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61 Frames Per Second

May 2008 - Posts

  • Chiptune Friday: LUNGE!

    Posted by John Constantine

    Written by Derrick Sanskrit

    It's friday, which means it's time for some chiptune!



    Shake your tail feathers to this funky beat, and hit the jump for a little bit of history.

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  • Whatcha Playing: Fire Emblem is Pretty Hard

    Posted by John Constantine



    Introducing 61 Frames Per Second's latest blogger: Amber Ahlborn

    I think I can hear the strategy role-playing veterans laughing at me, but cut me a little slack, I'm pretty new to the genre. Fire Emblem is a series with deep roots. I didn't become personally acquainted with the series until Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance hit the GameCube. The game absolutely captivated me.

    Convinced that Fire Emblem is awesome, I snapped up Radiant Dawn the day it released for Wii.

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  • The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History, Part 3

    Posted by Peter Smith

    The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker — Dragon Roost Cavern



    Generally speaking, I have as much disdain for the 3D Zelda games as I have love for their 2D predecessors. With some exceptions, they're tedious slogs of fetch questing, hand holding, and unskippable, unbearably patronizing prattle. ("You got a key! You can use it to open a door!") This subject tends to be a bone of contention between me and my esteemed colleague here at 61FPS, but one thing I have to concede to him is that the dungeon design in these games is usually pretty swell. For all of Wind Waker's faults, it has the virtue of being visually gorgeous, which is why its fire dungeon, Dragon Roost Cavern, beats out the dreary Fire Temple from Ocarina of Time. (Don't even get me started on Twilight Princess.) The dungeon's architecture and mood are admirably cohesive, too — you can almost feel the breezy air outside the volcano give way to a brutal dry heat within. And the boss is — no argument here — spectacular. You win this round, 3D Zelda. . . grumble, grumble. . . — PS

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  • The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History, Part 2

    Posted by Peter Smith

    Resident Evil 2 — Raccoon City Streets



    Hideki Kamiya followed the logical zombie progression after Shinji Mikami's original Resident Evil, going from the '50s schlock of a haunted mansion/mad-scientist's lab combo and straight onto the '60s of Romero-urban-zombie-apocalypse. Kamiya's sequel also had a novel twist on the dual protagonists of the first by making two slightly different quests for the heroes Claire and Leon. You know how zombie apocalypses work, right? When survivors need to stick together to survive, you separate them immediately. Resident Evil 2 opens with a tanker truck of gasoline exploding in downtown Raccoon City, with Claire and Leon stuck on either side of the ensuing blaze. When you finally start guiding your poorly equipped, clean-cut cop or street-smart biker chick through the undead, you do it in flames. And, yes. The zombies are totally on fire too. — JC

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  • The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History, Part 1

    Posted by Peter Smith

    Videogame designers have found a great deal of inspiration in elemental dichotomies. Wood versus stone, wind versus lightning, ice versus fire — these natural conflicts are excellent bases for compelling environments and rich atmospheres. What better than tangible extremes like hot and cold to convey a sense of place to a player? To celebrate the imminent arrival of summer, 61 Frames Per Second is going hot with our first top-ten list, looking at the greatest fire levels in gaming history. If you're sweating, don't worry — we'll get to ice soon enough. — John Constantine

    Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts — Crucible of Flame



    Nobody would subject themselves to the brutally difficult Ghosts 'n Goblins series if the games didn't feature Capcom's usual immaculate production values. Dying a hundred times in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts' third stage, the Crucible of Flame (and you will) is made marginally more bearable by the brooding music (forever seared in my brain after a misspent youth) and the characteristically idiosyncratic twist on the usual "fire level" theme: instead of a generic inferno, the Crucible of Flame finds you in some kind of metallurgical hell. The stage has a lot of character; as fire levels go, it's more of an oozing, molten nightmare than a pyrotechnic fun fair. (In fact, some would say there's nothing fun about it.) A word of warning: it only gets worse from here. — Peter Smith

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  • Bionic Commando Rearmed Delayed, 61FPS Breaks Stuff, Is Happy About Soundtrack

    Posted by John Constantine



    Um. Yeah. Have I mentioned that we like Capcom games? Have I also mentioned that I actually tried to get legally married to Bionic Commando but was barred by New York State law? Have I mentioned that the delay of the Bionic Commando remake, Rearmed, made me actually yell at strangers on the street in Swahili? I don’t even know Swahili! But it happened. Those dudes at Capcom are trying to make it up to me though, by releasing the soundtrack to Rearmed on iTunes. Their logic for doing so, mentioned on the Capcom blog, is flawless:

    Why release this soundtrack? Simple:
    1) Because it’s awesome.
    2) Because Ben Judd loves his fellow Bionic Commando nerds. That’s YOU.


