Finally... Jet Set Willy Walkthrough

Finally, a video walkthrough of classic eighties platform game Jet Set Willy. I cant remember the days I lost playing this game, and rather than having lost patience, I think I just grew out of it and stopped playing, but it holds a special place in the hearts of every thirty year old British male!

The storyline of the game is as follows:(Found At Decent Group)

Millionaire Willy has had a party in his 60-room mansion. The party is a loud and wild one, and only the 'morning after' does everyone go home.

Willy inexplicably finds himself in his bath at 7am, and decides after his heavy night to go to bed.

However, he's not allowed to: his housekeeper, the butch Maria, will not let him go to bed until he has collected every single empty glass from the mansion and tidied the place up.

This isn't as simple as it sounds for Willy, whose task isn't made any easier by the ducks, flying pigs, floating monsters, high-velocity darts and ancient scrolls which seek to put him off - all of these things and a good many more send him to his death.

What's more, Maria insists that the whole task must be done before midnight.

Waiting For : X-Men 3

More information at X-Men 3 : The Last Stand

Links : 2 X 4 Brooklyn Museum Identity

"We imagined the Brooklyn Museum as the alternative Museum. Alternative not in the sense of either the marginal or the counter-cultural, but in an significant way. Alternative in the sense that "mainstream" is imaginary, that everyone, and all important things, are alternative.

Brooklyn Museum is not tourist-oriented, it doesn't cater to prefab, highly polished and well-rehearsed cultural fantasies about elegance, connoisseurship, purity or refinement. It is family-centered and facilitates a process in which visitors readily form their own interpretations of great art through many different, easily shifted and customized paradigms."


Brooklyn Museum combines authority and the active questioning of authority. If there is a central trope, perhaps its the intelligent, informed question, wittily framed. So, in our eyes, there is be an intellectual weight to the Brooklyn Museum of Art's identity combined with a certain quirkiness: Solidity destabilized.

The logo starts as a modern seal, but the seal continuously morphs. Each new iteration draws from a different trope, both high and low: a stamp, a flower, a violator, a thought bubble, a drop of water, etc. The morphing system plays out over the range of graphic materials from business cards and shopping bags to uniforms and site signage."

More information can be found at 2X4.org

Updated : Algorithm On MySpace

Algorithm has recently added a number of new features to it's MySpace page, including video highlights from our favorite movies and music videos, our favorite movie stills and book jackets, as well as some new logotype work and even the ability to play the classic Asteroids!. The blog is gaining some healthy momentum and we are looking to increase the number of enhancements going in over the next few weeks.

Is anyone else wondering if MySpace is going to becoming a somewhat standarized online promotional element folded into the interactive creative plans of bands, movies, tv shows etc?

Our MySpace page can be found at MySpace.com/Algorithmdesign

Now Live : 315 Film Site

The official site of upcoming independent feature 3:15 is now live and in the process of being maintained on a regular basis. There will also be a myspace component to the promotion of the feature. The site, using production still as wallpapers for each section, will feature downloads, production updates, and general information on the film.


It can be found at www.threefifteenthemovie.com

Just Added : Chop Shop NYC

Inspired by some recent brand building conversations, Algorithm has recently completed a set of t-shirt designs for New York based clothing company Chop Shop. We are also working on the development of their online presence, which, while still in its early stages, can be found here. Enjoy!

Funkstorung: Grammy Winners

Designed, art directed & produced by The Designers Republic

Waiting For : Nintendo Revolution

Every gamer who plays. Every one who used to play. Even those who have yet to play, Nintendo is your bet.

As the cornerstone of his speech today at the Tokyo Game Show’s annual event, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata elaborated on the theme of the company’s aim and proven ability to broaden the population of video game players. Two shining examples highlighted in his keynote include the smash-hit sales of the highly innovative Nintendogs game for the portable Nintendo DS system, and the new controller that will be central to the company’s upcoming console system, code-named Revolution.

Nintendo breaks with more than 20 years of video game history by abandoning the traditional controller held with two hands and introducing an all-new freehand-style unit held with one hand.

