It’s out, it’s out!

Highborn hit the iTunes store today, go get it!

(and hurray, my first official credit as a designer)

If you are a press type, send me a note and I’ll get you hooked up with a review copy.

Highborn preview

Touch Arcade has posted a glowing preview of Highborn, the lighthearted social strategy title I was working on with Jet Set Games (while I’m still contracting with Jet Set, I’m now spending most of my days over at the Instant Action game studio).

It’s exciting to see the game finally nearing release, and Joseph Hewitt, the lead designer on the project, has really done a hell of a job wrangling Highborn to completion. I’ll be showing off the title at E3, and giving away promo codes to bloggers and press, so hit me up if you’d like to see it for yourself.

Heavy Rain origami

Kudos to Quantic Dream, what a clever way to occupy the player during the install process.

HoN Stats

HoN Stats, a little Heroes of Newerth stat tracking app that a friend and I having been tinkering with on the side, is now live.

The iPhone games I play.

Or less succinctly, the iphone games that continue to maintain a prominent position in screens four and five (where games go, between day-to-day and apps in development) at the start of 2010, even though I’ve got other games that I really should be playing and/or researching instead.

Cobra Command ($4.99)

The iPhone has seen the rerelease of several classics from the laserdisc arcade era, including the Dyer and Bluth collaborations Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair, and while the mentioned games are both worth reliving, Cobra Command, a laserdisc title I played only once as a kid, is the only one I keep coming back to regularly.

Licensed and released for the iPhone by Revolutionary Concepts, Cobra Command somewhat straddles a laserdisc genre that had split into two camps: fully animated narratives stitched together scene by scene (with progression more or less based on a series of quicktime events), and more traditional arcade shooters with animated scenery and backgrounds (think Astron Belt or M.A.C.H. 3). The result is a visually interesting game requiring more skill and less rote memorization (although plenty of that is needed to), leading to its longer lifespan on my iPhone.

Zen Bound (currently on sale for $1.99)

One of my first iPhone game purchases, and still one of my all-time favorites, Zen Bound plays to the strengths of the device, making clever use of tilt without the control scheme feeling gimmicky or tacked on at the insistence of a marketer’s bullet point.

As a bonus, the full soundtrack, written by downtempo artist Ghost Monkey, is freely available to purchasers of the app (click on Secret Exit in the main menu and enter your email address for a download link).

Hell, even the UI is fantastic.

Canabalt ($2.99)

The opposite of Zen Bound, Semi Secret’s Canabalt is frantic, maddening, and addictive, with distilled one-button gameplay and music by indie darling (and all-around good guy) Danny Baranowsky.

Version 1.2, now available, adds a new music track, new obstacles, and leaderboards (with a current and ungodly world high score of 367,562 meters).

Hot tip: tapping with my index finger instead of my thumb increased my top score by over 10,000. I’m told it has something to do with reaction timing, and why the same finger is used to time laps on a stopwatch.

Hi, How Are You (currently on sale for $.99)

Based on the work of artist and musician Daniel Johnston, Hi, How Are You is a solidly constructed surreal platformer with Q*bert mechanics.

The crew at Dr. Fun Fun has done an excellent job translating Daniel’s output into playable form, and the result is a smile inducing experience. While I’m not a fan of the default tilt control scheme, the alternative virtual d-pad feels and controls just fine.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen the 2006 documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, rent that first, then play the game.

Space Invaders Infinity Gene ($4.99)

Props to Taito for really knocking it out of the park with this one. Space Invaders oozes style, and is by far my favorite of all the classic gaming rehashes now available on the iPhone.

My only disappointment is that the extra use-your-own-music mode spits out levels based on metadata, rather than giving us the music-matching procedurally generated levels of games like Audiosurf and Vib-Ribbon. Still, awesome game.

