"A world is more than a space, more than a place; it is something to inhabit & be inhabited by. What you infuse a space w/ to make it habitable, to make it memorable (since memory is profoundly spatial), gives the place its character, its soul…

Zelda would be better if it had no story…no plot to structure the adventure…first Zs barely had any plot…were better for it. With plot, sequence matters too much…early Zs had situations, worlds & scenarios that framed action, gaps to be filled in by player, sequences to be broken. Optimal paths & shortcuts weren’t a given; they had to be earned. Items were the most prominent plot devices, & even they were not unduly strict about order. You could be slow & steady or blast straight through with a little know-how…basic rules of the gameworld were what bound you, not some artificial necessity imposed for the sake of plot."

…a world is not for you. A world needs a substance, independence, sense that it doesn’t just disappear when you turn around."

"What I really want to do is be in the forefront of game development once again myself," Miyamoto said. "Probably working on a smaller project with even younger developers. Or I might be interested in making something that I can make myself, by myself. Something really small."

[via: http://kottke.org/11/12/shigeru-miyamoto-to-step-down-at-nintendo ]

"But wait… That wasn’t all they did. They disabled embedding of all content on our site, even the things we had made ourselves. Sure, the videos were still available by going directly to Vimeo.com and going into our account, but embedding was gone, so every occurrence of a video on our site was replaced with a block that said “embedding has been disabled for this site.”"

"Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games."

"The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga, in his classic 1938 study “Homo Ludens” (“Man the Player”), argued that play was one of the essential components of culture—that it in fact predates culture, because even animals play. His definition of play is instructive. One, play is free—it must be voluntary. Prisoners of war forced to play Russian roulette are not at play. Two, it is separate; it takes place outside the realm of ordinary life and is unserious, in terms of its consequences. A game of chess has no bearing on your survival (unless the opponent is Death). Three, it is unproductive; nothing comes of it—nothing of material value, anyway. Plastic trophies, plush stuffed animals, and bragging rights cannot be monetized. Four, it follows an established set of parameters and rules, and requires some artificial boundary of time and space. Tennis requires lines and a net and the agreement of its participants to abide by the conceit that those boundaries matter. Five, it is uncertain; the outcome is unknown, and uncertainty can create opportunities for discretion and improvisation. In Hyrule, you may or may not get past the Deku Babas, and you can slay them with your own particular panache.

The French intellectual Roger Caillois, in a 1958 response to Huizinga entitled “Man, Play and Games,” called play “an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money.” Therein lies its utility, as a simulation that exists outside regular life. Caillois divides play into four categories: agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), and ilinx (vertigo). Super Mario has all four. You are competing against the game, trying to predict the seemingly random flurry of impediments it sets in your way, and pretending to be a bouncy Italian plumber in a realm of mushrooms and bricks. As for vertigo, what Caillois has in mind is the surrender of stability and the embrace of panic, such as you might experience while skiing. Mario’s dizzying rate of passage through whatever world he’s in—the onslaught of enemies and options—confers a kind of vertigo on the gaming experience. Like skiing, it requires a certain degree of mastery, a countervailing ability to contend with the panic and reassert a measure of stability. In short, the game requires participation, and so you can call it play.

Caillois also introduces the idea that games range along a continuum between two modes: ludus, “the taste for gratuitous difficulty,” and paidia, “the power of improvisation and joy.” A crossword puzzle is ludus. Kill the Carrier is paidia (unless you’re the carrier). Super Mario and Zelda seem to be perched right between the two."

"For the upcoming show Pixel Pushers, sponsored by SCION and curated by Giant Robot, I decided to explore the carnivorous side of the world of video games. Though I myself eat meat, enough of my friends and loved ones are now vegetarians or vegans, so it’s something I’ve been experimenting with. I suppose these pieces are a by-product of that exploration. That, and my long-time obsession with meat diagrams."

"Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind classic anime like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, is making a Nintendo DS game title Ni no Kuni with Fukuoka-based developer Level-5. It is Studio Ghibli's first venture into video games.

Provocative post with many comments. "2009 Was another triumphant year for the Wii & DS. Nintendo has successfully introduced the general public to playing games on computer hardware... far from a triumph for the medium of videogames. ..Nintendo didn’t do much. ... Rather than trying to start a revolution with a brand new medium, they had a good look at the way people play today & made digital versions of those activities. They basically made it possible for people to play the kinds of games they were already enjoying, on their television sets. Some may celebrate this as the breakthrough of videogames into the mainstream. I don’t. I hope this is just a temporary setback in the evolution of the medium. I’m not a big fan of huge corporations, but I do share, to some extent, the dreams that Sony & Microsoft have about the interactive medium. With them, I see videogames as the great new art form of the new century. Videogames as the cinema, television & pop music of the young millennium."

"A family shouldn’t have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home. Participate in more..."

