The Summer of Scott Pilgrim

Back when I was first talking to Bryan Lee O’Malley about his upcoming “Scott Pilgrim” book series in 2004, neither of us ever imagined what a huge sensation it would become. International best-seller, lauded by critics and media outlets, a cultural touchstone for an entire generation of slacker hipsters. Even with all that’s come before, though, summer 2010 will be remembered as the summer of Scott Pilgrim. It all starts next week with the release of the sixth and final volume in the series, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, wherein all questions will be answered, all plot threads tied up, and we’ll all have to move on to something else. A mere three weeks later sees the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game on the Playstation Network. The 16-bit River City Ransom homage sports squeal-worthy art direction by acclaimed animator Paul Robertson and an original soundtrack by Brooklyn’s own chiptune power group Anamanaguchi. Fandom is sure to reach an all time high, though, with the August 13th release of the major motion picture adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, directed by Shaun of the Dead‘s Edgar Wright and starring a cavalcade of hip young actors from everything cool in the past decade.

Intense new seasons of cutting-edge TV drama

The two most-talked about season finales last year were those from Dexter and Mad Men. One season ended with a small core team of the characters quitting their jobs, stealing everything they could from their old office and setting up their brand new agency in a tiny apartment, the other ended with the protagonist stopping the world’s most successful serial killer only to find his wife as the killer’s final victim and himself with no alibi (see if you can guess which show was which). Dexter and Mad Men were both already among the most popular and celebrated shows on television, but the status quo-changing finales last year served as fantastic set-ups for what are absolutely certain to be fresh and exciting new seasons. The characters are all forced into wholly new situations (starting a new business from the ground-up, divorce, single parenthood, suspicion of murder), the intensity be positively rife.

New albums from the biggest names in indie-rock

2010′s already been pretty great for music. We’ve seen long-awaited returns from the likes of Gorillaz, Gil Scott-Heron, and Devo, powerful returns from Los Campesinos!, LCD Soundsystem, and Xiu Xiu, and stellar debuts from the Drums, Fang Island, and Sleigh Bells. Fantastic as all that has been, there’s the very good chance all of that may be forgotten when the tidal wave of summer and fall releases hit, including new albums from the Books, Menomena, Arcade Fire (whose The Suburbs is seen at right), Chromeo, !!!, Klaxons, Eels, Interpol, The Thermals, Les Savy Fav, Röyksopp, The Walkmen, Of Montreal, No Age, Ben Folds, and Antony & the Johnsons. If there’s not a band in that list that gets you excited and tingly then you probably aren’t hip enough to be targeted by national advertising campaigns for your valuable interest. Plainly stated, that’s a pretty epic lineup of album releases. Here’s hoping most of them don’t suck!

The Good

• Your favorite franchises are back! - Even with all of their innovation in technology and experience, Nintendo’s greatest asset is their catalog of beloved characters, each a ripe mine of opportunity for new games. Nintendo fully utilized that catalog with this years show, highlight brand new games in the Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby, and Metroid lines, plus a new Mario sports collection and Wii Party, a party game starring Nintendo’s newest and probably most popular characters, the Miis. Every single one of these titles looked like the very top-most notch of quality entertainment, with Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn in particular stunning the audience with returns to long-lost and adored realms.
• 3DS - The biggest reveal of the conference is also the hardest to demonstrate: a portable gaming system that displays truly immersive three-dimensional graphics without the use of special glasses. Nintendo wasn’t willing to just let the tech speak for itself, though, showing testimonials from a slew of big name developers and their enthusiasm in already working on the 3DS, along with a list of in-development titles including Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Super Street Fighter IV, Kingdom Hearts, and a long-awaited Kid Icarus sequel. Oh yeah, the 3DS also has an analog slider, motion controls, improved wi-fi, vastly improved graphics, and the ability to take 3D photographs. Oh yeah, this thing is awesome.
• More than just Nintendo - Portables have always been a safe bet with Nintendo, but a lot of analysts have claimed that only first-party games are successful on the big N’s home consoles. Looking to blow off that speculation entirely, the press conference included excellent-looking and crowd-pleasing third-party Wii titles like Disney’s Epic Mickey, EA’s NBA Jam, Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2 and Activision’s update on the multiplayer classic Goldeneye 007.

