Last updated: Monday, January 5, 2009

As interesting articles are posted about the game (previews, reviews, etc) We’ll stick them in here.

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January 2009

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Kotaku’s Brian Crecente really enjoyed Mushroom Men and includes it in his list of the best games of the year with a very encouraging little blurb.

Mushroom Men: Spore Wars was the most fun I’ve had on the Wii in months. It offered a funny little story, interesting character design and amazing art and sound, all while still feeling very this generation. Spore Wars is a must have for any Wii gamer bemoaning the lack of traditional games on the platform.

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PeteDorr includes Mushroom Men on his list of the best Wii-exclusive titles of the year.

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Marc Normandin at Blast Magazine had a great time playing Mushroom Men.

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Derek at Infendo didn’t start playing Mushroom Men until after the holidays, but his review is forthcoming, and he likes what he’s seen so far.

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December 2008

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GamesRadar liked the look and sound of Mushroom Men but thought the gameplay was typical of the platformer genre.

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Diehard Gamefan has posted their musings on the DS version of Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi.

… players willing to dig a little deeper will find a challenging action game with far more depth then the usual fare.

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From their inclusion of Mushroom Men in their consideration for Game of the Year, it’s was already obvious that Kotaku enjoyed Mushroom Men. See what they liked and what they hated about the game in their official review.

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In their Game of the Year considerations, Kotaku has zeroed in on Mushroom Men for its exceptional Art and Sound.

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GameShark posted a generally positive review of Mushroom Men.

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TWGNintendo features an article about the top ten games they want to see sequels for. Among those games mentioned: Mushroom Men.

… the game is fun, flavorful, and a great addition to any pizza night.

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Associated Content reviewed Mushroom Men.

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KyleMitchell at BrightHub enjoyed Mushroom Men.

This is one adventure that’s definitely worth your time.

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USA Today posted a very positive review of Mushroom Men.

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Gamespy’s review of Mushroom Men for the Wii is quite positive.

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Frank Teran spoke at length with Katrina at Mixed Bag Musing about the birth and development of Mushroom Men.

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Louis Bedigian at GameZone has nice things to say about Mushroom Men. He ranks us at a 7.6 out of 10, about the same as most other reviews.

GoNintendo points out one of the best lines from the review.

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Mushroom Men is showing up in various lists on Amazon.com today. It’s the number 2 Party/Adventure game and number 8 overall in hot new releases. And the customer reviews speak for themselves.

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We love to hear what the true fans think about the game.

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We’re honored to be selected as ScrewAttack as their Pick of the Week last week.

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Mushroom Men is causing a stir over at GameRankings today. The first few reviews are in, and except for the negative reviews from GameInformer and 1UP dropping the overall average score, the critics are enjoying the game. So far, half of the reviews are in the 80% range. My fingers are crossed that more reviewers agree.

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Jonathan Marx at Cheat Code Central wrote a fantastic review of Mushroom Men. It’s great to see when people recognize that the strength of the limited combat system in our action/platformer game comes not from excessive waggle (the 21st century’s button-mash) but from well-timed flicks of Pax’s weapons to perform deliberate attacks at the perfect moment.

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NRevolution hates mushrooms but they enjoyed Mushroom Men.

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There’s a very positive review about Mushroom Men at EverHype.

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IGN reviewer Daemon Hatfield has a lot of nice things to say about Mushroom Men for the Wii. He obviously gave the game his full attention and evaluated it fairly.

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Katrina at Mixed Bag Musing offers a fresh, honest evaluation of Mushroom Men. Her article is extensive and detailed, unlike some “professional” review sites I won’t mention here.

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Tondog over at RFGenerations runs through a list of the few new games that came out last week, including Mushroom Men. He speaks highly of the obvious potential at having Les Claypools awesome tracks weaved into the foundation of the play experience.

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Hear straight from the non-jaded consumer’s mouth what they think about Mushroom Men, no platform or publisher bias included. NeoGAF also has a lively thread running.

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Gametrailers is holsting the latest behind-the-scenes look into the concept art and resulting game assets for Mushroom Men.

Other sites like GamingToday also feature the video with their own unique take on the work.

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There are always people skeptical about new characters entering the Nintendo platforming pantheon. Some people aren’t even fans of the genre in the first place. But the stunning visuals and quirky music in Mushroom Men have been enough to attract everyone’s attention.

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Wiifanboy points out the wild discrepancies in the four online reviews of Mushroom Men posted so far. We’ve always seen a lot of support from the authors and readers of Wiifanboy.

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Official word from SouthPeak Interactive: They’ve shipped Mushroom Men! Go buy a copy!

Some of our favorite blog sites carried the news as well. As always, thanks for your support guys!

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Mushroom Men is included in The Review Digest’s Holiday Video Game Wishlist.

