Jeff Minter is making a Gamecube game!

[A Black Falcon]

Jeff Minter (Llamasoft is pretty much him) is making a Gamecube game! PGC had the link, so then I went to his site and they have more info too (link below). :)

http://www.planetgamecube.com/news.cfm?a...em&id=3870

http://www.llamasoft.co.uk (Forums -> Blog)

I can honestly say I never saw this coming... I have followed Jeff Minter (and Llamasoft) for a couple years now but all he's made in the last few years was Tempest 3000 on Nuon and some more recent PocketPC games... so a new shooter from him? And with the help of Lionhead Studios? Wow! Cool!

Llamatron for PC has always been one of my favorite shooters, and Tempest 2000 (I've played the PC demo on the Jaguar emulator, though the Jag emulator doesn't get it right yet... no sound...) is really cool too... I love the 2d shooter genre so seeing another one on the Cube (Ikaruga, too) is great... given how N64 only had one 2d shooter in its whole lifespan...

Here's the link to his post from his blog at his site with more info than PGC has.

http://gubbeen.dowcarter.com/forum/viewt...404abe9e09

Edit: Added the picture at the top. :)

[OB1]

Yeah this was announced a couple of days ago.

Sounds very Rez-like, doesn't it?

[A Black Falcon]

Never played/seen Rez... I assume its a scrolling shooter type game with some kind of twist?

As for this game, given the developer (Minter), it made me think of Llamatron or Tempest 2000 (given how I never played Tempest 3000, it only being on Nuon...)...

This is really cool... a 2d shooter, but innovative too... and it sounds like its Cube-exclusive, too! :)

Edit: Almost forgot! Jeff Minter on Unity vs Rez. From his forum (linked to in my post).

http://gubbeen.dowcarter.com/forum/viewt...638396a0d2

Clack wrote:
So is IT going to be like REZ ish ?


Well, people are bound to make comparisons between Unity and Rez, but Unity is actually based on ideas I have had lying around in my head since 1994. Rez is an abstract shooter, true, but in a very self-consciously TRON style, and its Panzer Dragoon roots are very evident.

Unity will be... Unity.

[Great Rumbler]

Sounds pretty weird...which means I'll have to check it out!!

Ikaruga and Unity...oh yes indeed...

[Great Rumbler]

Screenshots!!!










Hmm...I can't really tell what's going on...

[OB1]

Cool, it kinda looks like Rez meets Frequency.

[Dark Jaguar]

Woah... It looks like an audio visualizer...

[OB1]

Too bad it won't be out for a while.

[A Black Falcon]

It IS part audio visualizer. Jeff Minter wrote one of the first of those - VLM (Virtual Light Machine) for the Jaguar CD... and Unity has a newer version of VLM in it. Plus, he seems to like to put those weird visualization-type things as backgrounds... just look at Tempest 2000...

As for the screenshots, COOL! Those must be the magazine scans that hadn't gotten onto the net a few days ago when I looked for them... :) Looks really wierd, yet cool...

[Italian_Pyro]

wow! looks ceizure inducing!:S

[A Black Falcon]

http://gubbeen.dowcarter.com/forum/viewt...70cdffbfcb

It seems Cube-Europe took those pics from this site (VLM Journal -- http://members.cox.net/jfuture/vlmjournal1.htm#01232003 ) without crediting them and put their logo on the screenshots... bad site! Its not nice to steal pics like that!

The funny thing is...

They only took the 8 shown on that main page at the site there. That site I linked there (in the post. The link on top is a thread at Yak's board about it) had 200 screenshots! Er... they are dumb?

