There are many talented crafters making video game inspired items. It’s always fun finding items that resemble long time favorite characters.
Michelle Rheaume crochets favorite characters from the Mario Bros games into three dimensional sculptures.
My favorite is the piranha plant.
Luigi gets some love too
She offers her designs in her etsy shop. And if you have crocheting skills, she also offers crochet patterns.
Maybe you could make your own raccoon suit Mario.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Monster Hunter 3 demo. The other week, the game actually came in. After enjoying the feeling of holding a new game in my hands I opened it up. In the bag with the game was a 500 Wii Points card courtesy of Gamestop as a special gift for pre ordering it. I popped the game in my Wii and sat down. I was ready.
I started a new game. The first thing you do is make your character. I gave mine corn-rolls pulled back in a ponytail and named him Bootsy. I continued on and watched the opening scene depicting a peaceful oceanside village. That’s the first thing I want to comment on. The village that the events of the gamer centers around is a very eye pleasing setting. It is on the coast of an island or continent (not really sure which one) and some of the village is built upon docks jutting out into the water. If you take way the land it would look like the place from the beginning of Waterworld.
When you gain control of your character, you are talking to the cheif of the village. There have been problems around the village and you are a guild hunter that is there to help solve everything. The cheif gives you a hut in the village which also comes with a nice view of the sea and a felyne (cat person) servant. There is a bed there for you to sleep in and a box for storage. You can even decorate our hut with the felyne’s help.
Your first quests involve getting resources to rebuild the hunter camp that was destroyed by the earthquake. Then the quests become a bit more serious once you start actually getting guild quests. The more items you find the more possibilities you have with forging and upgrading weapons, armor, and other items.
The game has good controls that are easy to pick up and also versatile (especially with he classic controller). The characters around the village are somewhat goofy like in the other Monster Hunter games. The monsters look great and have different weaknesses and strengths that makes for good hunting. There are also supposed to be new quests to download via Nintendo WFC. I’m currently not sure of when these will come out, but I’m sure it won’t be too long.
Good hunting!
Hilarious or strangely disturbing? I think it might put me off my dinner taking a knife to Pac-Man’s face. On the other hand, what am I saying?
From the Etsy item description:
NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM! It’s the sound of PacMan chomping away at those little pellets – how could I not be inspired to make a cutting board out of him?
Geek out your kitchen with this end-grain cutting board featuring PacMan and either Blinky or Clyde (he’s kind of orangey-red) racing toward a power-up pellet. Who will get there first?!? Help PacMan by buying this board right away and chopping onions all over Blinky’s face!
This hand-made end-grain cutting board will add a touch of gamer-nostalgia to any kitchen. The board is made of walnut, hard-maple, and cherry put together with FDA approved, water-proof glue, and treated with a mixture of mineral oil and beeswax.
End-grain cutting boards like this one are very durable and will not dull your knife edges like some other types of cutting boards might. Also, while some people worry that wooden cutting boards are not as safe from bacteria as glass or plastic, there have been studies done that actually show that wooden boards have antibacterial properties (seriously…ask The Internets). I don’t know if those studies are 100% accurate, but I do know that people have been using wooden cutting boards a lot longer than plastic, and have not all died of food-borne illness, so I figure it’s probably ok (though I won’t hold it against you if you decided to cut poultry on a separate board).
I’ll include a set of care instructions with any cutting board that I sell.
This board is approximately 18 X 12 X 1.5″
This is the opposite of a discount game!
$165 at 1337motif’s Etsy shop!
Most people today play games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Halo 3. But a lot of you people will read this and say something along the lines of “Ome-ga, no dude!? I play games that are different and a lot of people don’t really play like Fallout 3 and Oblivion.” Oh really now? That’s cool, and different, seeing as they were being hyped up and discussed about all over the internet and video game magazines starting when their development was first announced, even now that they are both released talked about all over the place. They are definitely not unheard of. On top of that, they are both sequels to superior games. Morrowind is better than Oblivion. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 are both better than Fallout 3. Don’t get me wrong though, people. These newer games are great games and very well made, and people who like them aren’t wrong. It’s just a matter of personal of preference. My only point is that nowadays it seems that developers sacrifice content and/or creativity so that they can focus on stunning HD visuals and/or great online multiplayer.
In general the newer games are, it seems the less hours of single-player game play it has. Even games that don’t have multiplayer seem to have less game play hours compared to older games. Sure, there are DLC’s for newer games, but this seems to just give developers an excuse to make a the initial game at release not that long and also the DLC’s are just more money for the gamer to have to spend.