The intuitive, pioneering interface allows players to run, jump, spin, slide, shoot, steer, accelerate, bank, dive, kick, throw and score in a way never experienced in the history of gaming.

“The feeling is so natural and real, as soon as players use the controller, their minds will spin with the possibilities of how this will change gaming as we know it today,” explains Satoru Iwata, Nintendo president. “This is an extremely exciting innovation – one that will thrill current players and entice new ones.”

When picked up and pointed at the screen, the controller gives a lightning-quick element of interaction, sensing motion, depth, positioning and targeting dictated by movement of the controller itself.

The controller also allows for a variety of expansions, including a “nunchuk” style analog unit offering the enhanced game-play control hard-core gamers demand.

The response from all major publishers worldwide has been extremely positive. Beyond its other innovations, the new controller gives third parties flexibility, allowing them the option to use as many or as few of the controller features as they desire. In addition, incorporated technology will easily allow games from the NES, SNES, N64 and Nintendo GameCube generations to be controlled in familiar fashion.

Nintendogs for the DS, a virtual and sophisticated dogfest, has taken the gaming world by storm, already selling more than 1.5 million units in Japan and North America combined. The game, just as Iwata believes the Revolution controller will do, is exciting current game players and attracting hordes of new consumers into the playing world.

More information at Nintendo.com

Ideas That Live Beyond The Page

Found at Magazine.org

The consumer magazine industry will unveil a new advertising campaign on February 27, showcasing the medium’s ability to engage consumers and improve advertisers’ results, it was announced today by Nina Link, President and CEO, Magazine Publishers of America (MPA). This campaign is the next phase of the industry’s three-year, multi-million-dollar marketing initiative that launched last year to promote the value of magazines to advertisers.

The new campaign was developed by Mullen and includes both print and online components that target advertisers and media decision-makers. The print creative features the jagged portions of a full-page ad torn from a magazine. Copy on the following page points out that readers are so engaged with magazine ads, it leads them to tear the page out and act on it. The tagline, “Magazines: Ideas that live beyond the page,” reinforces the concept.

The online component includes both the dedicated mini-site www.magazine.org/beyondthepage and online banner ads, which will also debut on February 27. The site will be an interactive representation of the magazine ads, with resources for advertisers on Engagement, Accountability, Case Studies and Research. And to speak to advertisers as consumers, there is a section called “Editorial,” which includes links to magazine articles, magazine blogs, magazine videos and podcasts and more.

“We wanted to showcase magazine reader engagement in a fresh way, and what better way to do that than to portray something that we all do — tear out magazine ads that help us make purchase decisions, or rip out ones that are so cool, they just had to be shared with someone else,” said Ms. Link. “In other words, reader engagement leads to action.”

“There's a lot of buzz these days around viral advertising and word of mouth,” said Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer at Mullen. “The fact is, magazines are the original viral medium. Their content and ideas spread to every aspect of culture and inspire action. We wanted to remind people that readers’ involvement with magazines influences their behavior as consumers.”

Ads for Infiniti and Altoids will be the first ones to be “ripped out.” Throughout the course of the year, other participating advertisers’ ads will be featured. Confirmed advertisers include American Express, Cover Girl, JCPenney, Lexus, Microsoft and XM Satellite Radio.

“The participation of these advertisers is testimony to their own understanding of magazines’ key strengths. The campaign reinforces that consumers engage with advertising in magazines in a unique way. We believe that consumers opt in to magazine advertising, while they are opting out of other places. That’s a compelling story for the medium,” remarked Michael Clinton, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer, Group Publishing Director, Hearst Magazines, who is Co-Chair of the Magazine Marketing Coalition, the group directing the industry’s marketing initiative.

Waiting For : RodenCrater.org

James Turrell's Roden Crater Project, active since 1972, continues to amaze and fascinate, now gaining online speculation.

The above site link isnt working yet (it still ironically still says 'under construction'), but you can find out about the project at The Roden Crater Project or at The Center For Land Use Interpretation

Just Added : Animated Gif Video Tests

We've been experimenting with the MySpace profile image area and trying to get some approximation of streaming video to work in there.

