This Cross'll Make Ya: Jump Jump.

Hey, remember when I plinked the astonishing flash game Super Mario Crossover? Well, there's a sequel now, and somehow, it's several orders of magnitude more astonishing.

If you can't be bothered looking at the old post, Crossover is a game that allows you to play through the original Super Mario Bros game as a bunch of other classic characters.

It sounds simple on paper but the amount of work involved must have been staggering. Well the sequel expands on the original in every way. More characters, more abilities and most disorientatingly, more art styles. Yeah, that's right. You can reskin the game to look like any era of 2D Mario game you like.

It's beautiful madness and it'll trip you up if you're a long-time gamer. I learned that some aspects of a Mario game are completely ingrained in my consciousness and are hard to subvert. Despite being told by the game that it wouldn't work, I tried again and again to stomp on goombas while playing as a non Mario Bro.

Anyway, I strongly urge you to play this game and every so often stop to marvel at how impressive a project it is. Not while you're mid-level though, the timer will run out.

Super Mario Crossover 2!

I'm SO sorry about that post title, by the way. Really I am. It sprouted in like my mind like a weed and I felt compelled to inflict it on you.

Get What You Need.

It's Friday afternoon. Why not get yourself geared up for the weekend with a music video.

OK Go are at it again. Their videos are always worth a watch but this one really stands out due to the amount of work that must have gone into it. In a change of pace, the video is actually a live performance. In a car, hurtling through a stretch of Californian desert, with none of the band holding an instrument. Instead, the car is doing all the playing.

It's probably best if you just watch it:

Yep, they've done it again.

Have a nice weekend!

SCUMM - A Review.

Hey guys.
I'd like to welcome you to the very first Plinx Book Review.
This doesn't represent a new 'direction' for the blog. It may well even be a one-off but hopefully you'll enjoy it. Anyway, let's crack on.

So the reason for this is that my buddy Edd (who was the animator behind these previously plinked gems) has done what I think we all secretly long to do and written a book. A real, pages-and-everything book!

This would have impressed me enough but it also happens to be a great book. A good, old-fashioned detective thriller set in the world of videogames! It's like he wrote it just for me.

It's called SCUMM (if you know what the significance of this is, you should really read it as you'll delight in the cavalcade of game references contained therein) and it looks like this:

Pretty neat, huh? It's the story of a detective named Richard who is trying to uncover the mystery behind a murder. It was written as part of a yearly book-writing event called NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month) which means the whole book was written in a month, one chapter a day. As a result, the story unfolds at a rollicking pace, as idea after idea comes tumbling out straight from Edd's brain onto the page (but not as messy as that sounds). The characters are whisked from a crime scene, through a fancy french bar, a mansion and a dingy alleyway to a suspiciously familiar area filled with spikes and springs which just happens to be called Springyard. There's also a marvellous chapter based on a certain cel-shaded, class-based multiplayer online FPS that somehow manages to remain thematically appropriate. It's a consistently surprising book that produces smirks on every page as some obscure game or aspect of gaming culture is referenced.

So yeah, I liked it a lot and I reckon you will too. If you think it sounds like your sort of thing, please consider getting yourself a copy. It's available HERE. Edd is charging the minimum amount he can for it as he's more interested in getting people to read it than turning a profit. In fact, buy a copy before the 19th of Feb and you can get 30% off with the discount code FEBRUARYCART305GBP.

So there we have it. The first Plinx Book Review.

Happy reading!

Intellectual Property.

Hello,
Got something to show you. It's a collection of artistic renderings of iconic places in popular tv shows. The Simpsons is in there, Arrested Development, The Sopranos and King Of The Hill too. I won't tell you too much about it as the set is accompanied by a pretty wordy explanation. Here's a small sample though:

Neat, huh? Check out the rest of the set along with the artist's commentary HERE.