Rock, Paper, Shotgun

News reaches us, courtesy of our comrades at PC Gamer, that Audiosurf will be available to pre-order on Steam from later today, with the full version available on Friday for those who fancy canoodling with a Game as a Valentines day come-down. Also, it’ll come with Valve pop hits like Still Alive, TF2’s retro-jingles and the electro-bleeps of Half-life 2. And, tech-watchers should note, it’s the first game including the Steamworks tech.

Our love for Audiosurf remains undimmed since Jim looked at it a few weeks ago. Having played most of the IGF grand finalists, my position is that while World of Goo is the best game per se and probably should be the winner and Crayon Physics is simply the most magical, Audiosurf will make the most money. Getting on Steam’s a good start for making that prediction come true, yeah? Oh – and PCG have an interview with creator Dylan Fitterer too…
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Gaming SA have this, which is pretty cute. One Thrashbarg – we suspect not his given name – decided to actualise the end sequence and a suitably creaky old terminal to play the tune. The processor is a Intel 2Mhz 8080. The sound is a Commodore 64 Side. The Code is assembler. And the video of it can be seen here. One question remains – since it’s a YouTube link, why didn’t I just post the code linking to the video and save myself the effort of cropping and uploading a screenshot? I must have kidney beans for brains.

Thanks to Mr Purvis for the link.

Frankly very tired of all the shouty nonsense rock on Guitar Hero III (really, it should have just consisted of Paint It Black 32 times over), I began to crave other musical delights for my ruined hands. I don’t know why I didn’t think of looking for this before. Frets on Fire isn’t bound by such tiresome conventions as rock songs and guitars. If it’s a song, you can play it on your little plastic guitar (or keyboard or gamepad or Strategic Commander) – regardless of whether there’s actually much guitar in it. And hence I found myself merrily playing these two fine pieces of Valve-related music…
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We know full well what Portal’s now-legendary credits song sounds like as sung by an insane AI construct (and I also have the unique horror of knowing what it sounds like as sung by half a dozen boozed-up games journalists, at least one of which appeared to have tears in his eyes come the final chorus), but how about in the dulcet tones of the guy who actually wrote it?

Dan kindly sends his intimate (is it still possible to say ‘intimate’ without it sounding like it’s about sex’n’stuff? Sigh.) recording of Jonathan Coulton performing Portal’s Still Alive, live and unplugged for the AT&T Tech Channel . It’s a specially and professionally-recorded version, rather than the shaky, farty-sounding handycam videos of Coulton performing it at a gig, which you may have spotted on other websites. And it’s a moment for Portal fans to treasure:

In case you missed it, MTV’s gaming blog ‘Multiplayer’ yesterday threw up an interview with Jonathan Coulton, the dude who wrote Portal’s ever-catchy Still Alive, about the story behind that very song. It’s fun, if not hugely illuminating, but most importantly addresses the vital cake question:

I don’t think I ever got any cake, but they [Valve] promised it all along. I will say they have the greatest table of snacks in their kitchen that I have ever seen: baskets and baskets of granola bars, and candy and all kinds of gum and Tootsie Rolls and Nerds and Doritos in little bags.

Valve’s Eric Wolpaw (and ex-Old Man Murray funnyking) weighs in at one point, revealing that also considered for Portal’s music was Ben Folds. Ew. I suspect I’ll have nightmares tonight about a horrific alternate reality where that actually happened, like the ones I sometimes have about Robert Zemeckis sticking with Eric Stoltz instead of Michael J. Fox for Back To The Future.