ffwd: Linklog

Archive.org: AV Geeks - 'VD Is For Everybody' ('The song is quite infectious', indeed, haw.)

FCCafe: OutRun, Sega Rally papercraft (In several flavors and styles, from the same source as the Katamari Damacy papercraft - here's a group shot.)

BBC: Eurovision song contest 'Allstars' competition announced (Go go Bucks Fizz!)

Namakoteam: Obscureness on Psikyo's Hot Gimmick mahjong series (Especially good since it links to the best 'how-to' mahjong explanation I've seen online.)

CBR: Stewart Lee talks to Alan Moore (Some intriguing talk about Moore's intentional estrangement from movies based on his characters.)

TuCows: IndieGameDev weblog (From a slightly unlikely source, but an interesting blog.)

ChartAttack: Stan Lee making Ringo Starr-based animated series (The sharks are so evolved that they can jump themselves.)

1UP: Phantom Dust - From Microsoft To Majesco (Originally for the now-cancelled XBN - good piece, embedding explosion-heavy autoplay videos in features is annoying, though.)

Sony Pictures: 'Mirrormask' movie site (Includes a teaser trailer for the astounding-looking Gaiman/McKean/Henson feature film.)

AllAboutJazz: Review of Transient's 'Over The River' net.label album (Here's the album link - good to see other sources picking up on net.labels.)

Fan-made Katamari Damacy papercraft (Good ol' lozenge head.)

Slate: 'Why video games shouldn't be like the movies' (Clive Thompson always gives good gaming talk for Slate.)

Electronic Arts @ USC lecture series (Is the artwork intentionally echoing Communist posters? Is this ironic? More at 11.)

NFG Games: Catch! Touch! Yoshi! DS review (Is this truly 'the first real Nintendo DS game'? Maybe.)

DIY Games: Independent Adventuring - December 2004 (Jozef Purdes comes up trumps yet again.)

GameSpy: Sega Classics Collection previewed (Wow, ten games, including a perfect Virtua Racing, for 20 bucks? Just say yes.)

Fatboy Slim: 'The Joker' video (Directed by a classmate of Brandon's, I believe - but both song and video are a bit sharkjump-y for me?)

Dubious Quality: Inside the EA LA Layoffs (Some interesting comments from an insider.)

Slamdance 'Big C' indie game winners announced (Good to see more people promoting independent development.)

Roctober: Hugh Phukovsky on the Andy Kaufman gathering (An extract from a paper-mag that looks very cool.)

DiGRA: Hard Core Column: Gosu Game Studies ('Academic researchers do not have to become world-class players or even fanboys to become gosu in player studies; they just have to find the players.')

Insert Credit: Sega Sammy's Darts Bar Bee (Odd - I always thought of darts as strictly a beerbellies and pints thing.)

The World's Smallest Game Of Pac-Man (.SWF) (Heh. Via Fort90.)

Gran Turismo 4 player completes real-time 24-hour endurance race ('Dozed off from time to time throughout Endurance Race and slammed into multiple guardrails' - via Piyokun.)

Sundance: Penn Jillette's 'The Aristocrats' movie ('You'll hear [a spectacularly dirty] joke told 100 times [by different comics].' Intriguing. Oh, and it's this 'style' of NSFW joke, apparently.)

Yahoo/Reuters: BBC Upholds Complaint from Narcolepsy Sufferers (Oh my zzzz.)

Konami's Gamers Day shows new Castlevania games (Went to this today - conclusion would be - IGA is rather cool, Castlevania DS is delicious.)

PsyTexx - Palm-specific music 'tracker', music-disc. (Good stuff - I remember when Melontracker was all the rage - via BoD.)

Google Video Search: 'wanker' (The NFSW words make it onto TV a lot more than you think.)

Intelligent Artifice: JoWood CEO resigns, offices closed (One of the big German-language game publishers having issues.)

Video-Fenky: Solvalou display model from Xevious (Wow, geeky Japanese retro gaming goodness.)

Tokyopia: Tetsuya Mizuguchi interview (Somewhat fractured, but still interesting.)

Archive.org: Kernel32 - 'Lay To Rest EP' (His previous Openlab release was one of my top ten 2004 net.label releases - this is also great, if abstract.)

