If you’ve ever been married or are in the process of planning one, typically one thing is true: she’s in charge.  If you’re not used to this concept, you should probably get there at some point.  However, some wives are just the coolest people ever and let their husbands go all out, integrating their passion/hobbies into the happiest day of their lives.  No matter the level of involvement, if you’re thinking of geeking out your wedding you might want to check out some of these great examples.

(Makes you wonder if the cake was cut with the Energy Sword)

If you feel like going a little more geeky than this (yes it’s possible), then you might want to consider an old fashioned Star Wars wedding.

(A RC R2-D2 was the ring bearer)

Obviously some of these are taking it to the extreme.  If you want to keep the nerdiness low-key but  still implement your passion, consider going with a really cool cake.

Let’s face it, if you’re already married, you wish you would have these.  If you’re still planning, maybe showing your fiance some of these pictures could sway her (you might also want to show her this collection of Nintendo themed weddings).  You never know what could happen…she does love you after all.

Everyone has their favorite videogame mascots from Mario and Link, to Sonic and Crash Bandicoot, but what about the other mascots that just faded into obscurity like the thousands of boy bands that weren’t NSync or BackStreet Boys? Not that these mascots had a fighting chance, as we found out. All of these characters below are so ridiculous in premise that you wondered how they even got past the drawing board.

So what defines a videogame mascot? Only characters used in some capacity to represent a gaming company were included. That means guys like Boogerman, James Pond, and even Yo! Noid were eliminated. Had we included them, this list would have been the top 1069.

The Kartel brings you the Top 10 Most Ridiculous Videogame Mascots of All Time.

10.) Jinborov Karnovski (Karnov)
First game: Karnov (1987)
Mascot for: Data East

Karnov is one of the most unlikely candidates to grace mascotship. He looks like a mash-up of Mr. Clean and Buddha. On a roid rage. Yet for whatever reason, Data East saw so much potential in Karnov, that after his first outing in his self-titled game, he was given a promotion. He went on to have cameos in various games produced by Data East over the years, including Fighter’s History, a knock off of Street Fighter 2. Oddly he was portrayed as a villain in Bad Dudes, so he seems to have a bit of an identity crisis, not unlike the random heel turns you see in WWE. He does have some cool abilities, like spitting fire, and even flying. But when it comes down to it, no matter what power-ups you give him, he was never that appealing. Though someone at Something Awful sure must love him.

9.) Zool
First game: Zool (1992)
Mascot for: Amiga 1200

Gremlin, a popular game developer from the 80-90’s wanted in on the mascot hysteria, and created Zool for the Amiga 1200 gaming system, somehow believing it could stand up against Sonic and Mario. Zool is a “Ninja of the ‘Nth’ Dimension”. He’s combination ninja and alien… yes, a Ninjalien. Conceptually that sounds like every fanboy’s dream, but the character was designed with no mouth or nose, or personality. What did stand out – extremely gaudy looking attire, with oversaturated reds, greens and yellows. Unfortunately, the character never really caught on partly because the game he was featured in was so difficult, most people couldn’t get past level 2. That seems to be a sure fire way to turn gamers into anti-fanboys for your newly appointed mascot. No doubt, the fact that it was a mascot for a highly obscure gaming system didn’t help. Apparently Amiga didn’t give up on their baby so easily, as a sequel was made, and it featured a female ninjalien called Zooz. My guess is that these are the same people who created Yaddle, the female Yoda.

8.) Titus the Fox
First game: Titus the Fox: To Marrakech and Back (1992)
Mascot for: Titus Interactive

Most US gamers aren’t too privy to the Titus empire, though they did become infamous for later acquiring Interplay when that company was in its final “Hindenburg” days. We forgive you if you never heard of Titus the Fox. On paper, the concept of a cute fox seemed like a good idea. But in implementation, everything about Titus feels like a knock off of other mascots, as he if was assembled in China by Knock Off, Inc. Despite some crazy adventures like riding magic carpets, and befriending camels and snakes, it didn’t cover up Titus’ ho hum charm. The games that featured Titus weren’t that hot either, as IGN once called called Titus the Fox on Game Boy Color as “the textbook case for How Not to Make a Platform Game 101.”