PAC-MAN Championship Edition ($2.99)

Ported from the 2007 Xbox Live release designed by original game creator Toru Iwatani, PAC-MAN Championship Edition adds time and skill challenges, wrapping the PAC-MAN concept in a new veneer of slick presentation and sound. While virtual d-pads can be rough on a twitch-based game like this, Namco offers four variations, allowing the player to decide which is most comfortable (I prefer Type 2, seen above).

One of four different Namco iPhone games based on the PAC-MAN license, this is the one you’ll want to go with.

Restoring Count-Down: Finished!

As the system that straddled the electromechanical and solid state eras, Gottlieb System 1 pinball machines were, even brand new, notorious for their electronic issues, and now that the components have aged for thirty years, the potential problems have only compounded. There are very few who’d call troubleshooting a System 1 an enjoyable experience, and some techs refuse to work on the machines entirely.

By the time I called Nick at Planet 9 Pinball, I’d rebuilt the power supply, replaced a half dozen of the transistors on the driver board, and had gotten everything up and running but the outhole kicker and a couple other troublesome bits. Unfortunately, I managed to short out the transistor on the bottom of the power supply against its bracket, setting off a minor chain reaction. This is when I called Nick.

He quickly resolved the remaining under-the-playfield issues and was able to get the machine back up and running, but while a testing low voltage issue he inadvertently discovered a bad potentiometer, shorting a handful of chips on the MPU board in the process. I replaced the bad pots, and over the course of the next week he tested and replaced MPU chips one by one until things were (mostly) back to working condition. Plans were made to source the remaining chips (for the display controllers), and Nick went on his way, vowing to never work on another System 1 game again.

[Btw, I highly recommend Planet 9, Nick's a good guy, his rates are reasonable, and he'll slog through the muck to get your machine up and running again.]

Knowing that the playfield mechanics were solid and that this machine would be living with me for years to come, I began to look into some of the more recent System 1 replacement boards developed by boutique outfits and hobbyists in the scene. I’d heard glowing reviews of a modern all-in-one board designed by Pascal Janin, and having just buffered my arcade project coffer with a few parts sales, I took the plunge and ordered his PI-1 X4.

The PI-1 X4 fits into the backbox and replaces the power supply, MPU board, driver board, as well as the three-tone sound board mounted in the front of the cabinet. In addition to replicating the base game functions completely, it adds a whole mess of new features (skill shot, attract mode, free play, multiple high scores with name entry, etc), moves the stored data from battery backup to NVRAM, and corrects many of the faults of the original hardware.

Pascal’s manual was well thought out and installation took maybe 20 minutes. After thoroughly testing everything and setting the parameters via his display menu system, I gave the playfield a quick wipedown, replaced the glass, and played my first game on the fully working machine. Man, did that feel good.

Here’s the PI-1 X4 mounted in the backbox… lots of room leftover!

And finally, after too many hours, a lot of sweat, and a little bit of blood, here’s my finished Count-Down:

Count-Down in the dark! All new playfield lights, including colored LEDs in the inserts and behind the drop target banks:

And a final gratuitous playfield closeup:

link love 121109

Retro extravaganza!

Download all 21 issues of DC Comics’ Atari Force, one of the more ah, interesting Atari licensing deals of the 1980s. The original pack-in issues (telling a previous story) are also available.

Scott Evans, curator of AtariGames.com, recently uploaded the CAX 2009 Atari alumni discussion panel. Available in 5 parts, Arcade Heroes has bundled them all into a single post.

The birth of an industry: Ralph Baer and His All-Purpose Boxes.

For the ZX Brits: 25 Years of Crash.

Top Ten Favorite Games

Industry Gamers asked Cliff Bleszinski about his top ten games. Nick Chester linked to the interview and posed the same question to Destructoid readers (with a bunch of Dtoid staffer and community answers in the comments). Here are my favorites, in no particular order:

Rez HD
Okay, the rest are in no particular order, but Rez sits firmly at the top with its perfect mixture of simplicity and depth. Whenever I want to just zone out and play a game, this is the game I go to.

