Drop that spray can – we're hands on with HOT PXL on PSP
Atari's urban mini-game mash-up in a minute
In a world where everyone's on the go, it makes sense for gaming to speed up its act too. And when it comes to Atari's upcoming urban mini-game bonanza HOT PXL, time is certainly of the essence.
Taking the part of wacky hip-hop skater/nerd dude Djon, your mission is to complete as many mini-games as possible without messing up, in order to unlock the complete collection.
And believe us when we say these really are mini-mini-games.
Getting our hands on session with HOT PXL in the gloom of Atari's arcade-themed E3 booth, most of the 2D retro-inspired games were over in a matter of seconds, sometimes before we'd realised they'd even started!
Luckily they were also very simple. Examples included avoiding a big oil patch in the road in a top-down racer, zapping a zit on a pretty girl's nose in 'photoshop' or eating the planets in a rocket-powered shopping trolley (you had to be there to understand).
As in the pioneering Wario Ware on the GBA, success was relatively straightforward once you'd worked out what to do, although the controls weren't always as responsive as we would have liked.
But even with 200 mini-games to complete, if that was all HOT PXL was about it would probably be the shortest PSP experience ever.
French gamemaker zSlide has other plans up its sleeve, however, with the mini-games of HOT PXL acting as an attractor for a wider vision of multimedia extravaganza.
One element is the ability to download new content from HOTPXL.com, with graffiti stickers, new tunes and playlists, and photos ranking alongside bonus micro-games. Podcasts about street art and skater culture are already available for you to pull down to your PSP via PC.
You'll also be encouraged to wrap your headphones around the game's original soundtrack (presumably copied from UMD to Memory Stick), and social gaming is another promised feature, with alternative versions of some of those 200 mini-games available either in mega party or turn-based multiplayer modes.
So there should be plenty in the box – always assuming, of course, those 200 mini-games prove up to scratch.
HOT PXL is due to be stenciling the walls of a shopping centre near you by Christmas; as ever hit 'Track It!' to be kept in the loop.
