Having Tetris blocks about to crush Mario was the obvious thing to do here because, well, what else would they do? A little more difficult was coming up with a way to make them threatening so I crushed Mario’s hand to make the stakes a little more clearer.

Also, after my previous Mario fights, it was nice to do something that a little color to it.

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I thought the Hadouken effect was gonna give me trouble but it turns out it was everything else that did.

This isn’t my favorite but I really sank some time on it and I refused to put it down until I was satisfied with what I had, so much so that I added the hobo bag even after I had uploaded everything, which is something I never do. I think the composition is a little too similar to Mario vs. Master Chief and Mario vs. Cloud (I realize that the more of these I do, the harder it will be to not repeat myself but still) and I worked a lot on the background but I don’t think it’s quite at the level I wish it were.

As for the piece itself, I like to think that the set-up is that Ryu walks up to Mario and then Mario takes off his shoes and rips off his sleeves like a badass before they get into it. I need to play with the outfits some more.

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The first trailer for Metal Gear Rising definitely piqued my curiosity but the long secrecy behind the game along with the lack of any solid information on what it was actually gonna play like (stealth? action? both?) and Kojima Productions’ ability to truly deliver on the “Lighting Fast Action” tagline has caused my interest in the title to wane a little bit.

Well, Spike’s VGA revealed a brand new trailer for the game today (above) and, just like that, Metal Gear Rising has skyrocketed to the top of my must play list. Sure, it was an exciting, action oriented and very over the top trailer and it seems much closer to the “Lighting Fast Action” promise than the original trailer was but what really sealed the deal for me was “Developed by Platinum Games.” Bayonetta is easily one of my favorites games of the last couple years (Vanquish slightly less so) and, well, these guys know how to do brawlers and they’re gonna make an awesome game out of this. It was the pedigree that Kojima Productions needed to turn Rising from a “well, they tried a different genre at least” to a “OMG, THIS IS THE BEST ACTION GAME I’VE EVER PLAYED!”

I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on this now.

A was a little lost as to how to handle this at first but it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites now.

Two things I like about this one:

1) It’s actually the first one where part of the figure is cropped which is a result of me thinking a little more about composition from the beginning instead of creating two floating figures and then throwing a background behind them.
2) I changed the shading up a bit in that there is different colored light being reflected on the figures instead of just gradually darkening of the base color.

The background is obviously inspired by the cover to the first BioShock and it was nice to be able to put a little storytelling in there. I like how it’s the calm before the storm and it just made sense to have the fight be over a Little Sister, even if Mario ends up looking like a dick in the process.

Ryu is up next and the line art is done but I’m gonna wait a bit before I tackle it because there are still other things I want to draw (and commissions too). I’m trying to get these to be a weekly thing at the very least though.

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Much to say about this one.

First of all, if you haven’t heard of The Binding of Isaac, go on Steam and download it for the “we’re giving it away for free” price of 5 bucks (less if you get it during a Steam sale). You’ll get countless hours of fun from the randomly generated dungeons where you unlock more items and enemies the more you play it. . Every playthrough is completely different and there are no lives or checkpoints in this game so you die once (unless you find that one item…) and it’s back to the beginning of the game.

Bottom line, I’ve been having loads of fun with this game and, much like it was when I did Mario vs. Meat Boy way back when, I was just compelled to draw this.

I thought about how best to handle this but it had to be with the image that is most representative of the game which is Isaac curled up in the fetal position. It’s also a little different from my previous Mario fights in that it’s not an all out brawl but rather a “WTF” moment where Mario doesn’t even know what to make of it. And yes, those are all in-game items on Isaac’s head, even the scratches and the flies. The dead bird is actually a pretty good one.

I also started adding Yoshi, Peach and Luigi behind Mario all of which were appalled just like he is. I did the finished line art and even flats but I dropped the idea eventually. It was becoming less and less about Isaac and more about the Mushroom Kingdom. Also, no matter how I tried, I wasn’t getting the feeling I wanted from the digital line art which makes me glad to have waited for a scanner all this time instead of going fully digital. I really like how the line art on these comes out when I work them on paper.

Now the only question is what name to use when I get to Dead Space’s Isaac…

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Man, it’s good to have a scanner.

I’ve had this sitting in my sketchbook for what seems like ages but it’s finally done. It’s not bloody or too violent but the prospect of Mario’s hand exploding should leave lots to the imagination, I think. The background is my nod to the Atari cover of the game. And yes, the Dig Dug protagonist was renamed Taizo Hori at some point but Wikipedia says he was actually called “Dig Dug” in the first game so that’s what I’m going with.