    I’m getting all choked up just thinking about how much they love me.

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  • Sweating it Out: How Fitness is Changing the Public’s Opinion of Games

    Posted by John Constantine



    Image courtesy of San Francisco Chronicle

    The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, “the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans”, announced today that they will be awarding $2 million in grants to twelve research teams across the United States to support research proving the benefits of health and fitness based videogames. It’s obvious that the recent surge of interest in fitness gaming has more than a little to do with the popularity of Nintendo’s Wii and the monolithic marketing blitz surrounding Wii Fit. But gaming as a method to curb obesity in the US has been gaining momentum since early 2006, when West Virginia began working with Konami to outfit public school gym classes with Dance Dance Revolution machines.

    While videogames are still an easy target for news media controversy, the tide is changing in a big way.

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  • The 61FPS Review: Grand Theft Auto 4 Part 3

    Posted by John Constantine



    I was hoping to open the final entry in my review of Grand Theft Auto with a definitive statement about its story, to find the game’s essence in the conclusion of its through-the-looking-glass tale of crime, brutality, and the American experience. I can’t. After one month, some thirty-five hours total, of playing Grand Theft Auto 4, I’ve quit. I’m not positive how close I even am to finishing the narrative portion of the game at this point because, not unlike the gameplay itself, there is no arc. After a certain point, the story merely plateaus with no discernible rise and fall. It ceases to be a compelling enough reward to keep playing the game.

    Grand Theft Auto 4 is a work at odds with itself. It places you in a gigantic world and allows you to do what you will, but you cannot change it. It allows you to build friendships with the characters surrounding you but keeps you always at their mercy, penalizing you if you can’t answer your phone in the middle of a firefight. The cars control with severe realism but the game demands you drive like Sandra Bullock in Speed. Even the slightest police provocation is an arrest-able offense but you can escape them by turning a corner. But most problematic is protagonist Niko Bellic.

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  • Versus: Rebirth of the Fighting Game

    Posted by John Constantine



    Rarely a day goes by here at 61FPS when we don’t at least tangentially talk about Capcom. Can you blame us? Some of 2008’s most exciting games will be released under the their banner and that’s not to mention the hundreds of titles they’ve made in the last twenty-five years that Pete, Derrick, and I still play with regularity. Last week’s announcement of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, a new fighting game that pits the publisher’s characters against anime icons from Tatsunoko’s four-decades-deep catalog, is particularly momentous. Alongside Street Fighter IV and Sengoku Basara X, it cements Capcom’s recommitment to the genre they all but created: one on one fighting games. What’s exciting, though, is that the genre itself is on the verge of an apparent renaissance.

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  • The World Ends With Yahtzee

    Posted by John Constantine

    It was starting to seem strange that all of our posts directing to The Escapist’s Zero Punctuation had volatile titles. Then I remembered that Yahtzee’s a volatile guy. His special brand of bile is pointed at The World Ends With You this week and, even though I have a serious fondness for the game, he makes some good points about its failures as a role-playing game. You’d think that role-playing would imply that you, y’know, play a role of some kind but, as Mr. Croshaw kindly points out, Japanese RPGs are pretty restrictive in that regard. This is why the silent, nameless protagonist of older RPGs is a sorely missed staple; it allowed you to inhabit that character despite your lack of influence over the story. That said, TWEWY’s story, not to mention its expertly translated dialogue, is pretty swell, so I don’t know what he’s bitching about.

    Hit the jump for good ol' fashioned ranting.

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  • Screen Test: Alone in the Dark

    Posted by John Constantine



    As a youth, conceptual horror was enough to scare me into insomnia. Violence was one thing - I could process that as fantasy - but lurking terror was too much. If someone said that they were going to watch a horror movie or tell a scary story, I would freak out. It was right around pubescence, when my capacity for abstraction was growing exponentially, that I developed a taste for fear. Like any other extreme emotion, fear can be delightfully narcotic. After watching It (yes, it scared me. You look at Tim Curry in a clown suit without shitting yourself, I dare you,) I was finally clued into what everyone else seemed to know: being scared is fun. It wasn’t until the late ‘90s, with early Resident Evil and Silent Hill entries, that I started getting my fix from videogames. So those games’ shared ancestor, Alone in the Dark, is an unknown quantity for me outside of reputation. The new Alone in the Dark from Atari, after a couple of years of development purgatory (not quite hell), is looking like it will live up to that reputation.

