Kotaku: still alive

Portal On PSN? Hah. No.

Luke Plunkett — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:30:00 MDT

Portal's on its way to Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Portal: Still Alive. Good news for 360 owners, but what if you own a PS3? And don't own a PC? And are allergic to the core Half-Life 2 storyline and all things orange? Well, you're shit outta luck, with Valve - responding to recent rumours - telling CVG that, no, the game won't be making its way to the PSN, and yes, the package is still a 360 exclusive. You could ask yourself why, but then that'd be about the time we remind you of Gabe Newell's insatiable, white-hot hatred for the PS3, then say "yeah, that's why".

No Portal on PSN says Valve [CVG]

Portal: Still Alive Is Portal + Free PC Map Pack?

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:40:00 MDT

Portal: Still Alive was announced during E3 last week. It bundles the original Portal with some "additional content", and it's due for release on XBLA. And ever since, PC owners have been complaining, wondering why 360 owners are getting new stuff while they're not. Well, according to former Shacknews boss Chris Remo, the "additional content" isn't necessarily "new content", as he says the bonus maps are those found in Portal: The Flash Version MapPack. Which PC owners can already get. For free.

Portal: Still Alive explained [Remowned]

Portal Still Alive Will Include New Puzzles, But No New Plot

Brian Crecente — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:41:19 MDT

Speaking with Valve's Doug Lombardi earlier this week at E3, we got onto the topic of the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version of Portal. I wanted to know what gamers could expect from the game and why Valve decided to tweak it for the XBLA release.

"It's about giving gamers more choices, more points of entry to get to the party, open more gates to the theme park as it were," he said. "It makes a lot of sense for us.

"The main idea is that this is Portal available as a download, and there is additional content as advanced challenges that will be available to you after you finish the critical path of the game."

But will we be seeing more of GlaDOS this time around, or perhaps an extended storyline?

"No," he said, breaking hearts everywhere. "That's for a game to be named later perhaps."

To check out our full interview with Lombardi and hear him pontificate on everything from Left 4 Dead Machinima to Steam as an archive for games hit up the link below.

Left 4 Dead May Get Machinima Maker Post Launch [Kotaku]

Portal: Still Alive Dated 2008 For Xbox LIVE Arcade

Brian Ashcraft — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:00:00 MDT

Microsoft community manager Chris Paladino does a video walk through of Microsoft's E3 line-up. Games mentioned in the clip include: Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, Rockband 2, Lips, Uno Rush, Galaga Legions and Portal: Still Alive. Wait, wait, wait. Portal: Still Alive? The game is hitting Xbox LIVE Arcade in 2008. It will feature single player and "a new challenge mode." Last April, Valve's Doug Lombardi stated, "You won't see a new Portal at retail this Christmas because of that. That's the trade off. People want more, but we don't want to give them more of the same right away because that would just be boring."

Thanks Brian for the tip!

Still Alive for Rock Band Free Tommorrow

Brian Crecente — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:00:00 MDT

No this isn't an early April Fool's joke. Harmonix, MTV Games and Valve have teamed up to release Portal endsong Still Alive on Rock Band tomorrow for free. That's free for the Xbox 360 and free for the Playstation 3.

"While the cake may be a lie, the free download of "Still Alive" is confirmed truth," said Greg LoPiccolo, VP of product development at Harmonix. "'Still Alive' is an awesome song that brings together great gaming and great music. We've teamed up with Valve to deliver a free download of "Still Alive" as a "thank you" to our fans for their incredible support."
"Rock Band has lit the industry on fire by opening a new market for cooperative musical gaming," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "We're delighted Harmonix has selected the track for inclusion in the growing library of tracks available for this phenomenal title."

With the suspicious timing I actually emailed the publisher's back just to make sure they weren't pulling a fast one, but they say it's 100 percent true.

Can't wait to play it again.

ROCK BAND Media Alert

ROCK BAND™ TO FEATURE FREE DOWNLOAD OF "STILL ALIVE" FROM VALVE'S PORTAL™

This is a triumph ... Harmonix Music Systems and MTV Games have teamed up with Valve to bring the song "Still Alive", released as part of The Orange Box collection of games on PC, 360 and Playstation 3, into the Rock Band library. And, as icing on the cake, the track will be available as a FREE download on April 1 for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, and April 17 for the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system.

Written by Jonathan Coulton and originally performed over the end credits of Portal, the experimental single-player game in The Orange Box, "Still Alive" found its way into the heads and hearts of gamers and quickly became a cult classic.

