Kick ass controversy

They have already released a port of Titus' SNES game Prehistorik Man for DSiWare, too. (One of Titus' few actual decent games...)

Because they haven't released an actual game in six years now, yet have miraculously avoided going out of business, and now in addition to their Fallout (sorry, "Project V13") MMO are one of the only Western developers doing Wii Virtual Console, they're expanding that to WiiWare and DSiWare too...

Descent and Stonekeep I'm betting will be ports, but Clayfighter... we'll see. The Genesis game is on Virtual Console already, so this one might be new or something? Or based on one of the other titles in the series? We'll see.

I guess it's nice to see this, it's better than nothing I suppose... (I don't think I will ever like Herve Caen...)

http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=44
http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=41

Oh, they have one other upcoming DSiWare title as well, an RTS, Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble. It's a cavemen vs. dinosaurs RTS on the DSi, apparently.
http://www.interplay.com/games/t_rex_rumble.php


There's an interview with some of the team on Interplay's site too:
http://www.interplay.com/games/interview...rumble.php

Excerpt:

Quote: Interplay.com: What was the most difficult thing during the development?

Rob [Stevens]: There are a few issues with bringing real RTS gameplay to the DSI. The limited processing power, the small amount of RAM and low resolution screens. We also wanted to take maximum advantage of the DSi dual screens and the touch screen. These finally offer a truly viable alternative to a mouse for console based, RTS style gaming.

Eric [Caen]: DS & DSi are great consoles, but most of the games use the fact they’re handheld as an excuse to stay very basic. They underutilize the display and go with a simple AI. For T-Rex Rumble, Rob had to deal with 3D & 2D real time graphics. Make a sophisticated AI for the cavemen and their enemies. He also had to create an intuitive user interface for an RTS when most RTS’s are played with a mouse and not a stylus. Not easy tasks.

Rob: The user interface design was a challenge. What works best for players? What’s easiest and most intuitive? How do they select one, two, or ten cavemen? I especially wanted to minimize the number of inputs required to issue orders to multiple groups of men. It also had to work equally well for right and left-handed players.

Eric: We tried several ideas before we were satisfied. It’s an RTS, so players need to be able to control many characters with very little effort. And T-Rex Rumble is not a “tower defense” kind of a game. It has some sophisticated missions.


Rob: With a PC, you have a mouse that can be combined with multiple buttons or keys. It’s easy to draw a rectangle around units you want to select before picking a task from a list on the screen. But on DS/DSi we had to create a system that worked purely with a stylus or even a finger, without filling the screen with icons.

All gamers go through a phase where it's "Us" versus "Them". You're favored gaming company or hardware against their favored gaming company or hardware. Arguments are waged and lines drawn. Members are quickly drafted, taught the rules, and then thrust into the middle of that hellish firestorm that is forum debate. The goal of all this is to "win", with winning meaning the eventual admittance of defeat by the other side. The only problem is that there never is any victory because the rules are constantly changing. What might be touted by one side can be quickly swept away following a decision by that side's company of choice to take things in a different direction. In a word: pointless.

The argument might be made that console wars are no different than sports. One side wants their group to win and the other side wants their group to win. There the similarities end. In the game industry, both sides can win because, while the two are competing with each other, the is enough room for both to flourish and make profits. This forces the console warriors to adopt increasingly obscure determinations of victory. Another problem is that there are no official rules to determine who wins. It's up to the warriors to figure that one out and both sides have different ides of what constitutes victory. To further distance itself from the sports analogy, each team in sports offers virtually the same experience. Both teams are playing the same sport. That's not entirely the case with game companies. Each company may offer a very different experience and that experience is readily available in all territories. One company might excel in RPGs, while another excels in platforming titles. Very different experiences. While there might be gamers who chose one over the other, many gamers will play and enjoy both.

Therein lies the problem with console warriors: they miss out. If you're a true console warrior, you'll stick to your console of choice and ignore the others. By doing that, the console warrior knowingly cut himself off from a supply of quality entertainment all because he, or she, wants to win an online battle, which, as stated before, will never actually ever be won.

Why then do we fight? Validation, simply put. We want to convince ourself, and others, that we made the right choice by picking one console over the other. Every time the other console loses an exclusive or sells poorly, it's a victory for us because it gives us one more notch in our belt. It's not about playing and enjoying games, it's about posturing, about back-patting, but without the eventual championship victory of your favorite sports team.

http://greatrumbler.wordpress.com/2010/0...-warriors/

Stupid movie, and definitely bad as a film, but just lamely entertaining enough to make me feel that I didn't completely waste my time.

Oh, I saw it in 2d, not 3d.

Warning: Spoilers!


