Okay, two of these in a row is weird, but could still be considered coincidence. After three, though? Selling shirts that are Mario-themed takes on specific artistic movements is now certifiably a thing.

This month’s contender is another Threadless tee, this time submitted by Brock Davis (the guy responsible for this Mario Kart-themed business).

You can purchase Arcade Expressionism here, but be quick – Threadless is in the throes of a 10-year-anniversary sale, meaning every shirt is marked down to $10. Meaning they’re selling like hotcakes.

Taking one of gaming’s most iconic opening levels and minimizing it down to a few expressionistic brushstrokes? That’s pretty good. Hopefully it can stand up to whatever oddly specific shirt April brings us.

Scrap Metal attempts to combine car racing and combat into something as delicious as chocolate and peanut butter. But does this title satisfy? …I totally just made myself hungry.

This episode has nothing to do with Infectonator: World Dominator.

RADAR: Scrap Metal Review

XBLA, Car Combat, Slick Entertainment, $15.00

Car combat, man! Who doesn’t love car combat? And Super Off Road! We like that, too, yeah? RC Pro AM? We’re into it? Great – so here’s Scrap Metal, an XBLA “Block Party” title that mashes them all up together into one game. I’d call it total “Carmegeddon,” if there hadn’t already been a shitty title called Carmegeddon. Maybe “Cargasm?” Well, we’ll save the superlatives until we actually analyze the game.

Squarespace is a publishing system for anyone looking to build a blog, portfolio or any kind of website

Here is a blog post about the importer: http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/2009/9/7/release-the-new-blog-importer.html

Free Indie Countdown

#3: Air Pressure – Windows/Mac/Linux, Visual Novel, Bento Smile – LINK

#2: Redder – Flash, Platformer, Anna Anthropy – LINK

#1: Home Sheep Home – Flash, Puzzle Platformer, Aardman – LINK

Feedback: Worst Franchises Ever

Some games shouldn’t be made. And some shouldn’t have sequels. Last week we asked what the worst game franchise of all time was, and you gave some surprising answers.

Next week’s Feedback question: Winter’s over! What game makes you think of Spring? You know, sunshine, happiness, etc. Weigh in with a video or audio comment on www.Bytejacker.com, a video response on YouTube, or a message on our hotline: (530) 675-GAME

If you want to make an impact online, GoDaddy.com has what you need. DOT COM names as low as $1.99. Plus, world-class hosting, fast-&-easy Web site builders and much more. Check out Revision3.com/GoDaddy for a list of all of the amazing GoDaddy deals from Revision3.

Free Indie Rapid Fire

Hippolyta – Flash, Arcade, Evil-Dog – LINK

Sushi Cat – Flash, Arcade, JoeyBetz – LINK

Windhawk – Flash, Shooter, Tony – LINK

This Week’s Music:

Alex Mauer, “Law of Cosines,” “Snipes,” Vegavox 2: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2009/05/vegavox-2

C-Jeff, “Electric, Part 3,” Electric: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2009/08/c-jeff-electric

Stalking People is Fun!

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Next weekend, PAX East debuts in Boston, which is exciting for about fifty different reasons. One of them is the Boston Indie Showcase, displaying a half-dozen indie titles local to the Boston area on the show floor. The coolest part? The showcase exists specifically to support indie start-ups who usually can’t afford booth space – meaning all these games will be exhibited free of charge to their creators.

The six games are:

• Slam Bolt Scrappers (Fire Hose Games) – “A unique combination of engaging in building challenges while fighting off wacky, cartoon baddies in a beat ‘em up brawler”

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Dejobaan Games) – “Jump off buildings floating above Boston performing stunts and making split-second decisions as you weave around buildings to score points.”
• Dearth (MIT Gambit Game Lab) – “Save the Tribal Lands from monsters and drought playing as a great shaman in this exciting co-operative action-puzzler.”

• Waker (MIT Gambit Game Lab) – “Players are challenged to use both mind and reflexes to solve puzzles, creating platforms to form a path in this puzzle/platform game set in the world of a child’s broken dream.”

• Turba (Keith Morgado) – “A puzzle game where each song played will generate unique game boards on which players much create combos of 3 or more of the same color.”

• Miegakure (Marc ten Bosch) – “A platform game where you explore the fourth dimension to solve puzzles.”

