There were plenty of exciting high-profile games at E3 this year, dominated by sequels. Paper Mario 2, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Prince of Persia 2 were among my favorites, but they’ve been heavily covered on 1UP, Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN, and everywhere else. Instead, I’d like to mention some of the obscure and bizarre titles that might fall under the radar of the mainstream gaming press, including my favorite game of the show.

Best of Show: Katamaridamacy (PS2)

I found the Japanese commercial for this game back in February, and was intrigued. Playing it at Namco’s booth yesterday, I was stunned by the originality and addictive gameplay. (It also has the best game cover art I’ve ever seen.)

Namco says the game will come out in the US, but they’re not sure when. Gameplay video (MPEG, 10 MB), desktop wallpapers. 1UP loved it, and I love 1UP.

Other Highlights:

• Chulip (PS2). A “kissing simulator” with the goal of kissing underground-dwelling people to make them feel better. Read the 1UP preview, with screenshots. Punchline, the game’s developer, has a Chulip homepage, with videos and wallpaper.
• XTango: Shuffling Roses (Xbox). Multiplayer ballroom dancing, with a control scheme similar to fighting games like Virtua Fighter.
• Under the Skin (PS2). An alien comes to Earth, scanning and assuming the identity of people around town. When the citizens figure you out, they attack you with special moves and you lose your clothes. 1UP preview.
• Odama (Gamecube). Military pinball, a bizarre mix of the Japanese battlefield with a giant pinball and bumpers. Original concept, but didn’t seem particularly fun. From the developers of the very odd Seaman for the Dreamcast. 1UP preview.
• Rumble Roses (PS2). All-female wrestling game, pairing big-breasted characters against each other. The gameplay wasn’t very good, and the uninterruptible cut scenes were unbelievably long. But considering the game advertises a “hands-free” mud wrestling mode, I’m not sure the gameplay matters much. 1UP preview.
• Ribbit King (Gamecube). Like Frog Baseball, but played with golf clubs instead. Adorable, and approved by the ASPCA. Trailer.

Anyone find any other unusual and exciting games this year?

If anyone out there can get me a guest pass into E3 or wants to loan me their own badge for the third day, please let me know. I’ll happily take you out to lunch.

May 12, 2004: I’m all set for Friday! Thank you so much (you know who you are).

Like Brewster Kahle, Nicola Salmoria, Sarinee Achavanuntakul and other archivists of the computer age, Jason Scott is one of my heroes. He dedicates a large part of his life to preserving the history of the BBS scene, from the amazing collection of vintage textfiles and e-zines, historic audio recordings, artwork packs from the computer art scene, interesting papers and books, a growing list of every BBS that ever existed, a comprehensive timeline, and a work-in-progress documentary with over 200 interviews. (I could write an entire entry about every one of these. Go check them out when you have a chance.)

I briefly chatted with Jason in IRC earlier today about some of his current and upcoming projects. His newest project is CD.TEXTFILES.COM, a collection of over 90 CD-ROMs from the late 1980s and early 1990s. These “shovelware” CDs archived files from the era for easy distribution over fileservers and doors.

Most directories have a FILES.BBS text file, which gives short descriptions of each file. Reading these brings back such a hot flash of nostalgia, it’s like stumbling on all the ephemera of my adolescence on one site.

The graphics archives are a hilarious look back to the years before Photoshop 1.0. The TBBS Carousel’s GIF archives (part 1, 2 and 3), To The Maxx’s categorized GIF archive, and the very retro Swimsuits to the Maxx. Each of the eight “Night Owl” collections from the early-1990s have a GIF and JPG directory. Very bizarre.

There’s legal shareware, games, graphic demos, textfiles, MODs, audio clips, and utilities for the PC, Atari, Amiga, and Commodore 64. The PC-Blue archive is a collection of disk images for IBM PCs from 1983 to 1985.

It’s a treasure chest of pre-Web randomness that would take weeks to explore. Let me know if you find any gems.

Like last year, I’ll be keeping a running list of my favorite examples of the web’s April Fools Day (aka “Internet Jackass Day”) silliness. (There’s another much more thorough list being updated constantly.) Wired has a roundup of the bigger pranks, with a confirmation by Google that Gmail isn’t a hoax. Gizmodo added a gadget-oriented list.

• Interactive fiction Quake port, with playable downloads!
• Google’s hiring for their lunar lab
• Cold war bomb warmed by chickens (not a hoax)
• 1UP’s Metal Gear Solid 3 preview
• Teevee.org bought by Salon
• Maddox gets happy
• Dave Winer revives Netscape comeback, steals back RSS
• EFF merges with the DOJ
• Homestarrunner loses its domain name (give it a minute)
• XML Control Protocol
• Apple adds bleeper to Garageband
• Low Culture and J-Walk both find their femininie sides
• Mezzoblue and Stop Design swap designs
• Java ported to Apple //c
• Google files IPO
• Metafilter becomes a wiki
• ThinkGeek’s new products
• Video iPod announced
• Python on the C64
• First Annual March for Web Standards
• Streaming audio over Usenet
• W32ValidXHTML.A validation worm
• Livejournal’s Serial Adder hacker, and the community response
• Gawker, Weblogs Inc, AlwaysOn merge
• Duke University buys public domain
• RIAA sues Google, Internet doomed
• IRS announces social networking service
• Super-wide flat-screen TV
• GMail screenshot (confirmed fake!)
• Day lost to stronger trade winds
• Avril’s Theorem
• OpenBSD on the Gameboy Advance
• Special Edition “Virtual Boy” Gameboy Advance
• Podboy, Gameboy emulator for the iPod (this one almost fooled me)
• NPR’s Vanity ZIP Codes

At the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair, Walt Disney and his team of technicians debuted several new attractions, each with a corporate sponsor: Ford’s Magic Skyway, General Electric’s Progressland, Pepsi’s It’s A Small World, and the State of Illinois’ Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.

I’ve posted a four-disc, 46-song collection of unreleased and rare audio from all four attractions, including outtakes and demos from the original recording sessions. The entire box set can be downloaded via BitTorrent from my new tracker.

Update – March 10, 2009: Disney’s going to be rereleasing this classic as a box set, so I’ve taken this download offline. Go buy it on Amazon!

According to one Disney fansite, the album was partially developed by Disney but never released because of conflicts with the outsourced record label. (Personally, I found it in alt.binaries.multimedia.disney on Usenet.) If anyone has more information about this collection, I’d love to hear it.

The complete track list is below.

Continue reading “Disney's New York World's Fair Box Set” →