Results tagged “videogames”

If snacks and unlimited arcade freeplay are relevant to your interests, you might want to read on.

It’s true that Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is wicked. Yes, God of War III will rock. And, most likely, Heavy Rain is a strong GOTY contender. But if you’re the type who knows enough about games to know what the hell the previous three sentences mean, you also know that you can find all this out (and more) on the myriad Toronto-based gaming sites out there as they release their coverage of the Sony Playstation Preview Event over the next few days. Indeed, as much as some of us here love playing with our joysticks (quiet, you), it really all comes down to what Tuesday’s shindig had to do with Toronto. After all, this is Torontoist, not Today in Gameplay.

One of the myriad press releases that made a brief and unremarkable splash in the tech feed pool this week announced the fifth anniversary of the Vortex Game Competition, an annual contest/boot camp/conference that has enjoyed varying levels of success among Toronto gaming circles since 2004. Slogging through the three pages of shiny, marketing-fresh copy may turn off many a young gamer who would otherwise be interested in such an event, but a little reading between the lines reveals that, win or fail, this year’s Vortex holds some secret networking opportunities for aspiring designers/developers hoping to gain an edge on some pretty exciting developments in the Toronto gaming industry (hint: Ubisoft! And Dragons’ Den!).

              

TOJam, in case you've somehow missed our coverage of the event for the past two years running (shame!), is Toronto's first and only video game development jam. This city is full of people with indie game-making chops (some of whom may soon have steady work, if Ubisoft decides to staff up with local talent). Since 2006, TOJam has been an annual focal point for all that technical prowess and creative energy.

Toronto is going to play itself in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but just as exciting is the news that you'll be able to play in Toronto in the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game, to be developed by Ubisoft. The news has been floating around the wires since Bryan Lee O'Malley let it slip during a San Diego Comic Con panel, and Ubisoft (who only recently announced their intention to found an 800 person–strong game development studio here in Toronto) expect the game to launch roughly the same time as the film (in 2010). O'Malley himself states "no platform has been announced yet," but promises "it's being made by huge fans of the books and it's a passion project for a lot of people ... So just sit back and wait and every time they announce some information you'll be like 'OH MY GOD WOO.'" Our only hope is that it maintains all the retro-cool of the mock-up screenshots from the back of volume five...

Last week, passersby at the corner of Queen and Ossington began to take notice of a curious wooden crate protruding from the side of a building. Some gathered around it with great awe and wonder, while others scoffed dismissively, thinking, “So what? It’s a frickin’ box sticking out of a frickin’ wall.”

On Eastern Avenue, just south of where Queen Street meets King Street, deep in a little pocket of industrial buildings wedged between Corktown and the Don Valley Parkway, is a junk-strewn brick building known, somewhat euphemistically, as "Innovation Toronto." It's been used at various times as a steel mill, a set for a TV series, and, allegedly, a homeless shelter.

Two nights ago, the Toronto Life Square Future Shop held their midnight launch event for Nintendo's latest desirable object, the Nintendo DSi. Those who don't keep obsessive tabs on the product cycles of videogaming platforms (and why wouldn't you?) might be confused at this point. Hasn't the Nintendo DS been out for like five years?

We've just gone through our archives here and it seems like we've managed to reach 2009 without mentioning the Artsy Game Incubator. Hmm. Well, rather than lament our foolishness, let us explain that it's a collaborative game development group for artists and people who want to make games but have no technical skills (or not enough) that uses simple and accessible tools to allow their game concepts to be developed.

We don't talk about video games that often here on Torontoist, usually for lack of a local angle, but we've found one to give us a reason to talk about TIGSource's Bootleg Demakes competition. It's a contest to produce a recent video game design as if it was developed for far older machines, and local independent game developer (and one of the organizers of TOJam) Jim McGinley developed Hold Me Closer, Giant Dancer, a PC "demake" of PS2 title Shadow of the Colossus if it was for the TRS-80 Model III. It's a clever little take on one of our favourite games, so why not check it out? (You can view some footage of it on YouTube, too.)

Wizard needs weekend plans, badly. Clever wizards know that the place to be this Friday and Saturday (June 27-28, 12–5 p.m.) is Evolution: 30 Years of Computer Games at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre (9 Ossington Avenue). 20 PC games are on display and available for play on their original consoles, showing how gaming technology has evolved since 1978.

The third annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam ran from the 9th to the 11th of May this year with over 125 developers managing to produce 34 different games across the intense three day period, and their pain is now our pleasure as all of the successfully completed games have been released online.

We should have known! The culprits responsible for the Pac-Man recreation on a streetcar shelter outside Kensington Market have stepped forward, and they're neither advertisers nor immoralists: they're Teeth (responsible for this charming bear-woman) and our very own Posterchild (who is something of a fan of video games).