Perhaps Titus the Fox was designed for French appeal, after all Titus was a French company. That being said, Titus had as much American appeal as Asterix, another French created character. Or… Rayman.

7.) Rayman
First game: Rayman (1999)
Mascot for: Ubisoft

Speaking of French sensibility that we don’t get… Ubisoft was pretty keen at one point in pushing Rayman to be their rep. While the whole Rayman series was built on some really outstanding gameplay, unlike these other mascot games, the character never really caught on. Can you blame Ubisoft for ultimately shifting focus away from Rayman to Raving Rabbids? Kinda sucks to get second billing in your own game…  IGN and GameSpot have both clearly suggested that future Ubisoft games could completely eliminate the Rayman character. Harsh.

There’s something about Rayman as a character that seems really off putting. He seems perpetually happy, in a naïve carefree sort of way, but there doesn’t seem good reason to why that’s the case. He had no limbs, and his nose would have given Opus the penguin a complex. He’s not quite human, not quite an animal, and not quite normal.

6.) Plok
First game: Plok (1993)
Mascot for: Software Creations

Rayman then leads right into Plok, another character that had no limbs. Note to all game publishers: If you ever concoct a mascot, add on 10 limbs to be safe. Gamers LOVE limbs. Plok completely takes the cake and bakery when it comes to being nondescript. He looks like something that a 3rd grader created in art class, and was limited to working with just Play-Doh and googly eyes. While I’m sure the character was designed to be cute as a button, there’s something creepy about the dude. Perhaps it’s the bloody hangman’s hood that he wears…

5.) Dizzy
First game: The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy (1991)
Mascot for: Codemasters

My sense is that Dizzy was an idea that a toy company threw away, because they thought Mr. Potato Head would have more appeal. Dizzy appears to have been inspired by Humpty Dumpty, and Codemasters felt like it was high time that “H.D.” got with gaming. Not many US gamers got to enjoy a Dizzy outing in videogame land, partly because Codemasters was predominantly a UK gaming publisher. The box art on old Dizzy games claimed he was the “U.K.’s #1 video game hero.” This of course was before Lara Croft came along, another U.K. created character, and proved that breasts are much more appealing than eggs.

4.) Slime
First game: Dragon Quest (1986)
Mascot for: Enix

You knew that Slime would make this list, didn’t you? It’s the most loved ectoplasm for the best-selling videogame series in Japan. It’s amazing that of all the characters they could have elevated to mascot, considering that the characters were designed by the same guy who created Dragonball, they chose the one that Akira Toriyama-san must have created as a last minute desperate attempt to fill a minimum quota in art submission. He’s probably laughing every day a check comes in for all the royalty he makes whenever Enix hypes Slime.  Despite the fact that Slime shows up in every Dragon Quest game, he’s also usually the weakest enemy you have to dispatch, which is all the more insulting. Since Enix was acquired by Square, Slime’s symbolic position has been quietly shuffled off, like poor ol’ grandma who was sent to the nursing home.

3.) Johnny Turbo
Mascot for: TurboDuo

Now Hudson was onto something big with Bonk, their first true mascot for the TurboGrafx-16 system. But then, something wonky happened when NEC/Hudson introduced the Turbo Duo. Rather than continue to push Bonk, and his offspring Air Zonk, they created a whole new character who looks like Kevin Smith recruited as the 5th Ghostbuster. Believe or not, Johnny Turbo is based on a real person, a game developer at that. A person, who to this day, must LOVE the fact that a company bet their next gen console system on his birds nest beard, and beer gut. Johnny Turbo was promoted heavily during the 90s, even if was a brief stint. The whole concept was that he was out to warn gamers of diabolic game companies (such as “FEKA”, a thinly disguised parody of Sega) that were trying to convince you to buy their inferior console systems. Johnny Turbo would say things like “Don’t let them mislead you! The Turbo Duo is the first CD game system on the market.” The ironic thing is, even the real life Johnny thought that the character was “petty” and “overly confrontational”. The more you saw the ads, the more you were convinced that this was the last system you ever wanted. Which is too bad, because it really was a pretty darn amazing console.

