Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 420

Yale researchers have found a way to rip images from people's minds

Time to start thinking about some custom firmware to guard the content of that brain of yours, presuming you are not a futurist who already thinks about that daily. Researchers at Yale have found a way to read people’s minds with an MRI machine. Before, they could read nonspecific things, like whether you were thinking about, say, flowers or buildings, but now they have enough juice to scan the details of a face. By having participants study a human visage while being scanned, scientists can intercept the image from brain activity patterns and reproduce it, although the reproductions look from slightly to radically different from the one they were thinking of. 

This of course seems like it could have incredible potential for games, you know, if they could ever get around the need for dangerous radiation and scary-expensive machines. And one day they might. Late last year, Valve bigwig Gabe Newell alluded to mysterious research in the realm of computerized mind-reading, making it sound like the company had something up its sleeve. But as it stands mind-controlled games are binary things, more like pushing a button by concentrating than tapping into your fears and your tactical shooter strategy. Still, it could be very cool if game designers could react to your thoughts. Except Suda51. I do not trust that guy with my unconscious at all.

Cave Story follow-up Kero Blaster sure looks cuddly and challenging

Cave Story was kind of like Mega Man, but artistic and free-roaming and free. It was released as freeware on the net before being HD-fied and deified by plenty of players who thought it was pretty much perfect. We’ve been waiting awhile for how the enigmatic Japanese game figure Pixel would follow it up. And it looks like Kero Blaster will satisfy the bloodthirst for brick-hard, old-school shoot-outs among incredibly cute pixel objects. The trailer looks pretty intense, as a friendly looking frog does not-so-friendly-things to bad guys such as worker moles, fire-blowing flowers, mud-men, and swooping bees. The game is hitting iOS and Windows on May 11th, with rumors of a 3DS version swirling previousl

The failed reality show Game_Jam is a descent into acid-green hell

There are many obvious problems with the failed “GAME_JAM” Iron Chef-style reality show that imploded after just a day of filming. To start with, a show based on a contest that involves participants tweaking code on their computer for hours on end doesn’t exactly make for riveting TV. And that’s before the casual sexism and moral stands; before the guy working with Pepsi demanding that everyone drink Mountain Dew or nothing at all. The grand prize was even to be “Dew Packs.” Yes, the sexism is terrible. But what I don't understand is the persistence of the stereotype that gamers are Dew-guzzling junkies, seen in how the show assumed that the thing that would motivate and inspire a prestigious game creator above all else is a year's worth of fizzy, highly-caffinated, brightly-colored corn syrup. Seriously?

Luckily, we were thousands of miles away from this madness. But we owe one to Jared Rosen of Indie Statik for biting the bullet and suffering through the shit-storm to deliver a top notch piece of journalism on the whole thing. You should check it out.

image via Indie Statik

Why are ragdoll physics so funny?

Turbo Dismount might have the answer.

Digging through the rubble of Witch and the Hundred Knight

Like Disgaea minus Disgaea.

Here comes a torrent of 101 obscure, absurd videogames

Games, games, games, games, games ...

The Kiss Controller shows how wearable videogames could bring us closer

No one really loses in a game like this.

Celestial navigation in A Light in Chorus is a dazzling thing

A Light in Chorus looks like flying out of a major airport at night as the sources of light that dot the runway recede to tiny speckled plots and soon millions of stars are strangely delineating the arteries of the city from the black. Except this game transpires in an ethereal forest that has mythological connotations and glittering hoof tracks. If you were feeling cynical you could say its just The Unfinished Swan with a black instead of white background, minus the paint and plus a dead deer, but that would discount how beautiful it is, how the landscape shuttering with ultra-bright particles rolls and rests. You should probably just see it for yourself.

This warped music video is like having a brain hemorrhage (in the good way)

The song is called "Radiation Therapy" by a noisecore artist going by the name of Wolfshirt. (Googling produced no additional information other than this superlative entry on Urban Dictionary: Wolf shirts generally possess an almost magnetic effect on women; who as if under a spell, cannot quench their insatiable lust for a man in a wolf shirt.) 

However, we do know this dazzling transmutation of a car with hydraulics into polychromatic shards was created using the game engine Unity at something very similar to a game jam for animators. It’s perfect for the end of a long Monday. So, watch and let your mind go.

Depeche Mode + Call of Duty + Cartoon Network guys = absurd dancing game

I’ve been sick with flu for the past week, and occasionally subject to fever dreams, the half-waking, half-sleeping kind. One was of cockroaches outside the window conspiring telepathically to invade the house. So I had to pinch myself when I got the email for the Kickstarter project Dancers of War, which said, in many, many more words, that the creator of Johnny Bravo, the weapon specialist from Call of Duty, and the synth dude from Depeche Mode were combining forces to produce a beat’em-up about dance.

Yes, this is a real thing. 

As Kickstarter projects go, this one is in the vein of “we have this insane idea we’re pitching to you,” rather than “we have halfway complete prototype to show you.” That is to say there’s no footage, though the art direction seems slightly flaming, if something can indeed be called slightly flaming. But we know there are more big names attached, such as choreographer Lisa Eaton who at least on one occasion has worked with Madonna; and also the much-celebrated, New Yorker-profiled, videogame voice-actor Jennifer Hale. Ready to see more!