Well, the day has finally come. June 29, 2010. This marks ten full years since the release of one of the most addictive keyboard-and-click video games ever created. It was there, in that game, online with thousands of other players fighting, leveling up, collecting treasures, that I realized my obsessive personality. I believe every modern person has this sort of “disorder” to some degree, they call it Obsessive Compulsive Disorder if I’m not mistaken, OCD for short. Diablo II (aka Diablo 2) took hold of that piece of each of us, the people finding themselves part of this new internet community, and held on tight.

Ten years tight.

And then there was the Social Media. And the clicking.

Now you might notice the “DIGG” logo mark stuck to the Diablo II image above. Why? Because it’s the same. Over the past few days I’ve attached myself to the community of DIGG like it was a game. Because it is a game. When you’ve got a brain like me and the rest of us young gentlemen and ladies who can’t keep their hands still, all you’ve got to do is provide a ranking system and you’ve got them occupied.

If you want to survive in today’s capitalizing network, you’ve got to keep your head. You consider your obsessive nature a disorder and you’re stuck feeling bad about it. You tell yourself you’re strong and that being obsessed allows you to do mass amounts of work, well, you’ll burn out, buddy. So what’s to be done? How many roads must a man walk down? Do girls just want to have fun?

Let’s talk about what we do on WFDJ to stay occupied in a healthy manner, or at least a progressively social manner. Sound good? How about we number this list, too.

1. DIGG – On this share and read site, I’ve found it beneficial to be yourself: ca77 is the name I go by. We had a WFDJ DIGG and it petered out. It had a little bit to do with that I lost interested back when I started it, and a lot to do with the fact that people on DIGG like to feel like they’re working with people as opposed to organizations. Now we’re making friends, connections, and cross-links. Up-voting per friendly suggestions, rooting out false prophets aka spammers, and submitting our own material here and there to capitalize on the work it does take to be a helpful member in this squad of workers.

2. FACEBOOK – Here we’re in a few places. There’s my personal page, something everybody’d probably enjoy having if they had one, then there’s both the WFDJ website page and personality. These both have their own unique abilities, both of them important to how we round out our facebook presence. The website page is the place where people basically thumb-up our page and suggest it to others. Real simple. The personality page is the same thing you get when you sign yourself up for facebook. If you’ll take a look you’ll see the name on it is “WorldFamous DesignJunkies” because we’ve got to fool fb into believing the presence is a person. People see this, find it unique, and friend it right away. 946 friends end up being much more valuable than 2,000 thumbs-ups. For real.

3. TUMBLR – A super-simple and lovely genius setup for bloggers from the start to the super-used-to. The WFDJ tumblr account acts as a subsidary of WFDJ’s main news page, allowing for more attention to be payed to individual images and quotes from pages. People today on these internets are interested not only in the content they’re peeking at, but in the way they’re peeking at it too. Tumblr is unique in it’s…well… twitter-list sort of friends feed, showing updates from everyone they love at once, with simple buttons for liking and re-posting. That, and if you’ve got the personality we’re talking about, tumblr’s a place where you can post thoughts and sub-images that come to your knowledgeable mind throughout the day not big enough for a whole post.

4. TWITTER – Have one. Love it. Don’t hold back. Unless you’re the kind of person who posts every 5 minutes, because that’s a cause to hold back. People de-friend people who post too much. I’d wager to say that posting too frequently is the number one reason people de-friend on Twitter. An awesome service to use to post to twitter is http://su.pr/, a site made by StumbleUpon for people to have instant url-shortening complete with a handy SU head-board. Always with the head-boards. Always with the grasp of the fingers.

5. STUMBLEUPON – This community is perhaps the most difficult to be a part of because of it’s dis-jointed nature. There are message boards and there are ways to send messages back and forth, but there’s so much sharing that it’s basically impossible to work with other people. Your best bet for becoming successful at SU is to follow the rules you’d work with for Reddit or Digg. Be sensible, work on helping other people first, yourself in the back of your mind most of the time, in front every once in a while. We’ve been at it so long that our method is to post different singular images from WFDJ, using SU as an image-sharing program rather than as a news aggregator.

6. REDDIT – Find your favorite sub-Reddit and thrive in it. I’ve had some little success working with the people who run the Star Wars list. Each subreddit has its own moderators and family, so it’s possible to be cool with these healthy “medium groups.”

