Rex Crowle, the Graphic Design guru behind much of LittleBigPlanet’s art style, has hailed TV artist Tony Hart, who sadly died last week .
Rex Crowle (Photo taken by Rob Logan for South London Today)
We’re not worthy!
Rex wrote a lovely piece about Tony Hart on the Media Molecule blog a few weeks back, but in a new interview with South London Today, Rex talks further about Tony, his influence on LittleBigPlanet and how moving it was to finally meet Tony Hart at the launch party for the game. Rex says:
The spirit of Little Big Planet springs from Tony’s belief that anything can be used to create art.
Read more about Rex’s thoughts in the full article.
The Ape Escape “Pipo” Monkey costume and Mainichi Issho Toro Costume have now gone live on the EU Store, two weeks earlier than previously announced. They were officially announced for release on February 12th.
They are both priced at £1.59 / €1.00 each.
We’re not sure if this is a mistake or not, but you can login to the EU PS Store and they are currently purchaseable as of now. The God of War mini-pack and Kratos, Groundhog Day & Chinese New Year costumes are all also available. The U.S Store has not yet been updated, so American players will have to wait and see if this rolls out across the pond.
Todays EU PS Store update
This unexpected surprise is bound to please many fans who’ve been wanting these costumes since they were released in Japan last year. The Ape Escape costume was available from selected retail outlets in Japan through pre-order, and the Toro costume has been available to buy in Japan since November 13th 2008. This update sees both the costumes available globally through purchase.
There are some technical issues currently taking place, as booting up the game currently gives a 403 error, which many users are reporting. We’re sure this will resolve itself though, whilst the LittleBigStore finishes updating. Or something.
The good news is that we can officially confirm that the Ape Escape “Pipo” Monkey costume has the best eyes, ever.
[UPDATE]
It seems that Europe has been a bit naught and has released these items ahead of schedule. Community Development manager Sam Protagonist says:
The originally stated dates are still accurate, however it looks like the European store has been a little overzealous, releasing much of the content straight away. Chances are this will be recitified shortly, so if you’ve managed to snag the new stuff early you’ll have a little longer to use it.
On the server front, there are some issues at present that are being investigated. We don’t expect the outage to be very long but there’s no scheduled return time just yet.
Get them early while you can!
Today’s the day that the latest LittleBigPlanet DLC hits the digital shelves. North America, Europe, Japan and other regions can expect to see updates during the day, and in anticipation, here’s a quick recap on the goodies.
There is of course the limited time availability free Chinese New Year costumes which were released on Monday. Be sure to download them before February 5th, when the next update hits and they’re gone!
Then there is the hotly saught-after Kratos costume. Many of you may already have him through the special promotions worldwide, but for some - now is the time to get your hands on him at last! ($2.99 / £1.59 / €1.99 TBC)
The God of War pack is another content pack which has been available before, to North American Gamestop pre-order customers. It comes with the Kratos costume, plus the Medusa and Minotaur outfits. God of War themed stickers mean you’ll get a bit more bang for your bucks ($2.99 / £2.39 / €2.99 TBC).
And lastly, another free costume is available this week - the Groundhog Day Groundhog! Like the Chinese New Year pack, it’s only available until February 5th.
We’ve noticed some confused gadders have been asking what Groundhog Day is exactly. Well, here you go:
In weather lore, if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If on the other hand, it is sunny and the groundhog sees its shadow, the groundhog will supposedly retreat into its burrow, and winter will continue for 6 more weeks.
It takes place on February 2nd in Canada and the United States.
Groundhog Day is also a damn good film with Bill Murray. Well, having Bill Murray in it automatically makes it damn good, but then anything could happen with a film that has Andie-”is it raining yet? oh I hadn’t noticed”-MacDowell in it. Anyway, yes, if you’ve not seen it then you need to. Heck, it’s out on Blu Ray this week as well.
So there you go.
As always, be sure to check our Complete DLC Archive for the low down on pricing and dates for everything that’s been released so far.
Another level design contest was brought to our attention recently, but the mail slipped down the back of the coffee machine and we didn’t find it until just now, oops!
This contest is from the Unofficial EU PS3 Blog, and you have until the 7th Feb to enter, which is enough time to make a new level, but the best part is you don’t have to - If you’re feeling a bit lazy, or jsut just super proud of your work. you can submit any level you have already made!
