It’s been rather a while since I’ve written something for Plan B Magazine, but I’ve returned to its pages in fine style, with a full page interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi about his interest in creating virtual pop stars for video games; from Ulala (for Space Channel 5) to the nameless girl featured in the Genki Rockets video for Lumines II.

I think it’s a rather interesting concept, and while, admittedly, this isn’t the most enlightening interview (it was his final interview of the Montreal Game Summit, and the jet lag was obviously getting to him) it’s still a good article.

As ever, you can purchase this issue at Plan B’s website.

What a horribly lengthy headline, readers. But it does explain my contribution to this issue as succinctly as possible!

Yes, in this issue I did a funky skillo interview with Bryan Lee O’Malley (creator of Scott Pilgrim) which is accompanied by an absolutely ace sketch of Scott Pilgrim character Ramona Flowers (this one, to my memory.) Oh, I also do a sort of combination review of New Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter Anthology, the both of which are pretty great, though arguably not great enough.

Speaking of Street Fighter, actually, I just got Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting for Xbox Live Arcade, and is it just me or is the AI, even on the easiest difficulty absolutely ridiculously hard to the point of being broken?

Still, the online is pretty good, and it’s nice to have it lying around.

Having never actually see a copy of this I can only sort of guess that I’m in this issue, but I’m fairly certain that it contains a very short review of Dead Rising by yours truly. If it doesn’t, then, well, um, I’ve lost a month somewhere and am a bit confused.

What else can I say about Dead Rising here that I haven’t said already, eh? It’s a game that has zombies in it and I’m, at this stage in the game, pretty tired of talking about it, as much as I love it.

If you’re desperate to read me talking about it, though, you can pick up this issue as a back issue at Plan B’s website.

By some strange and terrible twist of fate, this happens to be the most recent issue of Plan B I own, despite the fact that I’ve been in practically every issue since. I guess I’ve been lost off the mailing list.

Actually, I moaned about this the last time I posted about Plan B here, so I am sorry. But I miss getting issues of it terribly. Perhaps I’ll just splurge and buy all the back issues I’m lacking, or something.

Anyway, this was a playful little article; I reference the Controller: Artists Crack the Game Code exhibition that I did a lot of interviews for Gamasutra on (see here) only this time I dare to have an opinion on it, and decide I don’t like any of it very much at all. There’s an absolutely brilliant graphic to go with this that is exactly what the title implies – a Super Mario Brothers take on Magritte’s The Human Condition. If you want to see it, of course, I’m afraid you’ll have to buy the back issue.

Hmm. I don’t seem to have got a copy of Plan B in the mail for a very long time; have they just stopped sending them out to the writers, or what, I wonder? Still, I at least have a copy of this issue, which features only two small capsule reviews; Shadow of the Colossus and Super Princess Peach.

Shadows of the Colossus is pretty much the one game (other than perhaps 9:05, but that’s a different story) I would use in any discussion of “are games art?” The interactive form is the only one that can force the player into performing actions they’d rather not (such as murdering peaceful giants) for what may, or may not, be an important reason, rather than just watching a character go through the motions. Of course, whether that makes it art (or even disqualifies it) would be part of the debate.

Oh, and my review of Super Princess Peach takes a slightly different tact from my earlier Eurogamer review, claiming that the game accuses your mother of owning a vibrator at the end of the game. Peach’s quest is, after all, for an item called the Vibe Scepter, and if that doesn’t have a weird sexual undertone I don’t know what does.

You can pick up a copy of this as a back issue.

I did rather a lot this month, as you can see. No help from Gillen, either, just a mysterious gentleman called “Minister Drill-Cock!” with an article, it seems, that came from the future.

“A world unknown” is a little piece I wrote on Samorost, Amanita Design’s emotive little flash game, for the release of Samorost 2, the sequel. It contains a short interview with Jakub Dvorsky, the creator. My Mario Kart DS and Sonic Rush reviews are the usual sort of thing (well, if you ignore how vitriolic my Sonic Rush review was. A protip, kids: bottomless pits are total arse) but the piece I’d like to spotlight from this issue is my second, much shorter, Animal Crossing review.

