• PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap
• PixelJunk Monsters
• PixelJunk Monsters Encore DLC
• PixelJunk Eden
• PixelJunk Eden Encore DLC
• PixelJunk Shooter
• PixelJunk Shooter 2

That is right, our Best Game of 2011 is roughly $1. All of these games should be playable in English if your system language is set as so. Play-Asia has ¥1000 cards for $20, but I bet you could find cheap ones elsewhere. The sale runs until Feb 6th, so you have some time to grab some yen.

As you can see the theme has a little bit of fun with some of the other PixelJunk games.

More more info about the game, be sure to check out our interview with Ariel from Q-Games that ran last week!

Q: The game has a rather interesting backstory, Sidescroller being the game the miners from Shooter/Shooter2 play in their pods. How did this idea come about?

After we’d established the basic gameplay mechanics and realized we had shmup gold on our hands, Dylan Cuthbert (President and Founder of Q-Games) came up with the world concept for PixelJunk SideScroller.

The basic gist of the story is this: you are the pilot of the ship in Shooter 1 and 2. You have escaped countless treacheries, but now that you’ve successfully carried out your mission, you’re being called back home. What’s a lonely pilot to do on the long journey back to Earth? Why, play PixelJunk SideScroller, the game on your cockpit’s console, of course!

This game within a game concept drove us to experiment with the world in fun ways. For instance, the cathode ray tube overlay effect the game has will make your TV look like it walked out of the 50s, but don’t worry, the game it still offers full 1080p and runs in 60 frames per second. Oh, and while I won’t give any spoilers away, I will say something MAY be wreaking havoc on the digital world with which you’ve been having so much fun whiling away the hours.

Q: It seems that Q-Games has spent a lot of time in the PixelJunk Shooter Universe. What makes the team wanting to keep coming back to it?

When production on Shooter 2 was wrapping up, we became enamored with the secret level (“The Road to Dawn”) you can unlock after collecting all of the treasure. This sidescrolling shooter with old-school, wireframe charm was created as a sort of “alternate universe,” but it was so much fun we were inspired to make a whole game out of it. It’s nice having the freedom to make the games we’re inspired to make. I think it’s this drive that helps make the PixelJunk games so special, because we really do care about the games we’re making.

Q: Are there any games that the team looked back on and thought, that would be a good mechanic to use in SideScroller?

We wanted to revisit old-school classics like R-Type and Gradius, and while we certainly drew inspiration from them, we gave SideScroller a flavor all its own. Sure, you’ll still be able to switch between weapons and power your arsenal up like you could in these classic shmups, but the fun fluid mechanics you saw in the Shooter-verse will make an appearance in interesting ways. That being said, SideScroller is a complete departure from Shooter 1 and 2. It is very much a shooting game; there are no puzzles here. There will be bullets, laser beams, and missiles flying every which way, but adding magma to the mayhem will make for a new experience even for the veteran shooter maniac.

Q: Bosses are something I would say the Shooter series is known for, what can we expect from the ones in Sidescroller?

Expect a lot of bullets. And laser beams. SideScroller certainly has its fair share of spectacular boss fights, but I won’t give away any spoilers. Except… you should expect the E.R.S. Pinita Colada (the whale-like ship in Shooter 1) to make an appearance. The poor thing’s been feeling a little under the weather lately.

Q: Music is another thing PixelJunk games are known for, is High Frequency Bandwidth back to provide music this time around?

High Frequency Bandwidth’s Dom Beken and Alex Paterson have again joined the ranks to create another killer PixelJunk soundtrack. The initial idea was to hand pick our favorite Shooter 1 and 2 tracks, after which Alex and Dom would remix them. What we ended up with weren’t simple “remixes,” though. Using some sort of alchemical magic, Alex and Dom were able to reinvent their music in beautiful ways. While you can still call the SideScroller music “remixes,” what you hear in the soundtrack are closer to “hints” of the Shooter 1 and 2 music. I was a big fan of the Shooter 1 and 2 music (on sale as the HFB: PixelJunked on iTunes and the North American PSN), but if anything, I feel Alex and Dom have surpassed their previous scores, taking the music in a new and interesting direction.

Q: How does the weapon upgrading work? Do you have a favorite weapon to use?

SideScroller has three weapons you can switch between to help you make it through the game: a machine gun, a laser beam, and some bouncing bombs (they sound cute, but they’re deadly). You start each level with all weapons at level 1, but you can collect power ups by defeating certain enemies. Collecting a power up will upgrade the weapon you currently have equipped by one level, and there are five levels total.

