, game city was horrendously disorganised this year, but it did have its benefits at times. flower overran its slot and we honestly made our way over to the gig thinking we were an hour late and would've missed it all, but because practically everyone was at flower anyway (including the organisers), it didn't actually matter. we just bumped the schedule on a bit, and still had time to play fluxx before it started. maybe not the most professional type of thing, but i think the nice community feel is one of the best things about game city.

World of wordcraft @gamecity was interesting: i still secretly want to be a games writer/editor. rebecca mayes is pretty cool too :)

there was a lot of discussion about games reviews, which, coming from ste curran of '7/10 onelifeleft' fame, and started by a statement that games reviews were pretty much meaningless these days, may hint at the slight irreverance to follow

RT @avalix "pacman is *almost* the most rounded video game character in video game history" @gamecity @steishere :D)

being a word geek, editor, zine contributer etc... i have a bias towards critical writing even if i do admit it bears very little influence on the games i buy anymore, but i like non-fiction writing as a creative artform, and was particularly impressed at the ability to put that into a musical construct with not just acoustic guitar but awesome pedal layering too. there may be more along this kind of front in the future...

a splendid day 2 at game city

something splendid at game city, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

Day 2 in the game city week and it starts off with Something Splendid...

Omg takahashi's playground is actually going to happen @gamecity! Yay mobile internet!

11:46 AM Oct 28th from mobile web

So, Keita Takahashi (aka Mr Katamari Damacy) is going to design a playground to be built in Nottingham! He kind of talked about it at his keynote two years ago but I don't think I ever expected anything to come of it, especially considering how long it took for them to get Noby Noby Boy out, but it's pretty awesome that hopefully in a year or two we might get to go play on it! The Q&A made sure that adults (and dogs) would be allowed to join in the fun too, although what the fun will actually be is still a mystery, other than something involving natural hill slides (interestingly, hand gestures and delayed translation add a strange layer to proceedings) and a provocatively large amount of polystyrene balls. One of these days I will have another go at unlocking the 2nd level of We <3>

(This is also the point where I'd visited the o2 store, and the very lovely assistant guy managed to stifle his laughter at my ancient (but awesome) Nokia E70 long enough to get me on the mobile web, woo! \o/)

Just played canabalt for the first time @gamecity in front of a curry house of people and didnt suck!

12:52 PM Oct 28th from mobile web

Canabalt kicks ass. I'd heard about it before but not played (as I later found out, it runs at about 7fps on my stupidly broken iBook) but quite aside from AdamAtomic being lovely and very interesting while we ate curry for lunch (another pleasantly surprising first!), it is just so damn addictive.

Also just got a certificate declaring i am officially brilliant at lego rock band \o/ @gamecity

12:56 PM Oct 28th from web

I think these are the wrong way round, but somewhere along the line we made it to HMV to audition for Brick Factor. Lego Rock Band is ace fun - much hilarity watching the guys before us do an awesome rendition of Walking on Sunshine before securing our place in Brickstock with Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams (I was on vocals - always am - as much as I love the drums and am a natural bass player, I'm usually the one least shy at singing, after waaaaaay too much experience on Singstar :D )

Is celebrating being born the same year as band aid and elite @gamecity

3:20 PM Oct 28th from mobile web

Do they know it's Christmas is my Christmas song :) 1984 was obviously a good year for the world ;) The Elite talk started out interesting, the game visuals and music are still surprisingly beautiful and I'd enjoyed learning about a game that I'd never played (due to the aforementioned being born the same year it came out), but unfortunately I remember very little of the actual talk because I don't think it was that enlightening... Got a very stylish origami poster though so can't complain :)

I think after that we took the opportunity to visit the best comic shop in the country, Page 45 of Nottingham, (always nice to go to a comic shop where everybody knows your name, even if you've only been buying by mail order) - introducing my friend Marc to the graphic novel that inspired the Batman: Arkham Asylum game (I know it's critically acclaimed and all, but unfortunately I can't stand the art style which in turn totally puts me off the game, which I hear is actually really good), and buying some new Joss Whedon loveliness.

