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The iam8bit gallery in Los Angeles premiered its latest video game-related art show last night, called the iam8bit Entertainment System. The centerpiece of the show was Travis Chen's homemade two-player console, which is a custom-made PC running MAME encased in natural bamboo, with two homemade controller boxes playing three different indie games: Canabalt's two-player version, the Sportsfriends bundle's BaraBariBall, and Chen's own Adventure Time game jam game, Bad Atticube.

Chen is a former Neversoft developer who now works on both iOS games with Scopely and his own indie creations, including the recent Typing Karaoke. iam8bit pitched the new show to him as "being kind of like a mock release of a game console" (in the shadow of next week's E3 and its two new consoles), and Chen said he emailed iam8bit co-founder Jon Gibson to say, "Jon, I'm building the console."

Chen's work is impressive: The "iES" wood case was laser-cut (though Chen says some sanding was needed to bring it all together), and the front of the console has an LED screen that shows various ASCII text. There are colored buttons on the top of the main unit, and pressing those changes whatever's shown on the screen, from crazy visualizers to a running dialogue between the console and its player.

The console is being offered for sale in the gallery, and Chen says if it does sell he wants to customize it for the buyer. But if it doesn't sell, Chen has other plans in mind. "I want to enter it into Indiecade and maybe even the IGF," he says. "Not too many guys are entering hardware, and I think that's really interesting; the idea of indie hardware."

The iam8bit Entertainment System, and the rest of the work in the show, will be on display through June 30 at iam8bit.

A zombie running game that doesn't have... zombies. Also, this is just straight-up Canabalt. NO.

Alphabet (written by its creators as A͈L͈P͈H͈A͈B͈E͈T͈) is a new game put together by Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi and Canabalt's Adam Saltsman. It was created for the bundle of indie games being given away to Kickstarter backers of the LA Game Space.

The mysterious Alphabet will be shown off later this week in Austin as part of "Juegos Rancheros," an event for the game development community. Also on display will be Takahashi's Tenya Wayna Teens, which involves two players - with sixteen buttons each - trying to avoid awkward social mishaps while trying to express teen love.

Alphabet, whatever it is, will be rewarded to backers as a playable game for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

LA Game Space has 10 days to reach its Kickstarter goal and is half way there, with $125,000 more to go. Today it's sweetening the deal for potential backers: Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy, and Adam Saltsman, the (running) man behind Canabalt, are teaming up to create a game just for people who back the project.

Anyone who pledges $5 or more to the LA Game Space Kickstarter will get Takahashi and Saltsman's game - whatever it turns out being - for PC, Mac or Linux. This is on top of the reward for pledges of $15 and more, which offers 30 new games from prominent indie developers such as Hotline Miami's Cactus, Steve Swink of Scale, Ben Esposito of Unfinished Swan, and Adventure Time's Pendleton Ward in collaboration with QWOP's Bennett Foddy, among others. Check out the entire list on on the Kickstarter's main page.

LA Game Space is looking to create a hub of game creation in Los Angeles, featuring development tools, pseudo classrooms, mentorship and networking opportunities, along with game development workshops streamed, for free, around the world. We interviewed co-founder Adam Robezzoli in a special episode of the Super Joystiq Podcast; give it a listen right here.

The Beatshapers Indie Bundle is part of the PSN drop this week, including five games "from famous independent game makers" for $6.99 in the US store and €5.99 in the EU store. The bundle features Wizorb from Tribute Games, Canabalt from Adam Atomic, Enigmo from Brian Greenstone, Galcon Labs from Phil Hassey and BreakQuest from Felix Casablancas.

While you're checking out the high-profile finds from Tuesday's PSN lineup, don't forget about the big little guys in the Beatshapers Indie Bundle.

#ifraud You may have heard that Canabalt's on sale this weekend as part of the Because We May sale. But if you see something called Canabalt HD on the App Store, don't buy it. It's a fake. More »

Outside of workshopping "challenge maps" for Canabalt, creator Adam Saltsman has been pretty mum on any kind of updates or changes for the free-runner ... until now. Rather than do a sequel, Saltsman is considering a free update that would add local multiplayer for up to two people, eight new hardcore game modes with corresponding leaderboards, and achievements for Game Center.

Saltsman also kinda joked about Canabalt without rooftops, as seen in the image above - sounds great to us because maybe then we'd stop jumping into walls. This was more of a hypothetical than anything, though Saltsman hasn't officially ruled it out. Maybe it'll be the most hardcore mode of them all: You spawn and then immediately fall to your death.

