Going West Brings Paper To Life
Incredible, haunting stop-motion animation of Maurice Gee's Going West, produced for the New Zealand Book Council.
(via Daring Fireball)
Street Fighter Reborn
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Masters duel in Street Fighter IV.
I've been playing a lot of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (whew!) on the Xbox 360 lately. It's a beautiful update of the fourteen year old classic.
I first played the original Street Fighter at an arcade called the Gold Mine (later called TILT) at what was once called Fashion Island in San Mateo. My friend Tah'ki was the first person I ever saw play the original -- it had big pads that you actually had to punch with your fist in order to kick or punch, and Ryu and Ken were the only guys you could use.
SFII revolutionized the fighting genre, with incredible graphics, near-perfect gameplay, and tons of characters and moves to use. I wasted more quarters than I'd like to admit at the pizza place across the street from my home when I was a kid.
With art by the Udon crew and rebalanced gameplay, SSFIITHD improves on the game in ways I'd never dreamed when I was a kid. It's still tons of fun, looks better, runs more smoothly, allows for online play and is definitely worth playing for five minutes or five hours in a sitting, even if you're a relative noob like me.
I'm especially interested in the rebalancing, as the original play balance was central to the international success of the classic. Big money tournaments are still played around the world using the different variations of the classic.
Sirlin was the lead developer on SSFIITHD. He's shared a series of articles, one per character, discussing the process used and changes made in rebalancing each character. Fascinating read.
Sirlin's site is a great place to visit if you want to learn more about what's changed in this new version. His tutorial videos are also informative. Also, Offworld has links to a great video interview as well as championship gameplay footage -- well worth watching.
While I love this latest version of SFII, I'm really excited about the upcoming release of Street Fighter IV, due out in February. Udon is again responsible for the art, and it looks like they've really outdone themselves this time.
To top things off, Kristen Kreuk of Smallville "fame" is starring in The Legend of Chun Li. The trailer is in Japanese, but that shouldn't matter much to fanboys everywhere.
Web 2.0 & China Channel
Very cool exhibit in Hong Kong showing the difference between free access to the Internet, on the one hand, and the Chinese experience behind the Great Firewall on the other.
Web 2.0 is a gallery installation consisting of two internet enabled computers, a hacked mouse and keyboard, and a custom plugin for the popular (and free) Fire Fox web browser. Two computers are connected to a single keyboard and mouse allowing visitors to control both identical machines at the same time while using just a single input device. The only difference between the two internet terminals is their network connection; one machine is connected to the less restricted internet in Hong Kong, while the other is connected to the internet through a connection point in the mainland of China.
The Golden Shield Project (sometimes referred to as the the Great Fire Wall of China), censors content primarily by blocking IP addresses. The Internet police in China is estimated to contain over 30,000 workers, and is responsible for blocking content such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, religion, and some international news.
The browser plugin used in the Web 2.0 installation will soon be available for public download on the web. Unlike many tools which enable Chinese people to freely surf the web via connections to computers outside of China, this plugin routes all internet traffic to computers on the inside of the Chinese firewall, allowing web surfers to experience an Internet identical to that of Chinese.
(Via ni9e)