Now, why'd he have to go and say that (again)?

A few years ago, film critic Roger Ebert sent gamers the world over into a tizzy by saying that games aren't art.

Although the remark inspired countless articles and blog posts on the subject (heck, I wrote one of the former for gamasutra.com in 2007), Ebert refused further comment--until late last week, when a post titled, "Video Games Can Never Be Art," appeared on his Chicago Sun-Times blog.

Unfortunately, Ebert spends the bulk of his post trying to dismantle a developer's argument in favor of games being art rather than trying to back up statements like this: "No video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."

The few times he tries to defend his position, he falls short. For example, early on he writes, "One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game." Sadly, he doesn't expand upon that comment and explain how or why the existence of rules, points and/or objectives disqualifies games from being art; all he says is that "real" art forms "are things you cannot win; you can only experience them."

Near the end of his post, Ebert asks, "Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?" Given his inability to explain his position--and his admitted inexperience with the medium he's so keen to criticize--my question to infuriated gamers (myself included) is: Why are we so intensely concerned with what such a person has to say about our hobby of choice?

See also: 'Games are not and never will be art. Oh, really?'

The game-inspired music video that got away

What do you get when you mix game-inspired imagery with the melancholy title track of Moby's "Wait for Me" album? If you're Maik Hempel, you get the following:



"Its different to anything I've animated in the past, because essentially the whole clip is made of two-frame cycles," Hempel says of his creation. "I played a lot of Super Mario World to get the right look for it."

The video was concocted for a recent competition held by the artist formally known as Richard Melville Hall  and Genero.tv. Hempel didn't take home the top prize, but he was a finalist--an impressive feat considering the contest attracted nearly 500 submissions.

(Via justin-difazzio.blogspot.com)

A tale of two trailers

During its recent Captivate 2010 event, Capcom unveiled new, English-enabled trailers for two of its upcoming DS releases: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Ōkamiden..

Here's the one for Ōkamiden:



(The one for Ghost Trick can be seen here.)

According to those in the know, Ghost Trick will see a Western release later this year, while Ōkamiden won't be heading stateside until sometime in 2011 (though it'll hit the streets in Japan by the end of 2010).

See also: 'Ghost Trick's box art is kind of kinky (and a little bit gay)' and 'Ōkamiden one step closer to being released in Europe and North America'

Bat Attack!

That's the name of my very first WarioWare D.I.Y. microgame, by the way.

I guess you could call it a riff on--or rip off of--one of Nintendo's first "weekly games," ABBE's Fright Light, as players are tasked with ridding a spotlit scene of shrieking bats.

Yes, my company is called "RainBlow Software." 

I'm pretty proud of it, to tell you the truth--mainly because I made all of the game's graphics myself. The background music was stolen--er, "imported"--from one of WarioWare D.I.Y.'s pre-fab microgames (Cake Defense), but I'm thinking of making my own tune for the already-in-the-works sequel--which will sport an awesomely creative name like Super Bat Attack!

Anyway, send along your friend code if you want to give it a go. (I shared mine here.)

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

In this instance, I'm talking about playing Super Mario Bros. on an Amazon Kindle.

According to ubergizmo.com, some uber geek is working on a NES emulator for the popular ereader. Here's how it looks running on a Kindle emulator:



So, basically, it looks worse than Super Mario Land running on a beaten-up, 20-year-old GameBoy.