Usually, when we make a mistake, there’s this tendency to want to go back in time. An impossible task, to be sure (and then, only Marty McFly could do it) and one that would ignore something crucial: mistakes or not, our decisions build our character. When a few years ago I found myself going through an existencial crisis that saw me abandoning videogames and writing about them, the desire to go back was gradually replaced by a certain acceptance. It was a choice made in full possession of my mental faculties and the cross to bare was mine alone. I’ve made worse decisions and I still live with them and I suspect many other people share the same experience. So when I’m confronted with chances to, in some way, redeem myself I don’t know what to think. When I got an invitation to work in Smash! magazine, I didn’t hesitate (spoiler: might not be entirely true). When this week sees a late Christmas present arrive by mail, in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, the world goes into “bullet time”. Once in my possession, it was sold in cold blood and became associated with other kinds of losses in my life. Now that I have a chance to return, arguably, to the best Zelda game ever created, I’m not sure what to think. To say that I will play it is a truism but it will be curious to return to Miyamoto’s maximum expression of wanderlust while trying to abstain myself from thinking about the double meaning the game now has. Overly gushy, they say. Something more interesting, then:

• An excerpt from 1958′s Disneylanf TV Show called Magic Highway USA, which ponders over the future of transportation technology. It’s an artefact very much of its time, with a radical vision of optimistic future clashing against the traditional roles of men and women in society (in other words, highways could me magical and futuristic but it was the man who would dominate them, while the woman was still chained to the role of the housewife).

• In a time where image manipulation technology risks killing painting as a means of promoting movies, here are some of the best examples of painted movie posters from Thailand during the 1980s. The detailed painting is fabulous, and showcases why some consider them an art form worthy of presertvation – especially when modern posters are almost always a Photoshop filter applied over a photograph.
• Speaking of posters, artist Tom Whalen has the habit of creating new posters based on old movies. The design harkens back to Saul Bass and Constructivist russian propaganda posters, and the result is excellent.
• Unintentionally lewd logo designs. And one (un)intentionally inspired by videogames?
• Planet Earth: the role-playing game. It’s all about the numbers.
• It’s hard to pick just one or two examples that showcase Chris Jordan‘s incredible photographic work, but here are two suggestions: Message in the Gyre and In Katrina’s Wake.
• The Last Ninja shouldn’t be a stranger to those who played videogames into the late 1980s. System 3′s game had considerable success, not only due to having been released on a number of platforms but also by combining combat and exploration to an eight direction movement system and fiendish difficulty. I remember having spent a long time with the ZX Spectrum demo but as it would seem, something more substantial is on the way. Trevor “Smila” Stoney, who has a number of remakes on his portfolio, is working on a remake of The Last Ninja for the PC. So far there’s only a screenshot and a promess to provide “better controls”, but it’s something to be on the lookout for.
• Over time, advertising campaigns have found allies in several mediums, from TV personalities to music bands and even comic book characters. I’m unaware of the very first time publicly renown super-heroes were used to sell products or ideas, but in this image we can see Superman in an anti-smoking campaign fighting against the physical manifestation of smoking: Nick O’Teen. Smoking, apparently, is an addiction caused by weird irish types.
• Squall’s Dead, by Rahul Choudhury and Diedra Rater, is an essay that suggests Final Fantasy VIII‘s storyline is actually the result of Squall dying early in the game when confronting Edea, as opposed to the more well accepted theories of time travel. As with all theories this one is about interpretation of the body of work and as such, can be accepted or dismissed, but is largely interesting and not without merit. What disappoints however, are the comments wherein people dismiss the essay because they claim it’s pretty poor reasoning that does not excuse the game for its plot holes. A weirder comment tries to explain how Squall survived Edea’s magical attack by discussing the specifity of the spells’ statistical and elemental attributes in the game. Which is absurd, really, since fans of the series were largely accepting of Aeris’ death in Final Fantasy VII and that was built on the same problem: story fiction (her death) clashed against game fiction (Phoenix Down).
• Subversion – Introversion’s fourth game still in development – gets treated to a preview by Jim Rossignol over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Introversion’s a small studio with a big heart, whose vision and ambition almost left them bankrupt, but who won’t stop creating post-genre games that shine in concept and execution. Subversion seems to be another example of that. Just as the studio’s first game, Uplink, it’s shaping up to be something about information vs. infrastructure vs. technology but on a wider scale. Whereas Uplink approached the hacker perspective, Subversion is guided by the notion of the secret agent. It seems to use very specific elements of Shadowrun and Corporation, and that can only be seen as a good omen.
• Nerds have feelings too!

It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!