"While the cake may be a lie, the free download of "Still Alive" is confirmed truth," said Greg LoPiccolo, VP of product development at Harmonix. "'Still Alive' is an awesome song that brings together great gaming and great music. We've teamed up with Valve to deliver a free download of "Still Alive" as a "thank you" to our fans for their incredible support."

"Rock Band has lit the industry on fire by opening a new market for cooperative musical gaming," said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. "We're delighted Harmonix has selected the track for inclusion in the growing library of tracks available for this phenomenal title."

With the addition of "Still Alive" to the Rock Band library, there are now more than 70 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. To date, gamers have purchased more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band since its launch on November 20, 2007.

Downloadable content for the Xbox 360 will be available via Xbox LIVE® Marketplace using Microsoft Points and is downloaded directly to the Xbox 360 hard drive. Downloadable content for the PLAYSTATION 3 system's version of Rock Band will be available on the PLAYSTATION®Store through the free PLAYSTATION®Network and is downloaded directly to PLAYSTATION 3 system's built in hard drive.

Rock Band is rated "T" for Teen (lyrics, mild suggestive themes) by the ESRB.

Drunk Guy Tries to Steal Portal Song at Valve Party

Brian Crecente — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:05:49 MST

So a funny thing happened at last week's Valve party.

As I'm sure you're all aware Valve threw a little party during last week's big show (We weren't invited. I blame our butchering of their song.) and during the tail end of it they brought up Jonathan Coulton to play a set. At the end of his last song he invited the Rock Band folks up on the stage to play Still Alive on their game, a really neat way to announce that the song was coming to the game.

After they finished the crowd went crazy, a Harmonix developer told me the next day. The crowd was so excited, in fact, that one of them burst from the masses and jumped onto the stage. Walking up to the 360 that was home to the song, he plucked out a memory card, plugged it in and started fiddling. At which point one of their larger of the Harmonix guys walked over and asked him if he needed help with something.

"I'm just grabbing Still Alive, everyone needs to be able to play this," he said, if my source's memory serves.

The developer plucked the controller from the rotund man's hands and deftly deleted the song, which he had already managed to grab, from the card. Better luck next time.

The Harmonix guys thought it was even stranger that he later bragged to Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos about it. Personally, I think it's super weird that he happened to have a Memory Card on him.

This year, we heard a really funny joke involving a possible 2008 game release. So funny it made out sides hurt! That fantasyland release day joke was?

Still Alive Rock Band Hands On

Brian Crecente — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:00:51 MST

I got a chance to check out Portal's famous credit song Still Alive today on Rock Band in the Harmonix hotel suite.

While the bass is a little bit on the easy side, the lead guitar, drums, and of course, singing are all the perfect level of challenging to make it fun. I'm already a HUGE fan of the song so playing it on Rock Band was a real treat. I can't imagine a single person with the game not wanting to pick this up when it hits the consoles.

I was a little bummed to discover that while the original singing is there and can be cranked up enough to cover your truly awful singing voice, there is no modulation for your voice while you are singing. So you can harmonize with a computer, but you can't sound like one... and we all know how awful that is.

Still Alive Confirmed For Rock Band

Mike Fahey — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:20:56 MST

Last night Valve held their GDC party at the lovely and white Temple Nightclub in beautiful downtown San Francisco, and a group from Harmonix were on the scene to catch a special performance by Jonathan Coulton, who you may remember as the writer behind the Portal ending song, "Still Alive". Towards the end of his set, Coulton and the Harmonix boys pulled out a surprise.

That is when we jumped on-stage and pulled out our Rock Band equipment piece by piece...When they got to the song list they scrolled through an almost infinite amount of DLC until eventually they stopped on one- "Still Alive" by GLaDOS

Remember the future Rock Band DLC found in file story from last Wednesday? Might wanna start paying it a bit more attention, cause this is one long shot that came true. Hell yes!

Valve Party at GDC + Special Preview of an Upcoming DLC Song [HMXSean's Rockband.com Blog - Thanks BatDan!]

