fortytwo points

"5 Awesome Video Game Consoles That Never Made it to Market" by Gamal

"There's nothing I love more than not having to work to add content to my own site, so today is just as much a treat for me as I hope it is for you. Enlightening us about some of gaming history's most depressing hardware flops is Gamal, fortytwopoints newest contributor, so please welcome him to the party. Let us weep together about what may have been and hopefully we will be inspired to do it better ourselves in the future. -Unfather"

>O<>O<

Since the late 70’s, gamers all over the world have had their own specific wish lists of what they wanted in a console. From how their dream console should have looked and what features that console should have had. It’s natural to dream up the ideal piece of technology that could cover one’s own specific needs and very often, those needs show up when there is a particular disadvantage in one or all of the consoles that have already been released. Who the hell would want a PS2 when you could have had a PS3?

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The Phantom, by Phantom Entertainment

Expected Cost:

Never officially announced but just to make ends meet, they'd have to charge $700 for the console

Why was it awesome?

Watchmen Saturday Morning Cartoon

Okay, it has nothing to do with video games but who isn't excited to see The Watchmen movie?

It was a rhetorical question.

The movie drops tomorrow, but until then, enjoy this mock Saturday Morning Cartoon by HarryPartridge:

Genius. Gotta love the nuances, and my thanks to King-mag.com for pointing this one out.

-Unfather

Where To Get Incredible Game Music

dB Soundworks may not be well known now, but I'll put money down that this guy's gonna be the next Tommy Tallarico.

Danny Baranowsky owns the property and created the fantastic music for Flashbang's fantastic game Blush (reviewed here). There's a nice selection of electronic music to go through and it's all free to download, so check it out.

That's really all I've got to say about that. ;)

-Unfather

Flashbang's Blush flOws like Spore (the fun parts, that is)

It's sometimes surprising if not downright amazing what social networking can do for you. I really only joined Twitter to compliment fortytwo points with some real-time updates and I never thought it would actually lead me anywhere I cared to be. This parts not surprising, but I was wrong.

As I investigated my few followers in an effort to determine how crazy they must be to have taken an interest in my Twitter account, I found that one of them (at least) probably isn't an individual. Instead, they turned out to be a gaming service.

Now, this is exactly why I never did and really still haven't gotten into the whole web 2.0 hoopla. You're a less valuable community when someone starts using your channels to hawk their wares in what will probably be an apparently objective manner. It's not wrong to sell shit through creative means, but it is wrong to think that someone's your friend and to friend them as if they actually were. Take a look at Tila Tequila. No one in the world actually likes her and yet she has millions of online "friends". Am I the only one who finds a service that facilitates this kind of madness unappealing?

Off With Her Head: Good Games Shouldn't Make You Feel This Bad

I have a million and seven excuses why I haven't been posting regularly lately, but this wall of half-lies and somewhat-truths I've constructed could not contain my desire to spread the word about this game.

(A special thanks to Play This Thing! for sharing this)

Bob Clark of The Designer's Dilemma blog recently developed a simple title called Off With Her Head for the Global Game Jam, and it's arguably of greater moral depth than almost any game in existence. Off With Her Head places you in the shoes of an executioner for a King, and you have the unenviable duty of convincing all the kingdom's women to either join the royal harem or die beheaded at your hands. The women of this land are all so beautiful and marry so quickly that even the realm's own men often go unwed, His Highness included, and the King has had enough. You will either help him resolve this problem in the most despicable manner possible, or you yourself will share their fate.

Yes, It Is Too Much MUGEN

I promised you some MUGEN insanity, and now I deliver:

In a perfect world, this would be standing up in an arcade somewhere.

-Unfather

Mugen X

Over a thousand characters. A hundred stages. More fighting than you can shake a stick at. I'll be back in a few with video.

-Unfather

Extended Reading: Questions with Entrager, Developer of Remote Masseuse

Recently I spent an indecent amount of time with new community release Remote Masseuse for Xbox Live. Giving it what you might call my "seal of approval", I have every intention of continuing to approve it through the holidays. Much to my surprise the creator himself stumbled across my humble little blog and commented, and having hit "ask" with a dart while blindfolded, I decided to request a moment of his time.

Fortunately Entrager agreed. Unfortunately I'm a terrible interviewer, so here are the best questions I could come up with.

I want to thank Entrager for being kind enough to pick up the slack:

Thank Your Lord It's Finally Here: Remote Masseuse for Xbox Live

We've all done it. To some it is a secret shame and to others it was simple curiosity. If you can find someone who hasn't done it within six months of owning one, then I can show you someone who's a filthy fucking liar. The fact of the matter is that vibrating devices, let alone wireless controllers, are all destined to eventually touch someones genitals, so it's only natural that we should finally have a product like Remote Masseuse by Entrager, available today on Xbox Live.

A potentially amorous by-product of Microsoft's recent move towards community development (see; XNA), Remote Masseuse allows you to control the speed and/or power of your controller's vibration feature. In effect this allows you to turn your gamepad into a clunky massage device of sorts, but in reality that means you can now effectively get yourself off with it. 'Bout damn time, too.

A maturbat solo mode allows you to... "massage" yourself alone, or you can go online and massage other people, possibly people you've never met before! :D There is even voice-chat support so that you or your partner can request "the kind of massage they would like to receive". Otherwise, we'd have to use the clunky Xbox interface to type  things like "mmm yeah, faster please" or "take that bitch off stun and set it to 'bust'".

At a measly $2.50USD, there's a good chance you have the 200 points to buy this already sitting in your account, possibly waiting for the next batch of shitty Guitar Hero DLC. There is a demo you can try online as well for the low low cost of free. It's a marketing scheme awfully similar to the internet-porn industries...

Having tried the demo, my verdict is gonna have to be "mmm... *O-face*". You know what I'm talkin' 'bout, yeeeaahhh... ;)

-Unfather

Demaking Team Fortress 2: Gang Garrison hits Beta Version 2.0

I'm a huge fan of Team Fortress 2 and would even go so far as to call it the best multiplayer deathmatch game there is, period. Of course you do not have to agree with me, as we all know not everyone can be right all the time. But I digress. Proving that a fun system is a fun system regardless of technical ability, Gang Garrison 2 captures the spirit of TF2 and shoves as much of it as possible into as few pixels as possible, and the result? Even more fun.

For those like me who were not aware that this scene had a name, "demaking" means to remake a game to play on a platform inferior to the one that it was originally intended for. It can also refer to games that are remakes in a traditional sense but that do not have the same technical features as the original, such as extravagant graphic effects or surround sound compatibility. Not the first Valve game to see this treatment, Gang Garrison 2 falls into the latter category alongside its compadre Portal: The Flash Version, potentially enforcing the idea that the Orange Box must be one of the most popular game packages of all time. Having just made it to version 2.0, I think it's time for a look.