Recently on Offworld: Steve Jobs, Serious Heroes, gaming's longest beards

By Brandon Boyer at 6:26 am Friday, Jun 26

There was no discernible reason why Japanese developer AQI should have to parody Steve Jobs to announce a new version of their portable Korg DS-10 synthesizer, which makes the fact that they did (above) -- and pulled it off with pitch-perfect style -- all the more fantastic, and sets a high bar as one of the cutest game announcements in recent memory. Elsewhere on Offworld, we saw more game/music crossovers, listening to the latest and most accessible chiptune/downtempo/glitch sampler for San Francisco's DUTYSTYLE III show, happening tonight at 8pm (check the post for full details), and finding Open Emu, a new modular Mac emulation system that's a boon for budding 8-bit VJs, as it lets you control both the visuals and the play of emulated games with audio and MIDI. We also saw that early-oughts cult classic shooter Serious Sam (which shipped with our favorite cheat-mode of all time, turning gibs and blood splatter into hamburgers, fruit, and bursts of blooming flowers) was being remade for Xbox Live Arcade, and that EA/DICE's similarly tongue in cheek free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes had quietly gone live, and will likely be taking up the majority of our weekend (as it should yours). And our 'one shot's of the day: the mathematical beauty of building pixel Invaders, the aching shoulder-slump of BioShock 2's original Big Daddy concept, the certifiably longest beard in gaming's history, and, of course, Michael Jackson, in memoriam.