It hurts to know that some places exist and that with your limited resources, you just can’t get there. One so-called place is a “small” shop that sells a “few” retro games. Rumours should be taken lightly people, this place isn’t small.

A brief insight into the fantastical wonderland of games development, rarely is there such a spectacle and especially of a most beautiful game. Psuedo sequel to ICO another great innovation in gaming history.

From Th1ng, a UK based company, comes an advert from the town of today fearing tomorrow. Looking at their showreel it’s sad to say that all the works that I’ve seen on UK television are lacking in comparison to their other stuff. Like the Winterthur advert the animation is lucid, the atmosphere and style is a wonderland compared to the Capital One Ads. Just shows you thats it all depends on what the client wants.

Who likes ER, I quite like ER… it’s quite amusing it is. I quite like ninjas too with their katanas and their shurikens. Very dangerous them are, quite sharp, quite sharp indeed…but wait!

What’s even more dangerous than ninjas… Dr McNinja! He’s a doctor and he’s a ninja! Watch him take on McDonalds and eradicate facial hair as we know it, but most of all, watch him take on the ninja’s worst enemy… …Pirates!

Pretty Pretty Bang Bang, a hip new game with some funky music from Studio Hunty.

Pretty cool video of a real life buit transformer! The first real transformer out there. Small fella but still pretty cool as it transform from a kart to a robot, does a pose and back to a kart again.

Since were on the subject here’s another video of what is supposedly a clip from the upcoming Transformer Movie…

The MGS franchise is reaching another border and soon those of you who have a PSP might be able to watch the comic, that was released a while back, in action. I found this video of the upcoming Digital Comic via the Ashley Wood’s, artist of the comics, blog. It looks great but if there is one thing that I’d add would be voice acting, preferably from the game.

Tagged.

Four jobs that I’ve had

• Takeaway Guy
• Mechanic Boy
• Designer Kid
• Teacher Dude

Four movies I can watch over and over

• Sin City
• Motorcycle Diaries
• In the Mood for Love
• Schindler’s List

Four TV shows I like to watch

• Ray Mears Bushcraft
• House
• Spin City
• Simpsons

Four foods that I like

• Beef Steak
• Lobster
• Roast Duck
• Crispy Barbequed Pork

Four websites I visit daily

• 4 Color Rebellion
• Insert Credit
• Flash Kit
• If Else

Four things I want to do before I die

• Finish My Tshirt for Avalon Star
• Direct a Movie
• Develop a Game
• Sample a minimum of 50% of the Worlds Mammals

This is the end. This meme ends, the end.

Eyezmaze has just brought out the latest in the Grow series to accommodate the festive season.

Death in Sakkara it’s a pretty cool point and click adventure from the BBC.

Great French Train Ad, “Ideas are born”. I wish British Airways ads was this cool.

Cool web site by Leo Burnett.

Cube, a nice production company. Some cool clips but this one is by far the best.

I’m starting to use kooky everywhere but really there is no other way to descibe this! no other way to descibe this!

When two brothers take enough time to do mug shots of the other guy then you realise that it’s time to take some time apart…

The I/O Brush, the next step for digital artists? See for yourself…

Walking Ideas presents us with a new fantasically addictive game, Oshiro.

Essential? They’re not that great but there are a few really nice ones in there.

Pretty cool French game. It’s only a decent game actually until they added the floor hang by pressing up after jumping which gives it that edge. A nice game for when you have a little spare time.

Eyezmaze, another site with great games. Home to famous Grow series, which I can proudly add that I have completed them all.

NEXT FRAME(!) is a very cool Japanese site with an assortment of very cool Flash games. Most of these are great fun but my favourite is this one, Seventh Sky. If the site seems like it’s gonna crashing or if it’s gonna stall don’t worry and just wait a while.

Man, I’ve had this site bookmarked for a while but I was working through my bookmarks and since then I’ve seen this piece so many times it’s ridiculous. I love the DDR type beat to it and I especially love the bit in the middle where the guy unzips his overalls. It’s crazy. They have other flash movies somewhere but this one tops it.

Another site with a cool simplistic design and some damn cool experiments. His video logic is simply amazing but when I first saw it it had some disturbing material on it. His Amzetype experiment is also cool but it’s also disappointing to see some of the stuff people search for on Amazon.

A stylishly simple Flash site with very cool Flash projects. Andy Foulds second Flash with the bouncing ball is amazing because it moves the window when it hits it. It truly astounds me! His Bush/Blair heads are cool. His Abstract expressionalism one is very cool aswell. Actually I could do this all day you should just see his site for yourself. Be sure to check his Flash 8 experiments!

…and a new start to the sixth year of Avalonstar. With that Bryan has announced the results of his Tshirt Contest!

It was a gruelling month for Bryan as through out the contest it seemed that nobody was entering, but I did. Man as bad as the contest was going, it seemed like luck was finally shining my way and that seeing as I was the only one entering, I guess it was only natural that I was the only one going to win. It was evil, coniving and in some respect sadistic. Just to make sure I bombarded him with entries and in the end I entered four, yes that was four entries into the contest! But I guess that wasn’t enough for Bryan. I guess mine were just… under par and undeserving of the $300 that he extended his contest for an extra week. A week? I wasn’t worried about a week! I was looking foward to today. Man, I could taste that prize. I was even practising how to tell him what I want. I was gonna rip off Martin Luther King, Jr but I only knew the first few words and so it went:

“I have a dream. Bryan, I said I have a dream. I dream of coding. I have a dream that you, yourself would deliver this dream upon my righteous hands and the light would shine down on us from above when I shall recieve your gift.”