The Bad

• Zelda’s technical difficulties - Nintendo knew what people wanted – a brand-new Zelda game – and so they gave it to them as the very first thing on stage in the presentation. Too bad Shigeru Mitamoto’s live demonstration was plagued by problems with the Wii MotionPlus controller and IR sensor bar. A clever nod to Steve Jobs’ technical difficulties demoing the iPhone 4 a few weeks earlier lightened the mood. Still, when the low point of your show is a brand new Zelda game, it’s a pretty damn good show.
• GoldenEye - While I appreciate the focus group videos reminding us that the original GoldenEye 007 for the N64 is one of the most beloved first-person shooters of all time and practically invented the home console FPS, this modern day update looks… not so good. The graphics are barely improved and look downright woeful compared to other Wii shooters like Metroid Prime 3, The Conduit and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Everyone raised on GoldenEye have since moved on to Halo. You’re going to need something special to win them back, and this ain’t it.

What?

• No Vitality Sensor - This Wii peripheral was Nintendo president Satoru Iwata’s big reveal at E3 last year, promising new degrees of game-to-human-experience interaction by monitoring the player’s heart rate and other physical factors to affect gameplay. It’s been a year and we’ve seen and heard nothing new from Ninendo on the topic, especially curious as Ubisoft showed off a very similar piece of hardware the previous night with their own heart rate monitoring game Innergy attached to it. Maybe games about relaxing just didn’t fit in with this year’s show, which was clearly about delivering big blockbuster experiences.
• No Pikmin - Shigeru Miyamoto promised two things in his 2009 E3 roundtable: that they were working on a new Zelda and that they were working on a new Pikmin. Their only truly new IP of the Gamecube generation, Pikmin is long overdue for a proper reentry. I suppose we can’t have every single Nintendo property in one press conference, though.
• No digital distribution talk - Downloadable titles are the hottest thing in gaming right now, allowing smaller development teams to make tinier games at budget prices. Nintendo prominently showed both WiiWare and DSiWare titles at E3 2009, but this year? Not even a mention of either service. It’s hard to get consumers excited about services they don’t even know you provide.

The Good:

• The Big Games Look Big - Both the Gears of War 3 and Halo: Reach demoes were appropriately grand and atmospheric, perfectly planting the audience into what’s new and noteworthy of the worlds in these established franchises.
• Control with Kinect - The “simplified” XBox menu for use with their new motion control camera is significantly nicer looking than its regular interface, and the ability to speak to your XBox and vocally command it to control your media is something we’ve dreamed of in home entertainment ever since Star Trek.
• ESPN - Sports are sort of a big thing. Having ESPN access exclusively on the 360 certainly won’t drive up XBox sales, but it perfectly placates the frat boy demographic that has made the XBox the smash hit it currently is as well as appeal to the casual family demographic Microsoft is so desperately grasping at.

The Bad:

• Kudo’s a douche! - Seriously, everything about Kudo Tsunoda just screams “asshole!” I’m supposed to want whatever this guy is selling? I don’t care if he’s the creative force behind your hot new product, Microsoft, your pitchman has to not horribly offend the audience.
• Kinect still looks unfun and unresponsive - A year after its original unveiling, Microsoft’s new motion control camera still looks not-ready-for-primetime. Game developers on Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures seemed to be having a good deal of difficulty controlling their own games properly, the Star Wars trailer looked like a bigger waggle-fest than anything the Wii has seen, and Kinectimals just looks stupid. I’m sorry, little girl, but when the cartoon tiger licked the screen it did not actually tickle you! I refuse to believe our imaginations will ever get that carried away while playing with CGI jungle cats.
• The entire Forza Kinect demo - Soooooo, we can slowly move around a car, then zoom in for details on all the pieces? This looked more like a commercial for interactive car commercials. And seriously, we got it the first time you zoomed in on the headlights and showed us a mini movie about how awesome they were, we did not need a repeat with the wheels… and the engine… and the dashboard… and the OH MY GOD, THIS THING WENT ON FOREVER!

WHAT?

• No XBLA - XBox Live Arcade is one of the best things Microsoft has going for it in the console wars, allowing any PC developers to make their own games and share them with the world. There are tons of fantastic independent games already on XBLA with plenty more to come, but the service didn’t get a single mention in the press conference, not even upcoming guaranteed hits Comic Jumper and BattleBlock Theater.
• Joy Ride to retail - At last year’s E3, Microsoft showed off Joy Ride, a kart racer set to compete with Nintendo’s Mario Kart and Sony’s ModNation Racers with the defining difference being that it would be 100% free to play (with purchasable upgrades for those who care). It was an exciting gamble that we were eager to learn more about. This year it was revealed that Joy Ride was now Kinect-enabled and be sold in stores just like all other games. Wait… what? We’re  supposed to buy this game now? Sort of defeats the purpose of the experiment, doesn’t it?

