Space Giraffe video will melt your brain

by Richard Mitchell { Oct 16th 2006 at 4:30PM }

Jeff Minter, the demented genius behind the 360's audio visualizer, is still busy with his next creation, Space Giraffe, for Xbox Live Arcade. Just to prove it, he released a video of the game in action. Bizarre doesn't even begin to describe it. Somewhere beneath the psychedelic lights and trippy music, is a basic shooter. The player slides left and right on rails as "enemies" slowly creep toward the foreground. Everything else is anything but basic. The enemies explode, lights go off everywhere, and weird little phrases pop up ("Ouch, my polygons!"). The end of level messages mimic the poorly translated games of yore: "Congraturation! You success!" Old school gaming veterans will also recognize plenty of nostalgic sound effects. It really defies description so we can only thank our lucky stars that there's a video. Hit the read link to check it out. You can also watch an earlier work in progress video -- set to one of Aphex Twin's (marginally) less disturbing songs -- after the break (song lyrics NSFW).

Tags: aphex twin, AphexTwin, jeff minter, JeffMinter, space giraffe, SpaceGiraffe

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Mike @ Oct 16th 2006 4:39PM

wow that looks like a terrible game. It looks as if the game is being made only to be enjoyable to people who are high.

ruiner @ Oct 16th 2006 4:43PM

if Syd Barrett made video games...

aragorn @ Oct 16th 2006 4:43PM

I am really loving those in this day and age that are embrassing the "new age retro" approach to gaming. Sure there are only a few examples of this nowadays, but they've been spectactular. I still play geometry wars to this day, and I feel that it very well may outlive my current 360 collection.

Rez is another great example of this. did anyone notice that the last stage of that game was a tribute to the game 'centerpied?

jbc @ Oct 16th 2006 4:48PM

umm, not to sound like a nay sayer against Jeff Minter's creativity, but i wish he would make something original. i have this game for my atari jaguar, except it's called tempest 2000 and it doesn't have quite as much blur effect. i mean really, even some of the maps look the same in the video. of course i love that game too so a trippy update might be worth it.

J.Goodwin @ Oct 16th 2006 5:05PM

Mike, check out Gridrunner++, and Tempest 2 or 3k.

Minter is an underappreciated genius.

xbox360dspsp @ Oct 16th 2006 5:09PM

As with many a Minter project, it looks like it will rock. I wore out joysticks playing Llamatron on the Amiga.

Deano @ Oct 16th 2006 7:37PM

He still needs to tone the visual overload down and show us that we are actually playing Tempest. One thing I liked about Tempest 2k on the Jag was the chillout flying through rings sections. I would love to see that brought back.

The audio is very, very good, though that Star Wars sounding sample needs to go. It is possible that alot of the samples won't make it into the final game anyway.