The Square Enix booth at the New York Toy Fair doesn't just figure the adorable and dramatic RPG figures one might expect. Among the many others, we've spied Nathan Drake looking manly, Meryl Silverburgh looking deadly, and Garrus Vakarian looking, frankly, badass.
While it may seem like a video of me singing to my two children as they bounce along to a song Will.I.Am did for Sesame Street a few years back, this is a video about SoulCalibur V.
Or possibly frog butt.
As the proud father of twin eight-month-old boys, I am constantly looking for ways to integrate my children into my work. It's one of the main reasons we had them, after all. I sit them on the floor nearby while I play, leave active controllers near them just in case inspiration hits. One of them actually played Twisted Metal the other day by chewing on the controller, but I didn't have my camera charged and the opportunity was lost. Still, good on Eat Sleep Play for choosing one of the more delicious buttons for firing missiles.
Have you watched the video yet? Totally about SoulCalibur V, right? No?
Perhaps some set-up will help.
Saturday morning around 1AM I purchased a new entertainment center from Walmart. What do we put in entertainment centers? That's right, video games.
I wanted something sleek and sexy to replace the 100 pound wooden monstrosity that's been taking up great tracts of my living room real estate for the past six years or so. I believe I've posted a picture of it here before. Ah yes, here.
I got home from Walmart around 2AM and decided that was a perfect time of day to tear apart my entire living room and put it back together again. This was a monumentally bad decision.
I spent the next seven hours breathing dust, tangled in wires, buried under Styrofoam packing materials and developing massive allen wrench blisters on my thumb and forefinger. At 9AM I fell asleep on the floor, curled up between my new entertainment center and the old one. I am almost positive that's how I will one day be found dead.
Welcome to the comedy block, kids!
Two hours later I woke up, checked my email, and fell asleep in my computer chair. An hour later my wife-figure woke me up. It was time for her to go to work, and the children were mine. There was no time to clean up the clutter I had gleefully tossed all about the living area; it was goo time.
So what you are seeing here is me desperately trying to stay awake while keeping two babies so occupied they forgot they were supposed to be crying and spurting bodily fluids from their diapers at regular intervals. We must have sung this damn song thirty times in a row.
All this because I wanted to have a nice place to play video games.
I won't apologize for my singing; it's okay to sing when you are deliriously tired or drunk at a Bethesda E3 party.
If all else fails, Archer and Seamus here were conceived at BlizzCon 2010 and born during E3 2011, and that's about as gaming related as you can get without one of your parents being a copy of SoulCalibur V.
Since the dawn of gaming there have been top ten lists. Lists of the best games; lists of the worst games; lists of the sexiest, most offensive, most family friendly, most humorous; there are top ten lists for nearly every game under the sun. And then there are the games that lurk where the sun doesn't shine.
Perhaps that wasn't the best way to word that.
Here at Kotaku Off-Kilter, we care about the games that lurk in the shadows, avoiding the spotlight as readily as they avoid the memory of just about anyone that's played them. There's a small chance that one of your personal favorite games has made the list. If this is the case, rest assured that there's something horribly wrong with you.
And so, in no particular order, nine games that never make it into top ten lists.
5: Jeep Jamboree: Off-Road Adventure
Platform: Should be fairly obvious
Developer: Gremlin Graphics, AKA Gremlin Interactive, AKA No Longer a Going Concern
I like to imagine the type of person that was walking through a video game store in 1992 and went, "Look! Jeep Jamboree: Off-Road Adventure is finally out!" In my mind that person is the type of man or woman that dreamed of driving a genuine Jeep vehicle but, for whatever reason, was unable to make that dream come true. It wasn't a financial decision; we were flat-out given a 2000 Jeep Cherokee last year, so of course that happens to everyone.
No, these people couldn't follow their off-roading Jeep dreams because they, I dunno, had no legs. How were they walking through the game store then, Fahey? Aha, hoisted by my own petard.
The one redeeming feature of this title was the excellent music, crafted lovingly by video game composer Tommy Tallarico, though if you really wanted to hear him at his best you'd all have bought ten copies of Advent Rising and we'd be drowning in sequels by now. Next week's list will be "Top Ten Reasons None of You Bought Advent Rising", and every answer will be because you wanted to make me cry.
