Author: Brad

You probably know me for my Flash game series, The Fancy Pants Adventure.

Nintendo R&D

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This hit me during Shigeru Miyamoto (you know, Mario’s dad)’s roundtable that just ended, and I figured this needed a separate post, so be sure to still check out the next post for the rest of my super important opinions, heh.

Here’s the quote from IGN:

Q: Microsoft and Sony showed their motion controls. I would like to hear Mr. Miyamoto’s feedback.

A: Miyamoto says for Nintendo the strategy is to do development and get the hardware ready and have software ready and then make the announcements. Until this new technology reaches that level, it’s really impossible to make any judgement on it. “Of course, we’re working at R&D at Nintendo. The things that we’ve seen here are things we’ve seen before,” he says. He is in favor of motion controls and anything that gets players moving.

Think about that one for a moment. What would happen if Nintendo came out and showed off all of the new hardware that they have in R&D right now that’s just as unfinished as Microsoft’s and Sony’s motion controllers? They would be showing off TONS of stuff that might never make it to the market.

Thing is, Microsoft and Sony KNOW that they need to have motion controls hit the market, even though they’re still working with very early prototypes right now. Because of Nintendo and the Wii. Hmmm…

Btw, new Wii Zelda just confirmed as continuing the Twilight Princess art style (and maybe being WM+ exclusive) 😀 Sadly, that’s about all the new info that’s out there right now…

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Nintendo’s Conference

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Welp, another press conference and you know what that means: everyone start predicting what Nintendo will be showing next E3!

Okay, not really. But yeah, the conference was pretty boring. No Pikmin (yet?), no Zelda (except for Spirit Tracks, which does look hella fun), Wii Fit 2, Nintendo Heart Rate Monitor or something like that, and yay expanded audiences.

Here’s the thing, though, as my cousin pointed out, Nintendo doesn’t really show much in the way of 3rd party software at E3, so a ton of 3rd party stuff was announced, bragged about, and otherwise showed off yesterday or pretty recently. I was feeling pretty bummed after the conference, until I looked at the Wii videos section on IGN. WOW.

I’m going to have to break this post up cause this might get long…
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The Future of Gaming!

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Behold:

Even better:

In all seriousness, though, to actually compare this ‘Natal’ this to Wii Motion Plus, well, when I play games like Gears of War and Halo, I’m always thinking how much better they would be with Wii pointer controls, or how much better GTA4 minigames would be with Wii controls.

Could this thing even control an FPS or a precise minigame?

So I guess that right now I’m playing 360 pre-natal? Yeck.

And if anyone actually cares to see how it really looks (but what’s the fun in that?):

Moar GIFs! Full body waggle!
spazzle

Okay okay, I promise that I’ll rag on Nintendo tomorrow if they unveil stupid things also. That would make me unbiased, right?

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Some Cutie Pants

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Releasing info before E3 seems like the cool thing to do, so here’s an early version of Cutie Pants’s run cycle so I can get some feedback on it and all that.

Hopeful there will be more test videos like this so you guys can see the progression of the animations.

Of course, watch it on YouTube.com itself for a much higher quality version…

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E3 predictions ’09

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Would be amazing if I could say that I’ll be at E3 this year showing off World 3 or something cool like that, but alas, I’m just on the consumer side of the news barrage once again.

Anyways, looks like most of the 3rd party info has been spilling out over the last few days, especially for 3rd party Wii games, since no news is going to stand a chance amidst whatever Nintendo finally decides to unveil.

Any guesses on what we’ll be seeing? Sounds like a new Zelda and / or Mario title is almost a given, same with more info on Wii Sports Resort, and something called Wii Fit Plus (maybe it’ll come with sunlight and fresh air this time around? lawlz I kid I kid).

As for the less whispered about stuff, I’m still calling (begging for?) a new Star Fox game this year. Would be nice if we saw whatever Retro Studios was working on, maybe even see a New(er) Super Mario Bros. on DS? Pikmin 3? Though that one’s probably most likely…

Either way, looks like we’ll be getting a much better ‘real gamer’ focused E3 from Nintendo this year. At least we better, after how badly Nintendo messed up last year. Heck, they even issued an official apology for their show!

Showing off FPA at E3… *daydreams*

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Game Mechanics

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[quick edit, looks like the subscribe to posts page is working now, the plugin got updated, I think all new peoples are going to be automatically subscribed, if anyone has a problem with that, let me know, everyone else, click the new page tab at the top right there, you can select which categories you want notifications for]

Yo yo yo, just thought I’d do a quick post (okay, well, not as quick as that Sonic one, but also far less depressing!).

Getting back into the swing of working on FPA again, I’ve begun thinking about game mechanics, and analyzing games that I’m playing even more so than usual.

So I’d like to know, what’s your favorite game mechanics? This post got quite a bit longer than I thought it would, so click below for my answer, and some musings on saving in games and game difficulty…

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ME2D -> World 3

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I’m gonna be gone for the weekend, but something came up in the comments of the last post that I thought deserved it’s own topic.

What features from Mirror’s Edge 2D do you think should be carried over to World 3? Any of the new moves? Time Trials? Replays?

On a completely unrelated note, the new Doves CD is out and it’s quite awesome.

Check it out here.