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

This digital download beat’em up from Ubisoft is based on the award-winning and beloved Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series from Bryan Lee O’Malley and Oni Press, timed for release alongside the feature film adaptation directed by Edgar Wright this summer. If the brand’s name recognition alone weren’t enough to get hipster nerds totally pumped, take in those glorious 16-bit graphics from famed retro-animator Paul Robertson (Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006, King of Power 4 Billion %, Architecture in Helsinki’s “Do The Whirlwind” music video) and an original soundtrack by 8-bit superstars Anamanaguchi and you’ve got enough geek heat to light Livejournal on fire. While sure to take a few liberties with the source material, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World promises at least six epic boss battles, weapon and store systems not dissimilar to the NES classic River City Ransom and unique movesets for all four playable characters, but honestly, they had me at “playable Kim Pine.”

Shank

Not nearly as over-the-top as the extended gameplay demos we’ve seen in the past, this neatly polished story teaser for the EA-funded indie brawler looks more an more like Kill Bill: The Game every day. If cartoon ultra-violence and ridiculous combos are your thing, so is Shank. If realism and and political correctness are, go play Madden or something. Shank has been in development for quite  awhile and only recently picked up by EA, who’ve shown a dedication to quality in small-team efforts by publishing Double Fine’s Brutal Legend and Valve’s Portal. Eyes are on Klei Entertainment’s Shank to see if they can follow that trend. The animation is gorgeous, the question now is whether Shank has the gameplay to match.

Rock Band 3

The big new features of everyone’s favorite party game with plastic instrument controllers are the addition of the keyboard and a new “pro” mode that more accurately simulates playing real instruments. The new “pro” controllers for the keyboard, guitar and drums even have midi-out so they can be used in professional music production studios. As always, there’ve also been big improvements in setlist controls, character creation, and all the other nitty gritty. Confirmed songs so far include Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” The Doors’ “Break On Through,” and Metric’s “Combat Baby” along with the Jimi Hendrix, Them Crooked Vultures, and The Cure tracks heard in the trailer. I’m sure a lot of people aren’t all that interested in rocking out on the keys, but the concept is curiously exciting to me and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Vanquish

For what seems like the entire history of the medium, popular videogame design has been dominated by the Japanese. Something curious happened in the past few years, though, as Western developers have risen to prominence, primarily with gritty action games starring super soldiers with big guns (Halo, Gears of War, to a lesser extent Call of Duty). Not to be outdone, one of Japan’s biggest risk-takers is trying his hand at this Western design aesthetic in Shinji Mikami’s Vanquish. Single-handedly inventing the survival horror genre with Resident Evil, Mikami knows a thing or two about taking a crazy idea and running with it. The trailer shows an army of soldiers not unlike Halo engaged in Gears of War-like combat wearing suits similar to Mikami’s biggest flop P.N.03. It’s also the newest title from Platinum Studios, the hot young game house of former Capcom employees that’s already produced the smash hit Bayonetta and the excellent-but-commercially-underwhelming Madworld. The question here isn’t whether a Japanese studio can produce an authentically American-feeling game so much as what can they do to make such an experience uniquely compelling.

Super Scribblenauts

5th Cell’s Scribblenauts was the little game that could at last year’s E3. Unlike the studio’s previous Drawn To Life which allowed players to draw the elements of an otherwise generic platformer, Scribblenauts ignited imaginations by allowing the player to insert nearly anything they could think of into the game world via a vast and powerful encyclopedia engine. Once you got past that incredible innovation, however, the game was equally shallow and kind of aimless. Super Scribblenauts aims to fix that problem with better controls, more robust challenges and, most excitingly, ADJECTIVES! Yes, while in the first game you could only summon nouns like “jetpack,” “gun,” and “gorilla” to your aide, now you can clarify the characteristics of those nouns with marvelously colorful adjectives. Just look at that trailer and tell me “Gentlemanly Red Raptor” doesn’t sound like an awesome idea for an entire game right there.