Evan Dorkin: 2004 Soda Trials ('You don't get this intense journalistic shit on Neil Gaiman's blog, I bet.' Indeed.)

Terra Nova: 9 billion gold piece Ultima Online server farm being sold (Ker-CHING - a piece of MMO history, indeed.)

Paige Davis fired as 'Trading Spaces' host for sex tape scandal? (Primo, if possibly untrue gossip.)

Archive.org: 'Copyright vs Community with Cory Doctorow' (Many pointed comments, in a row.)

Obscuro Game O' The Day: 'Ganbare Neo Poke-Kun' (NGPC) (Since Brandon is picking up a copy - there's a FAQ with more info, looks like mini-game heaven.)

OSDir: Danny O'Brien - To Evil! Jan '05 Edition (Ohmy, oldstyle newspaper column pointy meandering, most pleasant.)

Barcade: Lethal Enforcers 3 arcade game announced (The first games were early '90s digitized-figure hilarity.)

Gamasutra: 'Interview: 2004 IGF Project Goldmaster Winners Talk' (They won the 2004 IGF, got to design a Sealab 2021 game for Adult Swim - neat.)

1UP/EGM: 'Playing The 'Rents' (Yes, yes, it's an inverse Child's Play, featuring a zombie.)

Squidblog: A blog about giant/teeny squid (Where's the Squidworth coverage? Via Collision Detection.)

Chipple.net: Review of an Alice In Wonderland-themed tea-room in Tokyo (Or vaguely Alice-themed, at least - some pics available here - via Jeansnow.net.)

Loonyboi: limited edition Monty Python-themed Spam available (Looks to be specially done for the Spamalot musical. )

Sulake Labs gets $23.5 million investment for HabboHotel (Wow. HabboHotel is a neat graphical chat prog, I met the Habbo guys at Ars Electronica in 2001.)

InsertCredit: Ultracade announces Breeder's Cup arcade game (New IC from me, also posted re: Jiji's trainspotter work on the Ibara illustrator.)

DE:BUG POD - a netaudio podcast (Uses Archive.org URLs to good RSS-feed effect.)

Game-Science: Famitsu/Enterbrain's Top 100-selling Japanese games (Good to see the full list, speculate on what obscurities are coming to the States.)

Moogle.net: Review of the Dragon Quest Slime controller ('As a controller, it's terrible. As a statue for the shelf, it's great.')

Pingpong Kombat - coin-operated table tennis machine (Here's a review of it, hah - basically a timed game with a raising/lowering net. Nice (litigation-worthy?) name, though.)

New Spike Jonze video for Bjork's 'Triumph Of The Heart' (Cats and Icelanders and rock 'n roll - via The-Inbetween.)

AP/CNN: Original Picasso sells at Costco (They really _do_ have everything there - via Mark Evanier.)

Opening movie for Sakurai/Mizuguchi's 'Meteos' for DS (Nice stylized intro, another Mizuguchi-related puzzle game I'm ravenously awaiting.)

Archive.org: Various Artists - 'People Doing Strange Things With Electricity Too' (Comfort Stand affiliate with Dorkbot for a great CC-licensed double CD about electricity.)

222b: 'Jakked' (Ben '222b' Turner links to this insanity from PSE2 - 'The fact that a magazine that has a direct business relationship with SCEA can't see that [Jak II is an exceptional achievement] is simply mindboggling to me'. WHAT? Church, meet state.)

CNN: Ex-banking software CEO creates 'Masquerade'-inspired $1 million treasure hunt book (Of course, Dan 'Elektro' Amrich is the online 'Masquerade' expert, which is interesting.)

Games.Kikizo: Andy Payne (Mastertronic, ELSPA) interview (A lot of interesting UK-specific budget gaming talk here.)

NFG: On PC Engine modems, super-obscure X68000 games. (On the obscure end of obscure, which is what we like.)

DIYGames: Playable PC demo of 'Darwinia' released (From Introversion, the Uplink guys, and _eminently_ worth checking out.)

Loonyboi: Jason Bergman's Top 10 games of all time ('...for absolutely no reason at all.' Ditto.)

InsertCredit: Wayforward's Sigma Star Saga announced (I say: 'Due out in June 2005, but looks dangerously cultish already.')

Eurogamer: Martyn Brown of Team17 interviewed (Spadge has some interesting comments on the life of the smaller UK developer.)