Mail Order Monsters
Probably the first game to really hook me, and a franchise I’d love to revisit as a designer. I still have a handful of monster disks around here somewhere.

Myth: The Fallen Lords
While the sequel was the better game, Myth: TFL led the way, and I do prefer its soundtrack (introducing me to the fine works of Marty O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori) over Soulblighter. Amazingly, the series is still strongly supported by developers in the fan community.

TRON
One of my earliest arcade memories is of walking into the Starcade at Disneyland and witnessing the overbright glow of multiple TRON cabinets, each with a spectator monitor mounted on the top. The experience burned something right in my brain, and I’ve been a huge fan of the franchise ever since.

Cave Story
Character, music, style, gameplay… Cave Story has it all. It still blows me away that Daisuke Amaya was able to create this entire game single-handedly, and I’m eagerly looking forward to Nicalis’ upcoming WiiWare release.

Herzog Zwei
Growing up as an Atari kid, I discovered the Genesis late, and Herzog Zwei even later. To this day, I don’t think anyone has done RTS on the console better.

Valkyria Chronicles
Lacking the polished veneer of nostalgia, recent games are always rarer on these lists. Valkyria Chronicles, flaws and all, was a breath of fresh air this year, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Magical Drop
I’ll take any of the three in the series, really. Magical Drop is perfectly enjoyable as a single player experience, but the game really shines in versus play. Most frantic puzzle game ever.

Rampart
Back in school, I used walk through the student union at UNLV between classes and play a round on the (usually vacant) Rampart cabinet. One of the first genre-mashup games (see Puzzle Quest, etc), the alternating segments of arcade action and puzzle building strategy hooked me.

Halo: Combat Evolved
When Halo was announced at Macworld 1999, I was blown away. Halo was the title that sold me on the original Xbox over a PS2, and Halo LAN parties are some of the most fun I’ve ever had gaming.

So that’s my list. What are your top ten favorite games?

Who were you during No Russians?

For those of you that have played the Modern Warfare 2 airport mission No Russians, a couple questions. If you haven’t played it, minor spoilers ahead.

After learning the hard way that turning on the other terrorists would end the game, I begrudgingly followed along. Uncomfortable with the idea of gunning down innocents, I pretended to take part, firing into the air, deliberately missing, nonchalantly walking along with the rest of the gunmen… and for all the problems I have with Infinity Ward’s approach to the mission, that particular bit stuck me as kinda fascinating.

I’m sitting on my couch, playing a game where I pretend to be a soldier. The solider I’m pretending to be is himself pretending to be a terrorist, and while pretending to be the soldier who’s pretending to be the terrorist, I’m (the player, not the soldier) pretending to shoot airport passengers.

Why did I do that? Why did I make the choice to pretend to play along? Did I assume that the game would notice, that I’d be chided or disqualified for not sharing in the civilian slaughter? Why not just shoot the civilians then?

Question 1. When you play a game like Call of Duty, are you consciously taking on a role (Hi, I’m Soap MacTavish!), making your decisions based on what you believe he would (or should) do, with a distinct schism between you and the figure on the screen, or is the character you, regardless of the details, with all decision-making based on what you would do?

If your answer is a little bit of both, or it depends, how does character definition affect your approach? How much do you need to know, what has to be presented to you as the player, before the role you are playing is no longer you, but a Mr. Soap MacTavish (or PFC Joseph Allen) instead?

Question 2. When you played No Russians, did you play as the undercover operative, or did you play as you?

link love 111709

Whoa, almost a month since the last link love.

Two excellent Kickstarter efforts met their goals this week: Computer historian Jason Scott‘s Sabbatical project and video game art mag Kill Screen. While Kill Screen fundraising is complete, there are several days remaining on Jason’s project… go give the guy a few bucks and let him keep doing what he does best.

The Making Of Tapper. Hey Edge, can we get an RSS feed just for the Making Of series?

The Running Man: behind the sketchbooks of Adam Saltsman’s Canabalt.