3: Magic Boy
Platform: Super Nintendo, PC, Amiga, Atari ST
Developer: Blue Turtle, from back when game studios named themselves after CB handles.
How can you not remember Magic Boy? It was Harry Potter before Harry Potter was semi-cool, only instead of attending a school for young wizards and being the subject of some sort of legendary prophecy or whatnot, Hewlitt the apprentice accidentally turns his master into an elephant and has to capture all of the monsters he accidentally let escape.
So really nothing like Harry Potter, aside from the name, which is absolutely brilliant in its simplicity. You don't get names like this anymore. I bet J.K. Rowling would have made even more money had she gone with Magic Boy and the Philosopher's StoneHe's a boy. He does magic. See? Oh never mind, you've forgotten him already.
1: The Elder Scrolls Travels: Shadowkey
Platform: N-Gage
Developer: Vir2L Studios, a Zenimax Media Studio
The third in a series of The Elder Scrolls games for mobile decides, Shadowkey was an epic adventure created exclusively for the Nokia N'Gai N-Gage, which means it reached an audience slightly larger than it would have had it been released exclusive via a neighborhood lemonade stand.
This hack-and-slash game saw taco-based adventurers travelling to several exciting and exotic places on the continent of Tamriel, including Lakvan's Stronghold, a fort located on the Skyrim side of the Hammerfell / Skyrim border. Just think, if you had bought an N-Gage you would have seen Skyrim seven years ahead of everyone else.
You would also have been forever branded an N-Gage owner, so it's a fair trade-off. I bet there are people out there that bought the device just for this game. I bet they still need a big hug.
9: Trap Gunner
Platform: PlayStation the First
Developer: Racdym, now known as Racjin, because that's a really big difference.
Featuring colorful anime-inspired graphics, sexy music, and a relatively unique premise, Trap Gunner got moderately good reviews from the sexiest game reviewers of 1998, but completely failed to make any sort of impact on its target audience. This was because its target audience was playing Halo three years in the future.
With its mixture of pre-game trap setting and fast-paced ranged and melee combat, Trap Gunner would have made one hell of an online multiplayer game. Unfortunately online play was something only PC geeks did back in 1998. Wow, this was supposed to be funny, and now I am just sad. I'll need a moment here.
7: Water Sports
Platform: Wii
Developer: I can't for the life of me figure this one out. Activision published it, so it should have gone big, right?
The Nintendo Wii is a haven for games that slip under the radar of both game reviewers and consumers. For the first few years of the console's life new titles were released on a daily basis, 90 percent of it complete crap, eight percent not-quite-complete crap, and the rest published by Nintendo. Every now and then a hidden gem would rise above the flock and make itself known, emitting an otherworldly light under which video game players would bask and be magically cured of all ailments. I was pretty sure Water Sports was going to be one of those games.
Then I realized that it had nothing to do with peeing on other people. Even the trailer had me fooled.
Not that I particularly wanted or needed a game that allowed me to use my Wii remote as a wee remote. I just thought it was a bold and daring choice in a market flooded with family-friendly fare (and not piss). I believed for just a moment that Activision was publishing a game that appealed to the more salty among us, family fun be damned. This should have at least made it onto a 'Ten Most Disappointing' list. Pity.
2. Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern
Platform: Dreamcast, PC
Developer: Ubisoft
Released during the downfall of the Dreamcast (read: after launch), Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern wasn't a bad game. It followed the fiction of believed science fiction writer Anne McCaffrey quite closely. Players could visit iconic locations from the series, experience the tear-jerking joy of impressing upon a baby dragon, and solve all sorts of little puzzles while attempting to unravel plot as twisted as the deadly thread that periodically falls from the planet Pern's skies. If it weren't for the ridiculous load times it might have been the perfect Pern role-playing game.
That, and the fact that all the Pern fans were busy playing on Pern-based MUSHes, text-based role-playing games that allowed them to act out all of those things without worrying about load times. As an added bonus, MUSHes also allowed the players to experience the joys of dragon mating, during which the riders get so worked up (due to that strong bond) that they absolutely, positively must sleep with each other.
What, I only played for a couple of years.
6. That One Game, With the People
Platform: The one with the colorful buttons, or they might have been grey.