With all of these plus finding the content plus preparing and publishing the content, one has the opportunity to have this OCD nature without messing a single one up by too much participation. Always keep in mind that everyone on these internets is a person, and that many people go to multiples of these sites. That means if you post the same thing to each of them, these people will find you and they will slap you in the face, digitally. So be new and unique with each little thing you post. In fact, just to be safe, never post the same thing twice. Not only is that healthy, it keeps you spry.

Stay spry!

And if you want to eat your life alive, play D2… or depending on when you read this post, play D3. And good luck, you’ll be alone there. It’s going to be TOO good.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies custom culture category.

Over at one of the most wonderful places on Earth, the Happy Seamstress Pattern Company, they are having a fabulous little contest for whose best at crafting. The subject matter? Mario. Or everything in the Nintendo universe. And even that rule is broken sometimes. But it’s all in excellent fun, and in most cases, thread and needle bliss! So take a peek, all ye crafty peoples, for below we’ve got not just the future winners, but the entire contest entry bin! Everything, including the terrible ones!

JK there are no terrible ones. Just some that… just can’t win.

The Happy Seamstress holds contests every once in a while, and they’re not the crappy kind where the company basically rips you off by paying you squat for what you could get lots more cash for, no! The H.S. holds contests for fun fantastic items you’ve made for yourself, or in many cases, for your kids, and congratulates you on a job well done, no more, no less! That’s how design contests SHOULD be run.

Remember folks, work for full pay or work for free, NEVER work for cheap. Discounts are for the people who sell the items, not for the transaction between designer and corp. Happy Seamstress seems to understand this well, and I congratulate them!

Also they’re getting prepared to have a pattern store to run alongside their very excellent blog, and I bet it’s going to be just chock full of wonderful products so everyone go buy!

Also I should mention that not only is there cross-stitching and knitting going on in this contest, it’s limited only to the word “craft” basically so it’s everything. Clay to iron-together beads. There’s a Tri-Force earring and Space Invader magnets.

Love it all. All of it love.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

So. The internets hath provided the world with some nicely-produced movie footage of a Mortal Kombat story in short-film format. It’s meant to be spread virally, which I’m sure it’ll do, and is doing, and it’s meant to create EXCITEMENT – which it IS doing. The clip you’re about to see is made by a … dance video director?! Kevin Tancharoen, who, because he was tentatively signed on to do a “caught in pre-pre-production limbo” Mortal Kombat, decided to make his own short, teaser version of what the film might look like. This is that. Many/most of the people in the short donated their time (maybe to get the chance to be in the final version), and the entire thing cost $7,500. And it’s gruesome. Totally gruesome.

It’s gonna be like a police movie!

Or maybe like a kung fu… gore… MORTAL KOMBAT.

Now the MOST and MOST FACTUAL information on this situation you’re going to get, you’re going to get from an interview done the day after this clip was released between the entertainment news source Collider and mister Tancharoen.

In that interview, Tancharoen begins:

KT: No. They [the studio, or anybody involved with the video game] did not [know about the mini-movie]. (Laughs) This was something I did completely on my own. However, there is a little bit of a tie-in, because I happen to be friends with Oren Uziel. And since we’re friends, I just called him up and said “Listen, I want to do this. This is what I have in mind. I want it to be contained, because I am not a studio with endless amounts of cash.” Then we started storyboarding from there, and started calling my friends, and started pulling as many favors as I possibly could. And I was thrilled that they all said yes. (Laughs)

Collider notes that Oren Uziel wrote the short. He’s currently listed on IMDb to write the next Mortal Kombat movie at Warner Bros. Tancharoen continues:

Now like I said, because I am such a fan of the Mortal Kombat series, I know there’s a lot of concern about the mysticism and the special powers and all that kind of stuff. Well, like I said, this is really designed — the short so far is really designed like a prologue to the movie. Now, in a movie version, I am going to have that mysticism there, but it has to be done in a very tasteful way. I wouldn’t like it too campy or too cheesy. I know this is a weird analogy, but it’s the best one I can think of right now. It’s kind of like when in Harry Potter, there’s two universes that coexist with each other. There’s the real world, and then you get on the train and then you go to Hogwart’s, and that’s where all the magic is.

That’s all I needed to hear. Make it AVP quality (low) or better, and I’d even go so far as to see it in the theater! All I need is a tiny bag of popcorn and one of those GIANT GULPS of soda they have at the theater now, one free refill!

Oh and… and…

This clip features the following actors and actresses: Michael Jai White who I knew played “Gambol” in the Dark Knight, remembered played SPAWN in that one movie called SPAWN, but had no idea was in The Toxic Avenger Part II – wowie!, Jeri Ryan whom you MUST know as “7 of 9″ from the Star Trek series Voyager, plus about a million TV shows, martial artists Lateef Crowder who is going to be in a 2010 movie about the other hugely popular fighting game TEKKEN, Ian Anthony Dale also in TEKKEN, and Matt Mullins who has done lots of great stuff, but whose proudest moment should be, I think, having been an actor in the 1996 video game AREA 51.

