messhof and cactus would like your brain to dance

By: Derek Yu

On: August 12th, 2008

I’m making this 3d motorcycle racing game with Cactus. We don’t have a name for it yet, but it’s looking pretty cool. It has a two player mode, split screen as well as online. The music in the trailer is John Marwin. –messhof

(Source: Tim, via the IndieGames.com blog)

Posted in Community, Previews, Videos | Tags: cactus, messhof

ChrisL

hooOHLY CRAP! I gotta say that looks like all sorts of keyboard smashing fun. I’ve been itching to play F-Zero lately but I sold my Gamecube. This looks like it could easy my pain nicely.
Günter

I am having a seizure as I type this.
Cactuswhydontyoucallme?

I’m making this pacman-supermario mashup with cactus. Only he doesn’t know it yet.
Well actually he pretends not to know we are working on this project, but I know he noticed me when I come under his window every night with my laptop.

But it’s our little love secret.

HEY Cactus, stop drinking too much soda, you’re becoming fat. You need to remain slim and take care of your skin sweetheart, it’s very precious and I’ll need it.
undertech

Skyroads on LSD!
IndieJoJo

Battletoads on LSD.

This project is the stuff of nightmares.
ChevyRay

I imagine that if I ever did make it to the end of a rainbow, a Cactus/Messhof collaboration is exactly what I’d find.
Foppy

That tunnel part of Starwing on LSD ;)
Bad Sector

I’ve seen a similar game in Flash a year ago, although the pace was slower. I was thinking to make something like this as a webgame in Java, but unfortunately i figured out that people disliked Java webgames and went to learn Flash (haXe) instead. I forgot about this since then.
HyBrIdEnS

Only thing this game needs is randomized tracks.
Toasty Mofo

That’s exactly what I’d expect from a messhof/cactus collab. Multiplayer sounds awesome. lofi epileptic repellant ftw.
cougarten

MOARZ!
Diogo Ribeiro

The goggles, they do nothing!

Now, there is some epileptic-inducing racing project. Let’s see how that turns out.
w

color slide
http://www.0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

Night Drive ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Driver ) on LSD anyone?
http://counthigh.com Adam R. Box

Cool. I always wanted to play through the end scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
lumpi

Starwing/Starfox at 2x the speed. Well, 1.5 times…
http://ptoing.blogspot.com ptoing

This looks nice. Me like.
n

awesomesauce!
Optrirominiluikus

cool bananas
Trotim

This actually looks pretty lame… no obstacles?
Madnis

The colored squares… they hurt me. Perhaps I shall drive as if to avoid them. Yes… yes… this shall be my path to victory!

OBSTACLES
NHP

seisure waiting to happen
Deedee

My brain doesn’t like that music :(
corpus

Trotim, can you really not see the obstacles?

They’re not exactly well-hidden.
gsoto

BATTLETOADS!!!!!
Cheater

Battletoads: Seizure – Now in glorious 3D!
http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

you come all up on an obstacle:
1, fight it
2, talk to it,
3, jump it,
http://silverspaceship.com SeanB

Compare to the level warp sections of 1983’s Encounter — 2:21 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sd4ujPJKQ8
Snow

It’s so seizure-inducingly mesmerizing and hypnotic… yes master, I will do your evil bidding.. after I finish the next track. When can my brain dance? :)
falsion

looks, uh.. cool I guess (although you can’t really tell much from the video). but i don’t understand, why is cactus always hyped so much?
ShockHorror

Because he “rebels” by making “experimental” games :P Something the tigsource community seem to love, lol. Personally they don’t excite me in the slightest =(
Derek

Hehe, sorry, guys… what can I say other than that I love what cactus is doing. I wish you could see what’s exciting about his games and what someone like him represents for the community at large, because I do believe that it is important.

Of course, I feel similarly about guys like messhof, Jesse Venbrux, Tarn Adams, etc.
Quetz

I, for one, support our cactus overlord.
Unimportant Person

Agrees with ^^.
falsion

lets rename this site cactussource, sounds appropriate to me.
Derek

Sigh.
Bad Sector

Cmon guys, experimental games rule. They set the base for other games :-). I really like them and i feature a few of them in my column in a greek gaming magazine every two or three months so more people can learn them.

However if there was something i would love to see in TIGs is more games which are not made at 160×100 resolution and 2bit sounds. TECNO-BASE for example is a one-man miracle from both technical and gameplay view (i’ve reviewed mainsteam FPS games and many of them have less polished gameplay than TECNO-BASE).
Rolf

The more people love something, the more haters you get.
That’s just the way of things.
Snow

Some of you guys are not understanding. The thing about Cactus is that he strips down concepts to their core essentials. Then he adds elements that – minimal as they are, disturb, unbalance, alter your sense of space/atmosphere. This motorcycle game has the element of the flashing squares for instance. It makes me think of one of those bizarre, flashing seizure-inducing early 80’s video games that would be shown in a science fiction movie. You know, they had similar movies in the 60’s too, where the protagonist was in a virtual world – but it was still life and death. If he/she crashed or got killed in the world, they really died.

It really sets you off and makes your pace faster. I dunno, I guess I’m using obscure examples. The motorcycle also feels like the final lap in a mario kart game – where the music speeds up, when that happens, it heightens your tension. It seems as if the race just got faster in that final lap – but that’s just the psychological effect of the music.
http://toadsanime.deviantart.com Toadsanime

I’m all for agreeing to the comment assuming that this game resembles Skyroads.
I’m strangely surprised about the bad comments this trailer has already received from people. The only bad thing isn’t that they’re flashing objects, but rather that we weren’t warned about it in that article.

As for the game, I couldn’t help but sit and shiver as I watched the trailer. That may sound like an act of cringing, but it’s actually rather an act of excitement. This game really does look pretty neat; and despite some people’s perceptions, unique.
Dord

You guys would do well at the Tate Modern in London. Shit on the floor and call it art.
juice

Mmm – I’ve not played Skyroads – and looking at the official website, it looks a bit too modern. To me this new effort reminds me of 3D Deathchase (ZX Spectrum) crossed with Trailblazer (C64/Amiga) and with the garishness of Blaster (Arcade – Robotron sequel) sprinkled on top. Any which way, it’s a good pedigree :)

Looking forward to seeing this on my PC!
No

When the hell is this coming out, it’s been three years!