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Obama in Japan - Mario cameos and magic tricks

In the same way President Obama managed to appear as a major popular culture icon during his presidential campaign (what with the action figures, bobble-heads, and visages on veladoras that emerged in an almost obsessed anticipation of his presidency), this popularized character of Obama continues to make comedic appearances over in Japan in the most bizarre and obscure situations. Hints of this fanaticism began to trail in with an Obama character in Street Fighter Online, but the pinnacle of this marvel is demonstrated for me in the below two videos:

In this first video, as seen on Game Politics.com, a kuroko performance of Super Mario includes a brief showing of President Obama, calmly exclaiming "Yes we can" before quickly passing by in a comedic fashion:

In this second video, a Japanese interpretation of President Obama takes the popular "Change" expression and uses it to transform Obama into a card magician. A total bizarro and ca-razy interpretation at best:

Does anyone know how long this trend has been going on in Japan and why? I suppose this could easily be interpreted as Japanese comedic characterizations similar to what sketch comedies like SNL does, but for whatever reason I feel like this Obama character is more meme-like in Japanese culture. My colleague D. Shack touched on the dissonance between Western and Japanese humor on his blog, but any more insight would be appreciated!

CO-OP Review - World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat

I'm a little late on posting this video, but I figured that those of you who follow CO-OP have already seen it by now and those of you who haven't should see it before they release their special GDC episode on Rev3 this evening. In this episode, the Area 5 folk bribe me with some delicious kumquat poppy seed ice cream from Humphry Slocombe and then keep me around to discuss World of Goo by 2-D Boy. You'll recognize my enthusiasm from the very start of the discussion, but World of Goo is truly a fantastic game, so buy it if you haven't!

After our ice cream was finished, we head to the Area 5 headquarters where Ryan tosses a Wiimote in my hands to give me have a first stab at the new game Bit.Trip Beat. The game is an exhilarating mash-up of pixelart, chiptunes, and old-style pong paddle game mechanics, and while I had a tricky time getting used to it at first (hence, the frustrated "That pixel was a dick." exclamation), I'll likely be downloading it for my own Wii to try it out again.

So what's next? Who knows! I've played a ton of new games in the past week because of GDC, so I'll probably be posting about those in the next few days. But who knows!

This just in: Offworld has just posted watchable recordings of both the IGF and GDC Award shows, where in the IGF video you can see a wild .tiff appear a few minutes in, sitting at a front table with Mr. Paladin and grinning like a little kid. We were sitting at a table with the Fallout 3 team, but only came to realize this when they went up on stage to accept their award.

Mame-Shiba & Giga Pudding & It's not a bra!

It's Saturday and GDC is over! It's been a busy week of inspiring Indie developers, meeting up with old colleagues and friends and the like, but it was all a lot of fun. I have a few posts on their way outlining some of the highlights from this week, but until then, Dan Paladin has shared a handful of videos he saw in Japan which I'm posting for some good Saturday morning entertainment. I'm going to start with Mame-Shiba, but don't miss Giga Pudding and The World of Golden Eggs after the jump!

Mame-Shiba
While showing off his new game at the Tokyo Anime Fair, Dan picked up a ton of merchandise from the Mame-shiba booth. According to this article in Serious Eats, Mame-shiba is a tiny bean dog that appears and tells you entirely random facts as you're about to eat. Dan said that apparently the character isn't too popular in Japan, but it seems pretty random and funny to me!

LED Sheep Herding Pong is Baa-dical (Pun!)

Alright, let's get it out of the way that this is a viral video promoting Samsung's new LED TVs. If that's what it takes to get a group of sheep hearders (who call themselves "The Baa-Studs", of all awesome names for sheep hearders to have) to choreograph a cluster of sheep that look like they're straight out of the Main Street Electrical Parade into a hillside rendition of pong, it's totally worth it.

Spotted on Laughing Squid.

"I am rubber, you are shoe" - DIY Monkey Island Converses

Like Dennis, I don't think I could wear these fashionably (there's something about converses that make me look like a total dope when I wear them), but these custom made, hand-painted (!) Monkey Island high-tops are something special. I'm particularly partial to the beautifully rendered illustration on the shoe closest to the camera, which is the iconic first scene of the game. If you think you have the mad skills it would take to make these babies, the artist even has a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to paint some for yourself.

Anyone want to paint that on a sweatshirt for me? I'll give you a three-headed monkey! Promise!

Seen on Rock, Paper, Shotgun - Thanks Brother Chow!