Congrats to all the winners!

The 8-Bit Alliance tour is currently in full swing, and luckily, it stopped off in my hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It was every bit as awesome as you’d expect.

At the last minute (and per Bytejacker reader siriusn’s request), I was able to snag a sweaty, frantic post-show interview with Anamanaguchi frontman Peter Berkman, wherein we discussed which of their songs will be coming to Rock Band Network later this year, whether vocals are in the band’s future, and…favorite American flag color. This is a weird one, you guys.

In case you’re wondering who the cameragirl / guest interviewer is, that’s Caroline Martin, probably best-known for her video on Vimeo of her dancing to Anamanaguchi’s “Blackout City” (hence the high-five upon the Rock Band reveal). Anamanaguchi has seen the video, too, because at the beginning of the show, Pete recognized her and asked her to dance on stage while they played one of their new songs. This actually happened.

Lastly, here are a handful of pictures from the night’s festivities, in case you weren’t jealous enough:

There were a lot of really neat games showcased at Gamma IV last week that those of us who weren’t there knew next to nothing about. 4FOURTHS was one of those games; all that was really known was that it was a 4-player co-op…something. Luckily, an absolutely jaw-dropping trailer was recently released, and it clears things up. Kind of. Just watch:

Especially neat is a subtle effect that occurs at one point when you watch the trailer on the game’s official site. We’re kind of suckers for cool little things like that.

(via)

Ed McMillen posted this great portrait of the indie devs from this year’s Game Developers Conference on his Facebook. Can you spot all your favorite dev heroes?

That's a lot of geek power in one place, y'all. Click for the big.

Here’s a full rundown of the included peeps. Can you match ‘em up?

Erin Robinson, Matthew Wegner, Adam Saltsman, Alex Austin, Phil Fish, Danny Baranowsky, Dan Paladin, Jonatan Söderström, Petri Purho, Alec Holowka, Derek Yu, Mark Essen, Tom Fulp, Ed McMillen, Dan Tabár, Tyler Glaiel , Tommy Refenes, Kyle Pulver, Ron Carmel, Jenova Chen, Jonathan Mak, Daniel Benmergui, Mare Sheppard, Tyrone Rodriguez, David Hellman, Alex Neuse

It’s like they’re Beanie Babies now or something. Collect ‘em all!

The IGF Awards at GDC just wrapped up, and man were they something. From Andy Schatz’s excellent acceptance speech(es!) for Monaco to host Erin Robinson saying “As we all know, the bigger your pixels are, the more indie your game is”, tonight’s ceremony was full of genuinely funny, cool moments.

We’ll have the full list of results for you later on tonight, but the Seamus McNally Grand Prize (you know, the big one) went to Monaco! Creator Andy Schatz gave a rousing and humorous speech, where he graciously accepted the award while thanking a long list of people (including EA Spouse, a name we haven’t thought about in years).

Congrats to all the nominees and winners!

We’re coming to you on the road to GDC 2010, the biggest gaming event of the year! We’ve also got a review of the latest entry into Capcom’s venerable Mega Man franchise.

RADAR: Mega Man 10 Review

Capcom, Platformer, WiiWare, $10

Mega Man 10 is here, and it looks like… Mega Man 9. This retro-inspired entry goes a couple steps farther than it’s predecessor with new challenge modes and the ability to play as Proto Man right from the start – but is it enough to warrant another purchase?

If you want to make an impact online, GoDaddy.com has what you need. . COM names as low as $1.99. Plus, world-class hosting, fast-&-easy Web site builders and much more. Check out Revision3.com/GoDaddy for a list of all of the amazing GoDaddy deals from Revision3.

Free Indie Countdown

#3 – Dreamside Maroon – Windows, Some Vine-Growing Thing, Terraced – LINK

#2 – Puddle – Windows, Platformer, Puddle Team – LINK

#1 – Devil’s Tuning Fork – Windows, First Person Platformer, DePaul Game Elites – LINK

Feedback: Best Franchise Ever

What’s the best game series ever? We asked you last week, and you came out (some of you in costume) to share your opinion. Oh, you guys.