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Dave Halverson at Play Magazine enjoyed Mushroom Men.

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MTV Multiplayer rates the box art for Mushroom Men and other new releases.

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Mushroom Men shows up on some people’s Christmas wishlists, such as TGR’s Aaron.

The last few screenshots before Mushroom Men’s US release went out today. Several sites carried them.

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I think I missed this when it first posted last month. Destructoid did a very nice preview of Mushroom Men.

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November 2008

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The Austin Chronicle ran a pair of features about Red Fly Studio and our on-site audio crew, Gl33k.

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The latest Art of Mushroom Men video features the Bad Guys, Amanita and Lepiota Mushroom Men. See it on GameTrailers.

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The Los Angeles Video Game Examiner has Mushroom Men listed in the “Best games for the holidays” section.

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Catchy article title at That Videogame Blog. Sounds like they have high hopes for Mushroom Men!

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GameTrailers has two exclusive videos up today. One is a brief little teaser, and the other is a behind-the-scenes “Art of Mushroom Men” feature.

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/gamer reminds everyone that Mushroom Men is one of the few remaining platformer games for the Wii.

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Wiifanboy reports on the last batch of Mushroom Men weapons, focusing on the “Radical” category.

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The Examiner includes Mushroom Men in a list of 5 games not to overlook this holiday season. In a similar vein, GamerTell encourages people to not let either the Wii or DS version of Mushroom Men slip under the radar.

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Word has hit the streets that Mushroom Men for the Wii and DS have been delayed a few weeks. Shack news reported that along with some pretty new screencaps and Matt Piersall’s audio developer diary.

Personally, I like Marco Halili’s take on it at Kombo.com:

…it will give multi-console owners like myself ample time to plow through some bigger releases like LittleBigPlanet, Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2.

That’s an excellent point!

Chelsea Thompson at Ripten raved about Matt’s description of the audio in Mushroom Men. It sounds like the audio reached into her brain when she had a hands-on session with the game but didn’t immediately register as something out of the ordinary. Matt always says that the best audio goes unnoticed. Bad audio sticks out and jars the players ears while the absence of audio leaves a gap that most people register subconsciously without necessarily understanding why. But good audio simply fills that niche in the player’s mind and makes the entire experience more complete. From Chelsea’s description, the latter holds true for Mushroom Men.

Wiifanboy needs to check their calendar. Technically, we’re still shipping in the fall. I refer back to Kombo’s post: Use the spare time we’re giving you to get through Fallout 3 and Fable 2. Then, you’ll be ready for a brand-new experience on the Wii when Mushroom Men hits the shelves. You won’t be disappointed.

DSFanboy talks about the matching delay for the DS version, as well.

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They sound a bit skeptical, but we’re sure once Chris, Jinny and Ross at the Weekly Geek Podcast get their hands on Mushroom Men, they’ll enjoy it. They talk about Mushroom Men (focusing on the metronome and music) at about the 22 minute mark.

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DS Fanboy posted their final glimpse at the weapons that can be built in Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi.

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The fifth Mushroom Men Developer Diary for Videogamer.com features Gl33k’s front-man Matt Piersall, describing all the nitty gritty details of the unique audioscape for the game.

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As you can see in the comments below this article on WiiFanboy, I discuss the use of minigames in Mushroom Men’s Gallery level as a little playscape to provide activity while listening to the Les Claypool tracks on the jukebox.

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The final True Game Headz interview with James Clarendon features one of the later levels in the game.

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October 2008

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I seriously never expected to paste the NPR logo into one of these blog entries, but a feature about independent gaming ran on All Things Considered, so here we are.

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MTV focuses on the expansive underlying musical influence of Les Claypool and the game’s 120 bpm soundtrack that infuses the entire gameplay experience of Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.

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Today’s post on True Game Headz steps away from showing gameplay footage and instead delves into designer James Clarendon’s head to get a sense for where all this wackiness came from.

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WiiFanboy posted a new batch of screenshots highlighting some of the bizarre weapon combinations available in Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. My personal favorite (not just because it’s the most powerful) is the one in which Pax suspends a marble in front of a laser pointer on a twisted paper clip. The marble focuses the beam of light, creating a “laser sword” of sorts.

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Fawlcon_Pawnch, our new favorite poster at the Gamespot forums, showed some love yesterday by starting a splendid thread about Mushroom Men to stir things up.

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Chelsea Thompson posted the Spore Wars Boss Fight press release at Ripten and added her own spin from her hands-on experience with the game.

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The latest episode of True Game Headz’ series of video interviews with James Clarendon is up now. He’d advanced on to the Morel Airship level. In the process, he shows how a second player can pick up a Wii Remote and join in the fun. This sequence also features a retro-themed side-scrolling section of gameplay.