About to go play at hide&seek sandpit @gamecity yay!

6:49 PM Oct 28th from mobile web

Well I already knew Hide & Seek was going to be fun - certainly enough to miss the 'We were 64' commodore love in event that it clashed with (I was an Amstrad girl) - but it was kinda nice to go to Sandpit in a place other than London where the atmosphere has changed a fair bit since more people have found out about it. Very glad that the lovely people on the desk let us in despite me being the only one out of our group to have found out about pre-registering, and ended up being roped into a game of 'Are you Thursday?' whilst we were still in the queue. The aim was to swap playing cards branded with the days of the week by asking people and finding out if they were a day adjacent to you - I never made it out of the weekend, but wonder if it was at all inspired by Garth Nix's Mister Monday books...

Awesome fun at sandpit @gamecity, *waves* to cool ppl we played impromptu werewolf with! more lego rock band too \m/,

12:34 AM Oct 29th from mobile web

So yeah, we got there a tad late (due to Wetherspoons food issues) but bagged ourselves stickers for two of the games running at the end of the night, so decided to head over to Lee Rosy's lovely tea shop just across the road from Broadway cinema where they had *more* Lego Rock Band (yay! - we got to do You give love a bad name by Bon Jovi amongst other things) and delicious chocolate cake mmmmm...

Then, in the true spirit of Sandpit, deciding we didn't need a scheduled game to gather people together, we teamed up with some (quite lovely!) random people and taught them how to play Werewolf. I *suck* at Werewolf, but nevertheless it is still fun, and got to meet some ace people (hi Hannah!)

We played hipsync (silent disco:the game, v fun) & moveyhouse (which, despite tech difficulties, might be the best film ever :)

12:37 AM Oct 29th from mobile web

Then the 'proper' games: first up HipSync, which was basically a Silent Disco (in the middle of the bar!) where everyone had randomised MP3 tracks and had to find other players who were dancing to the same style of music as them. A few sync issues (ironically) but fun none the less, and the 'game' aspect of it did mean that no one really cared about dancing/moshing/headbanging to silent music in front of a bar full of people :) Would definitely like to play again.

Lastly was Moveyhouse, in which a cinema full of people watched descriptions of people in another cinema and attempted to act out the human drama which was probably far more interesting than the film being shown. Some more technical issues, but the joy of these type of games meant that we weren't entirely sure what was supposed to be part of the script or not, what was pre-written or improvised live, and just got on with having fun with Darth Vader masks and Werthers Originals instead :) A surprisingly emotive experience - laughter really is self-perpetuating, and might actually have been the best film ever (they told us to say that ;) )

Off to the pub after that for fake cobwebby beer and interesting discussion - but possibly the concluding thought from the day is that the most fun came from when we were just chilling out and playing together. Which would make sense, considering we were at a games festival, but the interesting part was that the games we played were mostly of the non-videogame variety...

star power

star pin, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

two new brooches up today, big ghost pin and star pin, available on etsy or folksy for the uk types.

speaking of star power - i recently became completely addicted to rock band when they had it at a conference i was at with work and nearly lost my voice pretending to be shirley manson :) back home all i've got is guitar hero 2 and singstar on the ps2. so the question is, to rock band or to guitar hero: world tour? and on the ps2 with the stuff i've already got (and some drums obviously, it's always been my secret ambition to be a drummer) or on the wii with the hope that nintendo gets DLC working? apparently rock band peripherals work with guitar hero world tour (or is it the other way round?) but it's all very complicated... any suggestions or advice welcome, for a rocking out christmas :)

merry christmas everyone!

happy christmas! blog's been quiet cos christmas has been crazy busy this year, but to all my friends, all my blog readers, all the people who are looking at this wondering what on earth someone has bought them for christmas, hope you have all had a lovely day :D and please enjoy the best christmas song ever courtesy of mr shakin' stevens!

today's gaming bounty has included guitar hero, copious singstar, two versions of zelda, and endless ocean - which if you've read the zine you'd know i was really looking forward to :) so going to take a bit of time off to play with all these and will update in the new year.