Yeah… I was ready. And the day had come.

I was excited but I braved the journey in typing A-V-A-L-O-N-S-T-A-R and proceeded to press Ctrl + Enter. The page was loading. The wait was not so long but I felt my face slapped across the screen. I scrolled down and read the excerpt. The winners would be announced. I was surprised to see that there was 26 entries and sure enough my success didn’t seem so certain but I couldn’t give up now! It finished “Okay, I’ll stop talking, let’s get it on!”

There was a pause. I sighed. Stretched out my hand and brung it down until the pointer was hovering over the read on link. I looked around the room and it was grey as I felt the world daunt on me. I looked back to the screen and down to my hand. As he said, “only one click separates you from me and salvation.” and so I clicked. I clicked and prayed. The screen loaded. I saw the same block of text I had just read and under it… I saw my entry. It was a momentus day. Glory had swept me. I was readying the tears until I read right above my entry.

Third Place: Mike Ly

The tears came but lo they were not tears of joy. No they were not. I took a step back and I thought to myself: runner up is great, My design didn’t really justify his efforts in his site. I was intrigued that my last entry made it because I rushed it and it was really just a draft of an idea. I was proud that I made runner up. Now content I was ready to see who had bested my efforts. I had only scrolled down a little bit more until again tears had come.

Second Place: Phu Ly

Damn. That hurt Bryan. For those of you of less cunning, Phu Ly is my brother and I wish not to express my… opinion on the matter that he beat me because alas I would like to keep this site clean and so that when you search me up in Google, I don’t appear as a star of pornography. Now onto the winner.

First Place: Kyle Jones

Kyle Jones, I don’t know him but I do know that that was a hell of a design and much congrats to him. I wonder what he’ll wish for.

It was a great contest and I’m sure Bryan’s satisfied with the winning entry. Thanks for the comment Bryan and especially Jen. I enjoyed the contest. I’m just gutted that I have to wait another five years before I have the chance of robbing him of $300 again. It’s sad and cliche but after what has passed over these few weeks…

…I dream of Avalonstar

Great short clip about the making of Flash 8. Well really it’s just a very brief history of Flash, the testing period of Flash 8 and the Flash 8 party! Wish I was there. It’s a nice clip to see the people who made Flash possible. Congrats to the team!

Avalonstar is hosting a t-shirt contest. Only a week or so left, hurry! $300 practically on offer.

Another Contest!? I’m really late on this one but I thought I’d post it anyway…

The acclaimed site GameDev is featuring a contest where you need to make a game that features any two of the four elements of the contest. The elements are pretty kooky but kooky’s good, they are: Robots, Pirates, Ninjas and Zombies. There are pratically no restrictions but I’ll let you read up on that. The prizes sound cool but a bit out of my league but it sounds cool to enter and there are of course bragging rights, right?

It ends on the 31st October, I’m four months late but there’s still a month left! Quickly make the game, write the manual, Zip the file and send it with a gift! (Kidding, you don’t ‘need’ a gift… it helps though, I’m sending cyber chocolate!)

I actually heard this news on Flashkit some time ago, but not to digress have a gander at the competition presented by Miniclip, the makers of the Heli Attack series. This is rare opportunity for all game designers to show off their talents to the world because Miniclip has announced a game competition!! The competition asks you to make a quality game not just a pretty game and there are specifics that need to be followed like it needs to be under 3kb, with no bigger than 800 x 600 dimensions and it needs to be coded for flash player 5, 6, 7, shockwave player 8.5 or java. The genre is totally upto you but you need to be 16 to enter! These games need to be fully complete with no nudity/violence and it goes without saying no stickman games! How they will define violence is questionable I guess, seeing as they did make the Heli Attack series, but it’s a risk that only you can take.

The winner (and maybe some runner-ups) will recieve a $3000 contract for their game!! You should read the terms and conditions about the contract and where to send your game file (.swf, .dcr, .jar only!!).

So good luck but not too much luck as I’ll be sure to enter too!

It ends on 18th of November so we have two months people!

Great optimisation tips for both actionscripters and non-actionscripters by Tom Moor. He’s also listed a great set of game physics links that are worth at least a glance and it’s nice to see his blog with Jonny Mccormack about the development of their Flash racing game.

Andreescu and Gaivoronski features a very cool navigation system made up of paper strips. A simple, though inefficient, system. I like it alot. Not really much else to say but they have a cool gallery fitting of their site and skills as architects.

“Ceci n’est pas du papier” or as Mac Translate translates it to be “This is not paper” has a very cool and interesting paper look, but sadly from the brief look I had of it the content wasn’t as good as the site looked, although the ‘product design’ section is nice but doesn’t really strike innovation in design.

FiveStone braves the comic book look and it looks good thought it’s a bit tedious to navigate. Still it’s a nice looking site with good portfolio. It even features a pac man game.

I haven’t really finished initiating this site but I’ve got lots of content thats just waiting to be talked of.

Pixel Perfect, a very nice looking site and a variety of interesting takes on putting forth a gallery. Haven’t seen many husband and wife sites though I haven’t really been searching but this one’s really nice. I’ve noticed the cool pulling the edges of pages implemented in their photo gallery which I’ve seen before but still nice to see again. It’s a very vintage looking site with a hint of regalness with a lot of interesting ideas, I especially like that ink fade that randomly occurs.