2.) Elbo
Mascot for: Electronics Boutique

To think a whole generation of gamers today were spared the mercy of Elbo. You luck gamedoggers! At one point in time, Electronics Boutique, a gaming retailer that later was acquired by GameStop, wanted in on the mascot craze, so they conjured up, what I’m sure they must have thought was too clever to be true, a dog boy name Elbo. Get it? ELectronics BOutique. To be extra cool, they gave him a skateboard. But wait! That’s just too much cool for gamers to handle. So they also gave him extra thick nerd glasses. Whew, that’s better. It was never really clear why they ultimately abandoned Elbo and sent him to the pound. Perhaps the demographics for gamers grew up. Or perhaps Electronics Boutique grew up. Either way, humankind was saved from another ridiculous mascot.

1.) Pac-Man
First game: Pac-Man (1980)
Mascot for: Namco

The funny thing is, despite the fact that half the crew at The Kartel here fought to save Pac-Man from this list, the more they tried to rally for him, the more they talked themselves into realizing that, yeah, Pac-Man makes for a lousy mascot. The issue at hand was that ol’ Pacster is an icon, and once you reach that status, people overlook how silly it is that you are so admired. But let’s cut to the chase: Namco banked their whole company on a ¾ a piece of pie. Over the years, as gaming technology improved, and gamer standards went up, Namco attempted to add some personality, and limbs, to their much loved character. The problem is that it still looks like a piece of pie. With limbs. Which I guess goes to show you that you can’t just slap limbs on anything and it works. Seems like I was proven wrong… While Namco today doesn’t tout Pac-Man as prominently as it did in its yesteryears, he still lives on, and still shows up on every conceivable gaming platform in existence. The problem with holding onto icons from the glory years is that it prevents a company from moving on and finding a character that connects with a new generation of gamers.

That being said, the concept of gaming mascots has pretty much gone by the way side. Perhaps gamers grew up. Or perhaps the gaming industry feels the need to tout other things that tickle gamers’ funny bone, ie. awesome graphics! Crazy violence! Either way, despite this list being the bottom of the barrel for mascots, it’s still one big nostalgia piece for an era that I kinda miss.

Necrovision

Necrovision is a cross between Left 4 Dead, World War 1, and the Evil Dead series. By granting the player a powerful demonic arm-thing made by vampires and enough weapons to rip the Kaiser a new one, gamers get to lay waste to zombies and ghouls on a quest to stop a mad German scientist from becoming the King of Hell. Of course the plot doesn’t make a lick of sense, but Necrovision does offer a whole lot of bang for your $12.99 with excessive gore, swearing from undead German and Scottish soldiers, and guns that actually feel powerful like they’re supposed to. The game also sports a neat kill combo tracker that makes you feel like a total monster when you’re racking up the enemy bodycount.

Terraria

If you haven’t heard of Terraria, you probably have a boulder the size of Alabama on your head. Terraria does for 2D sidescrolling what Minecraft does for 3D world-building. Essentially, players are tasked with mining and building their own weapons and such to fight baddies. Sound familiar? Oh, and you can build and entire world with the toolset as well. Sure, it sounds a lot like Minecraft, but it has its own unique aesthetic and identity and manages to be a compelling creative sandbox, attractively priced at $9.99.

Clutch

I hesitated to add Clutch to the list because it treads on familiar territory of car-combat and zombies. By now, there are probably sixty different titles alone in that category, making it hard to distinguish Clutch from the rest. However, this zombie racer is a little different in that it is far more brutal, there are sharper visuals, and it has a PS3 port. It also came before all of the other competitors, appearing in a little known corner of the Steam market. For $9.99, it satisfies that small niche of gamers who want to run over zombies while enjoying a little post-apocalyptic street racing.