Call it old fashioned, but the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis era was the best era in the history of video games. Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, Phantasy Star IV, The Lost Vikings, Earthbound, Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past, and Super Metroid. All these games had either deep immersing plots or fun quirky ones, and sometimes both. The characters on these games were memorable and unique, not cliché like so many of the characters from today’s games. The villains on these past games too are great. They were evil, cunning, and sometimes hilarious and goofy. Other than the SNES and Genesis era, we have the NES era and the PSX and N64 era (no, my order of discussion here is not chronological). The NES games were all games that you could just pick up and play. Mario, Final Fantasy, Metroid, and Zelda all have their roots in this system. The PSX and N64 have some of the most highly praised games to this day. If you were Final Fantasy VII and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are both receive praise from countless games as perfect.
I can go on about this for days, but at this point all you readers are probably feeling like my ranting is some kind of cruel punishment for that piece of bubble gum you stole from the grocery when you were five. If I were to go on with this, you will probably feel like you are in Hell with Satan telling you about his tastes in video games while you are there waiting hours to relieve yourself by unleashing the most voracious piss in your life. My rambling is done!
Lately, I’ve been feeling very nostalgic for Ms. Pac-Man.
I spent a decent amount of time in arcades when I was little. I liked most games but Ms. Pac-Man was always my favorite and playing it is how I spent most of my money.
For awhile, my Mom and I would play it at the convenience store near our house after school every day.
Years later, we’d play it at the laundromat every week and I never got sick of it.
Someday I’d love to have a Ms. Pac-Man arcade machine but for now all I have is a gameboy version to play which is entirely too tiny on my ds screen to truly be enjoyed.
Inspired by my love of Ms. Pac-Man, I’ve assembled an image post that features the work that others have made in homage to one of my favorite games.
Enjoy!
What was the first game that allowed the screen to scroll left? Metroid! What was the first game with a female lead? Metroid! What was the first game that blew the minds of the entire human race? Metroid! Are space pirates, genetically engineered organisms, a bounty hunter with an awesome Varia suit, and charged beams from an arm cannon exciting? Of course they are! Metroid games rule! Nobody can deny that!
In video gaming history, there is only one person out there who can wield an arm cannon better than Mega Man. That person is Samus Aran, intergalactic bounty hunger. She’s blonde, but she’s not stupid. She’s armed with a Varia suit, a one of a kind suit of armor that’s the best a bounty hunter can have. Her arm cannon can fire a single shot or charge up and shoot a huge beam. She can even switch between multiple beam varieties, such as ice or fire. It can also fire concussive missiles. That’s crazy, right? Well just wait! There’s more! Her suit can roll her up into a morph ball so Samus can fit quickly and easily into tight spots or escape whn the enemies have her surrounded, which happens a lot with those conniving, shameless space pirates! When in her morph ball, she can also lay bombs down, which can prove useful destroying obstacles in her way while rolling through tight spots.
Samus Aran is the definition of girl power. She’s a man eater alright! If you don’t believe it, just pick up any Metroid game and find out for yourself. The most recent is Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii which includes all three Metroid Prime games: Metroid Prime 1 and 2 from the Gamecube and Metroid Prime 3 from the Wii. It also takes the Wii controls from the thrid one and applies them to the first two. It’s great fun, and a great example why Samus Aran is a better woman than Fergie, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna combined!
When I saw this amazing, handmade Scribblenauts plush, I couldn’t believe how awesome it was.
It was expertly made by Rosmary Travale.
As a general rule, I don’t play strategy games. If a game requires me to move small battalions around a map attempting to capture key locations while at the same time defending my base, I’m going to fail on at least one of those two fronts. Honestly, I’ll probably fail at them both. However, Creat Studios’ PS3 exclusive Mushroom Wars looked innocent enough, so I gave them five of my electronic dollars – a recent price drop from the initial ten dollar tag.
With adorable avatars like these, how hard could the game be? Right?
The premise is pretty simple: you (the red mushroom army) are trying to defeat the enemy (the blue mushroom army) by completing whatever set of guidelines are presented. That about sums up the amount of customization you have in your troops. Sadly, there aren’t different types of mini-mushroom men like Full Metal Armored Mushrooms, ready to lead the front lines or Super Secret Ninja Spores, stealthy and cunning units lying in wait to unleash massive amounts of mushroom pain – you just get to control hundreds of normal, unassuming mushroom minions.