You can’t expect, though, that everyone picking up this sequel will have conquered the first Super Mario Galaxy. After all, last year’s New Super Mario Bros Wii was a tremendous all-ages hit, and that was a strictly two-dimensional affair. How can people who’ve only allowed Mario to run left and right hope to control the stout hero as he is propelled through three dimensions in the perilous vacuum of space? Never fear, Nintendo’s all over this concern by including an instructional DVD with Galaxy 2. How does this work? Well, let’s take a look at the Japanese version:

Now I don’t speak Japanese, but I think I can translate the video as follows:

• Push the stick forward. Oh look! Mario moves forward!
• Stop pushing the stick forward. Hey, wow! Mario stopped moving forward!
• Move the stick backward. Goodness gracious! Mario moves backward!
• Now we know that the stick moves Mario! Oh my word, see that angry thing coming to attack you? That’s bad! Press the A button to jump on it’s fat stupid ugly little head. The evil mushroom represents America.
• Now that you see how easy this game is, let’s show you the ridiculous acrobatic feats you’re expected to make the portly Italian plumber do without pulling a hamstring. Have fun!

I’m glad we cleared that up?

This increased sense of urgency created an intimacy and a loyalty. Gamers grew attached to the characters and universes of these “classic” games more than they do now. No matter how Master Chief from Halo and Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet may try, they’ll never have the curious fan-devotion of the old-school icons like Mega Man, Sonic, or Mario. Countless grade-school playground conversations and sketchbooks were filled with questions about what would happen if these legends were to meet, to impact on each others’ unique universes. The Super Smash Bros games have allowed us to let many of the bigger icons engage in fisticuffs, but one clever indie browser game has finally allowed us to put a number of the greats in the shoes of possibly the greatest.

Jay Pavlina’s Super Mario Crossover takes the entirety of the classic Super Mario Bros and allows you to play through it as a variety of classic 8-bit Nintendo-era characters, transposing their movesets and skills into the original Mushroom Kingdom. If you choose Mario, you’re playing the original game we’ve all known and loved for over two decades with absolutely no alterations – all the power-ups, enemies and secret locations are the same as before. The real fun comes from replacing Mario with one of the other 8-bit heroes: The Legend of Zelda‘s Link can swing his sword to attack above or below him, with a boomerang for slightly longer-range attacks; Metroid‘s Samus Aran can use her morph ball to squeeze through tight spaces and her upgraded wave beam is far more reliable than Mario’s fireballs ever were; Castlevania‘s Simon Belmont has a double-jump that his contemporaries lack, and his daggars make for a powerful distance weapon; Conta‘s Bill Rizer is a badass and Mega Man… well… he’s flippin’ Mega Man, what more do you want? All that added power does serve to illustrate Mario’s secret power, though: running. None of the other characters ever needed to run in their games, just walk and fight, so rushing through perilous areas and getting to the flag before time runs out is more challenging without Mario’s supernatural ability to run faster than any overweight Italian unionized-plumber has any right to.

Super Mario Crossover is apparently only the demo of the much larger project Jay Pavlina’s been working on. While there is concern that the game in its current state may receive a cease-and-desist order from the owners of the intellectual property it’s based upon, Jay seems unconcerned, stating that it would be easy to replace the copywritten materials with his own original parodies. Until that final concept, or any other fresh projects come along, take the time to play through Super Mario Crossover now. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself remembering things that never actually happened while playing.

So begins Ghost Trick, the newest adventure detective game from Shu Takumi, creator of the critically-acclaimed Ace Attorney games. Though the Phoenix Wright trilogy of the Ace Attorney series are considered a Nintendo DS series here in the west (also ported to WiiWare and iPhone), most people forget that those games were originally released as Game Boy Advance titles in Japan and they play as such. Little more than interactive novels, the DS versions of the Ace Attorney games tacked on touchscreen and microphone controls just to utilize the new hardware and were never really necessary in gameplay. Ghost Trick, however, is a whole new game designed from the ground-up for the DS and it really shows in this debut trailer:

First off, just dig that style. So smooth and cartoony, no outlines, just vibrant colors and bouncy animation. A detective game centered around death and supernatural powers, the temptation had to be there to fill the game with heavy black tones, but the brighter graphics displayed here should serve to amplify what will almost certainly be the games strongest feature, it’s thoughtful and often hilarious characters coupled with sharp writing.

The player steps into the ethereal shoes of the recently deceased Sissel. He learns to use his new ghostly powers from a haunted lamp (I’m already loving this) and decides to prevent anyone in the city from being killed overnight while also investigating his own murder. All of this must happen before sunrise, though, as that is when Sissel’s soul will be taken from the world. As a ghost, Sissel can possess inanimate objects in the real world in order to interact with his environment. Take control of a rubber ball to bounce over to a rake to knock into a watering can et cetera allows for Rube Goldberg-esque crime fighting fun. Move a tray of doughnuts to lure innocents away from the place they might get hurt or be seen by the enemy. Every crime scene interaction is limited to four minutes (apparently the amount of time ghosts can be active/rewind time if they make mistakes) which could make for some very exciting and active chain-reaction puzzles.