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  • Whatcha Playing: Keeping the Beat, Drum Master Style

    Posted by John Constantine



    Written by Derrick Sanskrit

    This hip urban lifestyle is killing me. Even though I walk a couple miles each day going to and from various places, I spend at least three hours a day sitting in place on trains as they scuttle my person between points A and R. Three hours! I'd probably go crazy or fall asleep and get mugged if it weren't for portable games. The problem is carrying games that can hold my interest for an extended period of time. Almost all of the most compelling DS games have little to no replay value (the Ace Attorney series, Hotel Dusk: Room 215) and many of the other better games require such precise stylus control that a simple jostle of the train car can ruin the entire experience (Elite Beat Agents, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass). What am I supposed to play?

    Thanks to importers and the region-free DS, I have found my answer: Taiko no Tatsujin DS: Touch de Dokodon!, aka "Taiko Drum Master DS". It keeps all the familiar elements of the popular arcade and home console Taiko Drum Master games (J-pop and classical songs play, cute cartoon characters dance, you beat the shit out of a big-ass drum) and makes it portable. Is there a story? Damned if I know, I just know that I get a more visceral thrill out of pounding a cartoon drum than I do shooting an AK-47 at Nazis.

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  • BREAKING: Beyond Good & Evil 2 Debut!

    Posted by John Constantine



    Oh, it’s more than in development. It’s more than a glint in Michael Ancel’s eye. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is so real it hurts to even think about it. Gamersyde is streaming the trailer that’s debuted at Ubisoft’s Ubidays event so click over there to get an eye full.

    My excitement. It is boundless.

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  • Along Came a Gamer: James Patterson and Authors in Games

    Posted by John Constantine



    James Patterson, mystery novelist/televisionist/filmist/Readers-Digestist, is rich. Crazy rich. The man’s writing makes so much money that my brain starts bleeding when I try to envision the raw numbers turned into cash. I can’t say much about his work - I’m just not much of a mystery guy. My only experience with Patterson’s output is restricted to films starring Ashley Judd and even those I can only hazily recall (much as it is with all movies watched on TNT at 2am.) Recently, Patterson set his sights on the rich narrative soil of videogames and is already enjoying a modicum of success with his PC title Women’s Murder Club: Death in Scarlet, a game based on the popular novel/television franchise. He certainly seems to have a keen sense of the form’s potential. In an interview with Next-Gen, Patterson said, "There's all sorts of content for games. To me, games are most interesting as they break the rules. The casual games business is just starting to open up. I'm not big on imitations. I like it when it's fresh and wide. It's a blank screen, man, you can put anything on it." Laudable attitudes about gaming aside, though, I’m always hesitant to embrace a prose writer’s jump to writing games.

    As I mentioned earlier, good writing is scarce in games, so you’d think that an accomplished prose writer would be a boon in a title’s development. But, as I also mentioned, the linearity of long and short form fiction isn’t particularly well-suited to a medium that requires variability; a reader will get to the end of the story no matter what but a player has to have control of how they get there.

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  • Fei Long and Dan in Street Fighter IV - Plus, New Boss Character

    Posted by Peter Smith

    Via Kotaku, check out these new concept sketches from Street Fighter IV, revealing that old faves Fei Long and Dan have made it into the character roster. This game just looks better every time a screenshot leaks. I was initially concerned that the characters looked sort of plasticky — those first few images looked kind of like stills from a PS1-era Tekken intro FMV or something. But it's only gotten more beautifully stylized every week, and at this point I'm highly psyched. It's a good time to be a Street Fighter fan, eh? On the slightly more questionable side, hit the jump for a pic of the rumored new final boss character, Seth.

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  • The Three Stigmata of The Halcyon Company: Philip K. Dick Comes to Games

    Posted by John Constantine



    While I firmly believe that most media shouldn’t cross mediums, sometimes the enthusiast in me really does get off on the idea of re-contextualizing great art. I want to see movies based on books, play games based on movies, hear minimalist symphonies composed to mimic Dadaist plays. Rarely, but I do. So, while the academic and critic in me is aghast at the idea of videogame adaptations of Philip K. Dick novels, the geek in me is ridiculously excited by the possibilities.

