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Ok, I had a strangely stupid (= great) idea for Sean's picture, that is if no-one else wants to make one. I could do it as a 70's basketball card. Pretty much like this example with text changed to " Sean Vanaman - Famous - San Francisco. This could be printed at a small size. I would need a day or two for this also.

I really like TychoChelchuuu's Nick, maybe because it's not really offensive in anyway and has some resemblance but still kind of has that f nick undertone. And yeah, I hope we get Sean from someone.

What was the name of the anti Movember campaign?

+ there's a Saitek (from Idle News Podblast - 02/26/09: With Saitek Cyborg) and a Boston Dynamics (aka number 1 Robot News resource) logo because cyberpunk has to have some shady corporations in it.

Yeah, the timer is a pretty big addition... I also think it's interesting how you have to try to keep track of time in your head, but I guess you can plan your explorations more safely in the future (I hope there's an option to have the new hud - timer, but I doubt it). Someone suggested a great feature on that stream: If you make too many stupid mistakes and die a lot, the PRO HUD turns back to normal.

Here's a link to the final image (10"h, 8"w). https://www.dropbox.com/s/74qcgxbz7s36nfg/hot_cyber_scoops.jpg "Hot Cyber Scoops" by Atte Okkonen.

The update is for PC, Douglas Wilson and Noah Sasso of Sportsfriends just streamed them playing the new version, since it's not archived on Twitch I took some sceenshots. There's some minor changes and bugfixes (full changelog is not revealed yet) but the biggest additions are the pro HUD and run on default (RT for walking). The new HUD is small and compressed, for example Ankh is over the heart and cape and jetpack do not show on the HUD because they are visible on the character. Also there's a level number and timer and even a special icon to show if the run is a daily challenge or not. There's no release date yet, but should be soonish.

Someone made a compilation video that I always secretly wanted. Super super good. https://twitter.com/chrisremo/status/426781121494253568 Oh and in other Spelunky news: Andy Hull writes on twitter: "The new Spelunky update contains a couple added features, but is mostly bug fixes. The biggest addition is a less intrusive HUD option." https://twitter.com/StoryFort/status/426851476062085120

Thanks and great work Blambo and BigJKO. I hope we get Sean and Nick too (I could not resist the call of a cyborg). Hah, I now realized your beautiful Scoops had a cigarette as well... Steve is such a homme fatale I guess.

Here's Steve. I probably do some more detailing and fixing, but it's almost done, and oh the text in the glasses is "uploading hot scoops to idle thumbs network". Full size is about A4, 300 dpi.

Doing Good Teamwork solo is pretty easy, carrying (and sometimes controlling) a dummy player is a fun challenge in itself. Low Scorer though... that was the most hellish achievement in the game for me. It's an interesting reversal of the usual goals but it can also feel quite unfair and luck dependent (like gold pieces completely hidden behind leaves/snow/sand). Curiously Low Scorer seems to only exist on the Steam version (?). For new players I'd say don't worry about beating the game or getting further every time, for a long time playing Spelunky is just learning, exploring and experimenting with stuff. If you are willing to pay attention for long enough you will get better and start to see what an amazing and unique thing this game, that at first seems so basic and familiar, really is. Also very excited for Chris's GOTY write-up.

Hmm, I'm just going to put this here, in honour of this strange and Nick filled episode. dishonoured_nick.mp3

I have been playing Spelunky a lot lately so I wanted to write something meaningful about it. But then I found a great quote from spelunkyworld.com - "Spelunky looks like a game of execution, but it's really a game about information and decision making. How good are you at looking at a situation and understanding what it means? You can't memorize, and you can't take time to carefully analyze, you must rely on your literacy of the system..." - and made a Spelunkymeetsthumbsfanartgif instead!

Super Smash Brothers looks really interesting but I have had no modern (meaning over 8-bit) Nintendo console so I have not been able to play it. So I was pleased to find out about Megabyte Punch. It is good and I believe its multiplayer and boss battles are very much Smash Bros-esque. Jake should play it and be thanked for reminding us about BaraBariBall. http://megabytepunch.reptile-games.com/

Since this is the official Idle Thumbs Things Related To Pac-Man thread, here's a first person pacman (via indiegames.com). http://www.kongregate.com/games/briderider/fps-man

That's no moon! It's a Space Rodkin.

Thanks for the gif love. I wanted to keep the OG NES resolution so face shrinking was pretty brutal (Jake's mood swing is great).

Plot thickens, Steve does a bad Ganon impersonation in this episode just to hide the fact that he is Ganon. (solid proof from an earlier episode, repost for this special occasion)

This episode inspired me to write this semicoherent rambling about violence in Video games (being finnish, there might be some strange grammar). Most games are about space. Controlling it and objects in it. Football is about how to get a certain object into a certain place while obeying the rules. Racing is how to control your object so it reaches certain coordinates before others. Those are about moving an object from place to place. Another gameplay concept of controlling space and objects in it, is tag. Tag is about contact, avoiding and achieving it. These basic ideas can be amazingly deep and wonderful or stupidly shallow and boring depending on the rulesets that surround them. Pong is kind of a reverse shooter, you try to hit a projectile and send a projectile back in a way it misses the other player. So when you flip those mechanics again and use realistic graphics, it can become morally super suspicious fast. When you represent the real world in your game about those basic mechanics, things start to look violent pretty easily. I'm not suggesting games with focus on spatial control should always be abstracted (simulating reality can be a good choice for completely mechanics driven game too), just that the killing and destruction represented in video games today is a logical result of combining more or less reality based visuals that attract and fascinate us with simple but powerful spatial mechanics like tag. The strange area comes when you want to combine that gameplay with story, characters and an environment where you feel that at least some of your own morals and emotions should be present. A year ago I played Zelda 1 and I was surprised how much it still felt like a real adventure. A vital part of that sense was how the combat and enemies felt truly dangerous. I had to be cautious and at times try some desperate tactics to survive. The idea of a mass murderer that you should also empathise with has been discussed many times before, but the thing that keeps bothering me is that I can't seem to figure out how there could have been the same kind of tension and danger without using a mechanic that was most convenient to depict as an act of violence. Also about JP's Hotline Miami comment, I don't think it is just another really violent game that happens to be well made too. Many games choose to represent the basic game of projectile tag as guns, bullets and guys exploding into bloody pieces while the core playing experience can be a quite mundane task of pointing and clicking stuff. Hotline Miami not just looks but feels frantic and aggressive, you can lose control of the situation no matter how carefully you try to keep things in order (as Chris well described in the podcast). I think the gore could be removed and the visuals abstracted into floating squares and the game would still feel violent.

I'm usually suspicious of ultraviolence in media but I thought Hotline Miami used it in an interesting way. It's not just a game with plenty of aggression, it's a game about aggression. A shaky analogy could be that if modern military shooters are The Expendables, Hotline Miami is The Raid. If it was a barely interactive 15 minute gamejam game that just shoved the blood in your face, Hotline would not obviously work very well, and after playing it through a couple of times the violence really starts to disappear and all you see is the mechanics. But when I was immersed in both the mechanics and the aesthetics, it was powerful stuff. The game took me into a strange place, a feverish nightmare that had progressed beyond paralyzing fear into a frustrated and desperate aggression. That "F this, I just need to get through this mess" feeling. And yes, somehow that was a very interesting and positively memorable gaming experience for me.

Made this today to demonstrate how Steve released his inner Ganon in this episode (at 17:22). Jake also mentioned the Return of Ganon laugh in some earlier episode and that was the moment I realized Idle Thumbs was truly a podcast for me.