"play the game with an imaginative child, and wide-angle concerns over mission structure melt away, as the true and dizzying wonder of the game’s conceit is unlocked. … free of the dry, efficient logic of adulthood, a child’s imagination also opens the game up in ways beyond most adults’ reach. Most games demand expertise for success, their richest rewards reserved for those who invest time into developing skills and technique. By contrast, Scribblenauts reserves its richest rewards for those who can devolve their expertise, unravelling the tightly wound habit of always seeking out the quickest, most efficient solution to a problem. It asks that we all rediscover a sense of childlike inquisitiveness rewarding those who play with the game, rather than merely try to solve it. Through that lens, the normality of tasks heightens the thrill of discovering leftfield solutions, rather than diminishing it."

""We're creating a real-life treasure hunt, and the DS and this software is acting as your treasure map, your trophy case, and your audiovisual canvas," ... For example, each item emits a distinct sound, which include musical notes and phonetic noises; the items can then be replicated and arranged on a Mario Paint-like musical grid. Like items and other custom creations, these resultant compositions can be traded with other players. But Leingang may be most excited about the subtle real-world activities his game might inspire. "We're using the DS' capabilities as a portable device above and beyond just the fact that I can put it in my pocket or sit on the couch or sit in the bathroom and play it. We're taking this thing and really flexing its muscles as being something that can travel anywhere across this globe," he said. He went on to explain some of the surprising effects the game has had on his own everyday routine in an effort to uncover fresh hotspots."

"After almost two years of hard slog, Starmen.net's Mother 3 fan translation patch has finally been completed, and will be released at the end of this week ... a whole month ahead of schedule! That's according to the latest blog entry on the project's site, in which team member Mato records that, "Testing's pretty much over now. Some bugs did turn up over the last few days, but they were all minor and quickly remedied. Some really hard-to-spot typos were also found and fixed."

"Make 10: A journey of numbers (released 26/09/08) is a mathematics game where players must complete numbers puzzles centered around the number 10. The overall aim of the game is to find and challenge the so-called “Make 10 Masters” as you improve your maths and puzzle-solving skills. Players use the Nintendo DS Touch Screen to complete the maths puzzles, and a gradual increase in difficulty and storybook style presentation mean the game is accessible for players of all ages."

"Mario's enemies have something to say."

"

"The idea behind Rhythm Heaven is that it's a series of mini-games that are all based around music and rhythm, developed by (and bearing a strong resemblance to the other work of) the Wario Ware team at Nintendo."

"Pikmin came straight from mind of Shigeru Miyamoto...offered gamers something new. A delightful mix of strategy & discovery...defied real-time strategy conventions & put gamers in charge of smallest, most innocent army of creatures in gaming history"

"A new digital delivery service in Japan is giving Nintendo DS owners on-the-go access to manga, novels, and animated shows and films."

"It may not be based on his groundbreaking Sandman comic series, but a Neil Gaiman property is finally getting turned into a game."

"A port of the original Katamari Damacy with a reworked control scheme would be right at home on the Wii, especially at a competitive budget price point."

"You can save the levels you make as sound files, just like the way old data cassettes used to do...Anyone who downloads the sound file simply plays it into their DS microphone, and voilà - your friend now has the level you made."

"researcher (studying artificial intelligence) now working for Electonic Arts. She is designing games for the Nintendo Wii - she worked on My Sims - and tells us about user-generated content and the importance of social software in gaming"

"It's simple and compact, pressure-sensitive, easier to view in daylight than a laptop and inconspicuous. And, when coupled with the paint application Colors, it's a powerful little device that's fun and practical for all skill levels. All you need is a N

"The strange, seemingly cacophonous stream of sounds coming out your speakers is GlitchDS, a homebrew cellular automaton music sequencer inspired by Conway's Game of Life."

"Names of actual urban WIFI zones (my favourite was called Familia Alvarez) are mapped and tagged like street-names in the exhibition space while aether waves with the same subjective names are also superimposed on the arts space, as playground."

"Using unique qualities of hardware has created system for playing of “Audio Games” which can be played only w/ sound (reading of text via voice synthesis) & one button for interaction. Though if you keep the screen up you can also read the text and v

"knew SDK was coming...some kind of enterprise support...But you watched those games -- particularly with accelerometer support -- and it was suddenly clear that iPhone platform is potentially serious competitor to DS & PSP."

"When Nintendo can't get line-time for the Wii, what hope does a niche item like an e-book reader have?...[until we're all desktop fabberrs] put not your faith in hardware readers — take the easy way out and hack bits, not atoms."

"Some of my favorite art and media deals with the display of multiple time periods at once. Here are some other examples, many of which I've featured on kottke.org in the past."

"Some random facts about how ebooks might be relevant for the Nintendo DS"

"None of Miyamoto's sentences have subjects," Koizumi says as an example. "So you have to rely on context. It gets to the point where Miyamoto will give us feedback, and the only person who has any idea what it means is me."