I like switching between all the weapons as I play. My main weapon is my machine gun, great for flying enemies. I’ll switch to my laser for more precise, pinpoint attacks against strong enemies or flying enemies that are lined up one after the other. The laser can pierce through multiple enemies, so those guys are asking for it! Then, I’ll switch to the bombs for enemies that are clinging to ceilings and floors. Bombs bounce along walls, so those guys won’t see what’s coming.

But that’s just me. One of the great things about the weapons system in SideScroller is you can play how you want! You won’t be required to use a certain weapon to defeat a specific enemy, so if you want to take The Bomb Challenge and go through the game using just the bomb weapon, you can do that! Changing which weapon(s) you’ll use to progress through the game will bring a different flavor to the experience, so have fun experimenting!

Q: Some people think the PixelJunk games are rather difficult. Has there been anything done or added in SideScroller to help them out?

We’ve implemented a robust difficulty system so players will be able to choose how they want to play. There are four difficulty modes total ranging from Casual to Brutal. There are a lot of core gamers who’ve never played a shmup. If you are one of those people, Normal difficulty is for you. Is Normal kicking your butt? Try Casual. Are you experienced with the genre? Hard is for you. Hard difficulty mode boasts new enemies, higher enemy HP, and enemy bullets fly at you a lot faster than Normal mode. Let’s not forget our old friend Brutal mode, which is there for those of us who just don’t get that heart-thumping thrill from playing the game on Hard anymore.

SideScroller also features a handy checkpoint system. If you make a mistake and your ship ends up getting blown to bits, you will respawn at a nearby checkpoint. Better yet, you’ll keep all the weapon power ups you’ve collected up until the time you initially cleared that checkpoint. The checkpoint system is a handy feature that will be sure to prevent any hair pulling out of frustration. However, keep an eye on your remaining lives. If you run out, it’s game over. You’ll be able to start from the checkpoint, but your score will reset and your power ups will cease to be!

Q: I noticed there is local multiplayer, does the difficulty scale when in co-op?

Yes. Enemy HP is increased when playing the game co-op, but that’s not to say it will become more difficult while playing with a friend, family member, or significant other. PixelJunk games have always had great couch co-op, and PixelJunk SideScroller is no exception.

Q: Anything else you would like our readers to know about the game?

PixelJunk SideScroller will be released on October 25th in North America and November 2nd in Europe, so take a pencil to your calendars, put on your shooting hat, and buckle yourself in your cockpit, because it’s going to be a wild ride.

I want to thank Ariel for taking the time to answer our questions. See everyone on the leaderboards

Baiyon also offered up his thoughts on the name change and the reasoning behind it:

Why the name change?

Baiyon: PixelJunk lifelike was originally conceived as an extension of the PixelJunk Eden world. Our idea was to create a kind of living speaker for people to play their music through, using natural imagery and taking strong visual cues from Eden. There wasn’t even the concept of a “player”. We’ve since moved far beyond that simple idea to new and uncharted waters both visually and musically. The style has evolved now into something that is really quite different from anything we’ve ever made before. It was only natural we’d want to chase this new concept and capture it with a new title.

Why 4am?

Baiyon: 4am represents the exact mood and feeling we’ve captured. 4am is that deep night hour. In clubs, the music drifts to a new level entering a deepened state that often seems removed from reality. Whether you’re in a club or not, 4am always feels like the night has gone on forever, where there’s still that little bit of time left before dawn. This late night feel better represents our current visual and musical style.

So what can we expect now?
Baiyon: PixelJunk 4am is something unique that has never been tried before, so we’re treading in new territory. We’re using the PlayStation Move in truly experimental ways to give people control of making their own style of music. Being able to stream your music live on PSN also gives people the chance to broadcast a new kind of online performance. We can’t wait to see people playing 4am deep into the early morning hours.

If you want to get a glimpse of what the game will be like, head over to the PixelJunk website. The page for 4am features a gameplay tease. You can use the mouse to affect the music, while the real game will have much more finesse it is a nice peak at what you can do.

I leave you with a 15 min performance of then “lifelike” at E3.

If you read my quick impressions from back at E3, you will know that Sidescroller takes place in the PixelJunk Shooter universe. But it might not be in the way that you are thinking. Sidescroller is actually the video game that the miners of the ERS Pina Colada play to pass time in their pods. That is why you will notice things like scan lines and a simulated curved monitor in the screenshots. All of this added with the vector style artwork make the game a pleasure to look at. The flashy neon effects may remind some of Gravity Crash, but the similarity is only visually. The two games play nothing like each other.