Developer: They did that one game! You remember, there were robots, or zombies.
Damn. Guys, I can't even remember this one. Could you go into the post after I'm done and try to figure it out? It'll be the one with the picture of the bunny next to it. Make sure you save the post after you've fixed it, I wouldn't want to look like a complete moron because I couldn't remember the name of this stupid game.
Thanks for the assist!
8. B-Boy
Platform: A large piece of cardboard, PlayStation 2, PSP
Developer: Freestyle Games, aka Best Developer Ever
In a perfect world, and by that I mean a world in which my every whim is catered to, you'd all be sitting around playing B-Boy 2012, the sixth installment of the award-winning rhythm dancing game. Perhaps at this point it would be Kinect and Move ready, forcing an entire generation to master moves normally reserved for only the most hardcore street dancers. Activision and EA would both have released their own B-Boy clones, the former securing the license to the classic Breakin' movie franchise, the former desperately trying to catch up to no avail.
Yes, breakdancing games would be the new first-person shooters in my perfect world.
I suppose you should all count your blessings that B-Boy came and went without making as much as a ripple on the surface of the collective gamer consciousness, because that would mean this was a world where my whims are catered to and you'd all be made of chocolate with raspberry filling. I never said my whims made sense.
4. Forsaken
Platform: PC, PlayStation, Nintendo 64 for some silly reason
Developer: Probe Entertainment
Most PC gamers I know were completely in love with Acclaim's multiplayer hovercycle shooter back in 1998. Borrowing the six-degrees of freedom from the popular Descent series and polishing it up wish sexy graphics and a signature style, it was probably the best online multiplayer thing going for months, giving first-person shooter fans something new and different to play.
Most PC gamers I know would also be hard-pressed to mention Forsaken without gentle prodding (or sharp blows about the head and neck). Why? Perhaps the answer lies in the game's name. It's a wonder they didn't name it Forgotten.
Aw man, just one entry away from making it. Sorry games, but I wouldn't want to render my entire premise null and void.
Feel free to share games you've completely forgotten over the years in the comments section. That shouldn't be difficult at all.
The might warriors circle each other warily, keen eyes searching for the slightest chink in their foe's armor. The tightness of an overtaxed muscle. The telltale twitching of an over-eager sword arm. An over-reliance on purple gems.
We've a great fondness for the work of video game humor site Dorkly here at Kotaku. I've featured their work here so often that folks often ask me if we have some sort of official agreement. The answer is no, not particularly, but I'd like to think they were aware enough of my plans to feature their videos on a weekly basis as part of Kotaku Off-Kilter that they featured one of my favorite games of all-time in today's video.
I've played Puzzle Quests one and two on every platform imaginable. I've currently got ongoing campaigns in the second game running on my iPad, my Xbox 360, and my Kindle Fire, all at once. So while yes, it is a little geeky, it's my kind of geeky.
Speaking of which, if you notice what's wrong with the gameplay in the video you will win my respect. Nothing else, just the respect. I hear it tastes like cinnamon.
You want to know how Tim Schafer and Double Fine managed to generate more than a million dollars in Kickstarter cash? Look no further than this hilarious exchange from twisted platforming classic Psychonauts. Sometimes you just gotta make out.
Expect to see plenty of Schafer and friends in our weekly Great Moments in Gaming Humor segment. He and colleagues Dave Grossman and Ron Gilbert are responsible for a some of the most hilarious gaming experiences ever gifted to mortal man from on high, from the point-and-click adventure The Secret of Monkey Island to the point-and-click adventure Day of the Tentacle.
Apparently pointing and clicking leaves a lot of room for funny bits.
But 2006's Psychonauts is no point-and-click adventure. It's a platform odyssey through the fractured minds of the campers and counselors of a summer camp for psychic children. Children like Razputin, the game's hero, voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz of Invader Zim fame. Or Raz's girlfriend Lili, who get excited by the strangest things.
The entire game is filled with side-splitting humor, courtesy of both Schafer and Eric Wolpaw, half of the beloved gaming commentary site Old Man Murray, who later went on to write the dialog for Portal and Portal 2.
But those are games for another week. Now pucker up!