IC Forums: Review of 'Metal Wolf Chaos' for Xbox (From Software's Jap Xbox mech game, includes dialog like: 'Jodie - "The cannon is recharging!" President - "I am on the move - I''ll smash it faster than a Florida recount!"')

1UP: Freeloader - Surreal Fighting Games (A slightly odd collection, but heck, if it involves Arm Joe...)

Ananova: Stephen Fry voice of The Guide in HHGTTG movie (Good choice, I reckon. Also, Hammer&Tongs interview on PlanetMagrathea is illuminating.)

Chaos Engine: the perfect video game pitch (Industry messageboard site has excellent articles occasionally.)

Private Eye: Funny Old World, Issue 1124 ('Pavarotti, my guide dog, only understands French.' Uhoh.)

Everything2: 'Mayor McCheese' (Is he the Jimmy Hoffa of the fast food mascot world?)

Gamasutra: 'Shaping Ty 2 for the Younger Market' (Free reg. req., dayjob, some interesting material on focus groups and why games for kids are (allegedly) picked on critically.)

'NubyTech introduces Rating System for Video Game Peripherals' (Wait, 'N = Naughty'? Words fail me.)

Wired Rave Award nominees announced (I'm kinda indirectly nominated, since the 'O’Reilly Hacks series' is a Books category nomination, yay.)

InsertCredit: Mutant Storm to Xbox Live Arcade (Mm, Jeff Minter, Robotron, Xbox, unholy matrimony - another IC post by me.)

Timothy@/.: 'Micro-idea: city trading' (This has been done before offline, but is there a good online site for it? Lazyweb alert!)

GDConf: 'Dear Friends' Final Fantasy concert in SF (Special pre-order ticket offer for 'GDC community', whatever that is, heh.)

Mygamer.com: Review of my 'Gaming Hacks' book (Really quite polite, yay, as is the new Planet GameCube review.)

RealityBlurred: Mark Burnett working on 'The Apprentice' musical (On the one hand, Survivor, on the other, this and Commando Nanny? Riiight.)

Nintendo: 'Another Code' DS demo movie (Flash) (Sorta Myst with top-down second-screen control and Nintendo JP bells on?)

New 'Edge' magazine homepage (Oddly enough, a Movable Type-powered Kotaku/Joystiq-type thing. )

Yahoo/Reuters: Kinky Friedman running for Governor of Texas (His main plan is to "fight the wussification of Texas" - his books are gonzo neeto, too.)

IGDA: Matt Sakey's Culture Clash column on why game journalism sucks (Same ol' 'New Games Journalism' stuff, only - citing your own pseudonymous article (see bio) as an example of the good guys? Cheeky!)

Archive.org: 3 new Lifeform Project click MP3 EPs (That would be lp010, lp011, lp012 - easily one of my favorite netlabels, from Hotlanta, to boot.)

Yahoo/Reuters: 'Pentagon Spurned Plan to Initiate Enemy Homosexuality' ('Another idea involved creating "severe and lasting halitosis".')

Anry.ru: Astounding Half-Life 2 art (for Russian magazine cover?) (Also see Tyrael Knight pic - download the TechSmith codec/replay files and see the artist draw it!)

Sony Korea developing 'EyeToy: EduKids' (Interesting regional development for EyeToy - is it doing worst in North America? Via GAF.)

Archive.org: Acid Mothers Temple officially-approved live shows for download (Beautifully cultish Japanese jamband, great free recordings.)

MonkeyMethods: 'Bill Gates Strikes A Pose' (It's obvious, but it's marvellous - via BB.)

Dave Smith selling his Gradius V crystal paperweight promo (Damn, this is nice - they should mass-produce them.)

Got-Next: Interview with Alien Hominid producer John Baez (With a nice shout-out to Gamasutra, even - oh, and Alien Hominid still rocks.)

Yahoo/AP: Willie Nelson launches 'BioWillie' diesel ('What Willie brings to this is the ability to communicate directly with a truck driver.' Like Paul Newman and salad dressing.)

IGN PC: Matrix Online gets official DC Comics comic fanzine ('Think of it like Maxim magazine or People magazine for The Matrix Online. Users that accomplish great things in the game will be featured and interviewed.' Interesting - via Wonderland.)

