Portal Tetris

If you would like to play some portal tetris pay it here!

Personality Quiz!

Currently up on the Portal website they have up a personality quiz.  

So far the results i have seen are: 

Chell

Companion Cube

And Turret.  

The results you can get are: 

ATLAS

Cave Johnson

Chell

GLaDOS

P-body

Ratman

Turret

Wheatley

And Weighted Companion Cube.

Portal 2

Portal 2 is coming out on April 19^th.  This is the original trailer that they made.

This is the trailer that they made when they finally accepted pre-orders.

There is now a co-op option to the game.

Meet Wheatley.

Still Alive

The song Still Alive was written by Jonathan Coulton.  It is unusual for a video game to end in a song, this maybe why it became such a hit among the gaming community.  The song itself was also remixed for the game to play on the radio in the chamber when you first wake up.   Still Alive was featured in rock band and also audiosurf.  The song was performed by Ellen McLain.  Ellen was the voice of GLaDOS throughout the game.  She is a trained opera singer and was not sure if she would have the right style of singing for the song, but after she heard it she loved it.  People have played this song in any game or anything that has a way to play sounds in games.  There have been elementary schools that have sung this song at their shows.  If you can imagine it I am sure it has been done.  

Cake Recipie

The cake recipe is a very interesting one.  It starts out just how any recipe would start.  It is the garnishes that make you laugh and the fact that there is a cake core from GLaDOS that tell you the whole recipe.

The screen behind the Cake Core also has the recipe embedded into it.

Turrets

The Apture Science Sentry Gun is quite cute.  Apart from the fact that it wants you dead they always sound rather sweet.  They are strangely polite at all times. They idle, sleep, scan, and shoot.  They are the only other voice in the game that you hear aside from GLaDOS. 

They also dance sometimes.

GLaDOS

GLaDOS stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System.  She is a sentient computer.  It was on the day that she was first activated (which happened to coinside with the first Aperture Science bring your daughter to work day) that GLaDOS became self aware and locked down the facility.  The survivors trapped inside the Aperture Science facility made GLaDOS angry and she began to flood the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin.  The survivors fitted GLaDOS with a Morality core which quelled her rage.  Glados continued to test the survivors until all that was left was Chell. 

GLaDOS begins to show instability as you travel throughout the game.  She slowly becomes more and more emotional.  When Chell outsmarts GLaDOS by jumping off the platform before she gets burned alive that’s when GLaDOS’s true nature begins to be truly revealed. 

At the end of the game though it may seem that GLaDOS is destroyed it is really only a part of her that is destroyed.  It is there that the song Still Alive picks up.

Chell

Chell is your silent protagonist.  She wakes up in the “relaxation vault” with new attachments to her legs.  These things are called Advanced Knee Replacements.  They help you catch yourself after you fall from a high height.  It is not known where Chell came from or what she will do later in the games or what might be reviled.  We only know to take what GLaDOS says about her with a grain of salt since GLaDOS does not seem to want Chell to live.

Chell
Biographical information
Homeworld	Earth
Function(s) / Belongings
Rank / Occupation	Test Subject
Weapons	Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device
Jewel(s)	Probably wore earrings
Physical description
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Hair color	Black turning grey
Eye color	Davy's grey
Cybernetics	Advanced Knee Replacement
Chronological and political information
Era(s)	Portal Portal 2
Affiliation	Aperture Science
Game information
Voiced by	Mary Kae Irvin (female Citizen sounds are reused when she is hurt)
Modeled over	Alésia Glidewell[1]
Designer(s)	N/A (Portal) Matt Charlesworth (Portal 2)[2]
Entity / spawn codes	N/A

Later Games

About a year after portal was released a game called Spectrobes: Beyond The Portals was released.  Though I have never played this game the reviews seem to suggest that is game is like a sci-fi version of Pokémon with portals.  Judging the cover art you can almost feel were they got some of their inspiration from.  There seems to be a blue and red portal in this game too.

Also created in 2008 was Portal: The Flash Version.  This enticed Valve to release on Xbox Live the Portal: Still Alive version of the game.  This game includes 14 new challenges and achievements in the game.  The game was received positively in the Live community.  The flash version is in a 2D setting and can sometimes feel strange to those who are so used to playing the original game.  Portal: The Flash Version can be found here.

