Magnetis trailer online

Magnetis Wii trailer from Yullaby on Vimeo.

F-Zero cover

Here's a quick cover of my favorite F-Zero tune, Port Town. Play it LOUD:

Port Town Mojo

You can also check my Facebook page (and hopefully become a fan! :)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nino-Mojo/176919580012?ref=nf

E3 press conferences

I don't get why everyone trolls at who's got the best conference and who's got the suckiest one. Sure Nintendo sucked, but all in all they still announced some rather cool games. Same goes for Sony and Microsoft.

2 new mario games, both looking super fun and gorgeous, a new Metroid by Team Ninja (who would have guessed? Smart move by Nintendo), a new Wii Sports, a new Zelda, a new God of War, 2 new Metal Gears, a new game by Team Ico, and tons of other new stuff, including new controllers for Sony and Microsoft. That's probably one of the best E3s ever for gamers, there's ton of stuff for everyone on every platform in every genre. I don't get why people are trolling about being disappointed by this or that.

Hey gamers, what the fuck is good enough nowadays to please you?

Edge threatened with a suit (by a major douche)

In case you don't know already, this is sad and infuriating.

http://www.mygameloft.net/igda-board-member-tim-langdell-igf-mobile-nominee-edge-and-a-sorry-trademark-tale/

And TIGsource.com's reaction:
http://tigsource.com/articles/2009/05/29/tim-langdell-the-edge-of-insanity#comments

Quentin Tarantino...

... Is awful. Seriously. He had his highlights but crap, if you consider him a master I just can't respect you.

Just saw Ueda's next game's teaser

Of course you've seen this gem by now:


WOW. I'm so grateful I can feel like this once every four years or so. This seems powerful and beautiful beyond words. I will enjoy it as slowly as possible.

It reminds me of some jerks complaining back then that Ico was too short, offering "only 6 hours of gameplay". How the fuck can someone blast through a gem like this is beyond my understanding. Fulvio makes the best tiramisu in Paris, but my young cousin ate it in 2 bites. That's because he's an ass, not because of the chef.

Random rants

- Ok so both the neighbours on the 2dn AND the 3rd floor are redoing their apartments heavily, so it's basically impossible to sleep after 7 or 8 am. Which to me is usually 3 or 4 hours only into my sleep.

- When scoring a film, there's a huge difference between doing something that works, and doing something that the film maker likes. Both are equally important (unless the film maker has a really bad taste, which happens). I lost a project this week because I couldn't do something in the style they liked, even if I did something that worked. Of course they were right to reject me, I was truly unable to imagine something in the style they wanted.

- Ju got that thought about making a podcast or some sort of video show where we could just go nuts and say what we want. I've been unable to take that idea out of my head for weeks now, so I think it's happening. I just need to setup mikes and everything. The whole thing will be in French though.

Excerpt of something I'm working on

Click here to download the MP3 excerpt

Hey there,

This is a little something I'm working on at the moment on my sparetime. In advance, sorry for using pizzicato strings, which seems to be the fucking default instrument for making "Crappy Casual Game Music 1.0". I just thought it did the job here, feel free to suggest something else.

It's for a kind of puzzle game for the iPhone, so it must be calm and unintrusive. It's really good being able to compose things that sound very personal to me. You're gonna say it sounds very "Nino-esque" I know. :)

Keep in mind it's a work in progress though, lots of work is still needed, to connect the various ideas presented here together in a better way (or to connect them at all :). 

Feedback is more than welcome!

----------

Glon,

Un petit quelque chose sur lequelle je travaille en ce moment dans mon temps libre. D'avance, pardon pour l'usage de pizzicato, qui semble-t-il est l'instrument par défaut pour faire de la "Musique de Jeu Casual de Merde 1.0". Je pense juste que ça marche à peu près là, mais je suis ouvert à une suggestion pour changer d'instrument.

C'est pour un jeu de réflexion, donc il faut que ce soit calme et non-instrusif. Ca fait du bien de pouvoir composer des choses qui sonnent de manière personnelle. Je sens qu'on va me dire que ça sonne très "nino-esque", je sais... :)

Gardez en tête que c'est un travail en cours, il manque encore du travail dessus, notamment pour mieux connecter les différentes idées présentes dans l'extrait (ou plutôt les connecter tout court. :)

Commentaires, retours, suggestions bienvenus !

PS: Et oui, je me suis dit qu'il était temps d'écrire un peu dans ma langue natale, dans laquelle j'ai bizarrement tendance à moins m'énerver. :)

Daniel Benmergui's and Gregory Weir's games

They're awesome, and you're not.

These two little gems are kind of like Jason Rohrer's games Passage and Gravitation, but cuter!

Try I wish I Were The Moon, and Story Teller by Daniel Benmergui.

Now try I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors, from Gregory Weir. If that's not brilliance, I don't know what this is.



I would just like to troll a little bit on the fact that I'm sure most people, especially a lot of game designers, won't see the "point" of these games, or say they aren't games at all, or they will simply not understand "the hype". I pity them, because that's exactly why this industry looks so retarded to the rest of the world. These experimental little gems do more to advance the medium to a truly mature form than anything you will come up with in your next action game.

Okay, you might not toy for more than five minutes with them, but for me it was a very worthy five minutes, since I feel tremendously inspired by these tiny things. And now I feel compelled to make my own.

The very cool thing with indy games, is that they still have a freedom long lost by mainstream game developers: name their game something interesting, or intriguing, or even meaningful sometimes. I Wish I Were The Moon, I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors, And Yet It Moves, Seven Minutes, Seven Days a Stranger... Those are interesting titles that make me want to find out what the game hides in its heart. They're intriguing, so by the moment you hear them your brain is already working trying to figure out why they're nammed like that, so in a sense, these games already respect you although you haven't played them yet.

Mainstream developers are condemned, perhaps forever, to try and fit a product descption into their game titles. What a pityful place we're in. I want to do art games. ;_;

Salon de l'Agriculture 2009

A few photos I took from last week's Salon de l'Agriculture. This is a show in Paris where you get a chance to catch a tiny glimpse of the amazing food products that french regions make. People come from all over the wold to see this, it is truly unique. Not to mention you get hammered for free less than 20 minutes after you're in, because of all the fine wines and beverages you get to taste.

I bought probably one of the finest Camembert I ever had there, for 3.50€ (gold medal this year), and two amazing Sauternes.

This is by far my favorite show in the world, and I've been to the GDC and E3 twice.