Oh, and that site calls the game VLM3 because the pics aren't of Unity itsself. They are pics of VLM3, which is, I guess, part of Unity, but it isn't the game itsself. Its the Interactive Visualization part. It isn't exactly visualization... It also has some kind of player control of the picture, Oh, and I don't know how this exactly will work on GC... NGC doesn't support audio CD's, so I don't see how the program would use a dynamic generate-on-the-spot thing, (as opposed to pre-generated 'tracks' for the music included in the game CD) given how it can't do audio cds. Maybe it does anyway, I don't know... I've heard mention (read: wishful thinking on Yak's forum) of mini-CDs full of MP3s but I don't know how that would work with the Cube... maybe you'll only be able to use it with the music on the disc. Anyway, it looks intresting.. I wonder what the game part (other than this 'interactive visualization' thing) will be like... but it sounds cool.

Edit: Edited post for clarity. Also, added this link...
http://www.medwaypvb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/unity01.htm
It has 800x600 versions of eight of the screens... it appears that the guy who runs that site I linked (VLM Journal) took them in 1600x1200 but only posted 320x240 versions of the 200 screens. Space reasons probably... but that site has a few of the bigger (800x600) versions. They look lower quality at that resolution...





That site has four more of those too.

[A Black Falcon]

Well, it "only" took them six days, but Gamespot has finally reported on this... they don't have the VLM3 screenshots, but I've linked to them already so it doesn't matter. Its just nice to see one of the big sites finally get this news... IGN still hasn't as far as I know...

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/new...14,00.html

[Sacred Jellybean]

The game looks confuzzling, but fun.

[A Black Falcon]

Yes.

I was playing Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar emulator... the sound doesn't work yet (the emulator isn't finished, and most games don't work at all, but tempest does with no sound), but its a great classic shooter... with cool backgrounds. This of course should blow that game away... :)

Oh, and IGN finally figured out this game exists. That didn't take long... only what, 8 days after the announcement? Yeah, 8 days. Thats a long time...
http://cube.ign.com/articles/384/384024p1.html

[OB1]

You should play Rez. Awesome game. Just make sure that you play it on a DC with a rumble pack or a PS2. If you take away the rumble you take away half of the experience.

[The Former DMiller]

Must have missed this thread before. We had the news before PGC, and when I posted the <a href=http://www.n-philes.com/php/epufyevuzyezupukaupf.php>screenshots</a>, I gave credit to the guy from VLM Journal instead of stealing them like Cube-Europe. So...yeah.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I'll be sure to play Rez on my invisible Dreamcast... its right next to my phantom GBA. :(

[OB1]

Well then you should have picked one up when they were $50, Dr. Sarcasmo.

[A Black Falcon]

I wanted to get a Dreamcast for quite a while... but never really had the money. I mean, once they dropped to $50 it was a dead console already, making it not that great a purchase... and before that I couldn't justify spending $100 on a console when I still had a lot of games I wanted for PC and N64 (which, remember, I bought the month Dreamcast came out)... I have played Dreamcast (my cousin has one), and it was a good system. They don't have Rez, though.

[Sacred Jellybean]

I played Rez on the DC, and I thought it was awesome as an Arcade game. From what I saw, though, it only had a short, single player experience. Certainly not worth $50. $10, maybe.

BTW- I've always thought rumble packs were obnoxious, but I could see it working with Rez...

[OB1]

For $50 the DC was a real steal. And since Sega doesn't sell any more games, you could go the pirated route, which is where I got a lot of my DC games after stores stopped carrying them. I got Rez for $3. And the rumble pack is absolutely essential for Rez.

[A Black Falcon]

I really liked my N64 rumble pack... which is why I was annoyed when it broke. I never replaced it, because by the time it broke (mid to late last year) you couldn't buy those anywhere anymore. So I'm stuck with no N64 rumble pack. :(

At this point finding DCs isnt easy... all (relevant) software stores have used ones, of course, but not that great a selection... anyway its not realistic for me to think about getting a DC. Just don't have the money... I'd rather spend the money I do have on more games for the systems I've got... I have trouble keeping up with the games I want as it is!

Maybe I'll try to find it or something in a few years when the DC has functional emulators, I don't know.

Pirated games? Where would you find those, the net?

[OB1]

Yessir.