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

I’ll admit this one kind of threw me for a loop. Jamestown is supposed to be a “neo-classical top-down shooter…..set on 17th-century British Colonial Mars.” This game makes no sense, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a ridiculously entertaining isometric arcade shooter, and frankly, that’s all that matters. The weapons and enemies are all well-balanced to give everything a punchy feeling while keeping the difficulty just right. The best part is that Jamestown supports four player co-op. That means that as long as one player is still alive, victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat. As the game’s description says, “Win or lose, your team will do it together.” What’s even better is the $9.99 bargain price tag.

Chaser

An older FPS title, Chaser is not innovative in any way, shape, or form. There’s not much to this game except spraying a bad guy’s brains on the walls and shattering some plastic-looking windows. But you don’t play Chaser expecting a flawless game. You play it because Chaser is the videogame version of Total Recall. The protagonist (called the Chaser, obviously) awakens on a ship with a bad case of amnesia. By the end of the game, the player has fought his way off Earth and is on Mars ‘looking for the truth.’ Chaser really is as campy as it sounds and revels in its inspiration, though the gameplay isn’t as strong as the cheese factor. Regardless of its faults, anyone looking to relive Arnie’s adventure should give this $4.99 budget shooter a chance.

Iron Warriors: T-72 Tank Command

Iron Warriors is a rare bird; it’s a tank combat simulator that is based on the conflict in the Balkans. Beyond the weird setting (it’s a Russian-made game), Iron Warriors prides itself on realistically depicting the operation of Eastern-bloc mobile weapons of war. I cannot speak to the game’s level of authenticity, but I can say that it is a punishingly difficult game. Players will perform cold start-ups of tanks and lead small groups of troops and support vehicles into battle, mowing down the opposition. Be forewarned; a single mistake can lead to a flaming wreck, so choose your targets wisely and maintain constant situational awareness. Priced at $4.99, Iron Warriors provides a tank sim experience rarely found in most games.

Universe Sandbox

Universe Sandbox isn’t a game so much as it is a playground for screwing around with physics and the universe. Want to see what happens when you chuck a meteor the size of Mars at the Earth? Go ahead. Care to witness the Sun supernova and blow our entire galaxy away? Sure thing. You’re given free reign to do as you wish, whether it be reordering the Solar System or generating a wormhole large enough to swallow Saturn. While it may be difficult at first to grasp all of the intricacies of this game, it’s hard to resist the cheap price of $9.99.

Inside a Star-Filled Sky

If the movie Inception were given a booster shot of steroids, Inside a Star-Filled Sky might look a heck of a lot like it. Masquerading as a top-down, cutesy little shooter, this game will mess with your mind. You see, any enemy, power up, and player avatar can be entered. If that doesn’t make sense, think of how Leonardo went inside a person’s dreams. Essentially, their dreams were levels that were based upon the person’s characteristics. That’s kind of how the representations of the insides of objects are presented in Star-Filled Sky. If it still isn’t clicking, check out the Youtube trailer below. There are no real objectives other than killing and collecting upgrades, so those who don’t like to wander probably won’t enjoy this game. But if you’re okay with experiencing a weird, head-trip journey unlike every other game on the market, the $7.99 Star-Filled Sky is an absolute must-have.

Detour

Out of all the strategy games I’ve seen, Detour has to be the strangest. Instead of building bases and creating armies of troops, players are tasked with building roads. Why make concrete pathways? The goal is simple: escort three trucks to a tunnel at the other end of the map. The journey is not so simple. Players have to contend with a rival who has the same objective, all the while managing gold reserves via mines and deploying offensive weapons against enemy roads and trucks. Matches are quick and intense, and defeat is swift if extra care isn’t taken to monitor resources and truck progression. Clocking in at $9.99, Detour is a great way to test out your strategic reflexes.

