Spotlight: PixelJunk Racers, Q-Games, And PixelJunk Sequels
So, you may have spotted that Q-Games' indie title PixelJunk Racers, which appears to be something along the lines of slot-car racing for the 21st century (woo!), debuts on the PlayStation Network today. But something you may not have spotted (and I just did, thanks to Brandon Boyer!) is that there are teaser images for their next two downloadable PlayStation 3 games in the series on the Pixeljunk.jp website.
The site acts a bit strangely, and sometimes doesn't show the teaser images when you click on them (maybe it's still loading?), so I thought it would be handy to extract and label them for you, dear GSW readers:
Going back to PixelJunk Racers itself briefly, there's a good intro to both PixelJunk and Q-Games on the official PlayStation.Blog, written by company co-founder Dylan Cuthbert, who explains himself handily: "I decided I wanted to try and return to 2D games and use this HD clarity and resolution to re-energize the classic game play of my youth, not just Nintendo-style 2D games, but ZX Spectrum and Commodore-64 style games which were much more quirky. "
When I was at Tokyo Game Show last year, I also sat down with Cuthbert and his co-workers, discussing the small Kyoto-based indie developer's history and attitude (not to be confused with Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment, btw!) - Q-Games has previously shipped "...Starfox Command for Nintendo's DS handheld and Game Boy Advance title Digidrive, part of Nintendo's unique 'Bit Generations' retro-styled original game series", and Cuthbert was one of the creators of the original SNES Starfox in association with Nintendo while working at Argonaut Software in the UK.
Lastly, I wanted to mention that Dylan and the Q-Games folks have entered the self-funded PixelJunk Racers into the Independent Games Festival this year, making it the first-ever PSN game to enter. This also means that there will be some fierce PSN vs. XBLA vs. PC indie competition in this year's contest (not that target platform really matters, but hey, it makes everything a bit more exciting, right?) More on the full IGF entry list after the October 1st deadline...
Comments
Is this game worth getting if you don't have HD?
Posted by: Joe - fourhman.com | September 13, 2007 11:26 AM
played the demo in SD. looks fine, not sharp like HD.
Posted by: ben | September 14, 2007 8:00 AM
"the Q-Games folks have entered the self-funded PixelJunk Racers into the IGF" - A 25 man company that works closely with Sony and has offices in Kyoto?
I really wish the IGF would setup a proper definition of "indie". I thought the point was to help promote and champion small under funded bedroom-coding indies? These people don't sound like they need promotion or the cash prize. I suspect they are entering the competition simply to raise the company profile and attract the interest of XBLA and WiiWare. Sad.
Posted by: Johnny | September 18, 2007 6:43 AM
Johnny - the IGF is for indies of all shapes and sizes. Pixeljunk Racers was done with a tiny team (ie not 25 people) and is completely self-funded. I certainly defend its rights to enter the IGF.
Worth pointing out again - last year's major IGF winners were done by one person and two people respectively. Size doesn't matter, it's the quality of the game.
Posted by: simonc | September 18, 2007 7:21 AM