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Confession: I’ve never played Space Channel 5.

That being said, I’ve always liked the look of it and one day, in my laziness, I was watching some videos of the game on YouTube and I started to get that itch I get when I want to draw something so I did.

I tried to go with the polar opposite of my last piece and this is perhaps my most stylized piece to date. It’s not as bold as some other stuff out there but it was fun to look at my drawing and just keep simplifying it again and again.

And the battles continue…

The reason for doing this piece if two-fold. The first reason is that my Mario Versus stuff is all pretty saturated, bright and colorful which I actually like, but I also wanted something that had a different feel to it and what better than the monochromatic Limbo for that? The second and primary reason is that I’m still without a scanner so I can’t work on the stuff that is already penciled (Dig Dug!) but something that’s only silhouettes I don’t mind doing digitally. I mean, I’ve been doing a lot of stuff that is entirely digital but I like to scan my Mario stuff because I like the line weight and texture to remain consistent throughout all of them.

But anyway…

This is definitely a record breaker in that it was completed in no more than an hour or two. I looked at a lot of screenshots of Limbo to get the atmosphere right and there was temptation to add more highlights or blood or motion blur and the like but I tried to keep it as true to the spirit of the game as possible and I think I succeeded. I always thought that the kid wore shorts and a t-shirt but after scrutinizing a bunch of screenshots I’m pretty sure he wears a sweater so that’s what he’s using. And, of course, they’re falling into spikes as they’re chased by a boulder which paints a pretty good picture of what Limbo is all about.

My immediate reaction after seeing the above “target demo” (meaning it’s not actual gameplay but rather what the developer is aiming for with the game) of Rainbow Six Patriots was that I wanted to remain as far away from the game as possible and, for once, it’s not simply because I dislike military shooters. Rather, it’s because of how this game expects me to shoot cops and kill civilians.

It’s because the game wants me to behave like an asshole.

This isn’t the first time such a thing has happened in a video game. In Modern Warfare 2′s infamous “No Russian” level, you’re given the option to shoot and kill civilians while undercover. In God of War 3, you rip off Helios’ head clean off by mashing on L1 and R1. But to be fair, I’m putting these examples in a vacuum and they can be justified in their proper context. In the former, it’s a case of the good of the many outweighing the good of the few and in the latter it’s, well, daddy issues, I guess.

But sometimes there is no such context. In the Grand Theft Auto games (where this all started arguably) you can go around and run over pedestrians, beat on women, kill cops and do all sorts of terrible things but, to its credit, they never force you to do it and you can (kinda) play it straight. Other games push this further and give you a morality system that provides consequences for certain actions you take, be they good or bad. This is an ideal method on paper but it isn’t one that works for every type of game or, for that matter, for every type of gamer.

The problem I have with the target demo at the top of this post is that they take the choice to not be an asshole away from you. After the most ham-fisted attempt at getting you to care about this forced suicide bomber’s life and his family, you jump to a soldier’s POV and, for a second, you might think “cool, I’ll be able to set things right and prevent this terrible thing from happening.” Well, you’d be wrong because you end up shooting some cops and then literally throwing this man over the bridge because, hey, you suck and he was gonna blow up anyway.

Don’t misunderstand me, I get that there’s nothing wrong with video games broadening their horizons and that saving the kingdom/kiling Dracula/preventing a nuclear launch from Metal Gear all fall within a very specific area of the morality spectrum. Taxi Driver is a movie about a mentally sick person, so why can’t video games show the dark side of things as well? Well, in Taxi Driver I’m not Travis Bickle and that’s a distinction that needs to be made. Games are a different medium and people need to stop justifying misguided, half-baked decisions by pointing at movies.

And that’s one of the problems ultimately, that these things aren’t planned thoughtfully and end up being no more than stunts to provide shock value and a post on every single video game blog for a week before they’re quickly forgotten. Outside of Fumito Ueda’s games maybe, there’s no attempt to legitimize these moments and give them some honest to goodness emotional value.

I understand that terrible things happen in real life but real life doesn’t have a version of me that has extrasensory powers, a mastery of time travel and the ability to resurrect an infinite amount of times. Bad things don’t happen in video games because the player is there to prevent them.

I don’t want to play a game where I have to throw an innocent man over a bridge to get to the next checkpoint.

I hate being apologetic but man, this is probably the worst zombie ever. I just couldn’t get myself to make her look ugly so I implied decay via the black bits and let her be. Entirely flat coloring has piqued my interest on occasion and I gave it a shot here which, in turn, forced me to not half-ass the background. The perspective is a little off also.

Needless to say, this piece is the result of trying to do too many things at the same time.