LegalTorrents: Re-packed 8BitPeoples retro bleep MP3 label torrent (Now updated with the latest 8BP goodness.)

'The Fourth Rollocol' - more pics of our dachshund puppy Rollo (So damn cute.)

Landoverbaptist: Winning Souls to Christ in The World Of Warcraft ('Jesus Loves You! Please Love Him Back or He Will Burn You in Hell! PM Me if you want to learn more! ' - via The-Inbetween.)

Archive.org AVGeeks: 'Great American Chocolate Factory' (Since I've just been reading the excellent Candy Freak, this seems relevant.)

Fort90: Details of 'Super Mario Movie' NES hack art exhibit (As previously mentioned, but includes pictures from the NYC opening.)

Sky News: UK animal/inanimate object cruelty issues (Nodding dog ornaments, conkers, squashed turnips, knickers have feelings too.)

Game Science: Nintendo's Feb-March Japanese release flyers (Some v.cool stuff in here, including Pac-Pix and Meteos for DS.)

WarpRecords: Chris Morris, Charlie Brooker doing Nathan Barley TV series (Oh boy - of TVGoHome fame, didn't spot this until now.)

FansView: Vaguely competent Katamari Damacy cosplayer (Also see Soul Calibur's Nightmare (who looks like a little person), and many other 'interesting' Ohayacon cosplayers.)

ComfortStand: Cell1110 - 'St. Meringue' CC-licensed MP3 EP (Try Cell 2 in particular - a female Pet Shop Boys, almost?)

InsertCredit: 'Merregnon 2 gets Japanese release' (I also wrote up the Super Mario re-movie and the coolness of BreakQuest for IC.)

Seattle PI/AP: Marge Simpson, Wilma Flintstone get make-overs for TV ad (Also starring the ever-geek-friendly Velma from Scooby-Doo.)

IC Forums: Super Mario Bros 'movie' NYC showing, using hacked NES cart (Nice uber-psychedelic raster flyer, too.)

Hollywood Reporter: Advergaming's prospects for 2005 ('We licensed the 'Matt Hoffman BMX' console game by Activision and added bars of Coast soap all over the place.' Nice.)

Slateman: SNK's Metal Slug sprite gallery (Good icon/avatar material - actually new, some lovely Progear sprite rips from Capcom.)

NTSC-UK: Daigasso Band Brothers for DS reviewed (When are Nintendo going to release more decent DS titles in the States?)

Yahoo: President Bush drops (?) Kid Rock from inaugural concert (Why? 'But only pimpin' hoes with the big tush/While you be left pimpin' Barbara Bush.' Oh.)

Survey: Yahoo! and MSN close search gap with Google? (I don't yet see any reason not to use Google.)

Nurium Games' 'Breakquest' PC indie game demo (Extremely good abstract Arkanoid action with smart physics and design - here's an interview with the creator.)

AICN: Tim Minear's 'The Inside' TV show previewed ('Silence Of The Lambs' by way of 'L.A. Confidential' from Joss Whedon's right-hand man - sounds intriguing.)

Waxy.org: Waxy Links Statistics (Also see the actual stats - now I'm so mainstream, it hurts.)

InsertCredit: 'live from tokyo: tim rogers' 2004 insert credit fukubukuro' (More or less 60,000 words, or so I've been told. I like it.)

Gamasutra: 'Back To The Classics: Perfecting The Emulation For Digital Eclipse's Atari Anthology' (Free reg. req., dayjob alert, very interesting discussion of Atari 2600 emulation.)

AP/SouthFlorida.com: Reality show 'The Will' canceled after one episode (Last one-shot bust? '"South of Sunset," a CBS detective drama with former Eagles rocker Glenn Frey.')

Editor & Publisher: 'The Latest Arts Beat: Video Games' (Wow, 'serious' journalists taking some notice.)

Pharrell Williams, Jacob the Jeweler hanging with Nigo/Bathing Ape (Don't you read Fashion Wire Daily? Also, please socially deconstruct this picture. And this one.)

F4 Records: Factory Records re-incarnated yet again (Tony Wilson is truly one of the 24 hour party people - via XRRF.)

eBay UK: Harry Potter-airbrushed PT Cruiser (This is just... odd. Also, Harry is cross-eyed.)