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MTV Multiplayer has been following Mushroom Men’s development pretty fervently. It helps that mega star Les Claypool provided music for the game. In this brief interview, MTV explains how everything came together just right for Les to work with us.

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In an insightful article on MTV Multiplayer, Tracey John explores the current trend in games to step away from the traditional Game Over screens. One example of such a game is Mushroom Men. It’s so awesome to see articles written about the videogame industry using our game as a point of reference!

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True Game Headz continues to post their series of video interviews with James Clarendon. Today’s video shows some additional powers and a mini-boss fight.

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Interactions Design Lead James Clarendon delves deeper into the guts of Mushroom Men, this time focusing on boss fights and other special interactions in the fourth Developer Diary for Videogamer.com

He also showed Mushroom Men to the guys at True Game Headz. The first entry in what will become a series of live play-throughs focuses on the game’s introduction and tutorial level.

Wiifanboy posted the True Game Headz developer walkthrough video with their own enthusiastic feedback and several links to previous articles that further reinforce the demo James gave.

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More images and descriptions of Mushroom Men DS hit the web today. JC Fletcher at DSFanboy shows some shots of the remarkable scav system in Rise of the Fungi. Due to the more RPG-like, systemic nature of the enemies and gameplay in the DS version of the game, the scav system for the handheld goes a step beyond the Wii version, allowing for hundreds of combinations and employing elemental strengths and weaknesses in every incremental upgrade.

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Interactions Design Lead James Clarendon delves into some of the core mechanics of gameplay including Camera, hero death and the influences of old-school games on the design of Mushroom Men in the third Developer Diary for Videogamer.com

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Kombo.com asked us some questions about Mushroom Men.

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Mike “Two Tone” McConnell at DEN got his hands on Mushroom Men for the DS and Wii. Read his reactions.

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GoNintendo was one of the first to post the latest images and info we released.

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Video Game Toys posted a couple of articles about some of the cool, real-life, tangible paraphernalia available to fans of Mushroom Men.

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Gamecock sent out a bundle of screenshots and info about the weapon system in the DS version of Mushroom Men. Various sites picked it up, including GoNintendo. It shows a small example of how expansive the weapon crafting system is in the DS version of the game.

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Lead Programmer and Combat Designer Kain Shin further details the combat experience in Mushroom Men in the second Developer Diary for Videogamer.com

Oh, and as always, your enthusiasm is noted and appreciated, GoNintendo.

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GamesRadar includes Mushroom Men on their list of “Best games still to come in 2008.”

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GameTrailers got their hands on a couple of new exclusive Mushroom Men gameplay videos. First is a collection of activities from the Morel Backyard level.

In the next clip, featuring the Earth Shiitake, notice the example of two-player cooperative gameplay. Player two (the yellow reticle) can grab objects in the environment and throw them at enemies using Sporekinesis while player one performs melee attacks and blocks the opponent’s attacks.

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N-Europe featured a batch of new Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi (DS) screenshots.

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Another nice preview comes to us courtesy of Games Abyss.

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I’ve watched the Totally Rad Show since it’s debut episode a few years back. It’s awesome to hear Alex, Jeff and Dan talk about Mushroom Men! Watch the whole episode, because it’s cool. But if you’re in a hurry, the Mushroom Men chat is around 37 minutes into the show after the Velvet Assassin preview. It’s brief, but the guys are enthusiastic.

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Marc Normandin at Chibi Gamer was first drawn to Mushroom Men by the announcement of Les Claypool’s involvement in the soundtrack. Since then, he’s come to like what he sees of the unique art style and has high hopes for the game.

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Lead Programmer and Combat Designer Kain Shin describes the process we went through developing the fighting mechanics for Mushroom Men. As an action platformer, combat plays an important role, and Kain was the driving force behind adding depth and variety to Pax’s battle capabilities.

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Daniel Golding at PALGN in Australia has crafted a delightful preview of Mushroom Men.

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Several sites carried the new screenshots we released into the wild last week.

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September 2008

A year and a half ago, I showed Frank Teran’s original concept art for Mushroom Men to Adam Sessler at the Game Developer’s Conference, and since then he’s been hooked. His enthusiasm for the style and concept of Mushroom Men was evident. Last night, he finally got to play the game, and he talked to Chad Barron about it on X-Play.

It’s just a list, but N-Europe highlights Mushroom Men as a game that interests them.

The Indie Game Developer’s Podcast interviewed Ryan and Kain at AGDC last week. Kain: Ryan: Tom East at the Official Nintendo Magazine enjoyed Mushroom Men. Read all about it!

Our friends at GoNintendo noticed, too.