EA Splits Up Orange Box For Retail

Mike Fahey — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:20:10 MST

If you're one of the five PC gamers on the planet who didn't suck it up and join Steam in order snag the contents of The Orange Box individually rather than go for the total package, you're in luck. During yesterday's conference call to investors, EA revealed plans to deliver Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 to retail shelves individually by March. No details on the pricing, but VideoGamer.com's suggestion that they would stay in line with current Steam prices seems like a sound one. I firmly believe that $50-60 for a chance to play through the sublime goodness of Portal alone was well worth the price, so a potential $19.99 is a steal, though let's face it...if you haven't played through Portal yet and your PC is fully capable there is something seriously wrong with you.

Orange Box contents to be separated at retail [VideoGamer.com]

Still Alive In Japanese Sung By Computer

Mike Fahey — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:20:29 MST

A Japanese friend of mine on Second Life (currently an employee of Unicorn Sexxings R' Us) pointed me towards this video she uploaded of Portal's "digging itself inside your brain to live" ending theme "Still Alive", translated into Japanese and completely computer generated, voice and all. It's amazing the sorts of things you run across while shopping for fake clothes with arguably real money while chatting with a girl dressed up as an anthropomorphic horse, isn't it?

Caek is Delishas [S.K.Y.]

Top 12 Portal 'Still Alive' Covers

Maggie Greene — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:30:17 MST

GameSetWatch has trawled the vast, vast waters of user-created content on YouTube and come up with their very own top 12 list of 'Still Alive' covers. Some of them are pretty neat, several of them are incredibly cringe-worthy, as befits a lot of user-generated content, especially of the YouTube variety - but worth a listen through for the sheer entertainment value. Above is their chart-topping pick, of which the creator said: "Everything on the terminals and sound is controlled by an Intel 8080 Microprocessor at 2MHz. The sound chip is a MOS SID (From a Commodore 64)." Mmm, geeky!

Aperture Science Rocks: The Top 12 'Still Alive' Cover Versions [GameSetWatch]

Kotaku Kristmas Kard, 'Still Not Banned'

Mark Wilson — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:00:52 MST

Hmm...maybe we overdid it with the whole "K" for "Kotaku" theme, but we've put together a special holiday ecard just for our readers. Why? Clearly the internet is short of obnoxious electronic entertainment. And when Valve agreed to lend us the background of a certain very popular song from Portal, we just couldn't help ourselves...

So from the entire Kotaku staff, happy holidays and merry whatever you celebrate. And to Valve, thank-you...and we're very, very sorry.

Voices in order of butchery: Michael Fahey, Mark Wilson, Brian Crecente, Brian Crecente, Luke Plunkett.
Lyrics by Fahey, Crecente and Wilson
Video by Mark Wilson

Frag Doll Sings Portal Song

Brian Crecente — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 08:00:43 MST

I don't know if it's the slight Scottish brogue or just that, like most gamers, I'm deeply in love with the song Still Alive, but this video of Scottish Frag Doll Kitt fulfilling a promise to sing a song with Jam Sessions is adorable. More so because she's singing the Portal song.

Kitt's Video Blog Number 2

VG Cats Still Alive

Mike Fahey — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:20:43 MST

VG Cats creator Scott Ramsoomair loved him some Portal. Not only did it inspire him to create a comic featuring the worst babysitting choice in the history of parental irresponsibility, but he also broke out his mad flash animation skills to create a music video for the song that I listen to over and over again on my iPod whenever the world conspires to drag me out of this chair and out into the harsh sunlight. No, not "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors. That was last winter. Of course I am talking about "Still Alive", that epic tale of cake and lies. Nice to finally put a face to the voice, even if the face is just a series of blue blocks. Hit the link to check it out. Just go ahead now!

VG Cats Still Alive [VG Cats - Thanks Alex!]

Condemned Movie Not Dead Yet

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:00:37 MDT

Details are scant on the Condemned 2 movie tie-in The Unforgettable. The movie was first announced in Variety back in 2005. Scribe Kurt Sutter (pictured) was roped in to pen the move, and at the time he said, "I'm a big gamer, one who feels that, in the last five years, some of the smartest and most innovative ideas have come out of the gaming world." Not many details have surfaced about the film recently, so game site Sega Nerds contacted Sutter, who said he just closed another deal to do a big script rewrite. A director, he said, is attached and will be announced at a later date. What's more, Shutter adds:

But the project is very much alive (especially after the surprising success of THE 300). In the world of features, a few years to get something into production is the norm... There will be some parallels [to the game], but it is not a movie BASED ON the game. It's INSPIRED BY the same source material.

I do like the idea of a movie being based on a game, rather than a game being made into a movie. That seems like a better approach.
Sutter Talks Movie [Sega Nerds]