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  • OST: Everyday Shooter

    Posted by John Constantine



    It might be cheating to spotlight Jonathan Mak’s Everyday Shooter in our OST feature. After all, Mak’s guitar instrumentals aren’t used to provide color and tone to Everyday Shooter’s gameplay; they are the gameplay. Yes, Everyday Shooter is a twin-stick shooting game in the tradition of Smash TV and Geometry Wars but it is also, as Mak puts it, an album. Each of the eight songs is a distinct composition the player influences by their actions, whether in success or failure. Survival brings evolving melody while death brings a dissonant clang. The sweet melancholy of “Porco in the Sky”, the vicious roar of “Bits of Fury”; Everyday Shooters' songs endure in the mind beyond play but listening to them, engaging the music itself, demands play. While Mak’s game is often compared to Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s games Rez and Lumines, Mizuguchi’s brand of synesthesetics is still rooted more in gameplay tropes than in musical traditions. Thanks to its structure and adherence to form, Shooter creates a musical expression unique to both games and pop music.

    Hit the jump for a listen and look at "Porco in the Sky", the fourth track on Everyday Shooter.

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  • Bringing Sexy Back: Susan O’Connor

    Posted by John Constantine

    Back in the day, Hooksexup had a motto: Good writing is sexy. In the past ten years, as Hooksexup’s grown out of its spunky, firebrand early days and into its current incarnation as a mature, established purveyor of cultural commentary, the motto has disappeared from the magazine. But it lives on in everything we do. Good writing being sexy is a belief we cannot shake, a universal truth that colors all of our endeavors, and it’s at the heart of 61 Frames Per Second.

    Painful as it is to say, good writing is still rare in games. Dialogue, expository text, all writing really, takes a backseat to the creation of every other asset in a game. Hell, in some cases, I’ve seen promotional materials better written than the game they’re humping (I’m looking at you Metroid Prime 3. Suburban Commando called, it wants its dialogue back.) That’s why Susan O’Connor is sexy. Recently named one of the most important women in games, the fact of the matter is that O’Connor is one of the most important people working in games, period.

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  • Your Chance To Party With Walter Day

    Posted by Peter Smith

    Anyone who saw The King of Kong last summer — and if you didn't, you owe it to yourself to correct the oversight — will understand the appeal of meeting Walter Day, the bearded, guitar-slinging gent who runs videogame world-records emporium Twin Galaxies. (Hit the jump for a priceless clip, if you need a refresher.)

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  • Sex in Games: Daniel Floyd is a Smart Cookie, But No Al Green

    Posted by John Constantine

    I’m pretty confident that panties were not thrown at Mr. Floyd when he presented this video in his Media Theory class at Savannah College of Art and Design. You can tell just tell he's no Prince of Love. Passing judgment on relative sexiness aside, Mr. Floyd’s put together an accessible history, analysis, and compelling argument on the future of sex in videogames. The man makes a good point when he says that mature treatments of sexuality must come from game designers themselves. But, truthfully, the people who play games have as much responsibility as designers in introducing thoughtful sexual themes into games. If gamers don’t show a willingness to turn a way from the stock settings and premises of most games, designers and, more importantly, publishers won’t see a need to satisfy that audience. Sexuality in games’ real hope lies not just in designers but in digital distribution. Game makers looking to explore human relationships, intimacy, and sex itself will find their greatest opportunity on the internet, free of publishing restraints and the scrutiny that comes from selling games in mainstream outlets.

    All the same, good on you, Mr. Floyd. High five. Catch the video after the jump.

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  • Happiness in Videogames: The Importance of Being Earnest

    Posted by John Constantine



    Lorenzo Wang, designer of Page 44 Studio’s trick-dirt-biking game Freakstyle, has been thinking about happiness. More specifically, he’s been thinking about the recent work of people like Daniel Gilbert and Jennifer Michael Hecht and their new insights into just how human happiness works. In his new essay, The Pursuit of Games: Designing Happiness, Wang applies these new theories of happiness to making good games and the result is a set of design maxims that every developer should take to heart. To clarify, happiness does not denote fun. As Wang puts it, “Happiness comes from the resolution of anger, ennui, fear, frustration, insecurities, and unimportance. Pleasure is an immediate, short-term rush, often visceral, and designers usually to call it ‘fun.’ You can have one without the other.”

