Angled Whiteboards

So the final episode of this season’s Sam & Max is finally upon us this week. I gotta say, I’m mighty impressed that they kept to schedule. Nice work, fellas.

And while I want to be extremely sensitive to folks attempting to bypass any and all spoilers, I have to admit that when I finally got my naked knight past the pixelated, shrinking shrubbery, into the path of a bat, and able to strike down my third dragon, I was SO RELIEVED.

Oh wait. That’s Thunder Castle. (Btw, I actually was able to get into the titular Castle. At which point the game dynamic changes DRASTICALLY. Now you have to get through pixelated, shrinking brick walls and into the path of a rat before you can strike down a series of wizards.)

New games:

• Sam & Max Episode 6: Bright Side of the Moon
• Super Tank
• Thunder Castle

New on GameTap TV:

• Play This Game: Baseball Stars Professional
• GameTap News: Halo 2 PC
• Sealab 2021: Frozen Dinner
• Raw Tape: Kickin’ It Old Skool

It’s Epic Adventure week, and the new releases should be right up an adventure gamer’s dark and puzzle-addled alley. So far, I’ve made my way through a bit of American McGee’s action-y Scrapland. Super nice production values on this one. I totally love it when games pull that cinematic fading-credits-over-the-playable-intro thing; it’s like a movie that I’m in. Something that strikes me about the character design in Scrapland is that a lot of the robots are just a ball-wheel away from fitting right into RoboBlitz (coming soon!).

The Staff Picks category gets some specificity starting this week — cycle through the left-side posters in GameTap Home to get to the Staff Picks one. Dallas is our featured staff member, and he’s picked out some diverse titles, boy. Got me to give Clay Fighter another shot after over a decade — I remember when that game just seemed SO “real”.

BONUS BLURRY CAMEO ALERT [for no one but me, really]: In this week’s Raw Tape feature on the Hot Fuzz/Shaun of the Dead dudes, you can see a very brief appearance by me, xamount. I’m the Millman-esque dork walking by in the background just as director Edgar Wright lists “ice cream, escaped animals, hedgehogs” as things you get to see in the upcoming film. (Also, Edgar Wright’s making a Scott Pilgrim movie? Sweet.)

New games:

• Mysterious Journey II
• Return to Mysterious Island
• Scrapland
• Sentinel: Descendants in Time
• Voyage

New on GameTap TV:

• GameTap News: God of War II
• GameTap Presents: Akon
• Play this Game: Ultima Series
• Sealab 2021: I, Robot, Really
• Sam & Max: Fireside Chat
• Raw Tape: Hot Fuzz

I haven’t seen the full iam8bit v.2.007 exhibit, but it’s hard to imagine much topping Brandon Bird’s painting, Battle of the Heroes.

The Easter eggs have hatched: Bug! (check the Coming Soon ring for more Saturn-y goodness), Warlords Battlecry III, and Wing Commander are all officially available in the catalog (without last week’s spelunking requirement). In addition, there’s a new Garage Games dealio called ThinkTanks that I need to try out. I haven’t yet due to still being all up in Rocket Bowl, but also because because I kinda got sucked into this other new game:

Doki Doki Penguin Land! Some are calling it the new [old] Pyramid Magic? It’s a little more action-y than the PyraMag — polar bears chase you around while you’re trying not to dig yourself into a corner. I don’t know about the action-y stress though; if that frickin’ mummy chased me around while I was stacking blocks, I’d have quit Pyramid Magic a long time ago. One benefit that Pyramid Magic doesn’t offer: DDPL tells you right up front that it’s only 25 levels long, and you can access any of them right off the bat. (After getting to level 32, I still have no idea how much more rooting around I have left in Pyramid Magic.)

New games:

• Bug!
• Doki Doki Penguin Land
• ThinkTanks
• Warlords Battlecry III
• Wing Commander

New on GameTap TV:

• GameTap News: Playstation Home [want some homework?]
  
• GameTap Tracks: Akon
• Play This Game: Heroes of Might and Magic
• Sealab 2021: Meet Beck Bristow
• Sam & Max: What Kind of Man Are You?
• Here Comes Trouble: [6 new shorts — my favorite? “Good Game”]

Miranda July, please don’t quitcher kitchen.

[link via Seth Godin]

[clever kitchen phrase by radio_babylon]

History of the Button (blog nerdvana for a designer) has a piece up about the play/pause button’s migration to non-a/v products.

It’s a great article — and also somewhat relevant given the need to study some of our newer Home posters: