Acid for Blood

Wintersday Calendar

The Wintersday Calendar is the Guild Wars version of an Advent Calendar. There's a new piece of fan-created artwork each day from December 1st - 24th.

[Via the Guild Wars LiveJournal Community]

Guild Wars Galleries on Flickr

Whenever I take screen shots from Guild Wars, I put them up on my Flickr page. Many of them have been compiled into photosets. I have collected all of the photosets and they can be found in my Guild Wars gallery collection.

Some highlights from the current photosets:

From the Travels in Tyria set:

From the set depicting the Ascension of my first Guild Wars character:

From the first Wintersday celebration in 2005:

From a set which contains random screen shots of my characters:

From Halloween 2006 (I missed Halloween 2005, which is why there are no pictures from that):

From Wintersday 2006:

From Canthan New Year 2007:

From the Guild Wars: Eye of the North set:

You might notice that the newer shots are in wide screen. I got a wide screen monitor in December 2006.

Meme: Box Art That Makes Me Want to Play

100LittleDolls tagged me to do the following.

This question was originally posted on Yudhishthira's Dice:

Ladies, what RPG covers (or interiors) have you seen that involve a woman in the art that make you say, "I want to play that" or, just as good "I want to play her". Or that make you feel like it is a game you could like, or be included in by a group of guys you'd never met and whose maturity you didn't neccisarily know?

Tekanji turned it into a meme for women gamers.

Meme Rules:

1. Copy the text of the original challenge from Yudhishthira's Dice and give a proper link attribution.
2. Copy these rules exactly (including any links).
3. Find images of game covers (interiors are okay, too) that make you want to play the game. Any kind of game -- video game, card game, tabletop RPG, etc -- is fine. Post them and include a short (or long) explanation on why the image makes/made you want to play the game.
4. The original challenge is about finding out what women think about how game art is marketed and therefore it is targeted at women. I'd like to keep it that way, please.
5. You can tag as many or as few people as you want. You do not need to be tagged to participate in the meme.
6. When you make your post, please post the link on this thread so we can all see what others have said.

My response to the meme is the Japanese and European cover for Ico.

Without knowing anything about the game, I was drawn to this cover because it was just so different from everything else on the shelves. The art style has a surreal quality, very different from the rest. You don't know what or who "Ico" is. All you see are two people running towards (or away?) from something. Towering structures dominate the picture and dwarf the pair. A vast, indistinct landscape surrounds them. They seem completely alone. One of the characters, wielding a sword, pulls another character along by the hand. The person behind the sword-carrier is taller. It looks a bit feminine, and I would think the viewer, if they had not already turned the box over to read the description, would think it is a female. The one with the sword, seems male but you can't really tell.

The original question asked respondents to cite covers depicting women which made them want to play the game. Although the character that the viewer thinks is female is in the position of less agency and less physical power (it is following the other one, who wields the sword), this fact did not turn me away. The overall presentation of the game does not depict a sexualised and objectified image of woman nor an ideal, testosterone-dripping image of a man. Ico's cover shows two people on a presumably perilous journey. There's a story behind this image, and this intrigued me.

I had seen the European cover just after the game's release in shops, whilst I was living in the UK. I did not buy a PlayStation 2 until early 2005. As many know, Ico is one of the most critically-acclaimed games released for the PS2. Unfortunately, I played the less-developed, bonus-free, and in some parts less-challenging, North American version. I like to think that the bits that were left out of the North American version do not detract from the experience. Ico is one of my favourite games. If you want to read about it, you can check out my progressive review at The Game Chair.

Typically, I would be more attracted to a game if it portrayed a woman on the cover who is shown to be competent and strong. I would be turned off if the women on the cover are sexualised and objectified. Ico doesn't have that. Although we are used to seeing the gender roles as displayed by the characters on the cover of Ico, neither character appears objectified or that they were created to fulfill some sort of fantasy.

A Metroid Valentine

Some nerd gave me this:

[More cards at VGCats]

ConceptArt.org

ConceptArt.org has loads of fabulous pictures of concept art from lots of different videogames. If you have time, take a look. I could spend a whole day just looking at all the artists' galleries.

Fun trivia fact: the icon I use for forums and stuff on the internets is cropped from a piece of concept art from Metroid Prime. You have to have a certain completion rate to unlock the galleries in the game to see it. This piece was created by Andrew Jones, one of the founders of ConceptArt.org.

[Guild Wars Factions concept art]

[Guild Wars Nightfall concept art]

[Thanks to Bigwig for sending in the link!]

Celebrity Mii Contest Results at Kottke.org

The winner may surprise you. There are some great submissions, so click on through for the pictures.

[Read]

Mii Envy

I want to make Miis and celebrity Miis on a Wii.

I want a Mii Parade in my Wii. Something about these traveling Miis really intrigues me. The Mii Channel isn't even a game as such, but it's really fun to play around with.

Things I need before I can possibly think about buying a Wii:

• Wii in more colours; black if possible
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
• More games that aren't gimmicky or rushed
• To save up some money :P

[Wii-volution's Create-a-Mii]

[Mii Channel]

[Some Mii Suggestions]

[Celebrity Mii Contest via Cathode Tan]

Undead Warlock Costume on eBay

World of Warcraft player Micah is auctioning off her homemade costume of her Undead Warlock. Her costume made it to the top 5 in Blizzard's 2006 Halloween contest. She is auctioning the costume so that she can raise funds to move back to New Orleans.

The costume includes:

• Dreadmist Mask
• Felheart Shoulders
• Dreadmist Robe
• Felheart Belt
• Nightfall Drape
• Felheart Bracers (and gloves)
• Grimoire (holds stuff!)

First Look at Absolute Sandman

I've been keeping an eye out for news on this ever since Neil Gaiman started talking about it on his blog a while ago. I'm a huge Sandman fan and a Neil Gaiman fan. The Beat has a look at comparisions between an original page from an original Sandman comic, and the re-coloured page for the Absolute edition. The page looks stunning.

The Absolute Sandman will re-print all ten volumes of The Sandman with better paper, re-done colours, and probably some minor copyediting. The original artists and colourists are being consulted throughout the process. Volume 1 should be out later this year.

I am so excited about this! It will probably be sold at a premium price, if the price of the Absolute edition of Watchmen was any indication (Mental note: may need to get this one, too). I never got myself the hardcover editions of the Sandman trade paperbacks. I was a poor student at the time, and read way too many comics to be able to afford hardcover editions. Now that I am a less poor officer worker, I'll be buying those hardcovers (which I assume they will offer, since it's Absolute). Since The Sandman was probably my absolute all-time favourite comic book, the price isn't a complete turn-off.

EDIT: Amazon.com lists the release date as 1st November 2006.

Wii Hardware Shots

Nintendo isn't abandoning the traditional control pad. Here is a picture of the "Classic Pad" controller for the Wii:

It has dual analogue sticks and what appear to be four shoulder buttons. It's a wired controller, though I can't tell whether the wire comes out of the top and they've pictured it trailing behind the pad and hanging down, or whether the wire comes out of the bottom. If the wire comes out of the bottom, then what is that little protrusion at the top?

EDIT: Apparently the Wii-mote connects to the Classic Pad via that cord sticking out of the bottom. So the Classic Pad is wireless, sort of. It seems cumbersome. Are we expected to have the Wii-mote portion held between our knees and pointed at the console, or perhaps sitting next to us, when we use the Classic Pad?

Why have they abandoned the pseudo handlebar style design of the GameCube controller? The GameCube controller is very comfortable to hold. I didn't like the placement of the analogue sticks in the GameCube controller, nor did I like the fact that the sticks were not uniform in design. The Wii Classic Pad places the analogue sticks in the centre, like the PlayStation controller, and I think this is better.

Here's a shot of the Wii console with a Wii disc alongside a GameCube disc:

This is the new prototype Wii-mote controller with the attachment, as revealed at the Nintendo press conference yesterday:

They're actually calling it the "nunchuck" in the Nintendo data sheets. The Wii-mote is a little bit longer than the original prototype, to incorporate the speaker in the centre of the unit. Also, I think the button labels are different from the Wii-mote we saw some months ago.