Weapons are also something this game excels in, with three different ones that can be swapped on the fly. Each weapon can also be upgraded via power-ups dropped by enemies and as the game only allows your ship to face one direction it is crucial that you do upgrade and upgrade often. The quicker you do so, the easier it will be to stay alive as power-ups add backwards firing to both the laser and machine gun. You have to be aware of what gun you are using though, as it applies the power-up to the currently equipped weapon.

As I mentioned at the top, much has changed since the last time I played. One of the biggest changes are to the missiles. Now instead of launching out numerous homing missiles, a bouncing ceiling and floor hugging variant has been added. These can be used in a very tactical manner and are especially useful in tight corridors. The ships visual appearance now changes based on the weapon you are currently using. This is also a welcomed addition as it is much easier to tell which weapon you are using without looking away from the action. One change I noticed that wasn’t to my liking was the increased time it now takes to do a spin attack. I really like to use the spin attack in game to quickly take out lines of enemies, and in its current state I couldn’t do it as often as I wanted to. But as the game is still in development, I am sure there will be even more tweaking so I am not worried.

Fluids are back and they do everything you expect them to do. You can shoot water into lava and make dirt, shoot lava on to enemies and destroy them, and lasers can melt ice. Also do to the fact that your ship now has a laser you can cut paths through the ice with ease. Water is still your friend and can be used to cool off your ship when you are overheating. The blocky look of the fluids, while not in a vector style, still seems to fit perfectly into the game.

Bosses are also something that you expect from the Shooter series of games and Sidescroller will not disappoint. We did get the chance to play one of the more fleshed out bosses and it had some interesting mechanics. It was a blast to play and like most boss characters we had to do numerous things to destroy it. I wish we could have gotten footage of it, but picture a pinwheel type machine made out of 3 triangles. To damage it, we had to shoot off the triangle pieces and light its core up. The boss also teleported around the level, leaving a ghost image to where it would land. The boss creature that I played at E3 was also there, but I hear they are buffing it up as many E3 goers decided it too easy.

One thing that will ease the frustration of many players are the numerous checkpoints that are built into each stage. I never felt like we had to backtrack too much after dying and Q-Games have even added an option to continue at a lower difficulty. Dying is something that you want to try to avoid though, as there is a combo system in place for score attacking. Every time you destroy an enemy your combo goes up. There is a cool down time that you attached to this, so if you take to long to kill another enemy you get your combo reset. Score chasers will have to find interesting ways to keep those combos going.

Being the huge PixelJunk fan that I am, I can’t wait to play it some more. With the game still in development and changes being made everyday, I can’t wait to see how the final product turns out.

Game still looks serious. As I will be seriously mad if you don’t try it. Eric and I will be playing some more of this at PAX, so look for some impressions then!

A sneak preview of an important reveal which will occur during Q’s very own +Jesse Venbrux’s talk at Casual Connect next week! If you want to find out more come to the talk!

What do you think it could be….!?

Well I think it could be something from the PixelJunk Monsters universe. Want proof? Well we all know that rainbows are important in the land of Monsters, meaning that you have successfully cleared a level without losing a villager. Does that house look familiar? Maybe this will refresh your memory. Ah yes the house from Monsters. But what about that face icon? That seems to be from Monsters as well.

I will be in attendance at Jesse’s talk during Casual Connect which takes place during the App Stores & Download session. My gut felling on this one is an iPad game, because of the mobile game development the speaker has, but something for a PlayStation platform works for me as well. Be sure to check back here next week when I can update you further.

[Source: Dylan Cuthbert, Google+]

First off this is a spin off of PixelJunk Shooter 2. Hardcore fans will know that if you collect all the gems in Shooter 2 you unlock a special stage that is nothing like anything else in the game, The Road To Dawn. The graphic style switches up to a vector like format and the game transforms into a side-scrolling shooter. Well, now we have a full game based on this and I couldn’t be happier. Mostly the title is about score attack, trying to collect as many “orbs” possible. The game also ditches the familiar controls that you know from Shooter 2, opting for a more retro control scheme.

So check out the screens, and look on the site tomorrow for my full impressions once I get a chance to hear the game.

The dates are as follows:

NA: March 1st
EU: March 2nd
JP: March 3rd

There is no date for Hong Kong, but I am pretty sure it will be the 3rd or the 4th. Eric and Chris both got some hands-on time with the game back at PAX, you can see some video of that at the bottom of the post. Sadly there is no word on the price, but with all other PixelJunk games being $9.99 hopefully that is a sign at what we will be paying for Shooter 2.

