ben is on the inter.net

Oh god I want this, originally uploaded by bburbank.

I went by the local vespa dealer today. They had one of these in stock, in the color I wanted. Out the door price was kind of high, but I could probably cover it. It was beautiful and the guy said they don’t think they’ll get any more of that model and definitely not in that color. This thing would do 75MPH on the highway, was fully automatic, and was slightly more comfortable than the really expensive chair that I’m sitting in right now.

My ad slogan: “I just want to kill myself and ride a Vespa LXV150 through heaven.”

So Metal Gear Solid 4 is coming out in 3 weeks and I’m more excited for it than I’ve been for a game in a long time. Seriously I’m frothing like a thousand blue planets here. This might just be residual excitement*. It also might be my very real fascination with a possibly perfect ending to the series**. I’m not sure, but in honor of it, I’m playing lots and lots of metal gear. I’m about to finish off Snake Eater, which I’ve been playing on Very Easy so that I can really mess with people. I bought a copy of VR Missions on ebay because it’s apparently one of the best puzzle games ever made. I’m finally going to open up that copy of Portable Ops to give it a try… Anyway, Metal Gear. Or should I say “Metal… Gear?”

* For the record, the game that I was the most excited for pre-release (of all games ever made) was Metal Gear Solid 2, a game where I watched the trailer probably hundreds of times over the course of the way-too-long wait.

** In the first trailer for MGS4, there’s a section where Snake puts a gun in his mouth. I’m hoping the game ends with him doing that, and then a hint appears at the bottom of the screen “Press X to Kill Yourself!”

Here’s some stuff. Some stuff that my kid will not understand that I understood as a kid. Some stuff that, should I mention it, will probably sound like somebody saying “color television” or “talkies” or “programming with punch cards.” It didn’t occur to me how much of this there was going to be.

• Command Prompts (mostly DOS here, but probably Unix too)
• Standard Definition (NTSC) versus High Definition (also, “widescreen”)
• 2D Fighting Games
• Point and Click Adventure Games
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games
• Polaroid (RIP)
• C++ (it’s gotta’ happen some day)
• the Gameboy
• Games without tutorials (PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG, VIDEO GAMES)
• The USSR and the Cold War
• Racism (this is pretty nice, actually)
• Compact Discs
• Drive-in Movies
• the Space Program
• Star Wars?

It just occurred to me that Happy Meals will probably be fine, though. They will be the last thing that God destroys before shutting off the lights on his way out. The last bits of life on the earth (probably crabs and bugs) will make their homes in discarded Happy Meals on the beach, the only proof that once I was a child.

It is without question my favorite Zelda game, and probably my favorite Nintendo game. I was thinking about it because the guys at selectbutton were talking about it (again), and I was particularly moved by this post:

There’s something impulsive and wilfully, blithely destructive about Link’s actions in LA. He is just going around destroying the world brick by brick, he knows he is doing this because every dungeon boss says so, but he ignores them completely. While the townspeople treat him as a nice fellow and are completely oblivious of what he is doing to them, and Link doesn’t bother to explain.

This being in part Link’s dream as well, it is natural for him to keep going through the motions of his day-to-day waking life. Beating up monsters, solving block puzzles, finding the entrance to the next dungeon. But the usual positive consequences don’t follow.

Like Shadow of the Colossus, LA exploits the player’s compulsion/obligation to keep completing the gamey tasks to achieve something bittersweet and morally ambiguous.

All this perhaps has something to do with why although LA is thick with calculated gamey bullshit, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as in modern Zeldas. Likely in part inadvertently, the game integrates the gaminess into its theme. Remember the scene where you are sitting alongside Marin on the beach, gazing into the distance? Instead of a bright blue sky and sea, there is the dull gray of the GB. Marin talks from her heart but you can only answer with either yes or no. When you finish the conversation and she offers to accompany you, you lift Marin above your head like a sword or hookshot and a text box says “you got a Marin!”. Somehow none of this really undermines the poignancy of the scene though, rather it contributes to its unreal, dreamlike aspect.

So Rivers Cuomo is doing this thing on youtube where he’s trying to get yonder internet to participate in a giant collaborative songwriting project. That’s kind of neat! He’s up to step 4 (arrangement), where you have to lay down some beats using the provided chord progression to fit the given song name (”80s Radio”). Here’s my entry:

UPDATE: I don’t like that very much… I’m going to write a straight up chiptune on my DS and hopefully have this done by the deadline this evening.

I’ve had this nasty flu that made me shiver awake at night even though there was not an ounce of cold in the room.

I was reading a blog this morning and somebody mentioned the JR Yamanote Line and I felt extremely homesick, which was weird since I’ve never lived there, but I guess Tokyo of all places feels the most like home now. I guess, arguably, it’s one of the few places I’ve truly lived, as in life.

Day/Night cycle requires Day/Night music duh.

 Sup Blocks - Night Leap: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is for a long night after a long day.

 Sup Blocks - Sundown 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I made what I guess is my first for reals chiptune. It’s called “Beat It Out Of You.” It’s CLOSE to what I want in sup blocks, but not exactly right. That said, I think I’m getting to the point where I can make MilkyTracker do exactly what I want. This is SO much better than working in GarageBand or Logic to make this stuff. Man.