Nabacular Drop

Nabacular Drop is not the best game in existence but it was a very good foundation for the game portal.  It is about Princess “No Knees” (she cannot jump) and how she was kidnapped by a demon and trapped in a mountain.  The creature Wally lives in this mountain.  He is upset that the demon has moved into his mountain and wants to help the princess escape.  Wally is what creates the portals in the game.  There are only five levels and they glitch out often.  It was this game though that Valve saw and hired the team of students who made the game on the spot.  

You can download the game here.

The Cake Is A Lie

The cake is constantly talked about as you go through the game.  GLaDOS refers to it throughout the levels and it is even mentioned on the walls of some of the levels.  If you find mention of the cake on a wall, it is always the same “the cake is a lie”.  

GLaDOS is not the only one to mention the cake.  There is a cake sphere that falls out of her that repeats the recipe over and over.  You may also find the recipe hidden in the computer screen script.  The only time you ever see the cake is at the end of the credits. GLaDOS also sings about the cake in end song Still Alive. 

This is not the first game that you are ever lied to about cake.  In Super Mario 64 Princess Peach invites Mario over for some cake.  After Mario saves Peach at the very end of the credits you finally see the cake.  

Apparently when the game developers were coming up with Portal they sat down to come up with an idea for the point of finishing the game.  They all sat there silent for about 15 minutes till one person said "Everybody likes cake".

"The experiment is nearing its conclusion. The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake."

Valve Merchandise

Several months after Portal came out they finally started to come out with some merchandise.  There was a coffee mug, a t-shirt, some stickers, and a parking decal for your car.  

It was not till almost a year after the game came out that there were finally plush Weighted Companion Cubes, they even came out with a dice version for the car.  

Still for some reason Valve has not exploded with merchandise for Portal.  There are only seven different shirts, a mug, a plushie, and a bunch of decals, and a few posters.  

I commend Valve for not starting a flood of merchandise.  They never anticipated the popularity of Portal but they are expecting it with Portal 2.  They already have some t-shirts out and some of the Portal merchandise is on sale in preparation for the new games arrival. 

The Black Box

Half life 2 was originally released in 2004.  The Orange Box was released in 2007.  The Orange Box has five games in it.  There is Half Life 2, Episode One and Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2.  When the later three were being planned to be released the development team came up with the idea of The Black Box.  The Black Box would contain Half Life 2’s Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.  The Black Box was originally priced $10 cheaper than The Orange Box would be priced.  These “box” concepts were developed to bring multiple games to different platforms at a faster pace.  Half Life 2 was released in 2004 through Steam which is a way that Valve distributes games to Windows and Macs.  Half Life 2 was not compatible on any consoles at this time.  Thus The Orange Box was deemed a better choice.  So those that had already bought Half Life 2 via Steam were offered gift vouchers so that they could gift their second copies to friends.  This still caused some grumblings among Steam users.


Portal was put into this mix so that people would have to buy the game.  Originally most of the players bought The Orange Box for the Half Life games and for Team Fortress 2.  It was not expected that Portal would eventually get the fan base that it did.

Portal Stats

Portal
Portal's box art displays part of one of the signs commonly used in the game's environment.
Developer(s)	Valve Corporation
Publisher(s)	Valve Corporation Microsoft Game Studios(XBLA)
Distributor(s)	Electronic Arts (retail) Steam (online)
Composer(s)	Kelly Bailey Mike Morasky Jonathan Coulton
Series	Half-Life
Engine	Source
Version	Build 4295
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows,[1] Mac OS X,[1] PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release date(s)	October 9, 2007[show]
Genre(s)	Sci-fi puzzle-platform game
Mode(s)	Single-player
Rating(s)	ESRB: T OFLC: M[9] PEGI: 12 USK: 12
Media/distribution	DVD, digital download
System requirements → See Development section for requirements

Weighted Companion Cube

"Not in cruelty
Not in wrath
The Reaper came today
An angel visited
this gray path
And took the cube away"

The Death of the Weighted Companion Cube became a pop culture phenomena the moment the very first person  reached level 17.  I have only eve known one person that on their first time through the game had no hesitation as they incinerated their Companion Cube.  I watched my friends do everything that they could to save the Companion Cube.  The Companion Cube lives in the hearts of those who played Portal and will always be one of the saddest memories in a video game.


The Weight Companion Cube won "best sidekick" by GameSpy in the 2007 awards.  