So peek at the clip and peek at this gallery clipped out of the clip and clip your clip with a clip and GET OVER HERE and clip clop clip. Yay Mortal Kombat!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies ARCADE category.

Holy crap! The generosity of the dude behind Exploding Rabbit is endless. Simply endless! Exploding rabbit is a new production… guy… who makes online video games and the like. And his first one is utterly fantastic! It’s called “Super Mario Brothers Crossover” and you won’t believe the joy you’ll get outta playing it. Crossover is a re-do of the original Mario Brothers video game (I should say, the non-Donky-Kong one), with one large difference – your choice of character. You can be the original Mario, Mega Man from Mega Man, Samus from Metroid, Link from Zelda, Bill R. from Contra, or Simon from Castlevania! Each of them has their own moves, power ups, and reactions to gameplay. A MUST PLAY.

Play it below, right now, today!

Anyone who’s played Mario will flip out over this. Anyone who’s played Mario AND one or all of these other games will flip out 6 times as hard. Each mushroom, fire flower, and power up does something basically unique for each character. Some of them based on their character play in their original game, some of them completely new! You will not be able to stop. Ever.

And lucky you! Here it is! The reason I said in the first place that this game’s designer was generous is because he’s given it away for free! World Famous Design Junkies is one of the places where the game is hosted. Play it here now!

Arrow keys to move, jump is Z and attack is X.
Then on some characters, special is S.
Check out holding your whole keyboard or laptop as a controller. lols.

Then if and when you love it, go visit him at his blog to see if there’s any new games. If you’re reading this on April 28th, then you’d better wait a little longer because that day, today that is, is when this game was released!

Hooray explosion!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

For your life to be at ease. Console games for your extracurricular life. The following is a collection of console games photographed in a regular and magnificent manner. Look below for the set of games owned by collector extraordinaire Phil Penninger, in a set conceived and executed by Patrick Molnar. These photographs show the differences and similarities, but more than that, they reveal something interesting in the viewer in the way they show interest. I tell you the most important part about this whole project is the eyeballs that hover above it. Game on.

Copyright © Patrick Molnar / Concept, Photography & Design by Patrick Molnar / Collection by Phil Penninger

Right now there’s a compilation book in the world, at least one of those, information is a little hazy on if there’s going to be more, like to be sold. But, BUT! There is some definite arrows pointing toward a poster in the future, which would be just lovely.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

Welcome yourself back to the ATARI 2600, one of the definitive moments in both home entertainment and interactive communication in our modern world. In these early years (1970′s, 80′s) of video game distribution, there was a bit of a learning curve. What should be done about advertising and branding these games we’ve got to sell, said the interactive masters of the day, the games are fun, but there’s no way we can use these little pixels as the covers of their packages! ZAP! There was a split. In this age came the strange world of describing not what was actually in the game,* but what you were supposed to imagine while you were playing it. *In most cases, that is.

Lets be straight up about this right now.

This gallery post is packed up full of ATARI game manual covers from the 2600, 5200 and nothing else. In this one product you will find the first voice of the game producer as spoken directly to the interactive-home-entertainment user.

This is inside the box.

Now take a look around in this gallery, and see many models. Along with the magnificent paintings and illustrations came several setups that lots of different games used. What you see above is an ever-so-slightly modified version of one of the more common layouts used by lots and lots of ATARI 2600 games. These black cover manuals have the title above, a picture in the middle, and copyright information below. Same font, same everything. It was embellishments that made the manual.

Notice then, will you, some of the impact and staying power lots of these books had. Take Donkey Kong for example. Look at that! It’s stayed basically the same graphics for hundreds of years! Then peel your eyeballskins back and experience the majesty of space travel with Space Shuttle – A Journey Into Space. And then there was Gas Hog, whose battlefield can only be entered one player at a time. Don’t worry, no Pitfalls here, only quality connections.

And for you Kevins in the audience, there’s Bounty Bob Strikes Back, which instead of being a book-type manual, folds out into a poster.

