News You Can Bruise for 2008 March 30

Permalink [Comments] (2) Sun Mar 30 2008 15:28:

Jeremy Penner reminded me of more heavily intertextual games: ROM CHECK FAIL and Barkley, Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden. Neither works in WINE so I can't play them, but they're exactly the kind of game my hyper-ludic-literate self likes to see.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that this new kind of game is inevitably what they call an "indie game", because you can't sell a game that rips off Pac-Man's sprites or makes unauthorized use of sports star likenesses. All you can do is hope nobody sues you, and game designers aren't covered by the same social mores that protect artists. You can always file the serial numbers off afterwards (the way some authors turn their fanfic into "original" universe novels), but part of the fun is the thrill of the remix.

Comments:

Posted by Jeremy Penner at Wed Apr 02 2008 17:39

I almost forgot about Retro Sabotage (http://retrosabotage.com/), which, after reading Mallory, seems like it would be really up your alley. Flash-based retro game deconstruction for your Linux-using convenience!

In terms of inter-game references, I'm also reminded of one of the levels in "The Wonderful End Of The World" (http://www.dejobaan.com/wonderful/), which is a PC-based Katamari Damacy clone. In this level, you begin by picking up pixels from a game of Pong, but as you grow larger, you find you were in the middle of a game of Pac-Man, which you can escape as you grow even larger to discover that actually the world is a game of Centipede. (http://www.dejobaan.com/wonderful/gui/shot_2.jpg)

Posted by Leonard at Thu Apr 03 2008 09:22

I didn't mention Retro Sabotage because I didn't think they were meaningful games, but coming back to it I see that not only is "Build On" a real game, it's something you might see under my defunct "X Carnage" label.

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