On Friday, reader Russ Morgan spotted Pac-Man on Spadina. Someone had converted one of the panels of the streetcar shelters between Baldwin and Nassau to depict a stand-off straight out of the classic video game: to the south, a big pixelated Pac-Man; to the north, Pokey, a big pixelated orange ghost; and, between them, a big pixelated cherry power-up. The yellow dots that always line the streetcar shelters, untouched by the artist, magically became pac-dots.

To those uninitiated to the ways of Next-Gen gaming, the huge lineups outside of the Yonge-Dundas square Future Shop and the Eaton Centre Best Buy could have seemed quite frightening. Are all these young, would-be hooligans planning a gigantic car heist of Gone in 60 Seconds proportions? Why are they eagerly talking about running people over, the Russian mafia, and a new targeting system that they simply can't wait to try out?

If you're thinking about Space Invaders right now, you probably spent too much time in the arcades of the early 1980s. But according to homeowner Eugene Popov, the inspiration for this colourful garage door wasn't a youth spent feeding quarters into game consoles; it was a few years living in South Africa.

Photos (top, and bottom) by wvs from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

According to Rafael Fajardo, absolutely.

Today launched Dear Toronto, a new independent videoblog site by Adam Schwabe, Ryan Couldrey, and Rebecca Black. The trio had previously collaborated at BlogTO, but recently decided to branch out on their own to focus on strictly video-based content.

Attention basement dwellers: on Wednesday, February 6, OCAD is hosting a free presentation by SWEAT, a collaboration of game designers, programmers, and artists dedicated to bringing socially aware video games to the general public. SWEAT has already produced games like Crosser, a Frogger-esque game about illegal crossing at the US/Mexico border, and is currently developing Juan & the Beanstalk, a game about the societal effects of illegal drug production in Colombia.

In what simultaneously has to be one of the most hilariously inspired and gut-wrenching punishments in the history of parental discipline, a local GTA father has set a new standard for puffing penalization. The man—an elementary school teacher known by the screen name "k_lid"—decided to sell his son’s Christmas present on eBay (a notoriously hard-to-find copy of the best-selling Guitar Hero 3 game) when he returned home from work early to find 15-year-old Isaac...

We don’t tend to post too often about video games here at Torontoist, what with basically the entire rest of the internet being devoted to it (well, that and anthropomorphic Star Trek slash fiction), but we do like to make special note when some pleasant news of local interest comes up, such as Toronto as a Half Life mod or the Toronto Indie Game Jam (Which we, er, forgot to mention this year. Our...

Last Wednesday, legendary Canadian music retailer Pindoff Record Sales sold off their 72-store Music World chain. Two days later, the new owners filed for bankruptcy protection and and will likely lay off 648 employees by the end of January. And so it goes. According to court documents, Music World plans an "orderly wind down," including closing stores and liquidating inventory. The retailer has been in dire straits for years, propped up by the Toronto-based...

Our most anticipated part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s new Future Projections programme, the Into the Pixel exhibition, had its opening reception last night at the at the Ontario College of Art & Design's Great Hall, where it will remain until the end of the festival.

Fan Expo is awesome. As awesome as anticipated by Torontoist late last week. Sure, the food is expensive, a bunch of the guests cancelled last minute, and Hobby Star is a huge corporate bully, but that doesn’t change the fact that Torontoist came within spitting distance of Adam West this weekend. In this three-day celebration of all things geeky, the biggest winner in the comics vs. sci-fi vs. horror vs. anime vs. video games battle appeared to be… video games! Playing host to the Toronto stop of the World Series of Video Games, Fan Expo delivered non-stop excitement during which those who still live in their parents’ basements were pitted against each other in intense competitions akin to sporting events. Watching Guitar Hero II champions from across North America rip through a video game edit of "Freebird" while a few hundred people cheered in encouragement ranks as one of the strangest things Torontoist may have ever seen. Also, Battle Royale shirts. They’re amazing, but why does everyone suddenly have one?

Another spate of announcements from the Toronto International Film Festival, with in particular an entirely new programme announced, Future Projections. To feature installations, interactive film projects, and other film-related art work presented outside the cinema space and throughout the City of Toronto, it’s to work as a companion to the Wavelengths programme. Eight of the nine multimedia installations will be offered as free, non-ticketed events, with entry to the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery offered free to Festival passholders/ticketholders for the duration of the Festival, and free to the general public on Wednesdays from 5 p.m.–8 p.m.

So there we were, all ready to write another post previewing the final weekend of the Sprockets International Film Festival for Children, when we realised that the film we wanted to bring everyone’s attention to, When the Show Tent Came To My Town, had already had all of its showings! Darn. So though we aren’t going to do a full review of the film, we’d just like to note that When the Show Tent Came To My Town is an absolutely brilliant Japanese-language film that deals with school bullying and friendships in an intelligent and moving way, and that if you get a chance to see it (even if you don’t have any kids) you should. It’s great.

“Use more…waste less!” That’s the motto of the new barter-community web site known as SwitchPlanet.