Next week’s Feedback question: What’s the WORST game franchise ever? Weigh in with a video or audio comment on www.Bytejacker.com, a video response on YouTube, or a message on our hotline: (530) 675-GAME

GameFly is the largest online video game rental service and offers you a choice from over 7,000 new and classic titles across all consoles and handhelds. With plans starting at $15.95 a month, GameFly members can rent one to four games at a time and keep them for as long as they like. There are no late fees, no due dates and shipping is always free. Once youÕre done playing a game, send it back and GameFly will send you the next available game on your list. If you really like the game youÕre playing, simply click Ņkeep itÓ on the GameFly website and the game is yours, at a discounted price. GameFly will even mail you the case and manuals free of charge!

Bytejacker fans get a 15-day FREE Trial when they go to www.GameFly.com/byte and sign up NOW. Be sure to use this URL so that they know we sent you!

Free Indie Rapid Fire

Air Pressure – Windows/Mac/Linux, Visual Novel, Bento Smile – LINK

Home Sheep Home – Flash, Puzzle Platformer, Aardman – LINK

Redder – Flash, Platformer, Anna Anthropy – Redder – Flash, Platformer, Anna Anthropy – LINK

This Week’s Music:

Chromelodeon, “Aluminum,” “Higgeldy Piggeldy,” and “Triangular,” The Final Recordings: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2008/04/the-final-recordings

Spiny Norman, “Give us the green light,” Magnetic Sumo: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2010/02/compilation-magnetic-sumo

Stalking People is Fun!

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Sadly, Bytejacker couldn’t make it to GDC this year (more on that this Thursday). Apparently, though, everyone else on the planet was, resulting in a massive influx in game news, both of the downloadable and indie variety. And hey, that’s totally our thing, man. So here’s a list of the relevant GDC stories from the past 24 hours – filtered through the Bytejacker indieloadable lens.

Tomorrow Corporation reveals their existence to the world - Today, a new indie studio emerged – one consisting of Kyle Gabler of 2D Boy, EGP co-founder Allan Blomquist, and Kyle Gray (of Henry Hatsworth fame). They haven’t announced any games yet, but if I know indie game development studios, it’s safe to say they will eventually.

Joe Danger is coming to PSN exclusively (at first) - Hello Games sent out a press release today announcing that Joe Danger will be coming as a “console exclusive” to Playstation Network this spring! This means two things: firstly, that the wait to play Joe Danger is soon approaching, and secondly, that all those videos of the game being played with an Xbox 360 pad did mean absolutely nothing after all!

Or did they? A Hello Games spokesperson (presumably “spokesperson” here means “one of the four dudes that Hello Games consists of” told Joystiq that this announcement doesn’t mean Joe Danger will never be seen on any other consoles. So just chill out! Jeez, guys.

Battlestar gets an MMO – and it probably isn’t what you expect - The pretty much invitable Battlestar Galactica MMO is now official – and actually kind of surprising. Unlike the Star Wars Galaxies and Star Trek Onlines of the world, this is gonna be a browser-based Unity joint. While no pay system has been announced yet, the game will be brought to us by Bigpoint, a developer notorious for those newfangled free-to-play MMOs that are so big on the internet these days. Pretty curious to see how this pans out.

Twitter games dominate - This is yet another piece of half-shocking, half-inevitable news: people obviously love Twitter, and apparently, more than a few developer types see that as an angle for a game. Fully relevant to this week’s events is BackChatter, the self-described “massively multiplayer GDC game” . It works like this: users can go to BackChatter.com and predict the three words they expect to trend the most in GDC-related tweets.

On the other end of the spectrum, the not-actually-at-GDC-but-just-released Tweet Defense for iPhone offers a much more tacit alternative to Twitter integration into your gameplay. Your Twitter stats factor gently into the otherwise-standard tower defense gameplay by netting you bonuses – followers equate range, tweets grant you damage bonuses, etc. Check it out for its special 99c introductory price here.

Phew! Obviously, this isn’t everything that got announced on day one of GDC, but these are some of the things we figured you guys might dig. Did we miss any big ones? Let us know in the comments!

GDC doesn’t technically start until tomorrow, but Derek Yu decided to kick things off early by posting a few minutes ago the first-ever screenshots from Spelunky’s Xbox Live Arcade release! Waagh!!

Check them out below:

Pretty dramatic departure from the pixel art graphics of the original Spelunky, don’t you think?