Got a favorite funny gaming moment? Send them to Fahey @ Kotaku Dot Com and they could be featured in the next edition of Great Moments in Video Game Humor.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a very good game. It's also a very silly game.
Following in the fine tradition of countless fantasy worlds before it, Amalur is stuffed to the brim with Weird Names and Proper Nouns You Can't Pronounce.
In order to highlight the ridiculousness at play here, we've drawn up a pop quiz. Each entry on the following list of names is either a person, place, or thing from Kingdoms of Amalur or it is entirely made up. Can you guess which is which? It might be harder than you think. (Answers are linked below.)
1. Haxhi
2. Spaladastria
3. Lord Akagrafik'll
4. Glendara
5. Klurikon
6. Figglehorn
7. Frat Lorenze
8. Meyetyre
9. Tala-Rane
10. Dokkalfar
11. K'lara Loschachtii
12. King Wencen
13. Flah'tah'rah
14. Arf Thundercrusher
15. Fomorous Hugues
16. O'gar the Bold
17. Tine Delfric
18. Flan Flannedy
19. Lord Khamazandu
20. The Gardens of Ysa
Here are the answers.
Welcome to the first weekly installment of Freaky Fan Art, an exploration of the peculiar, bizarre, and downright peculiar places gamers' imaginations take them after the end credits roll. This week, Sonic the Hedgehog gets stuck in the toilet, cuddles the prince of the beasts, and finally grows a pair.
Of breasts.
Why do fan artists love Sonic the Hedgehog? I'm gonna toss credit to the distinctive style designer Naoto Ōshima gave his creation, with simple elements easily ported to other animal types. Just look at my own Twitter icon. A decade ago I adopted the internet handle Bunnyspatial after an odd fellow at a Dragon*Con slapped a sticker on me that read 'Bunny Special'. The name stuck, and I spent a couple hundred dollars commissioning a Sonic-style rabbit to be my digital representation.
So when I comb through the internets searching for Sonic fan art, I'm not looking at freaks, perverts, or deviants (do deviant artists count?). I'm look at fans that, like me, fell in love with the character and the art design. Some of them just took things a bit too far.
Take this piece for deviant artist Monakokko. Monakokko does some amazing work, capturing the true essence of Sega's beloved characters in all sorts of different situations. I truly mean that. When I've had occasion to imagine Sonic the Hedgehog pausing to take an enormous shit, this is exactly how I pictured it in my mind.
But Fahey, how do you know Sonic is actually doing number two? Maybe he just tripped and fell onto the toilet, getting stuck in the process! Okay, you want to play imagination games? I'm imagining the toilet is a costume Sonic makes Amy Rose wear when he wants to **** in her *****. You really don't want to play imagination games with me.
I know what you're thinking. Where is all the Sonic hentai? Finding freaky hentai is easy, and we're running a relatively clean show here. I'd rather post images like this pseudo t-shirt advertisement I dug up on Fanpop. Here we have Sonic, Shadow, and Silver standing around talking about t-shirts. In case you couldn't figure it out, the artist has labeled the piece 'Shirt Talk'.
Am I being marketed to? I cannot tell. More likely I am being entertained by an artist that's seen so many advertisements they cannot tell what's real from what's specifically designed to make you want to buy a product.
Also, I have serious doubts the artist has any idea who the guy on the middle shirt is. It is, of course, the famous vampire slayer, Blade.
And then suddenly Sonic was wearing a bra and panties, a sentence that has launched hundreds of sexy works of Sonic fan fiction over the past quarter century. I thought he liked his Blade t-shirt. Apparently he's extremely fickle. Isn't that just like a male hedgehog dressed as a woman? Sorry, that was completely mishedgehogynistic. I apologize.
There just seems to be something about the hedgehog and his friends that cause even the most innocent young fan artists to gradually shift from drawing Sonic and Amy holding hands to Sonic and Amy ****ing their ****s with ****s. I'm just randomly placing asterisks, but you get the idea. One minute you're drawing Sonic on the Toilet...
...the next you're drawing rabbits in stripper garb. I believe Monakokko was going for Playboy bunnies here, so at least they are classy strippers, but there's definitely a sexual element that feels completely misplaced yet strangely fascinating.