I mean, the movie had some big problems. First would be that it has an identity crisis in that it couldn't decide whether to be Clash of the Titans or God of War... it eventually decided on Clash of the Titans, but only after a lot of "I hate the gods" stuff that didn't end up going anywhere and just helped the movie make even less sense. "I hate the gods and I'm going to destroy them!" "... Well okay, maybe not, I'll work with them actually, and just fight the evil one..."... and in the film it's done even worse than that. It was just stupid. I know we're in a time of cynicism, as God of War shows (Kratos is a suicidal mass murderer who kills like half of the gods for really badly written reasons, and yet he's the "hero"...), and with that element of the film (if mostly just in word and not in deed) they were obviously trying to attract that audience more, I think, but because of how they resolved it, it just made it make no sense. They really needed to work that out and make the film more consistent. "We got no fish so I hate the gods and want them to die!" says the old fisherman at the beginning... and that theme comes back again and again, only for the movie to sabotage it at the end. The whole ending was just so bizarre... they could have done that same ending but made it actually made sense had actual good writers been working on this movie, but yeah, no luck in that department obviously. This movie's about the spectacle, you're supposed to ignore how bad the plot is. (And I've only scraped the surface in how stupid and broken the plot was... I won't mention everything right now, but it was just so dumb...)

Now -- I think that it is BETTER that they didn't go through with it. I don't like God of War's approach. But honesly, in this movie it just made no sense.

Beyond that, of course just like the first movie any attention to mythological detail is seriously lacking to the point where it's almost an accident when they actually get anything RIGHT, but with a movie like that you expect that kind of thing, so that didn't surprise me.

As for the movie itself, it was predictable, somewhat like the original 1980s movie and yet different in a some ways, including some I've mentioned. I thought parts of it were awful, a lot of it mediocre, and a few parts good. There were some pretty cool action scenes, such as the fights against the giant scorpions and then the Kraken. I liked the second half of the movie better than the first; while early on I wasn't liking the movie at all, by the later parts I was enjoying myself enough to make it feel worthwhile seeing. It's a bad movie, but entertaining bad, at least for anyone who likes fantasy movies, ancient Greek themed stuff, or things like that, as I definitely do.

Oh, the women with the vaguely Cretan/Mycenaean layered dresses in the Argos hall were a nice touch, maybe a tiny little nod to the period when the myths were actually set? (Greek myths were written down in the Classical era when everyone wore draped robes, as they do in this and every other Greek-themed movie, but the myths were mostly SET hundreds of years earlier, during the Mycenaean age before the Greek Dark Ages. Clothing, government, writing, political systems, and more were very, very different at that time.) Putting people in classical robes anyway is justifiable though, because the myths reflect the time they were written down in as much or more than the time they are supposedly set, but still if intentional it was a nice touch.) Having Medusa be beautiful and yet hideous was also interesting, it was an interesting take on the character for sure.

(Of course, after all five of his companions died in the successful effort to beat Medusa is when our hero abandons all his "I'm going to win with just human means" and uses the sword Zeus gave him and takes off on Pegasus, without a good enough explanation for why he changed, but yeah, I did say the plot was bad, so oh well. :))

... Also, after getting back from the film a few days ago I spent most of the next eight hours reading about various Greek myths on the web, which was pretty fun and interesting, so it definitely wasn't all bad if it got me to do that. But yeah, don't go in expecting a good movie... it's definitely not that.

I don't think this has been mentioned here, but sorry if it has.

http://www.bluesnews.com/s/109378/get-we...n-tom-hall

He's in rehab now so he's evidently going to be okay, but he's only 45, that's pretty sad news. Tom Hall has made some truly great games. Commander Keen was one of my favorite series as a kid, and I still think that they're amazing games. I'm definitely hoping he continues to get better, and maybe even makes some great games again... Anachronox was great too, but that was in 2001 and he hasn't been able to do nearly as much since then. In his most recent job he has been creative director at KingIsle Entertainment for 4-5 years now, but the only thing they've released is the kids' MMO Wizards 101... I have no idea if it's any good or not though. I really want to see more great games from him.

Anyway, it's really too bad that this happened to him so young, strokes don't often happen at age 45. :(

The bad: It's an FPS. :(

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/54277/...-Australia

X-Com is an amazing strategy classic... there have been other games like it since, but not with the X-Com name since the '90s. It's too bad that instead of finally bringing back one of the great PC strategy gaming franchises, we're getting yet another humans vs. aliens FPS... oh well. Maybe it's better than nothing... perhaps...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100414/t...ews_ts1615

giggity

I mean, I remember him being up there with Paul Bunyan and such as a kid, but does he really deserve that? His big claim to fame seems to be denying the progress of technology, "heroically" pounding in more train stakes than some steam engine (though I will note this, he's dead, and they've surely invented even faster means of doing that, negating his victory entirely). Plus, the "lesson" seems to be "technology is bad". I never really did get why he's such a big deal.

I'll say it. John Henry was a damned fool.