There are 3 prize packs to be won
First Place:
* EU PS3 Blog Limited Edition Sig!!! - Stating that you won the Competition and your LittleBigPlanet level name
* Little Big Planet T-Shirt
* 4 LBP Pin-Badges
* A Little Big Planet Walkthrough PDF Guide
* Little Big Planet Vinyl StickerSecond Place:
* 2 LBP Pin-Badges
* An ‘I Love Sackboy’ Badge
* A LittleBigPlanet Walkthrough PDF GuideThird Place:
* A LittleBigPlanet Walkthrough PDF Guide
* 2 LBP Pin-Badges
The closing date for entries is Saturday 7th February 2009 at 6pm, and the winner will be decided by a mixture of the public (that’s you!) and the the EU PS3 Blog staff, 50/50.
Good luck!
This is almost entirely unrelated news, but some very good friends of ours have just released the open beta to their first PC game title - Plain Sight.
It’s a fun little game in which you control a sword weilding robot, jump around mini planetoids and explode yourself in other people’s faces. How can you say no to that? Check out the trailer below…
Anyways, the guys are having a level design contest, and we thought perhaps some of the level design skills people have been honing in LittleBigPlanet might be transferable!
All you need to do is sketch your idea for the level onto a sheet of paper, scan it, and send it in - easy. Of course it would probably help to play the game first, which is lucky because it’s a tiny 40mb download, and the beta is open to everyone, no account needed! Why not give it a shot?
Patch 1.08 hit the servers last night, but instead of the bug fixes everyone was hoping for, this patch was just downloadable content related. According to the cheese schedule laid out by Mm earlier this month, the next patch due would have been named Edam - but this is not edam, and nor is it a cheese at all according to the latest entry on Mm’s blog, which contains the tag ‘not a cheese’.
For reasons of consistency, we require a cheese based nickname for this patch, and have decided to dub it Ricotta - a cheese made, in part, with natural by-products of cheese production, and therefore much less of a cheese altogether.
Arise Sir Cheese!
UPDATE
Ahem. This article has been marked as factually incorrect. A patch called ‘Ricotta’ is now in production.
Multiple reports from the field have arrived in Planetoid Central this evening to tell us that patch 1.08 has hit the servers, three weeks earlier than expected. This patch, nicknamed Edam by Media Molecule (at least we assume this is Edam, it could be an unknown cheese!), should contain a whole bunch of bug fixes, some of which are fairly major ones that have been causing trouble left, right, and center for the last few weeks.
Actual content is so far unconfirmed - Let’s hope everything is fixed now though, huh?
The outlined plans for this patch are listed below, let us know what is and isn’t included!
Edam contains a set of bug fixes and is currently in testing. Specifically the fixes are:
- Failed to save profile’ message not being displayed when a users profile is full.
- Object Capture Bug: switch connectors being deleted when an object is captured.
- Failed to load profile issue: where the user is thrown out to the XMB due to a texture that is not registered in their profile being present in their pod.
- Text not displaying in the text chat window.
- Slow rewind due to moderation check.
- Save file corruption which caused the game to crash when placing any object in an emitter in any level.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Update 1: It looks like this patch could just be related to the forthcoming availability of the God of War costume pack, and not as we all hoped the much needed changes to the game. It’s waaaay past our bed time here on the Planetoid, hopefully the morning will bring with it some clarification!
Update 2: We can confirm that this patch is 13Mb and we notice that it has re-arranged selected content in the LittleBigStore. This screenshot shows how the Kratos’ costume now appears for players who’ve already downloaded it (the God of War pack icon showing the three costumes no longer appears to players who’ve not already downloaded it). This makes sense as the Kratos costume and God of War pack are out on Thursday.
We’ve heard reports of some players still having problems with LBP, so we’re still not 100% sure that the patch is Edam - we’ll report back when we hear confirmation.
Update 3: This patch has been confirmed as a content-only patch, installing the latest costume textures (required for players to see other people online who are using the latest DLC costumes). It’s *not* Edam.
The other day we were asking if any of you had been inspired by LittleBigPlanet to get out the scissors and glue, and start creating things. The first email we received was from Paul, who dropped us a line to tell us about his big pile of homemade sackboys… 16 of them to be precise, check them out…
Awesome huh? He also sent us some teaser pics of his soon to be completed custom made Solid Snake sackboy doll, with the promise of updating us when it was complete.
We want one, I bet you do to. Anyone else been creating things?
Yes, that is exactly what they said. Sackcake.
A Geekologie reader named Kelli made this cake for her friends birthday party:
I made the cake for my friend Marchelo’s birthday dinner last night, and everyone loved it! It was a basic lemon pudding cake with chocolate fudge frosting, all in all 2.5 cakes and 3 cans of frosting went into this creation!
