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Electroplankton: Coolest DS Package Yet!

I don´t know exactly what it is about NDS games, but the collector in me finds them extremelly sexy. Nintendo is doing things great in terms of packaging making each game release look really unique, I just can´t help but felling inclined to get this things.
 
john tv said:
It's not out yet, no. I got an early copy.

Heading out for a meeting now -- I'll try to get some playtime in on the train (heh), but no promises. :)
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You mean you're going to play the DS in public?! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Somebody, stop him before it's too late!
 
Dragmire said:
Oh god, no, is that serious? Why go from something stylish like Electroplankton to Snoop Dogg's Playa Dissin' Touch!
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Hey, Reggie knows what the masses want! He's been working with VH1.

Seriously, if I would be the one who developed such an original game as Electroplankton, and some moron would rape it into a cheap hiphop fest, I'd kick him in the nuts. Pretty hard I think.
 
Fucking NCSX needs to ship my copy NOW!.. I just hope it wont end up into having 20 minutes of worthy gametime
 
Nintendo should give this a Limited Edition release in the US... something like 25,000 copies. I can't imagine it would lose them money, and it would help them prove that their DS-is-new-shit hype is more than empty promises.
 
I want to play the theme from Kikujiro with this

Having my Planktons play Joe Hisaishi's Mad Summer would rock
so my first test for this game would be to try to get those beats and melody recreated by my Planktons
 
vitaflo said:
Toshio Iwai, one of the great new media artists of our time.
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Pretty much, except he's really been at this for almost 20 years.

indieszero were the developers, who also worked on the recent 1000 Year Family GBA game for Nintendo, the e-Reader's Mario Party-e, and the totally fucking awesome SuperFamicom action-puzzler Sutte Hakkun.
 
doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo doo
Buy it now doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo do doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo doo
Buy it now doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo do doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo doo
Buy it now doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo doo
Buy it now doo doo doo doo doo doo Electro Plankton doo doo doo doo doo do
 
RF: We've talked about fourth quarter in terms of when the games that truly take advantage of wireless connectivity, through the Internet, will happen. Metroid Prime Hunters is going to be wireless play local area network (LAN), so eight players playing Samus hunting each other. That's where we're going, so from a wireless Internet play standpoint [it's] fourth quarter.
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:(
 
Semjaza Azazel said:
Come back and tell us how fun the game is!

Also, I'm very upset that Hunters won't be online. Lame.
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let's not derail the thread because that is an old Reggie quote we don't know that yet

Maybe John had no time today
 
well i wouldnt say one of the best media artists, but he is a pioneer in video game art.
 
heavy liquid said:
The interview is from Gamespot, as was posted on 3/11/05:
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:( :(

Still, give us some impressions of this non-game thing John!
 
Unison said:
I think he meant "New Media" artist.
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I did. Sorry brandonnn, I forget those words sometimes read a different way. I work in the New Media dept of a very large contemporary art museum, so I guess I'm just a little too used to throwing that term out there. ;)
 
sp0rsk said:
well i wouldnt say one of the best media artists, but he is a pioneer in video game art.
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He would be on a list of influental New Media artists, ask any New Media curator.
 
Whoot. I'm back. Played it a bunch last night before drifting off into dreamland.

So actually, I highly recommend you go to the official Electroplankton website and click on the first bubble at the top-left ("donna soft?" for those of you who can read Japanese).　It actually takes you through all 10 plankton, which is basically the entire game. (I know it's not a game, but for lack of a better word, I'm going to refer to it as one.)

Each plankton is like a different mini-game, I guess, with its own unique way of making music. I'll give you a brief rundown of the first five, but be warned -- I HAVE NOT YET READ THE MANUAL, and the game itself gives very little detail as to what you can do with each plankton, so these descriptions are going to be pretty simplistic. :p

01 Tracy -- Each of the seven plankton can be dragged anywhere on the screen to create its own line of sound. First you draw a line (it can be pretty long, actually), and then the plankton will follow it over and over. It even repeats the speed that you draw -- so for example, if you draw the first part reeeeeeeally slow and then the next part super quick, it'll follow the line in the same manner. You can make some pretty cool music (well, with me it was more like noise) when you have all seven going at once... :)

02 Hanenbow -- This one's kinda neat. One leaf at the bottom shoots a plankton up in the air, and when it hits things (namely other leaves), it makes a noise. The point is to try and rearrange the leaves in such a way that you can keep the plankton bouncing around and making tunes before falling off the screen (you can even press A to display the specific angles of each leaf, i.e. 45 degrees, 83 degrees, etc.). If you press "up" on the d-pad, you can shoot out more plankton manually in addition to the one that comes out every few seconds automatically. Also, if you keep hitting the same leaves over and over, they turn red. I haven't managed to get all leaves red at the same time (they fade back to green if you stop hitting them), but perhaps it might trigger some kind of reaction. BTW, you can also press "Select" to change the leaf layout -- there seems to be four different layouts in all.

03 Luminaria -- I like this one, too. There's a grid with 36 arrows on it, and you start out with a plankton in each of the four corners. Once you touch one, it starts traveling the path of the arrows (which you can change on the fly, of course), making music as it goes. Each plankton has its own speed, too. So you basically make music by sending them around the grid in whatever direction you please. If you keep an arrow pressed for a few seconds, it starts spinning, meaning the direction the plankton goes when it crosses it will be totally random.