Also this sort of collection relies heavily on contributions from those with much more invested in the game. I’d like first to thank Atari Age, without a doubt the most complete and astoundingly devoted ATARI website this side of the internet. Go there for ANYTHING you might need concerning the ATARI phenomenon. Then let’s get into this list of other contributors: IHateMyScreenName, Retro Dude, Joe Kral, ewitch, SpaceInvaders, nickstone333, amster girl, Metal Misfit, djdac, DJ Romarcade, Amster, Meringues, Dionisio, PaperGhost, ZawTowers, Dimic, Hustler, John Mundy, Old Man Winter, Semper Novus, JBCurio, Willceau, Kuilman, Mr Phillip, and Old Man Musings.

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

These things right here in this post are all illustrated by Paul Robertson. Welcome to his fantasy. This is tiny video game wonderland. Robertson is an animator, more specifically, he works almost exclusively with Japanese-manufactured video games. In this post you’ll get to see a LOT of his new sprites (tiny characters that in this case move) and stills. All of them were made in the past few months and a LOT of them are from the new unreleased video game “Drawn to Life: the Next Chapter!”

Oh how I love things that move. These remind me, us, you, how much we love arcade games and casino digital slot machines. Look at everything move! These are super pixels at their most super cute! The word is Kawaii – spread the word!

I can’t talk about it yet so here’s a few animations from the last game I worked on: Drawn to Life the Next Chapter by 5th Cell

-Paul Robertson

Paul Robertson is a video game animator and a graphic designer. I wonder how much he really enjoys his work? You can see the joy very plainly. When brought down to their most rudimentary aesthetic keypoints, pictures of items are basically so simple that they’re perfect. Your brain thinks so, just ask it! You cannot deny the cuteness! Don’t even try! Feel free to get lost in ecstasy in this pixelated wonderland!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category!

BONUS here’s the commercial from the FIRST “Drawn to Life” video game:

First let me say to you that this is very similar to Dance Dance Revolution and Tetris mixed together. Then let me say to you that it’s run on a little thang called the Arduino open-source electronics prototyping platform. In this project is a new way to play tetris – interacting with your feet and your body rather than just with your fingertips. Made by interface designers Luyza Pereira and Bettina Hiel for a school project. Bet ya’d have trouble, ya pro!

Pick up the box, turn it, twist it, bop it. Stomp (NOT TOO HARD) on the pads at your feet to move back and forth. And what’ve you got? A whole new game, for cripes sake!

I’d love for this to make it to the video game emporium at the mall somehow, I’d play it all day and forever and ever and ever! Tetris is a way of life!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies arcade category.

Hot dogs! Oh my goodness hotdogs! Coney Island Dogs. That’s what’s up. We’ve got a place around here (Minneapolis, Minnesota) called Uncle Frankey’s. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. They make amazing Coney Island Dogs. Supposedly they’re better on the REAL island, but who knows! These people do. And when I say these people, I mean all the people who took the photos included in the super insanely huge World Famous Design Junkies Coney Island Sign Explorer Collection. Oh wow the signs. Look at them all!

Ah yes, the island. All of these photos are straight off the island. Coney Island was the biggest park in the USA between 1880 and World War II, but now it’s sorta… fading… but that’s alright! It’s still insane! It’s a fast collection of fantastically clean painted signs and erratic, calculated oddities. And of course, the lights at night, or as we love to call signs of just this nature: Night Type.

BEHOLD, and be held… by the excellence.

Ironically, “Coney Island hot dog” describes a product that is unknown in its namesake, Coney Island, New York, where hot dogs (usually called “franks” from frankfurter) are traditionally made only from beef and served plain or with sauerkraut on a bun without other adornment except the availability of mustard, which at Nathan’s was applied by the customer. The only reason for the name is the generic hot dog’s origins in Coney Island, where it said to have been invented by Charles Feltman in 1867, who put a Vienna sausage in a roll and called it “Coney Island Red Hots.” Some people, unsure of its ingredients, called it a hot dog. Different references claim that the locals thought the sandwiches reminded them of Feltman’s ever-present companion, a dachshund, called a wiener dog even back then,and the term hot dog became a popular term. – WEEKII

The photos you see in this post are from the following contributors: I Follow, Brooklyn Bridge Baby, Maisa NYC, hut234, Mattron, Whiskey Gone Bad, Matt Daniels, Megga Llucci, Brunocerous, NB Photo Flash, Charles le Brigand, Andy Brannan, Nauga Style, PSLove1982, Me-Myself-I, Tucker Photography, Lost in Brooklyn, Coney Island History Project, Gordon Gattsek, and a couple others I cannot yet identify. Thanks to yew all!

This post is part of the World Famous Design Junkies environment category.

This post is also part of the World Famous Design Junkies street signs category.