#passagebalt Small, well-crafted indie games can be great about delivering unfiltered experiences. In Adam Saltsman's Canabalt, you ran and jumped until you couldn't any more. With Jason Rohrer's Passage, you wandered around a pixellated world that represented life's journey, meeting a spouse and making your way together until that stopped, as it ultimately has to. More »

You can now play Canabalt in multiplayer (in the Windows/Mac/Linux version, available right now for literally any price in the Humble Android Bundle). But developer Adam Saltsman is still thinking about how to enhance the running/jumping/dying experience, polling Twitter followers about the "vague, mysterious ideas" shown on his Professional Game Designer Whiteboard.

The whiteboard depicts some kind of "challenge" mode, which features a map. This opens up the game to all kinds of uncomfortable change, like the potential for movement in another direction. After all, that map isn't a straight line that goes on forever. Or maybe it's a set of specific, creator-designed Canabalt situations arranged within a map display. Something like that.

One is the grandaddy of the now ubiquitous auto-running genre, the other a divisive interactive poem about love and death. Together, Canabalt and Passage make Passagebalt: an auto-runner about love and death. The longer you run for, the older you get. Somewhere along the line, your true love waits. Can you protect them? Will you die alone or loved? What is love, anyway? Oh, shut up and press jump.(more…)

Adam Saltsman, the man behind games like Canabalt and Gravity Hook, has signed on to develop an action game based on the popular Hunger Games book series. It will "go along with" the film, which releases this March. [Adam Saltsman] More »

#canabalt This isn't something done for internet shits and giggles. It's an "official conversion" of awesome death simulator Canabalt running on...the Commodore 64, one that will soon be going on sale. Like, it'll come on a cartridge. Amazing. More »

Two of the bombastic dudes behind the iOS gem Sword and Sworcery EP recently sat down with the creator of Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward, in an hour-long discussion with Juegos Rancheros, the independent video game collective in Austin, Texas.

Kris Piotrowski of development studio Capy and Craig Adams of Superbrothers had a talk with Ward about the fine lines between cartooning and gaming, pitches for a possible Adventure Time video game and the superb soundtrack to Sword and Sworcery, composed by Jim Guthrie. Take an adventure into the entire video above, moderated by Canabalt creator Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman.

Two of the bombastic dudes behind the iOS gem Sword and Sorcery EP recently sat down with the creator of Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward, in an hour-long discussion with Juegos Rancheros, the independent video game collective in Austin, Texas.

Kris Piotrowski of development studio Capy and Craig Adams of Superbrothers had a talk with Ward about the fine lines between cartooning and gaming, pitches for a possible Adventure Time video game and the superb soundtrack to Sword and Sorcery, composed by Jim Guthrie. Take an adventure into the entire video above, moderated by Canabalt creator Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman.

#watchthis What happens when the creators of Sword & Sworcery meets the man behind Adventure Time? Green screen insanity, Canabalt high scores and More »

#egregious Last week, the outright theft of a Flash game, republished for sale on the iTunes App Store with Apple's approval, jarred the Flash development community. Though the app later was removed, anecdotal reports of similar ripoffs came trickling back. More »

No doubt, the team at Apple filtering the thousands of submissions to its App Store have their work cut out for them, but that doesn't make the instances where crap slips through the cracks any less infuriating. For example, Free Running showed up on the App Store today, looking suspiciously like Semi Secret Software's Canabalt, a game that basically kicked off the whole genre of touch-based running games.

Free Running doesn't just appear suspiciously like Canabalt, either--it looks and plays the same, too. Can you tell the difference between these two games? I captured both on my iPhone this afternoon.

One of these is Canabalt. The other is Free Running. Take your pick!  What's different? The name, the intro graphic (the original recommended headphones, while Free Running simply has a stylized painting of a city), the connections to social networks to share high scores--and the proper attribution of anyone who worked on the original project and its iOS porting. Oh, that.

This is theft, and I won't dignify the act by linking to it, but who's behind it?

The publisher of Free Running is listed as PLD Soft, and it's not hard to imagine how the company pulled this off; back in December, Semi Secret Software made Canabalt open source. The success of Canabalt on iOS devices, plus a cool $25,000 the studio raised for charity, encouraged the decision.

