The Download Munkey : A Link A Day ;)

Some delightfully adorable Japanese festivities-themed wallpapers from the drumming game series Taiko no Tatsujin from Namco. I initially thought the pictures were random illustrations of traditional Japanese cultural icons until I read Danny Choo’s post about Hanami on Monday - apparently the pink flowers on the April 2008 calendar wallpaper symbolize the annual custom of admiring the cherry blossoms (sakura) that bloom from late March to early April - who says you don’t learn anything useful while collecting art or wallpapers (or reading blogs for that matter )

© Namco

Below are all the calendar wallpapers starting from the first one issued in Aug 2007. I’ll try to identify the festival or holiday represented in each with assistance from Wikipedia.

© Namco

Aug 2007 - Wasshoi Hyakuman Matsuri perhaps?

© Namco

Sep 2007 - Start of Autumn?

© Namco

Oct 2007 - Health and Sports Day - Yes, it’s a public holiday - I think it’s a great idea to implement something similiar in Singapore

© Namco

Nov 2007 - Culture Day?

© Namco

Dec 2007 - Christmas!

© Namco

Jan 2008 - Eating sticky mochi during Japanese New Year.

© Namco

Feb 2008 - End of winter? Or maybe the Sapporo Snow Festival?

© Namco

Mar 2008 - Japanese Doll Festival / Girls’ Day known as Hinamatsuri.

Hopefully, we’ll get to see the paper carp steamers that characterize Kodomo no Hi or Children’s Day for May’s wallpaper.

Below are the direct links for the Aug 2007 to Oct 2007 wallpapers since the links have been taken off the site.

Aug 2007
800×600
1024×768
1280×1024

Sep 2007
800×600
1024×768
1280×1024

Oct 2007
800×600
1024×768
1280×1024

Download the other wallpapers via the official Taiko no Tatsujin site.

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CuteDeadThings Wallpapers

Discovered this game via the HD trailer posted at GameTrailers.com showcasing gameplay footage of a battle between the Royal Army and the National Army (which resemble the Allies and Germans in WWII respectively). Some stills from the trailer - it’s quite funny, do check it out

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

The family-friendly equivalent of squashing the enemy under your tank’s steel tracks

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

While the game might seem silly, the physics don’t - witness this powerful backblast from the main cannon

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

Extra air support - the aerial variant of tank desant tactics practised by the Soviets in WWII

Battlefield : Heroes is an upcoming free-to-play multiplayer third-person shooter from EA / Digital Illusions CE (DICE), the creators of the Battlefield series of first person shooters. While the bright cheery colours and cartoony characters definitely draw comparisions to Valve’s Team Fortress 2, the characters in Battlefield Heroes are loosely based on WWII soldiers and weapons unlike the fictional stereotypes in Team Fortress 2.

Take a look at the veteran soldier below with a Tommy Gun look-alike : soldiers from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the famous 101th Airborne Division “Screaming Eagles” also had Ace of Spade markings emblazoned on their helmets during WWII.

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

This tank is of course inspired by the mainstay of the WWII American armored forces, the M4 Sherman.

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

This game will be released as a free download during summer 2008 and promises to support relatively low end machines - I say relatively low end because Battlefield Heroes still requires 512 MB memory and a graphics card that supports Pixel Shader 2.0 which is frankly not my idea of a low end machine While it’s free to download and play, it will be ad-supported - thankfully there aren’t going to be any in-game ads

© EA Digital Illusions CE AB

Download these four wallpapers (in 1024×768, 1280×960, 1440×900 & 1680×1050 resoutions) from the official Battlefield Heroes site or track the development progress at the developer blog.

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Hypothetical P.1000 Ratte Super-Heavy Tank

Haven’t been recommending much papercraft apart from Shin Tanaka’s Spiky Babies these days despite the glut of excellent models being showcased at two of the papercraft blogs, Papercraft Paradise and Papercraft World that I visit quite frequently.

Today I’m proud to present Chris Beaumont’s cool Cubee Craft series, mainly for the fact that he has made one of my favourite 80’s cartoon characters, the cute fluffy Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from The Real Ghostbusters, into an equally adorable paper toy.