"If game designers are still struggling with getting their cameras right, it's because they're inventing a new visual language."

"So please, Mr. Negroponte, hear my plea! Give up on the laptop, and just make a Nintendo DS cartridge with your educational software on it!"

"This piece examines the unpacking of a Nintendo game cartridge, decoding the program as a four-color image, revealing a beautiful soup of the thousands of individual elements that make up the game screen."

"Pikilipita VJ is a homebrew software, that took in total three years in the making. It's a VJ software for doing visuals at night clubs. You can select different levels and "play" the visuals, selecting colors etc. It is available for Game Boy Advanced,

"Then I came to my mailbox, it was full of letters with presents- all from my mom. Every letter was pretty much the same. "Thinking of you. Thought you'd like this present. Love, Mom" Even though I'd stopped playing, she continued to send me presents."

[Now at: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/19/animal-crossing-story-makes-us-sob-like-little-babies-update-1/ ]

Gameboy Advance Emulator for iPhone

"brings a windowing system to the DS, specifically tailored to homebrew programmers. It won't suffice as a proper desktop environment for the handheld, but that's not the purpose of the application. Rather, it's meant to help users create their own applic

"Welcome to the official website for HullBreach, the browser-based space MMORPG for the Nintendo Wii. Game development is well underway with a public beta available for immediate play."

"the first module made using Protein engine - it's a little audio manipulation software running on DS which ables you to play with an existing .wav file or recorded audio sample; you can pitch it, scratch it, rewind, mute and apply effects on it. Moreover

"Dubbed "Everyone's Nintendo Channel" (at least in Japan), the service effectively turns your Wii into your very own DS Download Station, with both game demos and videos available to be transferred to your DS."

"Wii Transfer can share your movies, music, and pictures directly to your Nintendo Wii using the Internet Channel. Browse iTunes playlists and iPhoto albums on your television. Convert your movies to formats the Wii understands, either streaming directly

"Another fatality in my village. Bones and Dotty waited downstream to haul out the body. "

"an Italian ad for the handheld that won Epica's silver award for Press last year"

"here is a short list of hand made, home grown, DS apps that I’ve found worthwhile thus far"

"Games are a superb environment for experimenting with new perceptual takes on geometry and physics. Designers craft these worlds from scratch, after all; they don't have to obey normal laws of reality."

"Just as some traditionally open companies close the door to third-party developers, the traditionally closed Nintendo will open WiiWare in early 2008."

"Animal Genius will test their animal knowledge by competing in five different games: Creature Collector, Scratch 'n' See, Matchomatic, Maze Munch, and Animal Expert. The game will test what players know about animal habitats and behaviors, teaching them

Plundr is the world's first location-based PC game. Using state-of-the-art Wi-Fi Positioning System technologies (WPS), the game locates the user's computer in physical space and uses their location as part of the game.

"They're finally bringing some English-based language trainers to the DS: listings for My French Coach and My Spanish Coach have turned up on GameFly."

"Animal Crossing is the antithesis of modernistic, compulsory design - what some people may describe as “tight” or “clean” design, in that every element has a specific mechanical purpose. (If there’s a gun on the mantelpiece, it must be fired by

"In another outrageous outburst of initiative, Nintendo Japan has announced that games developed by students from its Game Seminar 2006 course will be made available to download from the DS Station."

"Sabiston saw unused potential in the Nintendo DS, with the device's dual screens and touch-sensitive, stylus-based interface naturally positioning it as a great platform for drawing."

"Animal Crossing isn't a game. It's a career. A vocation, a mini alternative life. You could educate a child with it and it would turn out OK. It teaches you everything you need to know about the real world. It teaches you the importance of money, shows y

"Nanoloop is a synthesizer / sequencer for the Nintendo Game Boy systems. Stored on a normal game cartridge, it allows to produce nice electronic music without further hardware, using either headphones or an external amplifier (home stereo, active speaker

"Waiting for the bus, on the train, sitting in cafes – we're always up for starting a friendly match. Thing is, it's not always easy to tell if there are fellow DS gamers around."

"Networked Gameboys playing pong! GameboyPong-FAN, by Erational and Antonin Fourneau."

"My older brother still pokes fun at my techno "clothing ideas" (remember the socks?) so I felt duly compelled to announce my latest thinking in this untapped fashion arena."

"Teacher James Penson thought some of the 5th and 6th grade children could benefit from a fun way to practice math and memory skills, and so he cooked up the idea of using the ubiquitous Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training in the classroom."

"I really hope Wii will prove useful in providing chances for this type of interaction between family members."

"The Nintendo DS is very popular in Japan and taking full advantage of its popularity is the Nation Western Fine Arts Museum. From the museum counter you can borrow a DS which comes with a special cartridge preloaded with the museum details. Each room in

"The students are getting accustomed to using the DS and are studying enthusiastically. Progress can be expected."

"Comic Book DS is a program making it possible to read your Comic Books on your Nintendo DS.