A Serpent Guard, a Horus Guard and a Setesh Guard meet on a neutral planet.
It is a tense moment.
The Serpent Guard’s eyes glow,
the Horus Guard’s beak glistens,
the Setesh Guard’s… nose drips.
Oct
13
I awake from stasis on an ancient starship with a group of other people. I don’t know how long I’ve been there, or even where I am. Along with the others, I discover where we are and try to get some sense of bearing. Using a local starchart in the ship’s navicomputer, we plotted a course among the star systems to find something familiar to us. We learned that we had been in stasis for a very long time, hundreds of years. As we reached the end of the very small ribbon of star systems on the starchart, we find a space station that is very similar in shape and design to the ship we found ourselves in.
Our de facto leader, who bears a striking resemblance to William Shatner, decides to board the station armed with the modified gravity gun along with a man who has been considered by our group to be somewhat of a malcontent and a criminal, so that he can keep an eye on him instead of left on the ship while he isn’t around. Upon boarding the station, they find that it is very old, like our ship, but in even more disrepair. The dingy lighting and murky, choking air, evidence that the atmosphere scrubbers have long since failed, shroud hallway after hallway in deep shadows, offering no sight of any other living being.
Eventually, a few human remains are found deep in the station: grisly skeletons, covered in the tatters of what used to be clothing, that have been severely decomposed. This deeply worries William Shatner, since a station of this size could not possibly have been run by this handful of people. He decides to check the locked closet compartments they passed near the airlock they entered the station through. After both men set to work on separate locks, they eventually hear the heavy bolts behind each of their doors pull back with a groan of complaint on old pneumatics that desperately cry out for maintenance.
What they find is beyond their wildest guesses: closets, medbays, crew quarters, all converted into sealed freezer rooms, numbering several dozen by the amount of keypads that display red “locked” lights and still functioning. Inside are the bodies of the station’s inhabitants, frozen solid in near-pristine condition. Some are wearing medical gowns, but some are still fully clothed, either in their uniforms, work coveralls, or even day-to-day clothing. They are all hanging upright along the walls from huge movable hooks, the kind found in an industrial slaughter house, that hang from a track hastily installed in the ceiling following the bends and angles of whatever room they’re in. Some were prepared for the hooks with makeshift harnesses wrapped around their torsos under their armpits, but most are simply hanging from the base of their skull, the sharp hook inserted through the back of their neck and up. Some have their eyes closed, at peace in their icy tomb. Others’ eyes are open, the sheen of ice doing nothing to conceal their empty stare, a strained look upon their face, as if flash-frozen in a hurry before…. What?
The two men meet in the hallway once more after surveying the grisly rooms, exchanging horrified glances, a single word on both of their minds: infection.
-October 13, 2009 9:43 AM
(Edited for readability. This fixed-width layout really sucks for posts that are Wall O’ Text)
Sep
06
Back in high school, I stumbled upon a small unknown indie game called Cave Story, or Doukutsu Monogatari (洞窟物語) for all you Japanese speakers out there. It was created by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya and released in 2004 as a freeware retro-pixel art sidescroller/shooter, and was subsequently translated to English by Aeon Genesis Translations.
Just recently I rediscovered Pixel’s world through Canabalt, another pixel art creation as a small-but-addictive Flash “one-button Parkour” game filled with more awesome, whose creator “Adam Atomic” Saltsman worked on the high res portion of the WiiWare port.
I absolutely fell in love with this game. Everything from the simple-yet-detailed pixel art style, the story and characters, to the play mechanics and easter eggs. I liked it so much I went so far as to mod one of my SNES controllers with a 25-pin DB connector so I could use it as a gamepad to play, really get more of that retro gaming feel.
Fast forward to this year, and the WiiWare port of the game is due out soon. This version is being released by the studio Nicalis, who is working with Pixel to create this port with a completely redone English translation, better graphics, and all new original content and music, though there will be the ability to switch back to the original art style and music if that’s more your thang. This alone will give me a reason to drag the Wii out of the closet, and maybe get a Classic controller while I’m at it for some nostalgiabombing retro gaming marathons.
In the meantime, you can check out the original Cave Story, Canabalt, or just browse some cute comics by Pixel.