ALSO ALSO SAVE CONEY ISLAND!

Oh CRIPES what were they thinking? They were absolute geniuses! That’s what you’re about to say like 50 times in this thread. This is World Famous Design Junkies first big retro thread of kitsch, inside is a collection of items that are not big enough to have their own thread, but much too big 2 b 4gotten. Most or ALL of them were made before the internet age, and are therefor just as good as new. That’s the rules of the internet. Discover for yourselves the wonders of the kitsch design universe.

To understand kitsch you must first understand the nature of the kitsch designer. This kitsch designer that’s being spoken about takes things to the next level of literal translation. They put puppies in human outfits, they bring a boom box when a tiny radio would be perfectly fine, and they wear an eyepatch. They’ve got everything in full color and they never let ink go to waste. They say, “man, the paint is here, and it’s gonna have to go somewhere, so if anyone is going to waste it, it’s going to be me.”

Then the kitsch designer splatters the paint all over the chia-pet canvas.

Please join me now on a limited journey through the insides of the kitsch design universe. The following designs are captured from a small but wonderful group of collectors who you should all meet. All of dis junk (or a lot of it) is from the following sources: RetroZone, Histoire Del Oeil, Graphik Addict, Arbito, Roadside Pictures, REBIRTH, probably Christian Montone, and illvisual, plus a couple other ones I might have lost.

Fear naught!

This post from the World Famous Design Junkies collection category.

Hey. Let me tell ya. I’m sure you remember the Erik Inkala Rock and Roll Party announcement from a few days ago on here, right? Well the opening night was last night, and here we’ve got a buch, no, a craplost of pictures from the event. So many photos. Artists up the wazoo and back again. Peek at it.

These photos were taken at basically the beginning of the show, so it was mostly what I assume was parts of Inkala’s family. Let’s just say the people at the show didn’t seem like the normal hipsters, punks, and bikeriders that I’d expect at a graffiti show. But it was fun to see that, as I’m a fan of the proliferation of “underground” cultures, especially when they are literally in a room that’s under the ground, in the basement.

Saturday September 19th at First Amendment Arts
1101 Stinson Blvd (corner of Broadway and Stinson in NE Minneapolis), 55413
7-10pm
all ages
free admission

Show runs September 19 – October 20, 2009
First Amendment’s regular gallery hours: Weekdays, 12-5pm

First Amendment Gallery will host the send-off party for Minneapolis-based / Brooklyn-bound artist Eric Inkala, who was previously featured in shows, Almost Famous and Almost Homeless. The exhibition will feature new paintings by Inkala along with the work of 47 local artists that have inspired him during his time in Minneapolis. Join the party, see a lot of great art, and take the chance to wish Eric luck before he makes his move to New York.

This post is straight out of the World Famous Design Junkies burlesque category. If you’d like instead to take a look through all the posts we’ve got on Burlesque Design, feel free to do dat too. Also I bet this constitutes another one of our super-famous, maybe even WORLD famous Mini Tours. Be there for those and that.

I bet you didn’t know that the average Wii controller has all kinds of guts like this. Guts. I’ve seen a lot of guts projects lately. That one with the lego guy turning around and around, those KAWS Dissected Companions from a few years ago. It’s no longer a joke! But that’s ok, that’s not what this is about anyway. It’s about how physical therapists are using the Wii to help their patients gain muscle strength by playing games! Yay Nintendo!

The designer behind this lovely image and poster is Angela Moramarco. She’s won heck-of-awards. You’d better listen. This thing is for an imaginary site http://anatowii.com/ which will potentially tell the winning physical points in using the Wii.

What parts do what for what!

Take a peek at the closer images below, the bigger versions are all at the top of the list of pics. Peek em out! This whole post is a part of the World Famous Design Junkies Arcade. UND also:: update from the designer herself:

Also wanted to note: worked with illustrator John Foerster to complete the concept. (www.foersterstudios.com)

Bangin!

Yes indeed. More and more of these lovely websites are turning up, archiving the fantastic excellence of old. Especially in arcade games, which were basically fantastic in their prime. The site the photos in this post are from is an offshoot of the actual real museum that houses these fabulous vintage machines. The game included in this post is called “Морской бой,” or “Naval Battle.” Behold! Then visit the museum’s site for the rest!

And yes, yes in fucking deed, you can play re-creations of the games on the site. They only have one or two up at the time this post is posted, but it seems that they’re updating everything with every game, etc. Photos of basically all angles and details of each machine, info on each machine, details and everything.

Must, must, must see http://15kop.ru/!!!

Comrade, to your battle stations!