The graphics are an astounding upgrade from the static art of Ace Attorney and the stylus controls should make the gameplay much faster and more intuitive. Most importantly, though, as a new Shu Takumi game from Capcom, Ghost Trick promises to be a compelling story with impeccable writing. Rumors are swirling that the DS is a dying platform, with Nintendo’s next handheld set to be unveiled in a little over a month. Consider, though, that Ace Attorney was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan when the original DS was already poised to replace that hardware and has already gone on to form five of the most thoughtful and smile-inducing games this generation. That’s not a bad pattern for Ghost Trick to be following. Besides, looks like the graphic style and touch-based detective puzzles should transition well to Nintendo’s much-rumored 3D device. Ghost Trick is set for release in Japan this summer and North America in the winter.

Linkin Park (the band) (your younger brother probably loved their song “One Step Over” nearly a decade ago) have decided to make a massively multiplayer online iPhone video game. In the process, they are attempting to capitalize on the recent wave of retro-nostalgia (Mega Man 9 & 10, New Super Mario Bros Wii, the chiptune craze, MacGruber) by making the game… ahem… “8-bit.”

It’s so… I can’t… ugh, just watch the trailer:

There are so many things to be upset about here., I’ll allow my friend Joe Larson to do get us started:

1. Where’s the 8-bits? I don’t see anything even remotely 8-bit. Oh? Those chunky pixelated 32-bit era pixels? Fail. That map, no 8 bit. Those weapons, no 8-bit. YOUR CHARACTER, no 8-bit. Your room, no 8-bit. Besides…
2. If this is supposed to be nostalga vs modern then first of all my money is on modern. It’s just better.
3. Oh, they’ve taken a remixed Linkin Park into blippy tracks? Oh, well that might be 8-bit. But it’s still based on pretentious quasi-teen mock angst. Lard, my ears throb just listening to it.
4. I love how they show you the idiot taking a shot at a guy and having the laser pass harmlessly through them, pause, realize it’s a friendly before moving on. Yeah, way to showcase your bad game design there.

It MIGHT be less of a betrayal to its very name if you will eventually change everything into chunky pixels, and it looks like that MIGHT be the case looking at the trailer, though they’re still distinctly 32-bit (like the SNES) sprites and character avatars and weapons are never at any time in the game anything less than hi-def.

Near as I can tell they’re making this game for one person, the Linkin Park fan. That being the case I really hope they plant a subversive piece of code in the game where if you play it for more than 20 hours it detonates your iPhone killing the user and ridding the world of the pretentious middle-class white kids who were probably going to go on a killing spree at some point anyways.

Man, I hate this thing.

Joe, a game developer of his own right (the excellent and much-buzzed ASCIIp0rtal was his doing), makes some excellent points, but there’s just so much more to hate about this project. Just off the top of my head:

1. Do people still care about Linkin Park anymore? Does name recognition like that sell a game? My teenage sister and I refuse any setlist in Rock Band 2 that includes the Linkin Park track or the Paramore track.
2. Unlock an exclusive song? That HAS to have been done before. I can’t cite the example off the top of my liquified-upon-submission-to-nonsense-game-trailer mind, but I refuse to believe there’s never been an exclusive song unlocked in-game before (I know that 50 Cent game last year had a whole bunch of “unreleased” tracks in it… “unreleased” in that they were too shitty for the album… even a 50 Cent album). Besides, that song’s going to be on YouTube and any blogs that still give a crap about Linkin Park the day after somebody competent buys/steals the game.
3. The developer – Artificial Life, inc. – also did the iPhone ports of the Adult Swim games, which in my experience have been mostly shitty, so at least nobody’s besmirching their good name with this nonsense.
4. My favorite t-shirt and hoodie are now soaked with vomit. Thanks a fucking lot, Linkin Park. Why did I have that banana for breakfast? Yuck…

Now there’s a videogame. Hey, it (kinda) (almost) (sorta) worked for Dante’s Inferno (not really)…

mif2000′s Hamlet or Last Game Without MMORPG Elements, Shaders and Product Placement is an adventure game in the style of Monkey Island or Machinarium… sort of. According to the developer this game involves absolutely none of the item-gathering that is classic to the adventure genre and focuses entirely on logic problems… which I suppose makes it more like Professor Layton.