Doves Myspace

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Current Events 6/7

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Last post before the big reveal tomorrow! (Which, no, is not a beta / demo :P)

Just a warning, this post might be a bit out of my specialty, and I hate listening to celebrities force their misguided and uninformed political sway as much as the next guy, but since getting into the games business, I’ve begun to keep an eye more and more on things like psychological studies on video game violence, and my ears perk up when politicians run their mouths off about censorship or any other attempts at controlling the markets out there.

So before I really get to it, if this is your first time on the site, you might want to check out the rest of the site, especially the last few posts in my 7 posts in 7 (business) days stunt. Also, I wouldn’t recommend this post for the younger viewers of the site, nothing obscene, but the content is fairly mature.

Game Developer’s Radio Podcast interview / Character reveal – 1/7

Jenna / ‘Fairly Obvious’ reviews de Blob – 2/7

If there’s going to be pirates… – 3/7

Music that I listen to when I’m working, music vs gameplay musings – 4/7

Fairly’s ‘Guilty Pleasure’ game – 5/7

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A better late than never 4/7

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Sorry about the last minute weekend blackout there. Still haven’t gotten back home yet, so this post is quite late, heh.

Anyways, music is a big part of The Fancy Pants Adventures, not just the in game music, but the background music that I listen to while working on it. See, I do a whole lot of sitting and working at the computer (makes up a good majority of my work, really), so to keep sane, I usually have a constant stream of music in the background.

Very gameplay focused animation is extremely rhythm centric, so having something with a solid rhythm in the background helps get my mind into a good state for animating. So in a way, you could consider a good deal of these songs as alternate background music for whatever games I was working on when I listened to them the most.

Gameplay is an art, music is an art. Both can create emotions that can’t be easily conveyed in words, so during production, I usually run into a few songs that I dig that seem to help convey the intangible qualities of gameplay that I’m going for.

Click on for a big ol list of musics!

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Easter Weekend!

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Sorry guys, Easter weekend and all that, just wanted to make a quick post to let you guys know that the official seven posts will continue Monday. Might make a quick post of I get a chance, but it/they won’t count as one of the seven.

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Post 3/7

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Yep! Still posting! A bit late today, but this one was a bit less than planned.

Before I start, there might have been a problem with an anti-bot plugin that I installed yesterday, but that’s fixed now, so if anyone wasn’t able to log in yesterday or earlier today to comment on Fairly’s post below, have at it!

Moving on…

So in the podcast I mention some tiny ninjas or something like that. But I wasn’t really serious. But apparently everyone wants ninjas in World 3, so let me introduce, the Toothpick Ninja Clan!

A Toothpick Ninja

Let’s face it, all games are made better by tiny, jumping ninjas, and World 3 needs more baddies (and I’ve been wanting to make some that jump), so why not?

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post 1 / 7!

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Big long podcast interview on Game Developer’s Radio!

This could be good for anyone who missed the Flash Gaming Summit panel, though it’s much longer, but I talk a bit about World 3.

Download the mp3, load it up on your iPod, then come back here and tell me how much of an old man I am ranting about the game industry!

I would recommend clicking the more button after listening to the end of the podcast…
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New posts!

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Alright guys, I know I don’t update this thing as much as I should, to help remedy that, my fiancée has been making posts under ‘Fairly’s Corner,’ but now that the Flash Gaming Summit and Game Developer’s Conference are over, I want to try and do something special and post something new every day for a week.

That’s right, 7 updates in 7 days. Compared to my usual ‘whenever’ update schedule, that number is pretty mind boggling. On the last day, I’ll have some cool news and concept art for World 3 to finish the new post flood with.

World 2 at FGS

So to start off the barrage, The Fancy Pants Adventures: World 2 won the indie game category at the Mochi award show! Most of you have probably read about it, but still, I think it’s way awesome, and just had to say it myself.

The Mochis Winners

Sadly, there was some computer trouble, so there’s no video saved from the ‘what makes a game a hit’ panel that I was on 🙁

But wait, there’s more!!! Click below to read the reset of the post!

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Last minute…

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So here’s an interesting last minute change of plans. Apparently I’ll be at the Flash Gaming Summit in a few days, as well as most of GDC.

Look Ma! I’m on teh interwebz!

Anyways, from what I hear, everything will be streamed live, once I get some details on that, I’ll update this post.

Anyone who’s going to be at GDC who wants to get in touch with me, shoot me an email. Sorry if I told you that I wasn’t going earlier, this is all super last minute…

Update: Ah, here’s the stream’s channel. Got a spiffy little chat there and everything.

And of course, here’s the programs. The award show and the panel that I’m on are the ones to watch 😉 Wish me luck!

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Newgrounds 2nd Annual Tank Awards

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So, apparently my site’s been down for quite some time and I just now noticed because I don’t have internets at my house for the time being.

Also as a side note, I have a plugin for WordPress that’s half working, if anyone wants to get emailed every time there’s a new post on my site, just send an email to the address on the Contact Me page. If you want to keep it simple, just put ‘add me’ as the subject.

Anyways, figured I’d expand this post a bit, since Newgrounds is a huge part of my Flash games career, maybe even the only reason I ever got into Flash in the first place. So here’s a nice little story for anyone who really cares 😀

Click below to read it!

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