Post-David Smith, 1UP adds Che Chou and James Mielke (Sorry, random game website gossip.)

'Only gay in the village' top UK TV catchphrase of all time (Just got Little Britain on UK DVD - verges on genius.)

Ali G's Borat causes havok singing national anthem at rodeo ('Unexpected song rendition' indeed - via Waxylinks.)

Archive.org: 'Santa Claus Conquers The Martians' feature film (Mmm, classy post-holiday PD entertainment - of course it's been MST3K-ed.)

OPM/1UP: Getting The Girl (A little more on girl gamers, by a girl.)

Daily Yomiuri: Video games with heroes make kids aggressive ('Computer games in which children can identify with a hero or heroine who attacks his or her enemies are more likely to make them aggressive than games featuring indiscriminate violence'? Interesting.)

PRBop: There's Ads Everywhere Else, Why Not Mud Flaps? ('Studies have shown that FlapMedia ads have an extraordinarily high recall rate with approximately 61,000 impressions per truck per month.')

Corpnews: Richard Garriott on the best MMOs of the year (Better stuff from Walter 'DAoC' Yarbrough, Damion 'ShadowBane' Schubert, and Raph 'Everywhere' Koster.)

InsertCredit: Radica does SFII Genesis 'TV game' (More quirk that's not for my work use.)

Archive.org: Mechasonics - Early Daze (Side 1) (Some great 1993-ish freely downloadable acid rave MP3s, originally recorded to cassette.)

PVRBlog: Going deeper into TiVo's CES announcements (A lot of this sounds _potentially_ exciting.)

InsertCredit: Metal Gear Ac!d's Japanese 'idol' movies (Bleeding snake, hidden trouser.)

Engadget: Verizon phones with streaming video for $15/month extra? (This sounds _great_, but argh, no Bay Area coverage yet?)

Armchair Arcade: Hackers, Slackers, and Shackles: The Future of Free Software Game Development (Definitely an intriguing article, from almost a Linux perspective.)

Bill Gates and Conan O'Brien's CES speech, transcribed (Transcribed Conan jokes are kinda funny - but did they cut the verbal indications of the technical problems?)

1UP: Grand Theft Auto's 'Essential 50' hall-of-fame entry (Also an intelligent discussion of the history of violence in games - more Toastyfrog goodness.)

Non-Sequitur cartoon: Newspaper cartoonist gets snarky about online publishing (As pointed out by Penny Arcade - wow, that's some hating.)

Monotonik: Planet Boelex - 'Sinking In The Soup EP' net.label MP3 release (Latest from my long-running net.label, free Finnish electronica from an old Amiga .MOD-scene guy.)

Loonyblog: Wachowski Brothers, Natalie Portman doing Alan Moore's 'V For Vendetta' (Alan Moore is still a genius, this could be excellent.)

Siliconbeat: Competing with Craigslist (A little old, but an intriguing look at whether newspapers will cope with the Craigslist phenomenon.)

XRRF: 'Professor Sheila, Take A Bow' (Yes, there's a forthcoming Manchester University conference on The Smiths.)

Reuters: Ricky Gervais' new sitcom will be 'Extras' (Post-'The Office', new sitcom will see Gervais playing 'aging film extra Andy Millman' - Kate Winslet, Jude Law to guest-star?)

Shii.org: The best Flash animation of all-time (A great primer if you're not a SA forum-ite, like me.)

Henry Lowood's 'History Of Computer Game Design' Stanford course reading list for Winter 2005 (Excellently comprehensive set of lectures, reading lists _and_ speakers.)

Alan Rickman voice of Marvin for Hitchhiker's movie (Also scroll down for a couple of movie stills - Marvin looks insane cute - oh, and check DNA's Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, only public for a little bit.)

Nintendo JP: 'Dance Dance Revolution with Mario' announced (You know, UK Resistance were on the money, as per usual.)

Orson Scott Card doing MMO with 'Tale In The Desert' creator (This is a very, very interesting match.)

1UP Freeloader: Return to Shooter Madness (A bunch of eminently sensible recommendations.)

AZ Daily Star: Biosphere 2 up for sale (Set up your offices inside the Biosphere jungle?)

Insert Credit: 'Silent Hill 4: The Room' review (One of the least rambling, most evocative IC reviews - v.good.)