Magicka

Magicka is ridiculous. It isn’t the game’s non-existent plot. It isn’t the typical fantasy monsters. It’s the absolutely spell-binding (pun) combat system. Magicka is fun because it gives players power over several different elemental spell types. Spells can be combined to create totally new attacks, like ice meteors (Earth and Ice). Adding to the chaos is the fact that there’s four player co-op, the only way to play Magicka. Default settings turn friendly fire on, so accidental deaths due to team-killing with ludicrous spells is commonplace and hilarious to watch. All in all, Magicka is a heck of a lot of fun and a great co-op package for the $9.99 asking price.

Additional Contributors: KC

McMillen is the designer of Super Meat Boy, Gish, and more than 20 other (mostly free) games, including Coil, Time Fcuk, Aether, and Grey-Matter. But nothing he’s done previously–no, not even 2008’s Cunt--is quite as bonkers as The Binding of Isaac.

Visually, this latest game is preoccupied with a small number of disgusting things: blood, poo, and bodies that are falling apart, or that were never put together correctly in the first place. It’s gross, and it’s dark, and it’s stuff that kids shouldn’t have to confront–and yet at the same time, it’s exactly the kind of stuff that tends to fascinate kids, and particularly kids in bad situations.

Add to that the random generation, with its constant cycle of adaptation, learning, and skin-of-your-teeth near-failure (usually followed by actual failure, and getting booted back to the beginning), and it all starts to gel: Isaac’s world is morbid in the way that kids can be morbid, and cruel in the way that kids can be cruel.

And I know, bodily fluids and difficult video games are Edmund McMillen’s bread and butter. None of that is new to him, and so none of it is in this particular game purely for thematic effect. But McMillen’s obsessions are more cohesive than they might at first appear, and so accidentally or not, the terrifying world of The Binding of Isaac makes a sick kind of sense.

These guys are no problem.

Surreal and Sacred Things

When I said that the game was surreal, by the way, I used the term advisedly. Blood, poo, and dead-or-messed-up bodies are not just obsessions that morbid children and Edmund McMillen have in common. They are also what surrealist painter Salvador Dali described as the three central themes of his work, and the three physical substances most closely tied to the sacred.

Strange though it may seem, there’s an illustrious history in art of trying to process the sacred in a dreamlike way, and ending up with the piles of primal, indeterminate bodily stuff that define Isaac’s imaginary world.

The Binding of Isaac is nothing if not obsessed with the sacred, and with people’s batshit-crazy reactions to what they consider sacred. It would be a shame to spoil anything specific, but suffice to say that Issac plays on the (totally imagined) connection between Dungeons and Dragonsand Satanic cults, and on the (unfortunately not-so-imagined) tendency of unbalanced people to hurt others on assumed instructions from God.

To understand how that relates to the action in The Binding of Isaac, you have to know the Biblical story from which the game takes its name: Abraham hears the voice of God, which demands a blood sacrifice in the form of his first-born son, Isaac. Abraham is both ready and willing to do as he’s told, until at the last possible moment, God informs him that he has been punk’d.

It’s a truly bizarre test of faith. Existentialists like Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre have spilled a whole lot of ink trying, and failing, to puzzle out just what Abraham’s actions meant, ethically and theologically. But whatever the story is supposed to teach us, we can certainly agree that, if someone were to follow in Abraham’s footsteps today, that person would very rightly be considered nuts.

So in McMillen’s version, it’s Isaac’s mother who hears (or thinks she hears) the voice of God, commanding her to kill her son. The game takes place in the imaginary world to which Isaac escapes while awaiting his fate. Like I said, people: dark stuff.

Seriously, though. Dark stuff.

Later this month, there will be a free update  in which things will (somehow) get even darker.

Minecraft

The talented guys of CorridorDigital created this Minecraft masterpiece with the help of a few friends, blending action and comedy that makes me wish it were a full web series. Alas, it is but one video… with a couple of deleted scenes to look at too, if you wish. Anyway, take a gander below.

“The end of days are upon us. Zombies now walk the earth 24/7. The ultimate weapon must be crafted so that Niko and Sam can escape on the last remaining minecart out of the infected city!