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  • Capcom to Date, By the Numbers

    Posted by John Constantine



    Late spring is always an interesting time to watch videogame publishers. With the close of the fiscal year, companies sit their investors and the media down to talk about how things have been going, what people are playing, and, most excitingly, what’s on the horizon. They also occasionally drop information that is ripe for trivia. For example, Capcom, the publisher you may remember as the one I have an unhealthy relationship with, released a list of all-time series sales numbers for the company. The usual suspects like Street Fighter and Mega Man are all over the list but, surprisingly, neither of those series take the top spot. Capcom’s best-selling series over the past twenty-five years has been Resident Evil, with over fifty games released world-wide and 34.5 million sold. Mark that down for quiz night.

    Hit the jump for the top ten.

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  • Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Inability to Show Instead of Tell

    Posted by John Constantine



    As Metal Gear Sold 4’s June 12th release date looms, more and more information about Solid Snake’s purported final adventure has begun to leak into the press. British gaming mag CVG reported late last week that MGS4 features a cutscene that lasts a full ninety-minutes. While the article doesn’t mention where said cutscene appears in the game – it may be smack in the middle or after the conclusion of play for all we know - it still means that a player will watch MGS4 for an hour and a half instead of playing it.

    Director and designer Hideo Kojima, in his Metal Gear Solid series especially, is notorious for using long non-interactive cutscenes and filling them with verbose, convoluted narrative. This over-reliance on the narrative language of film turns a number of players away from the games completely. Just two months ago, I replayed through MGS1 through 3 and both of my roommates could barely stand to be in the room while I played because, more often than not, the screen was filled with stiff talking heads. Games are meant to be played, not viewed, and that maxim makes Kojima a difficult creator to engage.

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  • Alternate Soundtrack - Donkey Kong '94 vs. Les Savy Fav

    Posted by John Constantine

    Words and video by Derrick Sanskrit

    The original Donkey Kong is justly considered one of the great landmarks in video game history. It popularized the now all-too familiar concept of platforming and introduced two of the most memorable video game characters of all time: the titular villainous ape and the overalls-clad carpenter named Jumpman, soon rebranded as the lovable plumber known Galaxy-wide as Mario. Even though the game was only four stages long, it demonstrated a clear story - ape abducts pretty lady, climbs up skyscraper, hero gives chase, avoiding obstacles - that resonated in the hearts of millions.

    After thirteen years, Donkey Kong was starting to feel a bit restricted and, as all teenagers do, decided to branch out to seem more exciting and relevant. The result was 1994's Donkey Kong for the Game Boy. It starts off with the original four stages but then continues for an astounding ninety-seven more that see Mario struggle across cityscapes, jungles, icebergs, valleys, and more outrageous environments. The soundtrack is sparse, with only a few sound effects for your actions and gentle musical clues to make you aware of time constraints. It is so elegantly simple that it induces a zen-like state; it invites a calm focus on the tasks ahead so you can rationally solve the puzzles before you. The only problem with this is that it’s completely unrealistic to be calm and rational when jumping across one-hundred-and-one stages in pursuit of your girlfriend and an enormous ape! Thankfully, this minimal soundtrack allows me to choose my own mood music without having to eliminate those all-important sound effects like I do with other games.

    Les Savy Fav are a lot like Donkey Kong, and not because their lead singer is a wild, hairy ape who climbs scaffolding (see Coachella 2008). Les Savy Fav are genre pioneers themselves, credited with creating the Brooklyn dance-punk sound that made bands like Liars and The Rapture famous years before their respective breakthroughs. While they are best known for their frenetic live shows and for 2004's Inches, it is 2001's Go Forth that is their best music for alternate soundtracking. Go Forth actually manages to take the innocently bizarre narrative scenario of Donkey Kong '94 and transform it into beautifully desperate drama.

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  • 61FPS EXCLUSIVE: Peaceoholics Protest Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto 4

    Posted by John Constantine



    Friday afternoon was bustling outside of Rockstar Games’ Soho offices in New York City when a group of Washington DC youths gathered to protest the recent release of Grand Theft Auto 4. Peaceoholics, a non-profit organization founded to develop support programs for young people involved in DC’s juvenile justice system, were led by co-founder and COO Ronald Moten to demand Rockstar stop marketing their Grand Theft Auto series to children under seventeen. As NYC Metro bus passed by adorned with a billboard for GTA4, Moten said that Rockstar’s game was a training simulator for young people, no different than games like America’s Army, a game used to train US Army recruits. “These games are training our children to be animals,” said Moten and and asked why Rockstar didn’t choose to make games about preventing crime that are as exciting as GTA. According to Moten, this was the third year Peaceoholics gathered outside of Rockstar’s offices. As of 1:30pm, Rockstar had not sent a representative downstairs to meet with the protestors.