 Beat It Out Of You: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Supblocks needs a very specific sound, and it’s stuck in my head, and I’m going to have to finally learn how to write mods in order to create it. The garageband plugin I’d been using for sine wave music doesn’t really fit the bill anymore; it sort of crashes a lot and honestly I should just be doing this in a mod tracker, so I am. Currently learning MilkyTracker on OSX, and I might try out a few PC ones soon enough. I’d considered just working in CSound to program all my own sounds but it’s so unforgiving and I’ve honestly forgotten the syntax. It’s actually great to be in a tracker, writing music non-linearly. I’ll post samples once I have the thing I want.

Persona 4!

That’s right! Another Persona game is going to drop… someday. Persona being my favorite game series in which I have never had any fun playing, this is some really exciting news!

Check out more scans here.

It’s been hyped since it took IGF 2006 by storm and it sort of disappears for a while and them comes back and people are all like “hey it’s Braid again” and it still isn’t out. It’s really incredible that a six level platformer game can take years and years to make, but through it all the game always looks better. When I first learned of it, the team had yet to contain David Hellman, the man who made the game truly beautiful. It comes out for Xbox Live Arcade soon, probably in about a month I guess, and you should absolutely buy it when it comes out.

I went and nabbed some full resolution screenshots of this thing. Every last screenshot of this game feels like an individual painting, and, well, it is. At times I find them ugly but then I find them wondrous again, which to me is a real mark of success, as it spills over into how the game plays as well. This is a game where the designer has tried to make you examine what a platformer videogame really is. And, I feel, you’ll have no choice but to pay attention while playing Braid.

This is the most atmospheric game I have ever played. Astute readers of my blog will recall that this was one of my favorite games of 2007, and to be honest, it’s probably one of my favorite games of all time. And it’s absolutely free over at Nifflas’ site. You should play everything this guy has made, but Knytt Stories was the first game from Nifflas that I feel gets it so right it borders on wrong (even when compared to the original Knytt, on which this expansion game is based). I’ve never felt so relaxed and tense at the same time. Even now, six months after I first played the game, the music calms me down and the gameplay cheers me up.

Also, there’s a level editor, and people have made some wonderful things using this very simple but very potent game. Here’s what I’m talking about.

So two weeks ago, apple got lots of street-cred for “democratizing” iPhone software development. I am writing today to tell you that they have not done this. So, they gave the SDK away for free. Awesome! Now you can compile applications for the iPhone for free! Unfortunately, you can’t sign the applications and deploy them to an iPhone unless you join the iPhone Developer Program (which costs $99). Without the ability to deploy, you’re limited to using the iPhone emulator on your mac. And this emulator can’t run OpenGL applications or emulate real world use with things like data transfer rates or use the camera or use multitouch or really any of the cool features on the phone itself. It’s a pretty good emulator, but it’s FAR from the same as the real phone.

The thing is, they don’t even tell you explicitly that you have to be a Developer Program member in order to run applications on the phone… You just get a “no connected devices” error in XCode (which should take a few hours to download and install), and then you have to look through documentation to see why you’re getting that error (”is your device plugged in via USB? Have you tried another USB port?”) until you ultimately breakdown and read the full iPhone Developer documentation and see that the iPhone can only run signed applications (again, no indication that you can only sign applications unless you’re a Developer Program member).

So you go to apple’s developer site and try and enter the program, because hey, why not, maybe that will work… I did this two weeks ago. I got a message saying that they’ll update me on the status of my enrollment request soon, and that as soon as I’m in the program I’ll be able to sign applications and deploy them to the phone. Well, they updated me today:

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

That’s mildly infuriating! I’ve waited two weeks to be told I will no longer get more information soon, but instead, at the appropriate time.

So be warned dear reader, it seems that Apple still holds all the cards in this game; you won’t be making anything for use on actual phones until they decide you’re allowed to do so!

UPDATE: in the past few days, apple has updated their site to say “The iPhone Developer Program will initially be available to a limited number of developers in the U.S. and will expand to other countries in the coming months.” Before, it only mentioned that it would not be available to other countries. Boo on them. When XNA launched its Xbox 360 capabilities you could run games on the 360 on the first day, and Microsoft never approved nor declined applications (you just paid and then you had the rights).

I finally picked up that last issue of Y the Last Man today and I just mowed it down. I have to say, I’m reasonably depressed right now! It was, in my opinion, an extremely good ending to a series that was pretty good most of the time. I’ll have to pick up the trades at some point so this can live on The Shelf instead of in The Box. There are only a few comics that have made me really FEEL something. It was a really courageous way to end the series and still leave everybody involved with a significant amount of dignity (most notable, our author, Brian K. Vaughn).

However, now I’m kind of bummed. I went to the comic store today and picked up the last issue of Y, the last issue of Cable and Deadpool (which I read for the hahas), and what I think is the final “monthly” issue of Astonishing X-Men. Other than Fables, I’m not really addicted to any monthlies right now, and I think this is strange, since when I got back into comics 5 years ago something like Y or Fables or whatever was starting up every couple months, and right now there’s nothing that really feels like it’s so well written you should read it instead of a book. Bummer.