Minus World

A ridiculously stylish R-Type animation made mostly by one person

Posted on May 19, 2016 by ollie

Irem‘s side scrolling shoot-em-up classic R-Type, known for its grotesque alien bosses and intense difficulty amongst other things, has been remarkably captured in this unique animated short that tells the story of a young man trapped inside what has been labelled as one of the hardest arcade games ever made. With a bold and vivid animation style that takes more than a few visual cues from the heyday of 90s sci-fi anime, this tribute to one of the shooting greats puts a dynamic spin on a truly memorable arcade experience.

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Perhaps what’s even more remarkable about this video is that all of the painstakingly detailed animation was produced by one man, Paul Johnson. Boasting 17 hand-drawn frames per second, it’s more than apparent that this project is a true labor of love, and not just because of its keen attention to detail.

Source: Attract Mode

Posted in Art, Games Culture, Posts | Tagged Animation, Anime, Arcade, Fan Works, Games Culture, Irem, R-Type, Shoot 'em up | 2 Comments

New Super Mario Bros. – 10 Years On

Posted on May 15, 2016 by ollie

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I have to start this retrospective on a personal note – New Super Mario Bros. came out ten years ago. Bloody hell, I feel old all of a sudden! To put into perspective how much of a whippersnapper I am, I hadn’t even been alive for a decade when Nintendo released what at the time was their first side-scrolling Mario platformer since 1992. You’ll be happy to know that this this feature isn’t about me though – it’s a retrospective on a game that gave the world’s most famous plumber a new lick of paint, reinvented the platforming genre for the 21st century and has spawned a long-lasting legacy that continues to influence Nintendo’s approach to creating games, ten years on.

At the time of New Super Mario Bros.‘s release in 2006, it had been a good long while – almost 15 years – since the plucky moustachioed hero had put on his platforming overalls (the side-scrolling variety, to be precise); aside from a variety of remakes and re-releases on the Game Boy Advance, home console outings were limited exclusively to a 3D space, with 2004’s Super Mario Sunshine being the only mainline title in the Super Mario series to release on the platform. The system’s other offerings consisted of a wide variety of spin-offs, covering everything from baseball to dancing – it could be said that Mario was as popular as ever, but the direction that Nintendo were taking with the series was straying further away from the core Super Mario concepts established in 1985 that had helped lift the titular character to his iconic status. With this in mind, New Super Mario Bros. was envisioned as a title that would bring the series back to its roots, offering up some authentic platforming fan-service for those who favoured a more traditional 2D Mario.

New Super Mario Bros. was a title which, in principal, aimed to serve as a re-invention of the plumber’s earliest adventures, drawing ideas from many highlights across the series’s history. Influence from the likes of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Yoshi’s Island and of course, the original Super Mario Bros. can be observed throughout, with these elements collectively used to build a game both nostalgia-invoking whilst feeling fresh – a true ‘best of’ Mario title.

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Posted in Features, Posts, Retrospective | Tagged DS, Features, Mario, New Super Mario Bros., Nintendo, Retrospective | 4 Comments

Highlights from the 2016 My Famicase Exhibition

Posted on May 10, 2016 by ollie

METEOR‘s yearly ‘My Famicase Exhibition’ cartridge design show is finally open for 2016! Just like last year, a wide selection of different artists from around the world have contributed their own unique designs for fictional Famicom cartridge labels that take advantage of the Famicom’s iconic cartridge design. After the break I’ve picked out a small selection of some of the best of the bunch, but if you want to see the entire exhibition and can’t make it to the METEOR design store yourself, check out the official Famicase 2016 website. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Features, Games Culture, Posts | Tagged Art, Famicase, Famicom, Features, Games Culture, Japan, Meteor, My Famicase Exhibition, Nintendo | 2 Comments

You’ve Probably Never Played… Kaze no Notam

Posted on May 1, 2016 by ollie

Kaze no Notam (Notam of Wind)
Developer(s): Artdink
Publisher: Artdink
Platform(s): PlayStation
Release Date: September 11th 1997 (Japan exclusive)

When it comes to capturing the feeling of flight, video games have a tendency to focus on speed above all else – modern air vehicles offer the sensation of insane velocity that many long for when soaring the digital skies, the closest thing to mankind’s dream of flight encompassed in virtual form. It’s regrettable that in this pursuit of momentum, one of the more graceful methods of flight has been sorely overlooked on many an occasion. Hot air ballooning may lack the awesome speed offered by military air vehicles, but it’s in this lack of haste that a unique experience can be found, one surprisingly untouched in video games for the most part.

Tokyo-based developer Artdink, known best for their A-Train series of railway business simulation games, approached hot air ballooning as a subject matter during a particularly experimental period in their history, one which saw the likes of Aquanaut’s Holiday and Tail of the Sun see release worldwide. Many of these games failed to garner commercial success due to their unconventional concepts, with cases of the titles even being labelled ‘non-games‘ as a result of their lack of clear conditions for victory or defeat, instead focusing sheerly on player experience. Kaze no Notam (Notam of Wind) would serve as a particularly notable product of this era in Artdink’s legacy, attempting to present a theme unseen in any game before it with a highly unique aesthetic built around it.