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  • Chiptune Friday: 8bit bEtty Tastes the Rainbow

    Posted by John Constantine



    Written by Derrick Sanskrit

    It's common practice at this point on the internet to have Dance Party Friday. Don't let us stop you. Its been a long week, you shake your groove thing. Please, allow us to contribute to your booty-shaking.

    Here on Chiptune Friday, we will spotlight one of our favorite chiptune tracks every week, embracing our primitive gaming past while looking to the very sexy future so you can wiggle while you work it. This week, 8bit bEtty's cover of the classic Reading Rainbow theme song. bEtty uses the soundchips from the NES, Gameboy, and Commodore 64 alongside Pro Tools to craft these retro nuggets. Enjoy:

    Reading Rainbow - 8bit bEtty



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  • Webcomic Watch: Eegra

    Posted by Peter Smith

    Videogame-themed webcomics are a mixed (and dizzyingly numerous) bunch; for every Penny Arcade, there're a few hundred semi-comedic fan-fictions stapled together from sprite sheets and MS Paint doodles. It's always a relief to find something with some genuine craft put into it. The relatively new Eegra's got craft in spades — artist Patrick Alexander deploys an impressive range of visual styles — but it's also got a glorious mix of old-timey wordplay and visual grotesquerie.

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  • Kudos: Play Magazine’s Scoreless Reviews

    Posted by John Constantine

    61 Frames Per Second would like to salute our print peers over at Play Magazine and editor-in-chief Brady Fiechter for their decision to run game reviews without letter grades or numerical scores. It’s a bold move for a print publication whose audience spends more time scrutinizing scores than what’s actually written about a game. While I’ve had my own issues with some of Play’s editorial content in the past, this is an important move for games journalism and, ultimately, for games. When publishers stop making review score averages the basis for what games get released and what developers get funded, videogames as a medium will be a whole lot healthier.

    Here’s to you guys.

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  • World WTF Federation: Wrestling Games?

    Posted by John Constantine



    Kurt Kalata’s website Hardcore Gaming 101 is a weird space on the internet. It’s like if the Smithsonian, a flea market, and a miniature golf course arcade from 1985 all existed in the exact same space. It is an indispensable resource and is one of the most entertaining and important archival magazines on the net. The most recent update features a number of articles focused on wrestling games. Now, I have fairly eclectic taste in games. I’ll play anything if it seems interesting. But I do not understand the phenomenon of wrestling games. Broadly speaking, wrestling games – I’m talking Hulk Hogan style wrestling, not the Olympic sport – are the most complex games in existence, featuring a level of depth in control and strategy that I have trouble even verbalizing. The Japanese developer Spike’s Fire Pro Wrestling series is cited by many developers as one of the finest game franchises ever designed. I played the Playstation 2 sequel Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for about twenty minutes back in April and I had no damn clue what was going on. There are like thirty selectable referees!

    WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH WRESLTING GAMES?! WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!

    Seriously, we want to know.

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  • Whatcha Playing: A Little Singin’, a Little Dancin’

    Posted by John Constantine



    Last Saturday, I woke up, put on the coffee, and sat down on the couch with the full intention of finishing off the remaining story missions in Grand Theft Auto 4. As the day wore on, though, I found myself continuing to ignore the controller, unable to muster the enthusiasm to play at being a hardened criminal. A whole Saturday was passing me by, gameless. It wasn’t until around nine o’clock that my roommate and I decided to bust out Rock Band that I got to gaming. I’ve been fairly indifferent to the music game revolution of the passed two years for one very specific reason: I suck at Guitar Hero. My finger dexterity simply doesn’t match my thumb dexterity. But, since a friend loaned his copy of Rock Band to my apartment full of twenty-something ne’er-do-wells, I’ve come to see the light, and it’s all thanks to singing. Karaoke videogames are too laden with pop and karaoke bars are simply too expensive for a man of my meager means. Rock Band lets me be Ozzy, Kurt, Shirley Manson, and Ad-Rock and the experience has been eye opening. Even more so than the Wii, Rock Band has proven to me the opportunity offered by alternative forms of control in games. And rest assured, Rock Band is a game, a clearly defined set of rules adhered to in order to achieve a specific goal. I just never thought my drunken rendition of “Say It Ain’t So” would ever be the route to the highest score or the next level.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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