[Source: US PlayStation Blog]

In the above trailer, Baiyon talks a little bit about his latest project PixelJunk Lifelike. The full interview, 9min in length not all with Baiyon, will be posted on this vimeo account in the coming future. If you like video game music be sure to check this out.

[Source: Independent Videogame Music in Context]

Remember back during GDC when I posted some first screens from PixelJunk Lifelike, a new “visualizer” from the team behind PixelJunk Eden. Well Tokyo Games Show has brought us a new teaser for the “game” and it is beyond bizarre. Also it looks like you can use the Move controller to do something, that something is unknown for the time being.

What I liked:

• Solid update to the first of the Pixeljunk series.

• Unique Ghost mode is unlike most online racing game offerings.
• Free to all owners of Racers, and replaces the original Racers game in the store.

What I disliked:

• HD is essentially required to get the most out of the game.

• The game lacks the charm of the later Pixeljunk games.
• Some gameplay elements are very unclear, instruction wise.

“Let me be the first to say this, but PixelJunk Racers is *not* a racing game.”
–Dylan Cuthbert, creator of Pixeljunk Racers

I remember back in the day when my aunt would take my sister and me to the Grand Prix Raceway, which sounds like it had the grandeur of an international speedway but was, in fact, more like a parish hall with a track in the middle. It was a slot car track, and I remember the fluorescent lights turning half off as two older guys put their cars on the line, ready to race.

I remember that because I always pass by the Raceway on my way to work, now an abandoned building with the red/yellow/green stripes still faintly visible on the side of the weather-worn concrete blocks. I suppose it’s telling that I don’t actually remember any of the slot car racing itself, maybe because slot car racing as a whole just isn’t that memorable to begin with.

So perhaps it’s a testament to Q-Games that they’ve managed to make a unique, if not fun slot racer that seems a lot more fun than the real thing, now in an updated form called Second Lap. This new version of Racers includes the suite of PS3-OS functionalities such as trophies, YouTube uploads, custom music and more, as well as burn-in protection and a much needed adjust in difficulty as well as a new mode called Ghost Attack.

In PixelJunk Racers you go though a single player tourney of events, most all having to do with the white drone cars that litter the track (smash the cars, now dodge the cars, now smash the cars but then dodge them, smash only the white cars, now smash this specific car, smash the black car but don’t smash it a second time, eat the cars, beat the cars, and so on.) The challenges are all fairly standard and there are a few gems hidden in there, as I rather enjoyed the slower challenges since they feel like you have to legitimately use strategy, as opposed to the fast races where you don’t have any time at all to switch lanes to dodge cars. It’s a simple single player game that will keep you busy for 3-4 hours or so, though the gameplay doesn’t inspire me to do it all at once. The new Second Lap features tone down the difficulty quite a bit, as it awards you better ranks and more forgiving bronze/silver/gold earnings. It’s definitely an improvement.

Along with the standard tourney mode is Ghost Attack, which is a very unique idea in that it allows you compete with ghosts and rank up on the leaderboards via a points system. It really feels like you’re playing with another person despite the fact that it’s just a replay ghost, and gets rid of the necessity of having to find a lobby, wait for an opponent, and the issues of lag. It’s an idea that probably won’t benefit most games, but for this one, it’s perfect.

It always felt like the original Racers was the black sheep of the PixelJunk family, with its lack of trophy support and general functionality found in the current PJ games, so it’s nice to get this update to round out the series. The local multiplayer (with seven, yes, seven local player support) is where you’ll get the most fun out of the game, and for a quick burst of gameplay, it’s certainly enjoyable. Just don’t expect the game to compel you to play for hours at a time.

NOTE: the game will be available as a free download for all Racer owners and will be available to buy on the PS Store for $6.99 on August 24th, replacing the current version of Racers entirely.

Click Here to purchase PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap from Amazon.com

This trailer shows off some of the enhancements:

I skipped out on the original title, but the improvements may warrant a purchase.
[Source: andriasang.com]

There are a few key features that are detailed, both pertaining to online play. The first is a versus mode which features head to head battles over PSN with voice chat. Seeing how when I played this game I always tired to screw over Brad, this sounds like a blast.

The second feature is one that will also be in PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap, Ghost Attack Mode. You will be able to download ghost data from anyone on the leaderboards and try to best it.

If you want to find out more check out the magazine issue.

[Source: dallow_bg / NeoGAF]