In fact, at a glance Kaze no Notam‘s aesthetic is potentially the game’s biggest draw. The game’s packaging, which displays a gorgeous pop-art style painting created by artist Hiroshi Nagai featuring a trio of vividly coloured hot air balloons gently drifting against a summery blue sky, high above the crystal clear waters of a swimming pool lined with vibrant foliage and all set against an exotic ocean view. Displaying such an eye-catching piece of artwork on the game’s front cover is a bold move, as well as one that sets the tone for the entire experience. Artdink were so confident in the use of this artwork, it seems, that each game was even packaged with a postcard that could be mailed away to enter a raffle to win full-sized lithographic prints of Nagai’s painting. This is a game that isn’t afraid to be forward with its plan to offer a more laid-back take on flight than you might be used to and the rest of its packaging works to only further certify this – the printed inlay inside the case even inquisitively poses the question “Did you luxuriate in the wind?”.

Clearly this is some fantastic packaging design on show that successfully creates a strong aesthetic for the title before you’ve even turned it on. However, in a surprising turn, this can almost be considered a factor contributing to the game’s undoing…

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Posted in Features, Posts, You've Probably Never Played... | Tagged Artdink, Features, Kaze no Notam, PlayStation, PS1, PSX, You've Probably Never Played... | Leave a comment

Career Spotlight – Tsubasa Sakaguchi

Posted on Apr 23, 2016 by ollie

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Tsubasa Sakaguchi

Residence: Kyoto
Role: Character Designer/Art Director/Director
Association: Nintendo EAD Production Department
Tenure: 2004-present

The likes of Takashi Tezuka, Katsuya Eguchi and of course, Shigeru Miyamoto, are world-renowned for their roles as designers, producers and directors at Nintendo, acting as the leadership, and in some cases, the driving force behind the teams working on many a high profile title. Of course, these big industry names aren’t the only key players in Nintendo’s arsenal of highly capable staff members, with many young talents and important contributors to the company’s biggest titles often sorely overlooked. However, in one of the most interesting and experimental moves made by the company in years, the introduction of the internal ‘Garage’ initiative, which gives younger developers the opportunity to express their unique ideas that could potentially become the next great Nintendo franchise – one such example of the fruits of this new program that has already come about is the multi award-winning Splatoon, a distinctly Nintendo-style reinvention of the multiplayer shooter that has spawned not only Nintendo’s newest successful IP (selling over 4 million copies worldwide by the end of 2015), but something of a cultural phenomenon in its fiercely dedicated fanbase and the almost instant adoption of its characters as some of Nintendo’s most beloved.

The staff members who make up the teams behind the likes of Splatoon are crucial to Nintendo’s development as a company, serving as the next generation of creators who will alter the direction of the company going into the future, and one day potentially take up the reigns as some of the most important figures in the industry, much like the current veteran staff members are today. The Garage initiative has done a great job at throwing a much deserved spotlight onto some of Nintendo’s up-and-coming creators, with presumably more games yet to be seen, but today we’ll be focusing on one staff member in particular who, despite having a well-rounded portfolio with Nintendo since joining in 2004, has only recently come to light through embarking on his biggest project yet as the co-director of Splatoon – Tsubasa Sakaguchi.

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Posted in Art, Career Spotlight, Features, People, Posts | Tagged Art, Career Spotlight, Features, Nintendo, Nintendo Land, People, Splatoon, The Legend of Zelda, Tsubasa Sakaguchi, Wii Fit, Wii Sports | Leave a comment

Programmable Series – The Spirit Lives On

Posted on Apr 17, 2016 by Chemical Taint

Programmable Series is a new feature written by Mike Clark covering a wide variety of topics related to independent games development. Read it to learn about the development processes and concepts behind some of your favourite titles and how you can use them to develop games yourself!

Many people have a fondness for old video games. Sometimes it’s because we enjoy the simplicity of a game that we can quickly pick up and play. Other times the nostalgia of replaying an old game takes us back to days when we dedicated our time to conquering challenges or exploring new worlds. Today there are more retro game collectors than ever before, yet there are also more games available than ever before. That’s not to say that the current generation of games being released are bad nor that the all of older games are good.

The fact is simply that the video game market is drastically different than it was 20-30 years ago and yet there is still an appeal for the old games; games that are expected to be cast aside as time goes on. Some game companies today are pushing for the latest in technology with higher resolutions, virtual reality and more interactivity usually being key focus points. Other companies are playing it safe and relying on brand recognition to make money by re-releasing their old games in collections or high definition remakes. As a result of these changes we lose system features like backwards-compatibility because game companies aren’t making any money on those original games anymore. They’d rather release them again and again while expecting consumers to buy each new version of the same game. Its certainly a strange time to be a gamer, which may be exactly why so many people are looking to the past to find great games. The future has a degree of uncertainty so we end up relying on our old favourites to reclaim some consistency. We already have great games to revisit and we all have a favourite game, or even favourite franchise, that we go back to time and time again.