couldn't leave without giving you all a little something to celebrate and thank you for reading, so you have a choice of *two* gifts from me (via some other reputable websites...):

dr who fans click here (and *how* good was today's episode?!)

music fans click here (especially if you like radiohead and hate x factor)

merry christmas to all and to all a happy new year :D

game city and other such fun

storm troopers love the wii, originally uploaded by spugmeistress.

so much fun it took me a week to recover! as it might you too after you read this mammoth of a blog post ;)

so, first things first - nottingham game city was the 25th to 28th october, nicely timed for my half term holiday, and it was ace. didn't make it to see the lost levels on thursday unfortunately but got the train nice and early on friday to arrive just in time for the lego star wars talk with jonathan smith from tt games. he showed us the new wii version of the complete saga, complete with wii lightsabre (tm) - a wiimote duct taped onto his son's red telescopic toy light sabre, showed us all the new stuff they've added to lego star wars 1 and 2 (including the ability to fly the millenium falcon round the pod racing circuit) and also talked a little bit about the upcoming lego indiana jones and lego batman games (on which ign mis-reported and got all the comics geeks up in arms - yes, including me). got to speak to him afterwards a little bit about educational gaming and how all the kids i've worked with absolutely love lego star wars and we love playing it with them because the co-op mode is perfect for teaching them how to work together (when they're not killing each other with force chokes that is, which i note features heavily in the new arcade modes). anyway, there was a star wars panel afterwards, mostly dominated by some bloke from SFX, i played around a bit on some of the indiecade games (cloud was fun until i kinda broke it), wandered over to the art of the game exhibition which was either smaller than i expected, or most of it was hidden away (flickr evidence suggests the latter) but there was some cool jon burgerman stuff there (he designed the game on exhibition in london last year). then it was 3pm, time for the unveiling of wii lego star wars: the complete saga on the mahusive giant screen in market square, and the chance to have a go on it! darth vader went on it first, against a random jedi (jedi won, not sure how staged that was), then they let the kids who had queued up have a go (all were absolutely loving it and hilarious to watch) and then i got to have a go against some random guy who was actually more enthusiastic about it than me (hard to believe) and i kicked his ass :) the controls were pretty easy to grasp, although i didn't get to try out the force moves cos aayla secura apparently doesn't have any, but she was pretty damn sweet with a light sabre. then i checked out the demo pods in the marquee they had in the square and spent the rest of the afternoon teaching some kid how to play guitar hero, which was fun!

saturday i had to get up *really* early to get the train to get there for 10 as not to miss the opportunity to drink tea and doodle with the aforementioned jon burgerman. ok, i don't drink tea, so i had hot chocolate instead and whilst i was waiting for them to go get some from the shop, i made some katamari damacy papercraft that had been left over from the wonderland craft session on thursday. met jon, who is lovely and did a sketch for my sister who is a huge fan, did some doodling, met a cool new friend called elsa (*waves* yay i wasn't the only girl gamer there on their own!) and was promptly late for the are you indie? talk with the also aforementioned indiecade people and alice taylor of the *also* aforementioned wonderland blog. who i got to meet afterwards and swap moo cards with, along with cory doctorow of boing boing fame! it was interesting actually, making the connection between indie gaming and the 'handmade' craft market in that you respond differently and accept different standards from them than you would to more commercial products - but also that indie games and webcomics can follow a similar distribution/monetizing model in that you can give something away for free, and still make enough back from your fans to keep going.