This picture gets better when you realize that Cream and Vanilla are a mother / daughter team.
And then you realize Cream the Rabbit is only six-years-old, and it gets much, much worse.
Many fan artists enjoy exploring the romantic possibilities of Sonic and friends. Some of them, like JayFoxFire here, aren't content to pair everybody's favorite borderline porcupine with folks from his own franchise, so we end up with works like this. I'm not sure James Earl Jones would approve.
Hell, I'm not sure I approve. First off, Disney characters and Sonic characters should not mix. Also, Simba has a girlfriend, even if he doesn't realize it at this pre-Timon and Pumba stage in his life. And where is Amy Rose? I imagine she's the incredibly jealous type, and would have none of this.
Note that I spent 15 minutes making sure this picture did not contain exposed animal penis before adding it to this post. This is just one of the many entertaining things I do for a living.
Update: JayFoxFire wrote to assure me that the two are merely cuddling. Rejoice!
Oh, there's Amy Rose. No wonder she's cool with the Sonic / Simba sandwich. She's got a little Disney princess of her own. This piece comes from deviant artist ss2sonic, who also does anthropomorphic My Little Pony art and has Rocket Raccoon as his user icon. I approve.
Remember when I said Disney and Sonic characters should not mix? That doesn't count here. This is perfectly fine.
This has been your typical male internet user minute.
And then there are those that love Sonic so much they can't imagine him with anyone else. "This is Sonics Girlfriend She looks pretty sweet and shes me" reads the description of this piece from Fanpop, uploaded by someone named Candy Lily. Someone incredibly lonely.
This is the Sonic fan art equivalent of writing yourself into a work of Star Trek fan fiction as a young ensign that is sent to sick bay for a routine checkup and ends up making passionate love to Doctor Beverly Crusher for hours, her fiery cinnamon stick hair plastered across my sweaty chest. HIS sweaty chest. Not mine. No, no, never mine.
I'm sure this was just an innocent crush. Some young child, barely old enough to understand image ratios, enraptured by her favorite character to the point where she imagined the two of them together, hanging out at the mall, maybe kissing in order to bring the hero back from the dead in 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog game. What could possibly be the harm in that?
Oh god. I told you she seemed like the jealous type.
That's about all I can take of Freaky Fan Art this week. I'd like to think we all had a good time, and maybe we learned a little about ourselves in the process.
If not, there's always next week. If you want to see a specific game or franchise featured in Freaky Fan Art, use the comment system for its intended purpose.
Warning, things might be getting a little weird for the next hour and a half.
Insomniac's made big moves these last few months, pulling away from PlayStation exclusivity and declaring that they won't be making any future Resistance games. You could argue that the future of the highly regarded developer is more independent but more risky, too. One thing's certain: toys are on the way.
Insomniac announced Overstrike—to be published by EA— at E3 2011 and, though their next big original IP bet isn't out yet, merchandise development is underway. Figures based on the Dalton and Naya characters from the co-op action game's four-person squad showed up at the Diamond Select booth. Diamond let me take these shots even though there's a big ol' no photos signs. (These designs aren't final, as they haven't been approved by Insomniac yet.) But it still surprised me that a new untested video game property—even one from a developer as beloved as Insomniac—would be debuting tie-in toys at Toy Fair 2012. Let's call it a vote of confidence towards a positive reception for Overstrike.
Zynga's controversial new mobile game, Dream Heights, is now available for iOS devices.
The tower sim gained notoriety well before launch as back in January, the announcement of Dream Heights kicked off another round of the "cloning vs. inspiration" discussion that seems endemic to the social and mobile development space. Zynga faced accusations of blatantly duplicating the very popular iOS game Tiny Tower.
Even Zynga's official announcement has had to give at least a glancing mention to the discussion and backlash, framing selling points around the "distinct features" Dream Heights includes, and adding:
Like many classic games, tower-themed games have been around for years, and we're truly huge fans of the existing games that have preceded Dream Heights. We're committed to making our games as fun and social as possible, and we hope to "build" (pun intended!) on the tower genre by making Dream Heights the most social tower game yet.
We've previously reported on Zynga's defense against accusations that their games are developed through cloning instead of creativity.
Dreamin' Big with Dream Heights [Zynga company blog]