Special thanks to the following dudes for helping us out:

Jimmy Wong (Zombies!) – http://youtube.com/jimmy
Arthur To (camera dude for first half) – http://youtube.com/paperisdelicious
Nick Laurent (camera dude for second half) – http://youtube.com/rosenchuck1
Freeman White III (camera and all around bro) – http://youtube.com/afreeworld
Notch, for making the game in the first place. – http://minecraft.net

Shot with: Canon 7D, Sony EX1
Edited: Final Cut Pro
VFX: After Effects, 3ds Max, Rayfire”

>A narrator introduces a strange, broken world. There’s a chunk of stone floating in space, and on it there’s a kid lying in a bed. There’s a pause before you, the player, figure that this kid is you. When you figure it out, you wiggle the control stick. The Kid gets up. “He gets up,” says the game’s narrator. And for a reason you cannot describe, the fact that he said this is completely awesome. This is Bastion.

There’s no reason why it should be as awesome as it is, this narrator. He’s just describing what you’re doing, after all. But the thing is, players are always actors, making the story happen by participating in it, and so to have that be true in so direct (not to mention stylish) a way just feels right. If something as simple as getting out of bed didn’t feel so right, then Bastion would be nothing more than a well-balanced, constantly fun, uncommonly pretty action-RPG. But some bold design choices, the narrator being chief among them, make the game into something much more. With Bastion, Supergiant Games want to do nothing less than remove the distinction between gameplay and narrative.

Indie Loot’s sister site, The Kartel, spoke with Supergiant’s Greg Kasavin about what Bastion’s lofty goals–which, having played the game for ourselves, we can safely that it achieves.

Listen Up!

When did zombies become boring? Just mentioning these undead creatures nowadays will make the average gamer groan louder than the living dead. That’s not to say they should just throw in the shovel and climb back into their graves; doublesix Games is bringing a zombie game to the table, one that (oddly enough) seems to have an air of freshness amidst all of the rotting flesh.

All Zombies Must Die! (with an ! at the end for added “!”) hopes to recapture something we wanted all along: the unbridled joy of mowing down loads and loads of zombies. Sure, all of the staples are there: you can get together a team of four, you can pick up awesome weapons, and you can leave a trail of blood in your wake, but that’s like saying “Dawn of the Dead” is the exactly the same as “Shaun of the Dead.”

Rather, it’s all of the creases (or in this case, searing flesh wounds) that make this game fun again. When you have an action RPG system in place, it’s not just about mowing down zombies; it’s about doing it in style. Why stop at cutting a zombie into pieces when you can light it on fire first? What about giving it a dose of radiation to make it a super zombie? Why not combine the two and then kill the horrific abomination? You know you want that XP multiplier.

Then there’s the crafting system they’ve cooked up. With specific loot drop spots, you can grab weapons and combine them like the best of ‘em. Dead Rising 2 might have had a spiked bat, but why not combine a shotgun with a plank of wood for a flaming shotgun?

And then there’s the style All Zombies Must Die! brings to the table. After all, you’ve got to dress up those zombies as a showpiece of sorts. The game has a cartoony look to it, paired with more references you can shake a stick at. From the Campbell Chainsaw to the Whiffle Bat (“Shaun of the Dead”…again), it’s an homage to the world of zombies that still manages to break new ground throughout the sweet, sweet carnage.

Plus, the advertisements are to die for.

This game = Worth it. Get it on PSN, XBLA, or Steam.

Ms. Splosion Man, the newest kid in the Twisted Pixel family, has the core gameplay and simple mechanics to rival platforming staples like Mario and Super Meat Boy. Also, like any good platformer, it manages to strike the triumphant highs and skin-peeling frustration of said titles. However, this prodigal son (daughter?) has an aesthetic that can kick even the most ADHD-riddled teenagers’ senses into hyperbolic overdrive.

Anyone who’s played a Twisted Pixel game can tell you that this new kid on the block is well on its way to establishing a very pervasive sense of humor and style for themselves. It’s easy to imagine that at some point the company had a big meeting where someone said “Twisted Pixel isn’t just a developer. It’s a brand.” And yes, the brand is strong. One can safely say Ms. Splosion Man looks and feels and sounds exactly like what I’ve come to expect a from a Twisted Pixel game.

