Best of GameSetWatch: From Amano to Star Trek

[Gamasutra highlights a week's worth of alternative video gaming news, media, and other curiosities from sister blog GameSetWatch, as written by editor Eric Caoili.] This round-up brings news on the Konami's Silent Hill-themed haunted attraction, a fanmade project that recreated Monkey Island 2 environments in CryEngine 2, and an excellent remix of Space Invaders and old photos from Life magazine. Other highlights include a look at Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano's new art exhibit in San Francisco, and a former Interplay programmer providing an embarrassing behind-the-scenes look at the company's disastrous Star Trek games. This past week's top stories: - Former Interplay Programmer Tells All On Disastrous Star Trek Games "'I saw the plans. They were looking at four to six hours of created video, and they were planning on doing it at maybe a 1/20th of the budget of a Toy Story movie. Something did not connect.'" - Auto Paint And Glitter: Amano's Deva Loka Exhibit "Titled Deva Loka, the collection is presented as "an ode to [Yoshitaka Amano's] childhood love for American comics and automobiles". Many of the paintings and sculptures recall the artist's years working at Japanese animation house Tatsunoko Productions." - Square Enix, PopCap Team Up For XBLA/PC Puzzle RPG "Square Enix, better known for its epic RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (though it did work on puzzler Yosumin), announced a surprising collaboration with casual game studio PopCap for what looks like a more polished Puzzle Quest clone, releasing for Xbox Live Arcade and PC." - Konami, Sinister Pointe Build Silent Hill Haunted Attraction "Konami and Sinister Pointe, the haunted attractions company behind last year's Saw haunted house, announced a Silent Hill-themed labyrinth opening at Sinister Pointe in Orange County, California." - Masa's Mario & Luigi RPG 3, Bowser Art "Japanese illustrator Masa seems to specialize in producing Bowser and Bowser Jr. artwork that excellently capture the former's oafish posture and screen-filling proportions, while sneaking in the latter's impish charm." - Klein Art Gallery Hosts Ready>Run Chip Music Exhibit "The show will present original music and visual art created with early video game hardware. Beyond just displaying works from the micromusic scenes, Ready>Run seeks to show chip music as 'an emerging genre as it continues to challenge and reflect the identity of contemporary art on an international level.'" - Big Game Hunting: Space Invaders "Ryan Sneider used photos from Google's Life magazine image archive to create this unexpectedly captivating mash-up of Space Invaders and American hunters... There's so many details to love about it -- the bonus ship in the distance, the hound charging towards the incoming fleet, and the angry expressions on the Invaders as they watch a single human fell one of their comrades with such a primitive weapon." - Monkey Island 2 Environments Recreated In CryEngine "After demonstrating his camera projection technique for turning the original 2D concept art from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge into 3D scenes, artist Hannes Appell has taken the idea of updating the 1991 PC game by recreating its backgrounds as 3D scenes in CryEngine 2."