Tag: OUYA

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That Dragon, Cancer expands its scope with Kickstarter relaunch

Joel Evan Green was diagnosed with a brain tumor at only twelve months of age. Doctors gave him four months to live. But he exceeded all medical expectations greatly, battling through multiple surgeries and another seven tumors. He lived on, strong, inside the sphere of love that his family had surrounded him in. They prayed, sung, and played with him, and Joel smiled back in the way that only infants can when experiencing pure joy.  When Joel was four years old, Ryan and Amy Green, his parents, started to recount their journey with Joel in a videogame. Prior to this,…
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That Dragon, Cancer dev to document story in upcoming film

There’s a heartbreaking documentary in the works on the equally heartbreaking game That Dragon, Cancer. The film is called Thank You For Playing and judging from the newly-released teaser trailer, it looks like it’ll be powerful stuff.  Two independent filmmakers have captured the personal tragedy of Ryan Green, who is developing a nonfictional game based on his family’s struggles to cope with their infant son being stricken with terminal cancer. Green admits in the video that it was a tough call to allow strangers to haul in film equipment and point cameras at his son as he lay on a…
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Whoa Dave! actually deserves that exclamation point in its title

Whoa Dave! is one of those modern-retro games that makes you wonder if videogames weren’t close to perfect like 30 years ago. Deep down, all they really need is a setup mirroring Mario Bros., some pixel-y beasts hatching from eggs a la Joust, and a couple of players lapping up coins and trying to sabotage each other’s shit. Oh yeah, also needed: some algorithm telling the game to gradually ramp up the intensity from step aerobics to “Holy jeez, I can’t tell where my guy ends and the enemies begin!”  It’s impossible not to have a great time with local…
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Passively shrug with us at Amazon’s new game console that isn’t a game console

Somehow the fact that the Amazon TV Fire is a game console didn’t come up until nearly 40 minutes into the press conference, which may be telling of where their priorities lie. As suggested by the “TV” part of the name, they want you to buy this device because Amazon Instant Video is more and more of a Netflix competitor. It just happens to play games. The Fire, though, is a little black game-playing cube that fits under your TV like so many others: OUYA, the Vita TV, whatever plays PlayStation Now, Steam Machines, that Roku I had that played…
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If Apple designed the NES, it would probably look like this show pony

A gameophile’s dream come true (if that’s actually a thing), this aircraft-grade aluminum console plays NES and Famicom games and sure is sexy, but sexy in the way people fetishize sleekly designed electronic products, not, like, “sex” sexy.  It’s called the Analogue Nt and is in essence a designer game system, which is lovely considering the way console makers mass produce their bland, black, plastic boxes as cheaply as possible. The best consoles and phones always look the same and are unspectacular, and it’s kind of a bummer. But this dazzler brings the same IKEA-mindedness to retro games that noted…
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LAZA KNITEZ!! is like Samurai Gunn with runaway spaceships

LAZA KNITEZ!! is the sweet-looking deathmatch in deep space that implores you to wreck your friends’ spaceships, courtesy a collective in Copenhagen. (Just a disclaimer up front: one of the devs is our very own Tommy Rouse, whose name you might remember from our fantastic Samurai Gunn review, and who I hear you don’t want to face in a showdown.) It turns out LAZA KNITEZ!! is similar to Samurai Gunn in a lot of ways, so maybe there’s some influence. Chiefly, it’s part of the shiny, new local multiplayer movement. it looks to capture that same giddy multiplayer magic of…