Above is an example of the kind of compressed content we have been successful in getting to work (click on the image to see it integrated within the profile page), which seems to work out well when you create an enormous animated gif (around 20-30s at around 12-15fps out of After Effects is a good benchmark), but keeping the colors to a limited number (2 and patterned gives it a great 'retro' styling) in order to keep the files around 300k. It seems like even though MySpace's image limit is 600k it is really struggling to upload animated gifs over 400k, causing all manner of frame corruptions and distorted playback.

For an example of this in action please visit Algorithm's MySpace page.

Just Added : Algorithm MySpace RSS Feed

The daily Algorithm MySpace RSS syndicated blog feed is now available here.

Links : United Nations Architecture

Found at Design Observer
"Design by committee. No one likes it. No one wants it. Even clients disavow it: "We don't want to get you into a design-by-committee situation here," they'll tell you, usually just before they actually start forming a committee to help you design.

But every once in a while it works. If you doubt this, look at the complex of buildings that rises on the East River in midtown Manhattan: the headquarters of the United Nations."

To those outside who question us we can reply: we are united, we are a team: the World Team of the United Nations laying down the plans of a world architecture, world, not international, for therein we shall respect the human, natural and cosmic laws...There are no names attached to this work. As in any human enterprise, there is simply discipline, which alone is capable of bringing order.
Le Corbusier, quoted in The U.N. Building

Read the full article at Design Observer

Recommended : Film School

Highly recommended this month are San Francisco indie 5-piece Film School, who's album is on constant rotation in the Algorithm studio. Highlights include Breet and Pitfalls, conjuring up images of what Interpol would sound like if they hung up their suits and moved to the West coast. After somewhat of a drought in great new music over the last year (enough with the substandard Killers, Strokes and Joy Division facsimilies), it's good to see 2006 kicking off with some real indie tunes! If only Snub TV were still around to feature them...

We'll be there at the Mercury Lounge on March 11th.

More information at : Film School Music

Links : Swiss 2010 Currency Design

"Earlier this year, the Swiss National Bank  announced its intention to introduce a new series by 2010, and invited twelve designers into a competition, asking them to represent "Switzerland open to the world"...

Take a look at the winning entry, by Zurich-based graphic designer Manuel Krebs. What you see there are a rendering of the AIDS virus (on the 200 Swiss Francs bill), of a skull (on the lower-right corner of the 1000), of an embryo (on the 100), and other similar motives. Think of having a fun dinner with friends at a nice restaurant, and then hand over to the waiter a 200-Francs bill representing the AIDS virus."

For the full story please visit Bruno Giussani's running notes on people, places, technologies and ideas.

Just Added : Algorithm Desktop WebCam

Above : Live Algorithm WebCam Image

Algorithm studio has just added a live webcam to the site. It will record the day to day activities of everything Algorithm and will be updated approximately every 30 seconds. It's working with an Apple iSight camera and running through ImageCaster. It's still a little temperamental in terms of server to live timing overlap and iSight is cutting out periodically, but we hope to resolve these small technical issues very soon. Otherwise, it will be used in conjunction with the other blog-based technologies we have been using recently to document the creative projects Algorithm has been working on.

In Progress : Wallpapers Series 7

Inspired by Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief (those familiar with the Spike Jonze movie Adaptation will understand the reference), the next series of Algorithm wallpapers will be based on the hybrid idea of combining elements from heraldic iconographic culture with Rorschach ink blot test results.

In Progress : Algorithm Updates

After a brief hiatus building out our MySpace page, Algorithm is now concentrating on a number of exciting new interactive projects. In addition to building out the support materials for BDMP's upcoming independent feature film 3:15, we will be working on a webcam project in the next few weeks. This journal, as always, will showcase some of the things that are of interest to us, as well as previewing work in development and recently published projects.

Links : The Atari ET Fiasco

Keith Schofield's video for Wintergreen's When I wake up describes the disaster of Atari's 1982 ET The Video Game fiasco, ending up with millions of returned cartridges being dumped into a New Mexico landfill.

Now Playing : Metal Gear Solid 3

Video Found At Google Video