Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

After a long wait and many, many inquiries, it's finally here. Look at the cover - even Link is excited! So take some time and check it out this week.

Cave Evil Board Game

Coming soon to a UM Computer & Video Game Archive near you...

The CAVE EVIL Limited Edition board game! Featuring some very intense artwork:

 

And a teaser trailer that awakens the dead:

An excerpt from the game introduction:

"The living buried their dead in maze-like cities deep underground, covering the entrances and leaving them to molder for all time. Yet the shadowflame burns deep within the abyss, and evil never sleeps. The dead and the demons who feast upon them found infernal life in this black world, and created a domain of their own, presided over by the Emperor of Eternal Evil, master of the Infinite Shadow and his millions of minions..."

From the game overview:

"Cave Evil is a game of brutal elimination. Each player is an ancient Undead Necromancer vying to harness the power of The Pit, source of Infinite Shadow. Only one Necromancer will succeed. All others will be annihilated..."

Silent Hill: The Terror Engine

Our friends at The University of Michigan Press have released Silent Hill: The Terror Engine, the latest volume in their Landmark Video Game series:

Silent Hill: The Terror Engine , the second of the two inaugural studies in the Landmark Video Games series from series editors Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, is both a close analysis of the first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron situates the games within the survival horror genre, both by looking at the history of the genre and by comparing Silent Hill with such important forerunners as Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil. Taking a transmedia approach and underlining the designer's cinematic and literary influences, he uses the narrative structure; the techniques of imagery, sound, and music employed; the game mechanics; and the fiction, artifact, and gameplay emotions elicited by the games to explore the specific fears survival horror games are designed to provoke and how the experience as a whole has made the Silent Hill series one of the major landmarks of video game history. 

 The book, which is released under a Creative Commons license, will be available for purchase soon; but because we have connections we already have a copy of the book in the library: http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/Record/011236530

Wolverine Soft's 48 Hour Game Dev Contest This Weekend

Wolverine Soft is hosting a game development contest this weekend in which a group of participants design a game within 48 hours. Game themes are announced at the beginning of the event.

Participants don't need to be game programmers - musicians, artists, and people with design ideas are welcome as well. Registration is open to current students of any university in Michigan or alumni who have graduated in the past 6 years (except those currently involved in the video game industry). Pre-registration is encouraged.

Read more about the event and its rules here.

Arcade Masters Series Finals @ AADL!

Ann Arbor District Library is holding finals for the Arcade Master Series this Friday from 6-8:30pm at the downtown library, so don't forget to check it out! Food and musical Chiptunes entertainment will also be included.

Participate for a chance to win an iPad 2 with iCade mini arcade cabinet! Hope to see you there.

More about the event here.

Top Games - Month of December 2011

Here are the top 10 games played in the archive during the month of December. A few new games quickly rise to the top, and FIFA makes an appearance on both Xbox 360 and PS3. We also have a board game on the list, showing the slow rise in popularity of our non-electronic collection.

1. Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (Xbox 360)
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360)
3. FIFA Soccer 12 (Xbox 360)
4. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (PS3)
5. (tie) Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii)
5. (tie) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Xbox 360)
7. FIFA Soccer 12 (PS3)
8. Seven Wonders (Board game)
9. (tie) Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo 64)
9. (tie) Uncharted 3 (PS3)