This is a video on the love affair that is the Weighted Companion Cube.  The Portal writers created a dialogue with GLaDOS that without realizing it you as the player begin to fall in love with your Weighted Companion Cube, just as all the others did.

"We had a long level called Box Marathon; we wanted players to bring this box with them from the beginning to the end. But people would forget about the box, so we added dialogue, applied the heart to the cube, and continued to up the ante until people became attached to the box. Later on, we added the incineration idea. The artistic expression grew from the gameplay."

“ A couple of people jumped into the incinerator themselves rather than kill the Cube.”

“One person said that it was harder for them to incinerate the Companion Cube than it was to kill a Little Sister. Oh, god -- what have we done?”

"Beyond the Box: Orange Box Afterthoughts"

Here is what GLaDOS has to say:


"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."


"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Companion Cube cannot speak. In the event that the Companion Cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."


"If the Weighted Companion Cube could speak – and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot – it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."


"The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as "alive", and hallucinations."


"State and local statutory regulations prohibit it from simply remaining here, alone and companionless. You must euthanize it."


"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the Companion Cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."


"You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations."


If you would like your own Weighted Companion Cube please click here.

SPOILER ALERT!

At the end of Portal you face the final boss, really the only boss.  Her name is GLaDOS.  GLaDOS stands for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System.  Throughout the game she slowly becomes more and more emotional.  At the beginning she sounds just like any AI, but by the end of the game she is angry and haughty and he voice hides none of it.  As she talks to you something falls out of her.  After the Morality core is thrown in the Aperture Science Emergency Intelligence Incinerator, GLaDOS changes.   That is when you learn more about the past of the Aperture Science Center.  She releases a deadly neurotoxin into the chamber.

“When I said "deadly neurotoxin," the "deadly" was in massive sarcasm quotes. I could take a bath in this stuff. Put it on cereal, rub it right into my eyes. Honestly, it's not deadly at all … to me. You, on the other hand, are going to find its deadliness a lot less funny.” -GLaDOS

You have three minutes to throw the rest of GLaDOS’s cores into the incinerator or you will die of gas poisoning.  Should you succeeded GLaDOS begins getting torn apart and as she flies out of the building you get pulled out with her.  The next thing the screen shows you is GLaDOS scattered all around you.  You are unable to move, you are assumed dead.  The Credits begin to roll and GLaDOS begins to sing.

When the decision came that Portal 2 was being released the ending changed ever so slightly.

This is my favorite quote that GLaDOS says during the battle.

Fan-made Merchandise

When portal was created it was not thought to be a super successful game.  Portal surpassed all expectations.  This meant that Valve was not ready to feed the fans with merchandise and they fell behind.  So the fans got to work and this is what they came up with…

Pins:

Jewelry:

Cuff-links:

Soap:

Dice:

Other:

This list goes on and on.

Fan-made Art

Art can be found in many forms. People made comics and cosplayed, cakes and other content. This is a picture of a girl that I met at Anime Boston in 2008 who cosplayed as Chell, she even has her own portal gun.

Motivational poster

Chell

Turret

Weighted Companion Cube

Comics

VG Cats seems to have a special connection to Portal, they seem to like the turrets and GLaDOS's song.
These are other comics that are also portal related:
Mario
3 Portal
Is that cake?
Portal-fun

There are many more fan-made objects out there.  These are just a sample.

Fan-made movies

Portal was never expected to be as big of a hit as it ended up being.  Portal: Still Alive won many awards after its creation.  Game Developers Choice Awards gave the award of Game of the Year, along with the Innovation Award and Best Game Design.  GLaDOS won several awards for best new character and made it on IGN’s Top-100 Villains list. 

Portal caused a ripple into the gaming community that was quite unexpected.  Portal fell into people’s hearts and did not let go so quickly.  Thus blossomed many fan-made videos, art, and merchandise.  This blog will look at the fan-made videos.

People have made remixes to portal either using the song by Jonathan Coulton, the sound clips from Portal, or both.  This particular remix used the sound bites of GLaDOS and the turrets to make their song.  The video was made separately from the song but used it as an inspiration.  The song is: The Device Has Been Modified by Victims of Science.

This next one is a fan-made video about your ever promised cake.  You never end up getting the cake in the game.  The cake is a lie. At the 2008 Anime Boston Convention along the taped line many wrote “the con is a lie”.

This last is a day in the life of a turret, a funny fan-made video.