© Chris Beaumont

Chris has also transformed quite a number of other characters from popular culture into paper toys, ranging from games - Master Chief from Halo, anime - Salchiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion, to comic superhero Rockeeter and movies such as the iconic Imperial Stormtrooper from Star Wars. There’s even a limited edition paper toy available for download until 20 March 2008 to commemorate Nine Inch Nails’ new album Ghosts I-IV. What’s even more amazing is that these toys are designed as snap together papercraft without the need for messy glue and adhesives

© Chris Beaumont

Imperial Stormtrooper & Salchiel templates

Chris also promises a new paper toy every week, so it’ll be pretty interesting to see what he comes up with, especially when his inspirations for new characters come from such a broad spectrum of popular culture influences. I think a Pac-Man paper toy would be a cool addition to the series

Read about Chris and his Cubee Craft collection at Urban Retro Lifestyle which is a wonderful place to visit if you’re into urban art, designer/vinyl toys and other cool stuff (who isn’t )

Download your very own Cubee Craft paper toys.

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Papercraft Paradise
Papercraft World
Gundam Papercraft Downloads

© Sean Cooper

Sean Cooper’s Boxhead series of zombie shooting Flash games have received a graphical upgrade, a new Defence game mode as well as new foes for the latest game in the series - Boxhead : The Zombie Wars. The name Boxhead probably stems from the distinctive blocky minifig looks of the player character and the zombies that infest each level. More about this series in my previous Boxhead : More Rooms article .

© Sean Cooper

The first thing you’ll notice if you played the earlier games, is that you no longer dodge between pearl-white monoliths in desolate deserts (above) while battling the zombie hordes as in Boxhead : More Rooms. Instead in Boxhead : The Zombie Wars, the zombies and their fiendish flame-spewing masters have overrun pleasingly lush (but soon to be despoiled) grasslands.

© Sean Cooper

Boxhead : The Zombie Wars also sports new lovely transparency effects as you can witness above, especially in the floating text that appears when you collect weapon crates and upgrades.

© Sean Cooper

The number of upgrades have actually dropped from 58 in Boxhead : More Rooms to 55 although the maximum multipler required to unlock all upgrades has increased from 125x to 500x(!). Upgrades range from the lowly 4x multipler required for a Pistol : Crack Shot upgrade to the 500x needed to unlock the final upgrade Airstrike : Nuke.

© Sean Cooper

There’s three new enemies apart from the generic zombies and their devilish overlords. You’ll quickly encounter groups of pesky red zombies who pursue you relentessly, shambling mummies and vampires who teleport right next to you whenever you stop for a break from the fighting. The blood-red demons have also now acquired fearsome flamethrower attacks that incinerate any friends or foe in its path.

Boxhead : The Zombie Wars relies even more on laying devious traps using barrels, barricades and whatnot than the previous games in order to get multiplers of over 50x after which goodies like turret guns and miniguns are unlocked for you to stand a better chance against the zombie host.

© Sean Cooper

For those who prefer a high bodycount, Defence is a new game mode (above) where you are given a few extra seconds of time after each level to emplace stationary stcutures such as turret guns, mortars and barricades to create killzones and fend off invasions by huge mobs of undead in numbers far greater than in the original Classic mode. You can easily reach multiplers of over 200x (and the associated goodies, of course) after completing just two or three levels but I find the action too frantic for me

Play Boxhead : The Zombie Wars.

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Soul of The Ultimate Nation Walllpapers

A new series of the adorable Spiky Baby paper toys by Shin Tanaka is ready for download This set of Spiky Babies is the largest collection yet with a total of 38 designs illustrated by artists and graphic designers worldwide.

© Shin Tanaka

My top nine in ascending order.

© Shin Tanaka

Terry’s Factory - Reminds me of a Chinese zombie aka Jiang Shi

© Shin Tanaka

Bshit - Love the smiley face with the eyepatch

© Shin Tanaka

Hariken - A nice depature from the usual cute designs

© Shin Tanaka

Akira’s Factory - Love the colours and the multiple eyes

© Shin Tanaka

Akishi Nishida - Mmm… Watermelons

© Shin Tanaka

Kazuhiro Hino - Reminds me of the masks worn by Luchadores (more masks & luchadores over @ deadlicious)

© Shin Tanaka

Koraters

© Shin Tanaka

Mochiwo - I think my dear thoo2 will love this one and the one below

© Shin Tanaka

Nekonoko

The rest of the Deluxe series below.














© Shin Tanaka

Oh yeah, even the box template is also available for download

© Shin Tanaka

As the templates are “blindboxed” and randomly chosen when you click on the Open a Box! button at the download page on Shin Tanaka’s official site, be prepared to click for a long time to collect the entire series (or use a Flash disassembler like Flasm - read my earlier introductory article on Flasm)

Download the Spiky Baby Deluxe Series toys.

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Papercraft World