Site Speed Upgrade!

In the last week, sirlin.net has gotten slower and slower loading pages. It took me over SEVENTY SECONDS to load pages. I discovered (thanks to a tip from sirlin.net poster Rufus) that this was because of a stray script from the now-defunct tipjoy. Script removed, and site is way faster now!

Now it's even easier to click the button on the right to become a fan of Sirlin Games on Facebook or to click the top banner to buy Flash Duel. Thanks for your support, enjoy the lack of insane slowness.

Subtractive Design Article

My article about subtractive design appeared in Game Developer Magazine in March, but I kept forgetting to post it on my own site. A request for a digital copy of the article from a lead designer at Relic Entertainment finally got me to actually do the work. By popular demand, here you go.

SF HD Remix is A+ and Sirlin.net is Top 5

1up.com gave Street Fighter HD Remix a score of A+. Wow!

Super SFII Turbo HD Remix Video Review

Meanwhile, Wired says my website is one of their 5 most favorite game-related blogs. In the coming months, I'll muck it up with a bunch of psychology stuff, then we'll see what they say!

Punch Out!!

I totally love Punch Out. That's awesome that they are making a new one.

Punch-Out!! Wii 'Debut' trailer

While I was at MIT, my roommate and I played Super Punch Out (SNES) a lot. We had quite a rivalry over it. The game has a scoreboard for how fast you beat each boxer and my roommate and I each tried to have the fastest time against every fighter. Often we weren't even home at the same times, so I'd come home to find him with a new time 0.3 seconds faster than mine or something. But even sweeter is that a lot of times he'd come home to find my time 10 seconds or even 30 seconds faster than his!

You see, there are tricks to beating lots of those characters quickly, so by discovering some different method, you can radically reduce your time. Often, I would find this much different method, then my roommate would see me do it (or I'd tell him how I did it), then he'd perfect the new method and shave off a fraction of a second or something.

We went back and forth on this for weeks, or maybe even months. Eventually, it was not enough to merely be #1 on a character's time-attck scoreboard. We'd each try to get TEN scores agaist a given boxer that were all faster than the other guy. That way the entire top 10 scoreboard would be my name, knocking him off entirely. Now you're getting the idea how into this game we were.

I love the look of the new Wii version in the video above. Really captures that old-school feel with modern graphics. Too bad I kind of don't have any friends anymore, so I don't foresee reliving the fun of that old rivalry. Oh well.

--Sirlin