 The official app icon for Free Running. "Canabalt has been a crazy ride for us," said co-founder Adam Saltsman late last year. "It's helped keep the lights on and pay for our health insurance, and allowed us to take the kind of risks that indie devs love to take. But, in the spirit of the Humble Indie Bundle, the holidays, and a (likely) bout of temporary insanity, it's time to open our trenchcoat and show everybody what we've got going on under there!"

Going open source meant other developers could use their technology to care their own games, but there was just one catch: don't use anything specific to Canabalt, code, art, music--whatever.

It appears PLD Soft simply took what Semi Secret Software made available, changed a few pieces to avoid name confusion with the still-available Canabalt, compiled it and submitted to Apple. And then Apple gave the software approval to appear in its App Store. Right now, it's still available for $0.99.

"We're doing what we can to take care of it," said Semi Secret Software in a statement to me today.

Free Running's listing on the App Store goes above and beyond simply trying to profit off ignorance; the listing text is mostly copy-and-paste job from Canabalt's existing listing, press quotes and all.

"Free Running is pure genius." -necessarygames.com -- Free Running's listing
"Canabalt is pure genius." -necessarygames.com -- Canabalt's listing

This isn't the first time PLD Soft has encountered criticism for its submissions to the App Store, either. App Advice recently highlighted another PLD Soft creation, Flash Video Guide, as a scam. The description for Flash Video Guide was reportedly vague but appeared to promise support for Flash Video on iOS devices. No iOS devices natively support Flash in any capacity, a public stance by CEO Steve Jobs.

"Overall, we’re recommending that readers not buy Flash Video Guide," wrote App Advice back in March. "It appears as if this application is a scam – a blatant attempt to rip App Store users off. For this reason, we’re not listing it in our 'Mentioned Apps' section at the bottom of this article."

There's no way to contact PLD Soft, either. Nothing's listed on the App Store page for Free Running and the company has no other software currently available in the App Store. A Google search for PLD Soft, however, does turn up a Twitter account that has no description and has never been updated.

I purchased Free Running before running this article to directly compare the experience with Canabalt. I could delete either one and unless I was really checking, not notice the difference.

Fortunately, it appears most App Store customers are aware of Free Running's origins, as the reviews are incredibly vocal about the actual nature of the source material. Clones are not new to the App Store, which means stories like this will likely (hopefully) result in Apple quickly pulling the game down.

#canabalt When I was a kid we had charity walkathons at my school. We walked around the playground, making money each lap for a cause I've forgotten. More »

#iphone If you've ever wanted to dig into the guts of Flash game and iPhone hit Canabalt, its creators are giving you that chance, making the indie game open source as part of a charity celebration. More »

The generosity of indie developer Semi Secret apparently knows no bounds. Not only did the studio lend its runaway (geddit?) hit Canabalt to the Indie iPhone sale, which has already raised over $25,000 for the Child's Play Charity with its ongoing $0.99 offers on iPhone hits such as Osmos, Drop7, and Solipskier, but the two-man team behind the grayscale game has opened up the Canabalt source code for everyone's perusal.

You can download and learn more about the Canabalt source on Semi Secret's official site -- all that we ask is that, should you go poking around in the game's brain, you finally program in whatever the agile protagonist is running from. We've spun off a number of theories involving the Illuminati, but it's entirely possible that we're way, way off base.

#indie Canabalt, the flash smash and iPhone indie hit, got a special two-player version from the game's creator and it will be showcased in the Winnitron, a touring arcade cabinet featuring several top-notch indie hits. This badass trailer was created for both. More »

For those of you who are entirely too good at Canabalt (and we see you there on the leaderboards, you smug jerks), Adam Atomic has introduced a more difficult version under the guise of "education."

Canabalt: Typing Tutor Edition is the same game you're familiar with, but with the jump command mapped to a letter key that changes after every few uses, displayed in the corner of the screen. In order to successfully navigate the endless rooftop path, you have to be able to access the right key immediately. It also includes optional spacebar or double-click-based control options.

You can play the game in a browser window here. We don't expect to see this one on iPhone -- or, at least, we hope we never have to use the iPhone's virtual keyboard for this.

[Via GameSetWatch]

#hotflashes Mavis Beacon may be the world's most famous typing teacher, but her indie cred pales in comparison to Adam Atomic and the nameless jumpman of Canabalt, which now features a white-knuckle edutainment mode. More »

#digital Before they made the excellent Canabalt, Adam Saltsman and Danny Baranowsky made a game called Gravity Hook. It was like Bionic Commando vs Peggle. Anyway, they're remaking the game in "HD", and you can play it right now. More »

Outrun complete devastation.