anyway, next was the big show. keita takahashi of katamari damacy fame did his keynote talk (which is best documented on the wonderland blog here) which was weird, funny, awkward, insightful and introduced by alice herself, giving a big shout out to etsy and the videogame craft phenomena which was nice! i haven't actually played much katamari, since i don't have a ps2 (yet) i've been limited to a quick go on someone else's psp, which allegedly is quite hard and not particularly true to the ps2 game (phew, i didn't just suck then), but it is a really fun concept, and the art and the story and the music and everything is just ace. keita ended the talk with a small demo of his new game nobi nobi boy (it means stretchy boy, amongst other things) which also looks kinda fun - any game in which you can give a pig a piggyback, eat it, fly up into the air and then poo it out and watch it float back to the ground has to be worth a go ;)

next up was a talk entitled 'my mum' by ste curran of thetriforce.com which was basically about how his mum used to love gaming back in the pre-atari days, fell out of love with it when the industry got a bit teenage boy-focussed (guns and shooting and driving and killing people) and how he got her back into it (and got less bored with gaming himself) through the wonder of animal crossing (aka the 2nd best game ever). and how games should be broad enough to cater to everyone and not just teenage boys. kinda preaching to the choir in places, well especially to me as i did an internal 'yay!' at every example of what gaming can and should be doing, but nice to hear someone in the actual games industry be sticking up for the gamers who aren't all about the fragging. and also, to be termed a 'hardcore' gamer, cos yes, i have been known to import games from japan (even if it was donkey konga) and although the types of games i like best are usually lumped in with gimmicks and casual games, i do care about them alot. so much so that i'm half tempted to try and get into the industry myself, but that's a whole nother story... rushed straight out of that talk (which i have to note, was in one of the smaller screens of the broadway arts cinema, with stripey two seater sofas instead of chairs) and into the ARG talk, with guy parsons masquerading as an unfortunately-unable-to-make-it dan hon
from mind candy (the people who did perplexcity of which i was a (small) part of). so not much i didn't know, but nice to see guy again, and reminded me why, despite the bitterness surrounding the later stages of PXC, args are actually really fun. then a quick dash to page 45, the best comic shop in the world, where i got issue #1 of suburban glamour (click for preview) which i read on the way home and is absolutely gorgeous (and brilliant) and back to manchester for...

arcade fire at the MEN with my mini-me (little sister)! which was *awesome*. how they managed to make a huge arena feel like the manchester academy i don't know, but i'm terribly grateful as i nearly cried when i couldn't get tickets to see them last time round at the apollo. pics on my flickr, but nowhere near as good as the ones my sister took (she is an amazing photographer). got a nifty lenticular poster of the neon bible too which is now up in my room and looks like the neon sign is lighting up when you see it from different angles. i love neon :) i wish i was in the arcade fire, they looked like they were having so much fun. and i wanted the singy girl's boots.

sunday time! the trains were rubbish on sunday so my mum graciously offered to road trip with me so she could go shopping whilst i geeked out. due to rubbish traffic over high peak i missed the first 20 minutes of from russia with love: the documentary the bbc made about the politics, rights wars and general hilarity surround the birth and rise of tetris. quite funny to see how serious it got over one little computer game, that turned out to pretty much be one of the key reasons nintendo, and the gameboy ever got so big in the first place. there was an interview with the guy who made it, alexey pajitnov, afterwards which was just brilliant - he is such a lovely lovely man, who incidentally, plays with his pipes to the left (yes i asked the silly question, everyone laughed, it needed to be done.) i also got to ask him later on which version of tetris he deems to be the most definitive, to which he said the gameboy one, which was nice cos i totally agree, and was bewildered at the weird version they had in the cabinet downstairs where a guy was attempting the tetris world record. there was also a smaller talk downstairs afterwards where the *real* tetris nerds got to geek out even more about versions and rules and whether the s or z block is better (alexey said s, i think i agree) and inbetween there was a giant queue full of people wanting to shake his hand and i think he was a little bit astonished all these people wanted to talk to him! i got my tetris cart signed and couldn't actually believe how excited i was about it.

after that it all felt a little bit of an anti-climax, but fortunately i had more fun in store in the form of my good friend john who was in town visiting and we hung out and watched neils' hole in my shoe song (very topical for me at the moment) on youtube, and on monday went into manchester for a spot of shopping and hanging around in arty cafe's and finding john a new hat (and a lovely one it was too) so yes, there's more pics up on my flickr if you want to go have a look, thank you if you've managed to keep reading this far, and i'll update with more recent news later in the week!