Yiif.

• “These publishers are all hoping to surf the recent wave of unusual mainstream media attention for their medium after a book entitled Chevy Brayne was hailed as the closest literature has yet come to fulfilling its promise as a fusion of 1980s hair-metal with edgy contemporary dance. A 15-year-old reviewer for the Guardian wrote: “Arguments have raged for centuries over whether books can really be art. But with its hypnotic elbow jerking and heavily chorused guitar solos, Chevy Brayne puts that issue definitively to rest.” Among the hardcore reading fraternity, on the other hand, some notes of scepticism were sounded. “The writer of this book promised us for years that it wouldn’t be what it looked like in demos, which is essentially just one word after another in a linear order,” fumed one enraged nerd. “And yet, for all the body-popping in baggy Y-fronts and squealing pinched harmonics, that’s exactly what it is. I might as well be reading Nicholas sodding Nickleby”. Steven Poole imagines an alternative reality in which literature, much like videogames, is attacked by the press. The result is fantastic.

• “I enlist the aid of a teenager to show the yaks how to actually play a videogame. Even then, it’s tough going. Of the three reviewers, only Kuroishi manages to play it all the way to the end. Two of the three are missing their pinkies — in the old days, when a yakuza or his subordinates screwed up, they chopped off pinkies as an act of atonement — and this seems to affect their gameplay”. Yakuza 3 reviewed by… Yakuza, apparently.
• “It was the seventy-seventh richest country in the world. And it didn’t even exist”. How a down on his luck 38-year old economist found a new life in EverQuest‘s virtual economies.
• “This design transforms mundane electrical pylons into statues on the Icelandic landscape by making only small alterations to existing pylon design”.
• A young boy accidentaly drops his handheld into the gorilla enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo. “The larger gorilla here picked up the maroon system to examine it and see what it was all about. He held the Nintendo DSi XL’s screens up to his face, flipped the portable around, and pressed his ears against the speakers whilst a younger gorilla (…) waited for his turn to tinker with it”. I’m glad the portable didn’t have any Donkey Kong games, otherwise it could’ve sparked a revolution.
• “Valentine Ackland was a lesbian, a communist, and at one time a Catholic, but above all she was a poet, whose work was overshadowed by controversy“.
• 700 pieces, 5 hours, 1 Elder God. Ars Technica reviews Arkham Horror, an amazing tabletop game… Which I own and never managed to get anyone to play with me ;_;
• Vintage Tokyo subway manner posters, between 1976 and 1982. Gundam, Superman and Jesus are on to you.
• Social networks through a retro-futuristic lens.
• Super Mario, the drama.
• A bible of shmups.
• How to rebuild a Death Star, one bank at a time.
• Shark Knife. No, really.
• Endless Breakout?