Except that means that for the first hour, I wanted to tear my face off. Because it is intense. The character (let’s call her Splosion Gal, to differentiate her from the title) is just as zany as her male counterpart, though her eccentricity is expressed through dance moves, incessant valley girl chatter—complete with Spice Girls and Beyoncé quotes—and the collecting of shoes. Is that sexist? I don’t think so. Am I being nickpicky? Almost certainly. The only real question is, does it make the game unplayable?

Far from it.

Like the first ‘Splosion Man, MSSM consists of a simple mechanic, professionally executed: a triple jump that damages, with an endless array of environmental applications. While the puzzle rooms of the first are all still there, the levels now have rubber bouncy pads, rocket cars, and electrical ziplines that create some streamlined, on-the-fly running and strategic ‘sploding sections that have a nice Sonic the Hedgehog (in his prime) feel. All of this is just my roundabout way of saying, despite what you may have to say with the packaging, the product is solid.

Sometimes Twisted Pixel doesn’t realize how solid their product is, so they’re compelled to overcompensate with all the extra fluff. But it’s not necessary; we love them for what is on the inside. We don’t need to be hit over the head constantly and reminded that “Hey! We’re Twisted Pixel! We’re hilarious! Look how crazy our characters are! Beards!” I get wanting to create icons. I get wanting to make something that’ll last in people’s minds. But that’s done primarily with gameplay, not stylization. It’s why we remember Mario and Samus, why we hope Sonic will still bring us joy, and why no one’s given a crap about Crash Bandicoot since 1998. And, I hope, it’s why the extended Splosion family (who else is waiting for Grandpa Splosion?) will stay in our hearts for years to come–not simply because of their wackiness, but because of their fantastic playability.

But here’s the thing: Costume Quest didn’t flop, and neither did Trenched or Stacking. Each game found an audience, despite (or perhaps because of) the specificity of its premise and central mechanic. A J-RPG about Halloween, an alternate timeline wherein the 1920s belonged to tower defense battles between T.V. monsters and hulking mechs, and a latter-day adventure game that uses matryoshka dolls to explore the concept of identity. None of these are games on which anyone, Double Fine included, would be willing to stake tens of millions of development dollars.

Nor would Double Fine have been willing to make a children’s game–based on Sesame Street, built for the Microsoft Kinect–had that been the only thing they’d been able to work on for a period of years. The Brütal Legend guys making a game for kids? A developer known for their singular visions using other people’s characters? Backing a motion controller at a moment when even Nintendo (the John the Baptist of motion controls) is looking for other modes of input? Risky propositions all.

The evil Baron is actually pretty metal, if you think about it.

Double Fine took this model from Valve, right down to a reliance on digital distribution, with the important difference that while both companies have taken bold risks in their designs–it’s easy to forget how ballsy Team Fortress 2’s art style looked in 2007, or just how out-of-the-blue the original Portal was–Double Fine has done a far better job of keeping the small-scale content coming at regular intervals. You’ve got to be impressed at the release of four games, each with substantive narrative DLC (definitely in the case of the first two, and most likely in the case of the second two), all in the space of a year.

So you might be asking, why don’t more developers do this? The short answer is that independence and risk-taking, even when well planned, are enormously expensive. It’s not just ambition and creativity and personal vision that Double Fine and Valve share in common. It’s also resources. Like Valve after the release Half-Life 2, Double Fine finished Brütal Legend with an engine that they’d made from scratch themselves, meaning that (1) they would never have to pay anyone to license the tools, and (2) everyone on the team knew those tools intimately. That’s an advantage that most developers–from the indiest of two-man partnerships to the great majority of big studio teams–simply don’t have.

It’s a rare, almost anomalous situation that’s brought us these games. And it’s a model worth supporting, if you’ve got the necessary console or consoles to do so, because there’s no telling when or if we’ll see so many remarkable artists exercising this kind of freedom again.




Look, no one said that the moral here would be anything other than play their games.