Games

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Posted in Features, Posts, Programmable Series | Tagged Features, Game Development, Indie, Indie Developer, Indie Games, Programmable Series | Leave a comment

You’ve Probably Never Played… Wakusei Aton Gaiden

Posted on Mar 23, 2016 by ollie

Wakusei Aton Gaiden (Planet Aton Side-Story)
Developer(s): Kokuzeichou
Publisher: Kokuzeichou
Platform(s): Famicom Disk System
Release Date: November 1990 (Japan exclusive)

When games come from an unexpected place, be it through their developer, country of origin or distribution method, they more often than not have an interesting story behind them. The Famicom era are notable for presenting some of the earliest and most memorable instances of promotional games, with various companies and establishments making use of the Famicom boom to get their products into the hearts, minds and homes (and not to mention game collections) of families across Japan. Be it a version of Mario Bros. created to advertise curry or a version of Gradius where all of the power-ups have been replaced with noodles, it seems that it was hardly uncommon to find games which had been created or modified for promotional needs.

What is slightly more rare, however, is when a government ministry is behind said promotional game; in the case of Wakusei Aton Gaiden, a Famicom Disk System exclusive shoot-’em-up released in 1990, the ‘Kokuzeichou’ (Japanese National Tax Agency, essentially their equivalent to inland revenue) are responsible for all publishing duties, as well as being credited for the game’s development (although in this era, it’s possible that the real developers may have been contracted in to work on the project and remained anonymous – some believe that Daisuke Amaya, aka Pixel of Cave Story fame, may have been involved in this bizarre tax office title). It’s hardly a surprise that government agencies are rare dabblers in game development, but the release of Wakusei Aton Gaiden as well as many other commercial games in the era in particular shows not only the power and reach of the Famicom boom within Japan, but that everyone from food companies to tax collectors had caught on and were looking to make the most of the phenomenon.

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Posted in Features, Posts, You've Probably Never Played... | Tagged Famicom Disk System, Features, Nintendo, Wakusei Aton Gaiden, You've Probably Never Played... | Leave a comment

Get a video tour of 2016’s My Famicase Exhibition

Posted on Mar 16, 2016 by ollie

The ‘My Famicase Exhibition‘, a yearly art exhibition held at the METEOR design store in Tokyo at which artists display their label designs for fictional Famicom games of their creation, has just opened for 2016, bringing with it a whole host of brand new original cartridge label designs that are sure to spark the interest of any fan of Nintendo’s classic home console.

If you can’t be there in person to check out the fantastic wall display of cartridges, this short trailer, shot by Studio Uamou (the people behind the popular Uamou character who has spawned a whole host of merchandise and apparel in Japan) and set to a bubbly chiptune soundtrack composed by SEXY-SYNTHESIZER, will give you a close-up look at the exhibition, as well as the store that houses it (somewhere I am dead set on visiting myself one day!).

There were some fantastic designs at last year’s exhibition, and this year some artists have even gone to the length of creating original back label artwork to replace the traditional warnings and usage instructions. You can check out more pictures from the METEOR store and the My Famicase Exhibition over at METEOR’s twitter page.

Posted in Art, Posts | Tagged Art, Famicase, Famicom, Games Culture, Japan, Meteor, My Famicase Exhibition, Nintendo | Leave a comment

8-Bit Handicraft, Oven-Cooked Cartridges and More Erasers – Culture Collection #11

Posted on Mar 8, 2016 by ollie

A certain beauty can often be found in simplicity, and more often than not the designs of old consoles display this in full force. This unique, almost space-age Famicom setup was photographed by masskutt at the Pixel Out exhibition, held at the Pixiv Zingaro gallery this month. Despite seemingly belonging to some kind of Famiclone machine, the controllers really stand out with their half-moon design and retro colour scheme. There’s something irresistible about that little CRT too!

Sticking to the topic of the Famicom, but perhaps with a more bizarre approach, I found myself admiring these cute pixel art designs put together by rurue0111 featuring a Famicom cart, Disk System and Disk, which appear to be some kind of charm or ornament (you’ll find many similar fan-made gaming handicraft under the hashtag “8bit_shugei”). However, what followed this seemingly innocent display really caught me off guard…

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Posted in Culture Collection, Features, Games Culture, Posts | Tagged Culture Collection, Features, Games Culture | Leave a comment

VIDEO – Check out the first part of our Hotel Mario live playthrough

Posted on Feb 26, 2016 by ollie

You’ve more than likely heard of Hotel Mario, the Mario puzzle game that wasn’t developed by Nintendo – and that Nintendo would quite like you to forget ever existed. Famous for its notoriously strange concept and so-bad-they’re-funny cutscenes, very few have actually taken the time to play the game and discover what it’s all about.

Low budget animation and awkward controls aside, Hotel Mario is in fact a bizarrely compelling puzzle-platformer, and a fairly challenging one at that. If you missed our live event, want to learn some more about what Hotel Mario actually is, or simply are enticed by the promise of “lotsa spaghetti”, then check out the video above!

We’ll be continuing to play through Hotel Mario over the coming weeks – make sure you’re subscribed to the official Minus World Twitch channel and following us on Twitter so you don’t miss out!