She’s done a fine job at recreating Sackboys loveliness with soft spongey goodness, covered in glistening chocolate. Oh how we love you, Sackboy…
The create mode starts. With a pile of cake material.
...Skip to the end! The ‘eat’ mode starts. With the head.
Great cake construction work there. Perhaps Sony could start producing their own Sackboy cakes and sell them down at the local supermarket. Heck, in the UK you can get Super Mario cakes at Marks & Spencer, why not Sackboy?!
Be sure to check out the complete Sackboy cake photoset on Picassa.
Thanks to Twitterer Redswipe for sending this in. [Via Geekologie]
Within a few weeks of LittleBigPlanet being released, the world was amazed to see a working 8-bit calculator created in the game by user Upsilandre.
Well, a similarly amazing creation has just popped up in our Big Book of Little Levels from PSN user vinizu, who has managed to create a fully working Electronic Beat Sequencer. We’re kind of gobsmacked at this, but see for yourself in this video just exactly how complicated it is…
The level allows the player to assign different sounds that are played in sequence. Sounds are assigned by placing different coloured blocks in to any one of 8 different positions in the beat sequence. Sounds so simple, eh?
Mad respect goes out to vinizu, the creator of this level. Amazing!
The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences have today announced the nominations for The Interactive Achivement Awards, which will be taking place on February 19, 2009 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas.
LittleBigPlanet leads with an impressive 10 nominations from industry leaders and members of the interactive entertainment software business. The competition isn’t light either, as it’s up against the likes of GTA IV, Fallout 3, MGS4 - infact, all the big name games of 2008. Here are just three of those ten categories in which LBP has been nominated…
Overall Game of the Year
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks / Bethesda Game Studio)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games / Rockstar North)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software / Valve Software)
• LittleBigPlanet (Sony Computer Entertainment / Media Molecule)
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (Konami Digital Entertainment Inc, Kojima Productions)
Console Game of the Year
• Fallout 3 (Bethesda Softworks / Bethesda Game Studio)
• Gears of War 2 (Microsoft Game Studios / Epic Games, Inc)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games / Rockstar North)
• LittleBigPlanet (Sony Computer Entertainment / Media Molecule)
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Outstanding Innovation in Gaming:
• Braid (Microsoft Game Studios / Number None)
• Left 4 Dead (Valve Software / Valve Software)
• LittleBigPlanet (Sony Computer Entertainment / Media Molecule)
• Spore (Electronic Arts / Maxis)
• Wii Fit (Nintendo / Nintendo)
Joseph Olin, president, The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences said:
This was an exciting year for games, The depth of talent and creativity in this industry continues to amaze me and we are honored to highlight some of the most impressive games of the year at the Interactive Achievement Awards. The 2009 nominees indeed reflect a stronghold of talent embodying the best and brightest in this field.
It’s likely then, that LittleBigPlanet will be going on to win some of its 10 nominations, and of course we’ll report back with the results on February 19th. More information can be found on the official site at www.interactive.org.
Perhaps Media Molecule will have to get a bigger awards cabinet...
PSN user corn_fest on the LittleBigWorkshop forums has been busy analyzing the latest tips video from Media Molecule. He’s noticed a number of new features just by watching the video through a few times. Here’s what he’s seen…
• Radius setting added to magnetic keys
Very handy! This is going to expand the usefulness of magnetic keys quite a bit.
• Current track bubble added to audio objects
A small but nice touch. Bring on more music!
• A new special object
This item first arrived in the MGS4 Story mode levels, and we reported back then that it was not yet available in create mode. We’re pretty certain that this controls lighting levels, allowing for much more atmosphere throughout a level. If you’ve played the MGS Level Pack levels, you’ll have noticed this little tool on screen whenever you enter a section which changes atmosphere using light.
• Infinite lives checkpoint
Nice! This could come in handy for survival challenge levels infact. You could provide infinite lives during a timed ‘training mode’ section, for example.
• Character enhancement system changes
From left to right: Jetpack, unknown item, Jetpack again?, Paintinator. Number 2 appears to be a ‘removal’ tool, walk past it to remove any power ups? Not sure what number 3 is though, perhaps a brand new powerup? We can only speculate, but it looks that way to us.
Media Molecule yesterday announced patch details, with the next patch (Edam) being a bug fixing patch. So that means these features are most likely going to be with us after that, in Cornish Yarg, which is just entering the testing phase. With Mm saying it will have a 6-8 week testing cycle, these features could be with us between March 1st and 16th.
Head on over to the thread to read the discussion. Good work corn_fest!
Page 7 of 21 pages « First < 5 6 7 8 9 > Last »
