Just when you thought cake couldn’t get any better

Debbie Goard of http://debbiedoescakes.net/ has recently completed a stunning groom’s cake in the shape of Samus’ helmet. I took the time to contact her about it and she was kind enough to let us know how it was made.

The cake was a mint chip cake hand carved from round cakes ,

stacked , and iced in buttercream and then covered in fondant. The

metallic parts were made of belgian modelling chocolate and painted

with silver highlighter dust. The entire cake was airbrushed to add

color and dimension to the metallic parts as well. The cake was a

surprise for the Groom, he and the bride are huge fans of the game.

Best wishes to the bride and groom. You can see more of Debbie’s stunning cakes on her flickr channel

Update: The bride took the time to comment about the cake, you can see what the inside looks like as well as view more about what specifically the cake was sculpted from by visiting her blog: Judyonthenet.

Samus by Luís Melo

Samus by Luís Melo

Artist’s Description: When I drew this picture I wanted to capture the old simple feel of the 8-bit game. It was nothing more than dark corridors, getting deeper and deeper, with strange colorful blobs of pixels as enemies. Your imagination did the rest.
I tried do do something in-between the very simple color and design of the original and what you can see today (I loosely referenced Samus’ suit from a couple of Metroid Prime pics), in search of something that isn’t an over-design of the concept and would still retain some of the crudeness of the 8-bit original impression I got as a kid.

Used with permission from artist

Metroid Quarantine Community Restructure

With the completion of our sister site, Magatroid, settling down we now have an outlet for theoretical discussion of the series. As such we are now loosening the focus of Metroid Quarantine from Metroid News to encompass all metroid related material. We have also opted for a smoother gradient design that gives the website a softer feel.

This ranges from highlighting Metroid based projects such as fangames to showcasing Metroid fanwork. On top of this is a recent resurgence in the amount of Metroid based news to report on, as such we are opening up to the possibility of turning MQ into a Metroid Based Blog (more…)

Metroid Prime 1 & 2 coming to Wii

Good news for the hopefulls. Ign reports that Nintendo is porting a total of seven games from the Gamecube to the Wii with motion control functionality. Notable among these are Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Along with the two Metroid remakes DK Jungle Beat, Chibi Robo!, Mario Tennis, Pikmin, and Pikmin 2 will be making the jump as well.

There has been a bit of speculation about the possibility ever since Retro was noted as saying that they tested controls on a build of the Gamecube titles prior to Prime 3. This may prove an interesting take for new and old fans to the Prime series.

Former Retro staff form Armature Studio

Remember those key employees Retro lost a few months back? Well they have resurfaced, and they have joined up with Electronic Arts. As it turns out they have set up a development studio by the name of Armature, in Retro’s own hometown of Austin Texas. They have signed a deal with EA to create games for the XBOX 360, Playstation 3, and Wii.

Mark Pacini told Kotaku

“EA approached us with this really interesting business model of creating a small studio that is only comprised of industry veterans. The goal is to create new IP with a very, very small team and to produce a game without having to grow that team.”

It will be interesting to see what they cook up.

The Speed Gamers – Gaming for Charity

I thought I’d take a moment from working on the “surprise” to make a short post about a group of gamers who’ve been raising money for charities with Gaming marathons. There have been quite a few of them popping up recently, with various charitable organizations benefiting.

On August 15th at 7pm est (6pm cst). The Speed Gamers will be raise money for St. Jude with a 72 hour Metroid Marathon. They’ll be going through all of the Metroid games (with the exception of Pinball) without sequence breaking, going “as their natural routes were intended.” while streaming a feed live off of their website.

Their last two marathons raised a total of $2445. This time they will be raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. You’ll find more information on their website, about the event and the guidelines they set for the marathon. On behalf of Metroid Quarantine: Best of luck to you guys.

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A short update on blackbird: It’s coming together nicely now. Only 2 More Days!

Promising Revelations

Ever since the beginning of its launch the Wii has attracted gamers worldwide by appealing to a broader sense of demographics as well as a significant portion of traditional gamers. While Nintendo has indeed held true to this profit-collecting slogan, only few games have been released that appeal to traditional gamers. These titles are few and far between so much so that the Wii is continually ridiculed beyond belief; being marked as too kiddy or too easy.

That, however, is all about to change with this year’s E3. While many believe that Nintendo has perhaps lost sight of its true fans the direction of public relations at Nintendo, Marc Franklin, says:

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Nintendo to sue Nyko for Wireless Nunchuk

The Kama Wireless Nunchuk, developed by Nyko as a third party controller for the Nintendo Wii, has met direct confrontation by Nintendo itself through a demand which supposedly exposes the Kama’s blatant similarities to the official Nintendo Nunchuk. Quoting the Nintendo spokesperson:

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Rumors of a Metroid movie resurface

Is it just me, or is this a good year to be a Metroid fan or what? We’ve got fan games coming out of the wazoo and now Metroid is rumored to be heading to the silver screen, this time with Michael Bay at the helm.
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Has Atari found the Holy Grail?

In a conference at Wedbush Morgan Securities annual Management Access Conference in New York, Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s founder, has declared to have found the most perfect and impenetrable encryption for games and computer programs. Not only this, but he is positive that said encryption will not be crackable, and that piracy will finally be immensely hindered.

In his own words,

“There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now. [...] What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world – which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords – which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem.”

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