The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

Katakijin is my favourite of the 10+ newly-discovered games I downloaded featured on the list of 365 games from Games Radar’s recent article about a year’s supply of freeware/open source games (and demos - unfortunately, they don’t exactly distinguish between the demos and the rest of the other games).

Created by Ultim8, Katakijin is a side-scrolling hack n’ slash featuring loads of ninjas - you control one particular black ninja who’s out to prove himself against a host of other ninjas with his dual katanas and flashy moves.

The controls are smooth and responsive which makes controlling and watching your nimble ninja leaping and running on walls extremely enjoyable. The sprites are very nicely animated which add tons of style to the combat - your foes explode in showers of blood and flying katanas (can’t believe each tiny ninja has so much blood in him ) If you’re still not convinced, just witness how your ninja makes his grand entrance into the game below

Style isn’t the only plus point for Katakijin since melee combat is quite tactical too - mashing of keys won’t help a single bit here since your ninja isn’t strong enough to stand and duke it out with multiple opponents at a time. Mixing evasive manuevers such as rolls and dashes with your attacks and parries will ensure that you don’t get cut to pieces in the first couple of minutes into the game.

The default keys as follows:

Movement
Move with cursor keys
Tap left or right twice to dash
Tap down twice to roll (good for evading attacks)
Press Z to jump.
Hold Z when jumping towards a wall to wallrun

Fighting
Press X or C to slash with your katana
Hold C for an alternative chargeable slash attack
Press Space to throw shurikens
Block attacks with Shift. Note that blocking two consecutive strikes stuns your ninja and leaves him vulnerable to enemy attacks. You can cancel out enemy attacks by pressing X when you anticipate an attack.

Download Katakijin or read more on GameRadar’s 365 Days of Free Games. There’s another (probably older) version of Katakijin at 64digits which is pretty fun too (comes with unlimited shurikens)

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Ninja Rinseout
Ninja Gaiden 2 Official Wallpapers
Tenchu Z Official Wallpapers
Blood in the Boardroom & Other ShadowRun Cover Artwork

A collection of 25 wallpapers featuring characters designed by Kaito Shibano for Marvellous Entertainment’s Nintendo DS tactical game Luminous Arc. Some of my favourites below from the official American site for Luminous Arc by its publisher Altus.

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

Now the main draw for me when it comes to wallpapers and promotional stuff for games are the “secret/unlockable” downloads. Luminous Arc has two additional unlockable wallpapers if you can guess the correct answer to the question when you select the Lucia wallpaper for download.

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

The first unlockable wallpaper is the alternative wallpaper of Lucia in a more eye-catching costume than the default white dress (above). Here’s a preview

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

The correct answer for this wallpaper to unlock this wallpaper can be found at githias’ blog.

If you enter a different word, you’ll get this one below instead

© Marvellous Entertainment / Altus USA

For more Luminous Arc wallpapers, check out the official UK site (7 wallpapers) and the official Japanese site (13 wallpapers - look under Special and click the orange button).

© Marvellous Entertainment / Rising Star Games Ltd

Some of the UK wallpapers above.

© Marvellous Interactive

A selection of the Japanese wallpapers.

Download Luminous Arc wallpapers from the official Luminous Arc websites for the US (under Extras > Wallpapers), UK and Japan.

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Magna Carta (Korean RPG) Wallpapers
Korean MMORPG Wallpapers (I) - Soul of the Ultimate Nation
Orchestral Score, Wallpapers & More from Blue Dragon Fansite Kit
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Dan LuVisi’s stunning portrait of an unmasked Predator first caught my eye in Issue 7 of Artzmania. This artwork is part of his BLACK series in his deviantART gallery in which he paints portraits of some of the most recognisable faces from movies.

© Dan LuVisi

The Predator is just one of the three works related to the Aliens vs Predator universe - the other two being a Alien Warrior and a grim Colonial Marine - I just love the glistening carapace and salivating jaws of the Alien Warrior

© Dan LuVisi

Since then, he has gone on to paint the three major characters of the recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight for his BLACK series, two of them being the Caped Crusader himself and his arch-nemesis The Joker (below)

© Dan LuVisi

There’s other movie characters in his gallery, of the charmingly eccentric Captain Sparrow and of King Kong locked in mortal combat with a ferocious V-Rex. There’s tutorials for this particular piece if you’re interested in the techniques used in creating this piece.