The art direction seems to be ripped right from the Gary Baseman playbook (might as well be “Cranium presents Hamlet“) with a heavy emphasis on comedy, a route many of the best adventure games have taken with tremendous success (conceptually and critically. Adventure games are still a huge risk commercially). I don’t remember any giant squids in Hamlet, but this could be an adaptation of of the pirate attack seen in the widely-acclaimed side-play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The fact that the player controls “Hero?” and not a known character from the play opens up all sorts of possibilities for activities that may have happened outside of Shakespeare’s text. That and, you know, the fact that it’s “inspired by” the play, much like 10 Things I Hate About You was inspired by Taming of the Shrew or the outrageous staging of Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet seen in Hot Fuzz. Still, logic puzzles and boss fights are two of my favorite activities in life, so I’m cautiously optimistic about the fun to be had in this version of Hamlet.

All will be revealed when the game is released for PC in two weeks. Check out the official blog for more information.

* — Movies from worst to best: Gibson < Hawke** < Olivier < Branagh

** — Bill Murray as Polonius alone is worth the price of admission.

First and foremost, yes, Noby Noby Boy should be on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and similar to the PS3 version, the main focus should be on stretching and shrinking a worm-like creature called BOY…

And of course BOY needs things to interact with, so simply press this button to randomly summon toys and objects for BOY to stretch, swing, and spin around…

Use the camera or import photos from your library directly onto the toys to populate BOY’s world in a personal way.

Got an idea you don’t want to forget? An important appointment? Need to buy apology flowers? Write a memo directly on BOY’s body! That way, you’ll be reminded every time you play with BOY (and you can save multiple memos).

Aaaaand there’s a clock. Really not much to say about this one. It’s a clock.

The in-app music player is a cartoon robot, with album art for a torso and controls on its hands and feet. Really useful considering how annoying it can be to back out of an application to change what music the iPod is playing, then go back into the application all over again. Plus that robot is pretty darn cute.

The in-app web browser has several tabs, each of which is bookmarked to some of the most popular sites on the ‘net like twitter, facebook and flickr, but you can browse any site you want (that the iPhone would read anyway). Again, this is more like skinning Noby Noby Boy assets over the existing Safari browser, but hey, still fun and still great that you don’t need to leave the app.

Syncing your location via GPS allows BOY to stretch as far as you have travelled in real-time as seen via Google Maps. This could actually be a lot of fun for jetsetters and world-travellers, not so much for people who hardly ever leave the same neighborhood.

The augmented reality feature basically allows you to play with BOY and his toys over live-streaming video from the iPhone’s camera, making it that much easier to throw robots at your friends’ heads without them knowing.

The mail feature allows you to take a screenshot of all the madness happening on screen at the moment and send it as an email attachment. Again, this is just tacking onto the iPhone’s built in Mail application, so you can send other messages too and it has you address book saved for easy sending.

And of course, all that stretching is for a reason: to feed your love to GIRL to help her stretch! This turns into more of a Hungry Hungry Hippos explosion here on the iPhone, and the stuffed GIRL in the video sounds, perhaps, a bit too excited at the prospect of eating all those hearts.

And the world map marks where you are everytime you feed your love to GIRL and also lets you see all the other users in the world wherever they are and how much they have shared their love with GIRL. It’s cartography of worldwide polyamory!

So basically this new version of Noby Noby Boy is an easy way to have a bit of extra fun while doing the things you’re already doing on your Apple iDevice. The only problem now is, well, getting it to work. There have been a lot of complaints since its release last year about crashing on all varieties of iPhones and iPod Touches. The screenshot at right is from the one time in the past five days I’ve gotten it to run on my 2nd generation 32gig iPod Touch (yes, that’s BOY hanging out in the tall grass outside my front door). Seeing BOY on a Google Map over my friend’s house was decidedly nice, and the world map was illuminated showing that it seems to be rather popular worldwide (mostly in Japan and California, of course). With appropriate updates so it will work on all iDevices without running out of memory (and seriously, there’s no reason for this to be more of a resource hog than Space Invaders Infinity Gene), Noby Noby Boy might just become the favored way to waste time on an iPhone worldwide.

More than anything, though, those promo videos above just make me want Noby Noby Boy dolls. THEY ARE SO CUTE!