[A Black Falcon]

Bah... isn't there any way of making Search DO ANYTHING USEFUL? Another word we've never used before on this forum is "unity".

Anyway... the game sure is coming along...

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=13754

Just click. Well, and stare, given how amazing the game looks (yes, screenshots! Many of them!)

And remember it's really just the one guy making the whole game...

[Great Rumbler]

It looks like hours of seizure-inducing fun!

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, doesn't it look awesome?

[Sacred Jellybean]

I must be the in the minority when I say it doesn't look that great. Yeah, it looks like it could be fun for a while, but... does the player continuously play through those acid-trip tunnels throughout the entire game? It looks like it could get repetitive after a while.

...although this IS a shooter, so I suppose the monotony is to be expected. :/

[edit]: Although I have to admit, those blurry-ass screens don't do the game justice. Unless it's SUPPOSED to look really blurry and give you a headache...

[A Black Falcon]

If you read the post above the pictures, you'd see that he says that they're blurry because they were taken off a TV by a digital camera...

And the game is a cross of a lightsynth and a shooter, so yes, you have psychedelic stuff in the background all the time. The question is what the gameplay is, and based on those shots I don't think we can really tell yet... except that I'm sure it'll be easy to learn but with plenty of fun to make you want to play it many times, like all of his games.

And remember, the ship won't be just white, I expect, and there will be more enemies and stuff I'm sure... though I don't know exactly what kind of shooter to expect. Any way it ends up I'm sure it'll be great, though, because most all of his games are...

[Sacred Jellybean]

If it's anything like Rez, it'll be fun as hell. I hope it's addictive and has replay value...

[A Black Falcon]

"It's not Rez darnit" is one thing he keeps trying to say but it won't go away until people actually play it and see what it actually is like. I'm definitely wondering myself...

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=18015

There are some side-scrolling parts too...

[Smoke]

Here's a demo of one of his older games: Gridrunner++

[lazyfatbum]

Isn't there another game on GC that's also a shooter with similar graphics coming out? I swear i've seen something like this before that was announced for GC. Maybe this is just a resurgence of the same game.

It looks cool, we need shooters. It's a dying genre.

[A Black Falcon]

Demo? Actually, I think he's released free all his older stuff... :)

And Lazy, this game was announced some time ago. When you've got a one-man development team games take time...

[Smoke]

Actually that's the only one he's still selling. It's a remake of a really old game of his.

[A Black Falcon]

Oh... the NEW Gridrunner. Right. It's not the ONLY game he's selling... there's also Hover Bovver. But Gridrunner is better. I have that demo... fun game...

[A Black Falcon]

http://media.cube.ign.com/media/489/489908/vids_1.html

Videos! :)

[Sacred Jellybean]

Wow... that game looks entrancing as hell - kinda like Rez, only in a different way. Hopefully, the gameplay can match that.

[A Black Falcon]

I think that that's gameplay in the videos... in some form, it is kind of hard to tell... it looks great, certainly, though. And I really wonder what it will look like in its final form, I don't think it's there yet...

[Sacred Jellybean]

True, you can see some gameplay, but you still can't get a great feel of it. There's no HUD, I notice, and do we have any idea on how this game is supposed to control?

I'd look up gameplay details, but I'm too lazy. You KNOW you're lazy when you can't gather enough motivation to flex the muscles in your fingers a few times. The 'bum's got nothing on me. :luigiwin:

[A Black Falcon]

You move, and you shoot. The precice gameplay details are still somewhat unknown I believe... though there might be more out there. I'm lazy too. :)

[Sacred Jellybean]

Yeah, I figured that as a shooter, it was pretty much a given that you move and shoot. :S I was talking about more precise details, though... Jeff Minter himself says "It's not Rez, darnit", but without any discernable gameplay details, it may as well be Rez.

So NYAH!

[A Black Falcon]

The video only helps show that a) you move and shoot and b) sometimes you are moving forwards in a tube or other shape and sometimes it looks like Defender