© Dan LuVisi

Gamers aren’t left out either - there’s Master Chief from Halo as well as Army of Two and Crysis art amongst others in his deviantART gallery.

© Dan LuVisi

Now if you’re thinking that Dan LuVisi only does portraits of characters from popular culture, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by his original pieces like this oddly attractive shark-headed humanoid - I’m still trying to figure out where the tentacles come from

© Dan LuVisi

Or this lopsided fight between a heroic knight and a massive dragon/T-Rex hybrid.

© Dan LuVisi

Check out Dan LuVisi’s deviantART gallery and view the above pieces in their full resolution. Don’t forget to visit his blog too - there’s a cool warrior panda concept exclusive to the blog

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Cubee Craft - Marshmallow Man, Master Chief, Imperial Stormtrooper Paper Toys
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A cross between an exploratory dungeon romp and a card based tactical game (tactical isn’t exactly the correct choice of word since combat is conspiciously missing), Casey Sillito aka MrFalcon’s Loot places you in the shoes of an adventurer on a treasure hunt in a deserted underground crypt.

Unfortunately, while the crypt you’re in is strangely devoid of monsters, each level is littered with devious traps to deter greedy adventurers like you.

Each turn as your adventurer enters a previously unexplored tile, he has a chance to recover bags of coins or other valuable loot (hence the title) or encounter a trap which will deduct a point of health (your adventurer has a maximum of 3 health). Traps are always active on both explored and unexplored tiles so make a mental note of where each trap is. Mapping out each level is important since you’ll have to carry your treasure back out of the dungeon for your score to count.

Occasionally instead of loot, your adventurer may come across useful items represented as cards which can played on the spot (e.g healing potions) or stored for later use (e.g disarm trap scrolls) which help offset the strong luck-based element prevalent in this game. Up to six cards can be kept on hand at any time so forget any idea of attempting to hoard a whole truckload of healing potions

Each successive level holds more valuable treasure in larger quantities and even more traps but will you survive and bring the loot back to the surface?

While the current version is addictive enough, I would love to see an RPGish like system in Loot where your adventurer could actually increase his chances of spotting, avoiding or disarming traps upon levelling up (or entering a lower level) which would make the downward journey much more attractive (besides you would think that an adventurer would learn after falling into the same pit trap several times )

Download Loot at YoYo Games, YoyoGames Forum or fullgames.sk (older version) where I found this.

UPDATE (03 Sep 2008) : The final version of Loot with improved graphics has been posted at the YoYo Games page above. Download from the YoYo Games Forum link if you’re experiencing issues with the main Yoyo Games site. Many thanks to Casey for informing me about the release of the completed version.

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Monster’s Den - My Favourite Flash RPG
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Featured the neon pink wallpapers of Metal Gear AC!D on Wednesday, now here’s a look at the concept for the two PSP games in the Metal Gear AC!D series. And yes, a portion of the concepts continue the artists’ fascination with gaudy pink

Some concepts for the first game.

© Konami

Being a fan (not a die-hard fanatic yet) of the Metal Gear series who has been tracking scouring the official sites for concept art and such for quite a long time, I’m positively sure that this is the only official gamesite for the Metal Gear series that actually provide a look into the concepts for the various characters that inhabit the Metal Gear universe.

© Konami

Snake and the soldiers on both sides of any conflict within the Metal Gear series are always decked in cool-looking body armour and the Metal Gear AC!D series is no exception.

© Konami

And it appears that the Metal Gears with bionic humanoid legs in Metal Gear Solid 4 might have first appeared in Metal Gear AC!D too …

Some Metal Gear AC!D 2 artwork.

© Konami

Concepts of some fantastic looking characters - bosses probably. I haven’t seen any game who has a Pickelhaube-wearing character as a good guy before.

© Konami

More character profiles from Metal Gear AC!D 2.

© Konami

Check out the entire Metal Gear AC!D concept art gallery (over 80 images in total).

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Konami Games Wallpapers
Metal Gear Solid 4 - Guns of the Patriots
C-Dogs SDL - Tactical Action Game