A bit off-topic, but I know lots of you got a kick out of the Totoro cupcakes my better half made earlier in the year. Well, she’s been at it again. My birthday is Christmas Eve, but we tend to celebrate with friends a few days early for obvious reasons – so this weekend she magically produced these amazing looking Pac-Man cupcakes. Enjoy the photos – and yeah, they did taste as good as they looked.
Following on from the popularity of last week’s Parappa and Street Fighter in just 15 pixels, I thought i’d better share this. Alaskan Military School have been at it again, this time cramming a whole bunch of classic games into just 15 pixels and four minutes – all to celebrate Gamecity kicking off today.
Question is – how many can you name?
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OK – the second non-anime/manga related post today, but when my good friend David Surman showed me this today I just couldn’t resist sharing. David is heavily involved in organising Nottingham based games-fest Gamecity, and – well, I’ll let him explain it himself:
This year we commissioned design collective the Alaskan Military School to produce an animation package to communicate the ethos of the event. We recently launched a series of viral spots that are the first part of this collection of new work.
A couple of quick news updates for you: this Sunday (May 3rd) sees the annual Sci-Fi London Film Festival’s annual Anime All Nighter swing into action – highlights this year being a showing of the controversial Ghost in the Shell 2.0, and – most interestingly – a very rare screening of a little film from 1972 called Panda! Go, Panda!
We stumbled across a true gem on the main Akihabara drag today; a store that sold only old Nintendo products and emulators. In amongst the Famicom and N64 carts my girlfriend spotted what’s pictured above: this beautifully formed Bomberman multi-tap. I’ve never seen a video-game peripheral evoke such nostalgic glee in a 28 year old woman before. The whole place was fanboy(and girl) heaven.
I was procrastinating preparing to do some work today by clearing out my office/studio/spare room, when I found myself taking the above photo. I was emptying a drawer of the usual flotsam of modern life, when I realised it was subtly different. Maybe it’s because I’m weird, but instead of the usual collection of random badges, elastic bands, paperclips and the tops off lost biros, this little pile included:
I’d been sat on Vexille for a while before watching it, to be honest. After the disappointment I felt from seeing the last Appleseed movie, I wasn’t sure if I could face another cold looking, mecha based, entrely CGI anime. But there’s an important fact that kept slipping my mind about Vexille, and that revitalised my interest every time I remembered it – that its the second movie from director Fumihiko Sori.
NOTE: also sometimes spelled ‘Dennou Coil’
Produced by cult animation studio Madhouse and directed by relative newcomer Mitsuo Iso, Denno Coil first started airing in Japan in May of last year, which is when I first started watching it, courtesy of Ureshii’s sublime fansubs. In fact, I watched the first 8 episodes just days after each one was first broadcast, but with other commitments and time conspiring against me, I criminally left the rest of the series untouched on my hard drive for months, until last week when I had a chance to sit down and try and catch up. I got as far as episode 12, still leaving me with another 14 to watch, and believe me, I’m going to be doing whatever I can to get through them. That new short story I’m working on may just have to wait a little bit longer.
Or at least his writers are. Once again they seem able to sum everything up in just under five minutes:
Updated: link fixed, video working again…
Just a quick one…had a clear out of the loft yesterday, and as a result I’m selling on some of my retro video games collection on ebay this week. Hard decision to take, because I love some of this stuff…even though I never use it, I just love looking at the packaging, especially on the Japanese stuff like the Wonderswan and the imported SNES games. Ah well.
Still not parting with my Dreamcast or Atari VCS stuff…not yet anyway…