NSFW, kinda: '80s Japanese hentai game covers (Mainly just a bit risque w/the cover art, but largely unnoticed early material by Enix, Koei, ASCII, etc - via The-Inbetween.)

SecurityFocus: Sims 2 hacks spread like viruses (Yikes, watch out for dishwashers named Candace.)

eBay: Entire Sub Pop singles club collection for sale (Obsessive collector nerd alert!)

Denver Westword: 'Game-on: Video game journalists look for a little respect' (Talking to David Thomas, Dean Takahashi, others - interesting.)

The Inquirer: 'How Nintendo boss silenced Steve Ballmer' (Wow, based on very fake article - The Inquirer not to be trusted in game-related gossip.)

InsertCredit: Jets'n'Guns downloadable soundtrack (..and gorgeous Swedish hair metal shooter game soundtrack action, to boot.)

PRWeb: 'Guru of Kettlebells, Pavel Tsatsouline, Leads Star Cast at First National Kettlebell Convention' (The only cure is more kettlebell! My name is Simon, and I'm addicted to lame press releases.)

NTSC-UK: 'Lumines' review for PSP (Absolutely my most-awaited PSP game - it'd better be a U.S. launch title.)

AP: 'William Hung only wants to play good guys' (Wait, in Singapore to promote his first film, "Where is Mama's Boy?" How the heck did that happen?)

Yahoo News: 'Nine-Year-Old Boy Fascinated by Toilets' (Free lavatories from Chris Kohler!)

Grand Text Auto: Zip-Gun Zulu (A Canadian sound poet's attempts to make Super Mario Bros into spoken word art, at about 01.16 in the MP3. Odd.)

OPM: 'Box Set: Box Art Around The World' (Some great comparisons from Jeremy 'Toastyfrog' Parish.)

Reuters: Trio Loses Half Its Subscribers, NBC Ponders Future (I previously mentioned this, but don't drop it, NBC!)

Insert Credit: Realtime Worlds turning Korean? (More gossip-y games news that fits better on IC than dayjob.)

Everything2: Anti-coffee legislation throughout history (I just remembered again that Everything2 rocks.)

Insert Credit: Masaya Matsuura goes Recommuni (Part of my IC freak-out - something to check GDC for.)

Everything2: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds (Aw, now I miss Bonfire Night in the UK - WotW is a traditional accompaniment in many places.)

PRWeb: 'Incompassionate Halton Bureaucrat... to be Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize' (Wait, no solar lights for someone's grave, this picture, the reprehensible phrase 'horrific tsunami waves of grief'? Complete, incomprehensible insanity.)

Piyokun's favorite videogames of 2004 (Good stuff - plus, scroll down for some crazily packed pictures of Comiket 67.)

Associated Press: 'The Donnas Say They Never Lip Synch' (Why. Is. This. News?)

Eurogamer: Top 10 Games of 2004 (Bramwell, Gillen and friends finish a fine, informal countdown.)

eBay: Katamari Damacy bobble hat (Just make sure nobody lops off your head and rolls it around.)

InsertCredit: 'Ie, Tatemasu! - A Review' (Absolutely fascinating article on 'fan-made erotic game' specifically for gay Japanese men.)

1UP's 2004 gaming year in review (Still my favorite mainstream game site - it's got, y'know, personality.)

MeFi: Aphex Twin comeback with UKP40-priced 12" on Rephlex (Oi, mate, you're avin' a laugh?)

2005 'annoying language' award winners announced by Lake Superior State (Here's the full list - including blog and, yuck, 'webinar'.)

Satan's Laundromat: KFC fast-food store ripoffs - a photostudy (This is why the Internet exists - via Waxylinks.)

IC Forum: Info on Tim Rogers' GamesTM interview with Hideo Kojima (If you can wade through the messageboard posts, some interesting stuff here.)

Jane Espenson and Eric Wight on the Buffy Animated Series (..which sadly never quite got going, though is apparently being re-pitched now.)

Defamer: Tom Cruise's diamond-studded Scientology medal (In in with the bling bling, Tommy!)

Vorc.org: Hally's 2004 chiptune of the year awards (A nice overview of the year in chipmusic.)

BoingBoing: Cory Doctorow on my 'Gaming Hacks' book (Holy crapola, best New Year's present ever.)