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A quick post about that Twin Peaks game... I mean, Deadly Premonition

Agent Cooper vs. Agent Francis York Morgan - photos via Twin Peaks Brewing Co. and Neogaf

Deadly Premonition is one big pain in the ass to play. The game controls are unbearable, the graphics are reminiscent of some game that debuted on the N64 years ago, and gameplay is tripped up with frequent bugs and quirky quests that make the whole thing feel insufferably slow.

That said, there are so, so many obvious parallels between Deadly Premonition and Twin Peaks that despite its many faults I can't help but reserve a certain desire to play it just to see how far its mimicry goes. In my first two hours of play last night I've noticed the following likenesses:

• You play as Agent York, an FBI agent from the big city who's come to a small town to solve the mysterious homicide of the beloved 18-year-old girl Anna. Sound familiar?
• You begin the game in a mysterious room surrounded by red trees with the floor covered in red leaves. You revisit this room in your dreams, sometimes at the start of a level. There's no midgets, but there are a pair of creepy twins (that actually replaced twin midgets from an earlier build).
• Agent York is constantly narrating his thoughts to some character named "Zach", not with a tape recorder, but through some communicative device in his head (aka York's crazy???). I assume the player is "Zach", but no-one else in the game speaks to "you" except for York.
• York is very particular about his coffee and biscuits.
• You collect trading cards in the game and they look exactly like the real trading cards for Twin Peaks. (shown above)

Now just so we're clear my fellow Twin Peaks fans, despite the similarities this is not the game you'll want to buy an Xbox for. The game just clearly comes off as the low-budget bastard son of a hypothetical Twin Peaks game. Deadly Premonition has a few things in it that separates it from the tv show, like the whole survival horror gameplay and the fact that Agent Cooper is way cuter than Agent York, but at the end of the day it's painfully obvious where the game got its characters and storyline. 

Since there was never a Twin Peaks game (and I have yet to play Alan Wake), this is acceptable for now, just bizarre. I'll probably keep playing it because, well, I bought it and it's kind of like playing Twin Peaks the game. But man, even the songs from the Deadly Premonition soundtrack all have their Twin Peaks doppelgangers. There's even a (terrible) knock-off Julee Cruise on some of the tracks. Unbelievable!

"Laura Palmer's Theme"   Twin Peaks - Laura Palmer's Theme

"Greenvale"   Deadly Premonition - Greenvale

and

"Audrey's Dance"   Twin Peaks - Audrey's Dance

Thomas Mclaine   Deadly Premonition - Thomas Mclaine

Look at this guy! Super Mario Beatboxer

Via Buzzfeed

Watching the video, it's hard to believe that he's actually making all those sounds at once, but he is! Japanese beatboxer Hikakin beats and boxes through those ever so familiar Super Mario Bros. tunes with his own remix. This performance is like Mario Twins in 3D (since 3D is synonymous for "better" and "cooler-sounding-than-HD" these days).

Speaking of which, you all remember Mario Twins by Group X? It's called Mario Twins, they look the same!  How in the hell?

Super Mario 2 Landscapes by Ashley Anderson

via www.gamescenes.org

Matteo Bittanti has been posting pretty frequently to his site gamescenes with some terrific stuff. A few weeks ago I reblogged his post about Robert Overweg's glitch landscapes, and this week he posted two works in ink by artist Ashley Anderson, who composed these landscapes from a variety of screen shots of Super Mario 2.

"I'm interested in the compositional possibilities of landscape imagery derived from early videogames. My generation's familiarity with these "places" seems to validate their use as subjects of landscape drawing and hopefully painting."

After browsing a bit through his Flickr account, I realized Anderson is also responsible for the coveted 8-bit Twin Peaks scene. He's got quite a line-up of work to check out (I dig his 8-bit meat series), and I'm keeping an eye out on his Etsy store for when some new pieces become available. My art collection is looking for friends!

Step-by-step Mega Lego Mario á la modo

Lego Mario pants via Luxology

Using the NextEngine 3D Scanner, modo, and some legos, Keith Brogan scanned a small plastic Mario figurine and mapped out how to rebuild him Lego-style. If you happen to have all of those things around, Brogan provides a photographed step-by-step on how he created the structure which features some terrific screenshots of Mario á la modo. Very cool, though, that must have taken forever to put together.

The finished Lego Mario via Luxology

Luxology via Neatorama

Monday! Oh, and no E3 for me.

Screencap from Rhythm Heaven I took at E3 in 2008

It's Monday, and guess what! Today I'm sitting pretty at my office desk, so so far away from all the E3 hullabaloo this week. Although I was in LA a mere 22 hours ago (Brother was graduating from UCLA with a degree in Electronic Engineering !!!), I won't be covering any BREAKING E3 NEWS and probably won't be using Twitter since my stream is oozing with E3 snark. Gotta *focus* (aka earn more gold medals in Picross 3D).

Someone did ask me on formspring this morning what I was looking forward to at E3, so if you're curious here's the small list:

• The Last Guardian
• The new Zelda game
• Clash of Heroes HD
• Deathspank
• Portal 2 (and all other tricks Valve has up their sleevesies)
• LittleBigPlanet 2
• and finally, the 3DS, although I have way too may DSes at home and I'm not really a big fan at the idea of 3D as "new" technology

I'm probably missing something, but that's all that comes to mind for now. I'm just gonna get pumped for this week in my own way like Cookie Monster gets for cookies. What are you looking forward to seeing from E3?

via Christr