Now, you might remember my first review and the furore that surrounded it, and basically, this second review is my response; a succinct example of why “new games journalism” is perfectly valid, and that it doesn’t have to be long winded. Here it is:

Roald is a penguin who lives in my Animal Crossing town. He’s fat, and squat, but he’s obsessed with body building. He reminds me of a good friend. Heck, somehow, he is a good friend. Yesterday, he’d put all of his items in boxes and was going to move out of town for a ‘sit-up competition’. Both myself and my girlfriend, who cohabit in the same Animal Crossing home, stylishly decorated by her, of course, were in a frenzy. We bought gifts, we sent him letters begging him not to leave, posted messages on the town billboard, fished, caught bugs, dug fossils, all in desperation to keep him. We entirely forgot about paying off our mortgage, or opening the gates to let visitors from other Animal Crossing owners with Wi-Fi into our town, such was our desperation. This morning I checked in – Roald is staying, happily fishing by the river. I think it was the punching bag I sent him. It’s his birthday tomorrow, though – I’ll have to buy him something else now.

In what appears to be little more than a short and very personal anecdote, I describe that you live in a town with animals in Animal Crossing. I explain the animals have personalities that you get attached to. I describe what you can do in the game (buy gifts, send letters, post messages, fish, catch bugs, dig fossils). I describe you have a mortgage to pay off and that the game has Wi-Fi capabilities. And, by doing that the way I do, I show that I liked the game very much. What more can a review do?

So. What’s everyone’s problem with “new games journalism” again? I forget.

(You can still get a copy of this as a back issue.)

A lovely issue of Plan B with the wonderful Cat Power on the cover, this featured my first feature in the magazine, a piece on Barrie Ellis’s One Switch campaign, which had only recently held its 2005 Retro Remakes competition. My picks of the competition were definitely Sky Puppy, Strange Attractors and a remake of Atari’s Star Wars. Sentinella [a direct download] is pretty good too, which infers that if you give your one switch game a name that begins with “S” then it’ll be half decent.

The results of the 2006 Retro Remakes competition (also held in conjunction with the One Switch campaign) are currently under deliberation, and this issue of Plan B is currently available as a back issue.

I can’t seem to find any information that claims I was in the August/September issue, so I’m guessing I wasn’t. There wasn’t really very much of me in this issue, either; just a short but very positive review of WarioWare Twisted. Gillen’s stuff this issue is more expansive; though his article does just go on about ABA Games again (he was discovering the wonder of Gunroar, at the time, I remember) but he also covers Façade and Fate, the latter which I’ve never bothered to play but often think I might, before I look at the worryingly large stack of games I’ve usually got that I have to play, and I forget about it again.

As always, you can still buy this issue of Plan B as a back issue.

As I’ve managed to post all of the links related to the Toronto International Film Festival so far, I suppose I should really start up posting up all the links to my work in order again.

This seems to be the first copy of Plan B that I’m in that I have managed to find in my possession, which is nice. It includes a couple of reviews which are probably pretty unusual for a music magazine, as they’re reviews of Japanese doujin titles. Tumiki Fighters is a lovable side scrolling shooter set in a world made of children’s building blocks, created by everyone’s favourite doujin developer Kenta Cho (a.k.a ABA Games).

The other title is really the revelation that made me write the reviews, though, as I’d spent the whole month playing nothing but it. Dokutsu Monogatari, created by the reclusive Studio PIXEL, is a lonely and lovely platform game that’s challenging, pleasurable, and a bit moving too. It’s old news by now, really, but if you haven’t heard of it by now it’s more than worth giving a shot.

Anyway, this issue of Plan B is available for purchase as a back issue.

I can’t seem to find much more in the way of things I wrote for the Banter, so I’ll skip forward to this, as I’m fairly certain I didn’t write much else of note during my final year of University. Well, other than a dissertation on artificially intelligent sheep flocking, but I’ll admit in retrospect that could have been better.

This issue, which I don’t actually have because no one at Plan B sent me a copy (I suppose I should face up to it never coming and just buy a back issue before it sells out) features a short review of Resident Evil 4 that somewhat stretches the definition of a review, by actually being an anecdote. It’s a fun one, though.