Some people who may appreciate the sport of hunting but do not find real live hunting very exciting or convenient can’t really get into games like Deer Hunter. Fortunately, our plane of existence is blessed with the game developer called Capcom. Capcom took hunting and made it a much more exciting experience. Their special ingredient was monsters and their successful outcome was Monster Hunter.
The demo of Monster Hunter 3 Tri for the Wii was not my first bite of the Monster Hunter franchise. My first bite was a tiny little nibble when I played my friend’s Monster Hunter game on his PSP for about a minute or so. I knew then that the games were awesome, but I did not own a PSP, nor did I buy one knowing that Monster Hunter 3 Tri was being developed for the Wii. When I first noticed that preorders were available, I reserved my copy of the game and received my free demo disc.
First thing I noticed was that the manual was a fold out poster with descriptions of the controls for each type of weapon you can have. The descriptions only cover the Wii Remote and Nunchuk control scheme, but the bottom of the instructional fold-out poster said something about viewing complete instructions including other control schemes at their website. I’m assuming that the classic controller is one of those schemes since the game has had numerous advertisements as having a bundle with the classic controller.
Finally, on to the game itself. It isn’t a whole lot different from the ones for the PSP. It consists of one central town with many vendors and many different environments you can go to in order to hunt down monsters. Besides the hunting there is also an extensive amounts of ways to upgrade your weapons using items you carve from the corpses of the monsters you slay and/or items you find from foraging and mining. A big difference from the PSP games is the underwater combat. This allows players to hunt monsters that dwell underwater, making a whole new way to fight. Of course, one can assume that there will be all new items, weapons, monsters, etc. that were never seen in the PSP version.
Who doesn’t like killing monsters then using their bones to upgrade weapons and armor and then using that equipment to kill more monsters? If you’re interested, pre-order and get a demo, or wait till April 20th and just buy it. Either way, take a seat, grab your ridiculously huge sword and go slay some monsters!
FINAL FANTASY XII is by some measure my favorite video game of all time.
Certainly, I like other games. Tetris, Katamari, Super Mario Brothers; some installments are more interesting to me than others, but I’ve found that over the years I keep returning to the same archetypes. (Possibly, this says more about the dearth of innovation in the video game industry than my own tastes. Anyway.)
FFXII struck a perfect balance between classic virtues and modern craft. An entertaining story with engrossing action. Great character designs and deep, deep combat strategy. In short, polish with substance. I usually tag-team JRPGs, playing a couple of hours a day switching off with a partner, but this one I played all the way through, start to finish, all by myself. I bought action figures of the game’s characters. I bought another stuffed Moogle.
So, if FFXII was so great, why have I quit playing FFXIII altogether, mere weeks after its release?
I used to bristle when people criticized the FF franchise for being nothing more than movies you have to sit and click through. Sure, some of the games forced you to sit through a lot of cut scenes, and the combat systems have once or twice felt a bit empty. But for every FFX, which was heavy on cinemas and perhaps weak on strategic depth, there would be a FFXII, with a combat system I still find myself trying to map, mentally, onto my everyday life.
Hey, I said it was my favorite game of all time.
When it comes to FFXIII, there’s frankly not much I remember about the game after turning off my system.
The game finally fulfills what less easily entertained people have been saying about the franchise for over a decade:
- The characters are 1-dimensional cliches
- The storyline is a rickety scaffold upon which are hung gorgeously rendered music videos
- You don’t so much play the game as you simply click a single button at the appropriate times in order to trigger the next music video
Now, I used to think those complaints were silly. And I still would, if we were talking about FF 7-12.
Unfortunately, we’re talking about a game that appeared four years after its last installment and cost $60 at retail.
FFXIII producer Yoshinori Kitase seems like a nice guy. I feel a little guilty here saying I don’t feel like his game was worth the wait.
But… I don’t.
I want to love FFXIII. Seriously! I scheduled the beginning of my spring vacation this year to coincide with release day — specifically to maximize my FFXIII first-run enjoyment.
Now I find myself looking around to see what’s next.
FINAL FANTASY XIV, a MMORPG I have no interest in playing, is set for release later in 2010.
FINAL FANTASY: CHAOS RINGS, an original game for the iPhone, is set for release “soon.”
I suppose it’s possible that the last three chapters of this thirteen (get it?) chapter game really do comprise over half of its playable hours. It’s still possible that the game will take a drastic turn towards something that will hold my attention. But I’ll be frank: that’s starting to seem doubtful.
I don’t expect this game will sour me on the franchise. I’ve waded carefully around dud installments in past. But I had higher hopes for FF’s debut on the seventh generation consoles. Especially after waiting since 2006 to see the end result.
