With every gaming generation that passes we continue to strive for better and better graphics, photorealism isn’t that far away from us, so perhaps it’s only natural that retro graphics are making a comeback. The folks at design group Alaskan Military School took it to the extreme though. They set out to represent classic games with just a 15 pixel grid. As ridiculous as it may seem, they achieved amazing results with a few, such as the video above which, if you haven’t deciphered it yet, is Street Fighter’s Ken Masters v. Blanka. Check out their website for the complete collection.

[Alaskan Military School / Via Boing Boing]

Say, would you fancy a big bowl of GoldenEye? Ah, how about a remake/port of GoldenEye? No, not the dead Xbox one. How about, say, a Wii one.

Yes, that’s right, a GoldenEye remake/port for the Nintendo Wii, supposedly due in 2010. At least that’s what the Curriculum of a videogame animator by the name of Craig Peck has let us to believe. In his CV, which is now offline, he listed working as an animator for “GoldenEye 2010 (Wii)”. The CV was promptly taken down yesterday as soon as it started getting attention, however the damage was done.

There’s a big mystery here though, why do you need an animator if you’re just going to port a game? Could they be adding new features? Or is this maybe a remake rather than a simple port. In any case, the rumor mill for GoldenEye is back in full force and that’s what matters.

[CVG]

8-Bit Trip is a music stop-motion video of all the glory of the 8-bit era made almost completely out of Lego sculptures. It’s mind-bending in its animation, tremendously witty in its detail and just plain lovely. The work of only 3 people and 1500 hours of labor. Fifteen-hundred hours is way too much time even by geek standards. File this under ‘beyond the call of geek duty’. Simply awesome.

It used to be that RPGs were exclusively for those at the fringes of society, the geeks, the outcasts. The terminally awkward. Those who would end up living on their parent’s basement forever or becoming overachieving lawyers, engineers and silicon valley tycoons. 

We’ve come a long way, my friends. A long way.

You’ve heard it, you’ve seen it mentioned everywhere on the internet, with your friends, your mom, your grandma and even that nice hobo down the street. Michael Jackson is dead. Now you’ve heard it here too.

Now, child abuse accusations aside Michael was a plastic surgery addict. Ok, ok. Child abuse accusations and bad nose jobs aside Michael was a pretty creepy man. Lets try that again, shall we? Child abuse accusations, bad nose jobs and creepiness aside Michael Jackson was a legendary musician and performer that shaped a great part of pop culture for nearly two decades. Ah there we go that sounded better.

He not only brought us great music but also taught a racism-divided world that color was not an issue and that in fact you could change colors yourself, provided you had millions of dollars and an adventurous doctor.

But that’s not why I want to remember Michael today, no sir, after all we’re all about games and anime. So I want to talk about that other great thing Michael gave us: Moonwalker, The Game.

Read more!

Whether you are a seasoned chiptune fanatic or are simply craving some of that old 8-bit musical goodness from years gone by Future Boy’s 8-bit Megamix is sure to get you dancing while still keeping your geek cred.

Done by Future Boy, a prominent Chiptunes DJ, this set runs about 2 hours long and contains some of the best original chiptunes music of recent years. For those uninitiated in the world of chiptunes this will serve as a great primer into the genre. This is music made with the original music chips from past consoles or at least sound libraries from said consoles. Then they throw in some of this century’s sampling technology and effects and you’ve got yourself retro nirvana.

For those already fans of the genre, you’re sure to find some memorable tunes in here as well as discover some new gems. In fewer words: Download this, its 2 hours of awesome gamer music you’ll listen to over and over.

[Future Boy / Via Offworld]

For those of you already watching K-ON! or thinking about it here’s a little something cool for you. This is an 8-bit version of the ending song from K-ON!, its awesome in all its retro glory! The 16 bit animation of the song is extremely well done and quite faithful to the actual animation, at least as faithful as a 16 bit animation can be!

If you haven’t seen the ending head on over to our first impressions on K-ON! article where you can watch it. Relive the days of the SNES and indulge in some K-ON fanboyism at the same time!

So what do you get when you mix a Japanese guy, English, alcohol and Mario Land? Well, I dont know but it probably looks something like this.

The sound effects he makes and the accent he tries to fake just makes it so much much better. And when he starts singing the US anthem? Oh mah gad so gutto! Mai MASH-rum!

[Offwolrd]

Now here’s a piece of gaming memorabilia I’d proudly frame and hang on my wall. It’s a cross-stitch of the map from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past. Servotron, an entrepreneurial user on the Spritestitch forums, took 4 months to finish this piece. Fortunately he has posted the pattern for the map so if you’ve got a cross-stitch machine… or an inhumane amount of patience, this could save you a bit of time.

[Spritestitch]

So Sin and punishment 2 will be heading to Wii! Which is a bit of a surprise, but not really. It wasn’t that long ago that Nintendo made the game available for the Virtual console. And once they did it became a huge hit. So I guess with that in mind a sequel was to be expected. It would also seem that Nintendo have also realized they can’t keep whoring Mario out in every sport known to man to sell first party titles, and that they’ve realized what we did yonks ago: That there are other Nintendo IP’s that deserve air time.

I really liked the original Sin and punishment, but it was bloody difficult. I hit a stage which robbed me of continues had me dying in seconds and this was on the easiest difficulty setting! I doubt I’ll ever complete the game at this rate – so I may as well look to the sequel. If Nintendo and Treasure co. decide to go Wii friendly, I imagine Sin and punishment 2 will feature unlimited continues and a super easy difficulty which actually makes the game beatable. But it would be kind of cool if they went 100% hardcore.

The graphics don’t look anything special, which is a shame. Because a bit of graphical sheen can go a long way. A few particle effects, more dynamic lighting and better quality textures would’ve been nice. But the game looks decent enough and if the core gameplay can be kept as tight as it was before – then it’ll be a solid game and worthy sequel.