Newsarama posted an interview with Programmer/Designer James Clarendon last week at the Nintendo Power event. Today they report on their hands-on experience with Mushroom Men (and other titles).

Newsarama interviewed Programmer/Designer James Clarendon at the Nintendo Power event last week.

A brief blurb on Gamespy describes Mushroom Men.

Nintendo Gal saw Mushroom Men at PAX this year and had a fun time exploring the giant world of man from the Mushroom Man perspective.

Not entirely sure how we ended up here, but we enjoy any press!

Scroll down until you see the photo of uncomfortable designer/programmer James Clarendon for the bit about Mushroom Men. Another exciting article!

UGO has written one of the best articles we’ve yet seen for Mushroom Men.

1Up says this about Mushroom Men:

The other big hit of the night was Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars, which releases in November. The game’s biggest fan was likely Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s son Michael, who could not put the game down — and he’s only four years old!

Nintendo Power staged an event in New York City over the weekend in support of the Startlight Foundation. They showed off a lot of upcoming games including Mushroom Men. Kotaku was there, giving Mushroom Men a try.

Infendo wrote up a whole slew of impressions of many games at the event, including Mushroom Men.

We expect news to come out of the game sites and blogs like G4, IGN, GoNintendo, Infendo, WiiFanboy, and our other favorite sites (too many to list). But a wonderful side-effect of building our universe on a basis of real-world floral, fauna and fungi is that we occasionally find articles about our games on totally non-game-related sites like AlabamaMycologist. I particularly like how the experts at sites like this pick up on certain inaccuracies such as the fact that our hero Pax is a bolete mushroom “with gills, rather than tubes.” Sometimes art outweighs truth, I guess. At the resolution available to the Nintendo Wii, the slivers of gills offer a lot more visual fun than the tiny, spongy surface on the underside of an actual Boletus mushroom cap.

MTV Multiplayer posted a brief article about how Les Claypool’s children were a strong motivating factor on his work for Mushroom Men. We owe those kids a great debt of gratitude.

Download the PDF to get the full interactive experience, but here’s the page with PlayZine’s write-up on Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars.

Grab the entire issue in PDF form here:

Mushroom Men has been compared favorably to some pretty cool stuff: Oddworld; The Force Unleashed and other top titles. But this article at Edge is the first we’ve seen that brings up legendary B-movie director Ed Wood. Another compliment, I’d say.

X-Play interviewed Designer Ryan Mattson about Mushroom Men a while back.

We’ve been posting a lot of articles about the Wii version (Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars), but don’t forget that there’s also a DS version, a completely unique and stand-alone adventure called Mushroom Men: Rise of the Fungi. Serving as a prequel of sorts, Rise of the Fungi establishes the climate of the mushroom world in the early days after the meteor fell. In it, you play as one of three character archetypes with RPG-lite mechanics and stats that allow you to totally customize your little mushroom dude to your play style. Rise of the Fungi is getting some good press, as well, such as this preview at ds fanboy.

Someone on the EuroGamer forums posits that Mushroom Men might be a contender for game of the year on the Nintendo Wii. We sure hope so! That would be sweet! Sound off at the EuroGamer forums if you agree.

Infendo Includes Mushroom Men as one of their top picks for the upcoming holiday season.

Topping the list is Adam Sessler’s enthusiastic floor report of Mushroom Men (and other Gamecock titles).

Game Vortex saw the DS and Wii versions of Mushroom Men at PAX.

BlogCritics Gaming reporter Brian Szabelski got his hands on Mushroom Men and has this to say about it:

It might not be the biggest Wii release this holiday season, but there is a good chance it could be the best.

4 color rebellion enjoys the 50’s-era pulp Sci-Fi feel of Mushroom Men.

Destructoid is offering up a kick-ass bass guitar signed by Les Claypool himself and other great Mushroom Men prizes to the best Mushroom Men diorama. See details at their site.

GoNintendo picked up the story, too. I like the comments on their site. Glad someone realized that we’re really interested in sparking creativity.

Jake at 8Bit Joystick shares his thoughts about his experience with Mushroom Men at PAX 08.

GameTrailers watched Producer Chad Barron play through Mushroom Men at PAX last week. Here’s what they saw:

JohnnyV at WiiBlog likes Mushroom Men and linked to some videos that helped sell him on Mushroom Men.

GoNintendo has always been very supportive of Mushroom Men.

Chris Kohler at the Wired Blog speaks highly of Mushroom Men.

The last thing I expected to say while playing Mushroom Men was, “Wow, this is what Force Unleashed should have been like.”

Fast Forward Weekly includes Mushroom Men in a list of games “worthy of anticipation.”

I’m not sure if this is a good article or not. My German is a little rusty, but it seems positive.

ScrewAttack interviewed Producer Chad Barron during PAX. See those two minutes here:

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