04 Sun-Animalcule -- Haven't messed with this one too much, but basically you just draw dots wherever you like on the screen (little suns), which make different tones based on where they are, and as the music loops, it replays the same rhythm over and over. The cool part is, if you leave them alone, the suns will get bigger and bigger each time around until it eventually gets dark and then they turn into little moons. The type of music you can make changes between sun and moon, and if you time it properly, you can have both types going at the same time.

05 Rec-Rec -- This one rocks. It's the one Bill Trinen showed off at GDC, with the four lines of fish that scroll from right-to-left along to a beat (there's a few different beats you can choose, BTW). You record a sample to each one using the mic, and then they all play together as it loops. You can make some pretty funky music with this one. :)

I gotta get going now; I'll do more later if I have time, but I probably won't, so here's hoping someone else (cough, Jonny) might be able to pop in and offer up some thoughts on the remaining five. :) It seems pretty cool so far; if you like tinkering around with sound, then you'll probably enjoy it. I'm not sure if it's worth the price of admission ($45 seems a bit steep to me), but maybe that's why they threw in the free earphones. ;p

Later!
 
Oops, nevermind. Thanks for the impressions. Sounds basically like what I expected, which is neat software if purchased for a cheap price.
 
vitaflo said:
I did. Sorry brandonnn, I forget those words sometimes read a different way. I work in the New Media dept of a very large contemporary art museum, so I guess I'm just a little too used to throwing that term out there. ;)
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's ok -- if you'd said "greatest new media" I would've been right there with you, but read it as "great, new."

And to sp0rks point, I'd look more toward the actual gallery works he's done, of which Plankton is a more accessible reduction. I can't remember if Nighttrain linked to a Sound Lens video or just Momus' description in the older thread, but if you search around there are videos of that and a number of others, which demonstrate why he's internationally renowned as, as vitaflo says, at the top of the multi/new media game. I'll try and get the links all rounded up.

I'm not sure that you'll get that just playing 'plankton, but it's a good start.
 
brandonnn said:
I can't remember if Nighttrain linked to a Sound Lens video or just Momus' description in the older thread, but if you search around there are videos of that and a number of others, which demonstrate why he's internationally renowned as, as vitaflo says, at the top of the multi/new media game. I'll try and get the links all rounded up.
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There's a video of it at the official Electro Plankton site. Third bubble to the left, third link down.
 
brandonnn said:
' I'd look more toward the actual gallery works he's done, of which Plankton is a more accessible reduction.
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And I think there's a few of his installations that didn't get into the game (or at least I didn't see these in the movies). My personal favorite installation of his is the Piano, a sort of virtual piano where you "draw" notes, which, if you think about how it works, could be recreated on the DS because of the dual screens, it would just need to be a trimmed down version.

The other is Resonance of 4, which also would be great on the DS, basically you have 4 people that all add dots to a grid to create to a musical piece that intersects with the others grids to create a song together. With the DS wifi linkup, this would be pretty cool with 4 people (or more!).

Electroplankton 2 perhaps? :)
 
This is a "game".

It may not be a traditional type of game, but its still a game if the point is to generate music by "playing", so it is a game.

It looks like a really off-beat version of Band Brothers.
 
john tv said:
02 Hanenbow -- This one's kinda neat. One leaf at the bottom shoots a plankton up in the air, and when it hits things (namely other leaves), it makes a noise. The point is to try and rearrange the leaves in such a way that you can keep the plankton bouncing around and making tunes before falling off the screen (you can even press A to display the specific angles of each leaf, i.e. 45 degrees, 83 degrees, etc.). If you press "up" on the d-pad, you can shoot out more plankton manually in addition to the one that comes out every few seconds automatically. Also, if you keep hitting the same leaves over and over, they turn red. I haven't managed to get all leaves red at the same time (they fade back to green if you stop hitting them), but perhaps it might trigger some kind of reaction. BTW, you can also press "Select" to change the leaf layout -- there seems to be four different layouts in all.
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And now for something related:

http://www.balldroppings.com/
BallDroppings is an addicting and noisy play-toy. It can also be seen as an emergence game. Alternatively this software can be taken seriously as an audio-visual performance instrument. Balls fall from the top of the screen and bounce off the lines you are drawing with the mouse. The balls make a percussive and melodic sound, whose pitch depends on how fast the ball is moving when it hits the line. This delightful application allows experimentation with sound and vision which will compound and intrigue you. Whether you are an adult or child, scientific brainbox or avid gamer. It doesn't have a plot, no heroine, no villain. It has no guns or alien beings. It is simply time to get creative, and those who are creative will love this. --Gosfish Games
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Electroplankton sounds awesome but I'm naturally intrigued by these types of experimental games (you play with it, it's a game). I'm definitely purchasing this title but hopefully it'll be released at a reduced price or packaged with the headphones at $30. Sounds like a real fun toy to idle the time away but I don't see myself buying it if it's expensive.
 
Yeah its sort of that whole "Seinfeld is a show about nothing" ... well, not really, every episode still had storylines.

Electroplankton is still a game.
 
Thanks john. I'm definetly intrigued on this one so I just ordered mine from Lik-Sang. Can't wait to play around with it.
 
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