Why you need to visit Game Over/Continue
We’ve posted about Game Over/Continue? — a group art show paying homage to “the massive influence and continuous evolution of video games” — several times already, but now that the exhibit is open and that I’ve seen it with my own appreciative eyes, I’ll remind you again to stop by the gallery at Giant Robot if you’re in town.
In fact, I’ve outlined four things you can look forward to, should you attend the San Francisco show.
1. Classy game art:
The work featured at Game Over/Continue? represents a “wide assortment of styles and genres provided by top artists in the fields of illustration, painting, sewing, and indie comics” — unfortunately, my camera did not do a good job documenting this. The Ico art above is only a fraction of a much larger piece that you really need to see!
2. Playful game art:
My camera corrupted this re-imagined Super Mario Bros. 2 ending, but I’m posting it anyway because the photo still looks cool. Note that the playful and classy pieces aren’t mutually exclusive; I just want to warn potential visitors that you may encounter an image depicting an oral sex situation between Mario and Q*bert.
3. Game art that I bought
This is part of a three-piece collection created by a former Nintendo tester. According to legend, the series depicts several Virtual Boy games that were never released (possibly using forgotten art assets for the work?). Its 3D origins are accentuated in the pieces with a layered presentation emulating the VB’s parallax.
I didn’t purchase this particular one, but it was my only photo from the set that didn’t come out too blurry.
4. Art games
The ARTXGAME portion of the show presented four new video games created jointly by artists and indepedent game developers. The clip above is from Derek Yu and Hellen Jo’s strange brawler, which is titled Hellen & Calvin’s Bogus Journey, according to Electric Ant. ARTXGAME organizer Adam Robezzoli tried to explain the title to me, but I was too busy trying to come up with ways to steal his Attractmo.de shirt.
The only game I tried out myself was Octopounce by Saelee Oh and Sarah Anna “Auntie Pixelante” Anthropy. My wife and I enjoyed it a bunch — I’m hoping to write up a preview for it later once someone posts more photos of the game online, as I didn’t take any decent shots of it.
The show runs until April 15th, so there’s still time for you to head over there! If anything, you should visit Giant Robot just to see all the great shirts, books, and people they have over there.
Huge thanks to Giant Robot owner/publisher Eric Nakamura and Adam Robezzoli for giving my wife and I a personal tour of the exhibit — it was definitely one of the best highlights of our San Francisco trip last week.
tags / game over / octopounce / auntie pixelante / ico / artxgame / virtual boy / art / giant robot / ec
