Vision of cool differs between countries.

Canadian Michel Gagne has an impressive animator career. He worked in the most prestigious animation studios like Sullivan Bluth, Pixar, Warner Bros., Disney and Cartoon Network. What if that guy decided to bring his knowledge of how things should move into a Video Game. That’s exactly what Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is. A performance, one of those games that pushes the limits and raises the standards.

Zzz.. Zzz.. Zzz… Hey… Wake up Wii… I know you have been sleeping for the past twelve months. I barely turned you on these days, exept to check why your little front light was flashing blue every once in a while wasting the energy of our beautiful planet. But now, this time is over, a game has come up that justifies you presence in my living room. It’s called Muramasa. It’s basically a very beautifully drawn side scrolling action game, and it’s all I need. It was created by Vanillaware an extension of Atlus, the brilliant studio who brought you Disgaea. I won’t spend time describing the game since the videos are self explanatory. After all, the only interesting thing here is me eventually bringing you the information that the game exists. Well, exists, it does in Japan, since it was realeased this April. Nevertheless, because this games reminds the old times, they decided to be consistent with this feeling by releasing it six month late in Europe. So dear Wii, you’ll have to sleep a few more months until I stick this CD inside your blue mouth.

After Highlander, it is the turn of the red metal warrior to be turned into a cartoon by the Japanese studio Madhouse. It seems they were able to deliver something that Hollywood couldn’t, great action scenes for a great Superhero, involving more than a bunch of poor Talibans with AKs. Along with it, they are releasing a Wolverine adaptation which doesn’t really convince me.

Because Wes Anderson is one of my favorites directors, I was very enthusiastic when I heard that he was working on an animation project, Mr. Fantastic Fox. But now I realised the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book involves high dose of puppets I am even more pleased. What’s great about the first pictures is that they remind me quite a few stuff I loved like Miyzaki’s Sherlock Hound, Maple Town’s toys, Black Sad, The Wind in the Willows, Renard Chenapan and probably Nintendo’s Star Fox. If my intuitions are right, all that mixed up with Wes Anderson’s disturbing humour and great sense of composition should make a great film. Answer the 13th of November.

Although the name of their company feels a bit cheap, Mobigame created an ultra good looking game here. Nothing else to say, watch the video and buy.

Red Line is the over exiting new animation film directed by one of the most talented Japanese animator of our time, Takeshi Koike. You probably know this guy because he brought you animation pieces like Animatrix World Record or the brilliant opening credits of Samurai Champloo! He is one of those who have a great balance beetwin style and skills. Although his drawings can remind Peter Chung’s, it’s not surprising to hear that a few years ago he was a disciple of Kawajiri at Studio Madhouse and worked as a key animator on Vampire Hunter D. On his own projects he developed an hybrid style and powerful color palettes, treating shadows like nobody else before. Two years ago, he directed a fantastic OAV called Trava Fist Planet with Hiroyuki Imaishi (Dead Leaves, FLCL, Re: Cutie Honey first OAV) and Kastuhito Ishii (Kill Bill Animation Sequence) that is illustrates perfectly what is the Koike Style. Along with STUDIO4℃, This trio forms THE other Japanese animation killer team.

Update August 4, 2009: New trailer here.

For wanabe environmental-friendly guys like me, life is an everyday challenge for control over the consequences of your own actions. I want to describe in which ethical pickle I found myself trapped today at lunch time when I was about to pick some cutlery a the Carnaby’s Pret a Manger. I was about to grab a plastic fork for my summer fruit salad when I realised that, moments aways, in my office, the place where I was actually going to consume this healthy bowl of fresh fruits, we had plenty of those in there metallic and re-usable form. I felt smart. Why waste this non biodegradable piece of plastic made with intensive use of petrol when you can use good old reusable ones? That’s what I was thinking for a few seconds having my hand floating in the air between my chest and the bunch of forks. Individually speaking, it sounded like a brilliant idea, but that’s when a second truth striked me. What if, having to wash this fork was actually more polluting then using the plastic one. In my company a lot of cutlery are being used, therefore, they use dish washers. If everybody was behaving like me, that would inevitabely fill a loads of dish washers, reject liters of non biodegradable washing products in our rivers, consume tons of electricty and waste more water. Should I wash this fork by hand? I am ready for this sacrifice for the sake of our blue planet. Well, I heard that hand washing wastes more water than dishwashers do. So this solution, although individually valid, was not at a larger scale. My arm was starting to hurt while I was standing in front of the cutlery holder like some kind of retarded. Why make things complicated, I thought? Let’s go back to the roots, I shall eat them with my fingers, ruining hundreds of years of human labour for evolution and manners. If only Pret didn’t cut those damn apples and left them as a whole, I could have done it without getting the sticky fingers. But, what about pinapples and mangoes then? Can you actually eat them without using a tool? Confused, without the necessary answers to find a proper solution, I grabbed the dark red plastic tool and left. I really felt frustrated that even though I spent time thinking about it, I came up whith the same solution that anyone else in here picked. If it’s so hard to do good with a small thing like that, what about the rest. The war for control over the consequences of your actions wasn’t over, and today I was defeated. But if at list sometimes, I win the battle, the cause is worst fighting for.

SNK Playmore released this really cool website that explains a bit about the sprites creation process for King of Fighters XII. I did hear they used 3D model as a reference for later 2D rotoscoping. At first I was a bit suspicious of this technique but seeing the result I should probably just bow and say “well done masters”. You will also find a gallery there, where you can spend hours playing the sprites animations back and forth to analyze every little subtleties that lies in there.

King of Fighters is back from the deads. Let’s oil our old rusty finger joints!

Dino Run is a little flash game made by a bunch of talented guys called Pixel Jam, and it’s one of the bests I’ve seen in my short life. Not only because it’s quite enjoyable to play, but also because it meets higher graphics standards than usual web games you can find around. Although the interface looks really minimalistic, there is quite a lot of things to know to be a good Dino Runner and the great multiplayer mode can prove it.

A bit of a private joke for Left 4 Dead players. Honestly quite funny when you got to know the game. It’s also introducing the idea of this strange choice Valve made by releasing a sequel of the game so soon. As far as I remember, I thought they were thinking that developping a games was too long and that they would focus on making titles that can evolve through time through updates. Well, nervermind.

Muscle March is one of these creations that perfectly illustrate what I like to call the “Japanese Madness”. Unfortunately, like many before, this game will probably never meet our lands because of his Japanese mind orientated content featuring muscles, moustaches, bears, bikinis and love. The style is amazing, reminding Katamari Damaci’s King of Cosmos or Satoshi Tomioka’s work. I love it!

For a while I have been thinking: “If I was one of those guy from Japan Studio, which idea would I come up with for my third game”. The basic principle of their games for now has been specific interaction with secondary characters made in a very original and beautiful way. So, who could have been the other cool entity to interact with this time? An onAline gamer on the other side of the atlantic or maybe something completely new that doesn’t fit with the previous games. Anyway, now I have my answer, and although this giant Tamagochi idea feels more like a mash up of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus than something completely new, it’s still amazingly attractive. Well done!

• Artwork by Thomas Deckers.

Monsanto is a company which has control over a large part of the food we are consuming. This documentary produced by Arte, shows us how nontransparent they are.

You can watch it online here:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hErvV5YEHkE

For more infos check this out:
http://www.arte.tv/monsanto

I am always apalled when I meet one of those in London. It took me a while to figure out that you didn’t have to choose between burning or freezing your hands by caping the hole and washing yourself in the little pool so created. But damn that’s pretty old school!