GANDREAS BRINGS ROGUE TO IPHONE
What better way to show off the glittering power of your 22nd century handheld communications device than with a 1980’s ASCII UNIX RPG? Gandreas Software has ported Epyx’s seminal early-PC RPG Rogue to the iPhone as a free download, and — to be fair — has done a very noble job of bringing the game up to date.
Gandreas’s version adds tile graphics (and a very smart tilt-mode that morphs the landscape view’s ASCII mode into graphics as you turn it up to portrait) and gesture based commands (trace a W on the screen to wield a weapon, R to remove a ring), but keeps the same brutal difficulty of the original: be prepared to die a lot by the crooked claws of kestrels.
Rogue – classic Unix game comes to the iPhone [Gandreas]
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EA REVIVING DUNGEON KEEPER AS ASIAN MMO
At a time when even NES cult brawler River City Ransom is finding new life as a sidescrolling MMO, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to hear that EA plans to do the same with its classic Bullfrog franchise Dungeon Keeper, especially given that the Asian online market is one of their biggest perceived growth opportunities.
Very few details have yet come out on exactly how the game might translate online. In their press release, developer NetDragon (who also are behind Ubisoft’s Heroes of Might and Magic Online and a forthcoming turn-based Disney RPG) have only dryly stated the obvious in calling it a “3D massively multi-player online role playing game.”
Bullfrog’s game was famous for turning the tables on RPG standards and letting players be the one to architect dungeons, placing traps and monsters to stymie marauding heroes. We only hope the game continues that same tradition and lets players switch off on directing dungeon design for others to plunder, and that the game gets localized for the wider world — the original release is coy on whether it’ll remain in the ‘Greater China’ region.
NetDragon Enters into Agreement with EA to Develop New Online Game – Dungeon Keeper Online
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CHRONICLE HOLDING LUCASARTS BOOK SIGNING
Via BigDownload we note that Chronicle Books will be holding a San Francisco signing on December 4th for Rogue Leaders, its upcoming visual history of the golden age of Lucasarts adventures.
Chronicle says the book is “a deluxe compilation that traces its history through never-before-published interviews,” with “more than 300 pieces of concept art, character development sketches, and storyboards have been lavishly reproduced to showcase the creative talent behind such videogame classics as The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.”
Cartoon Brew ran a scan of the one-sheet several weeks back with a selection of the images inside. The signing will be this Thursday, December 4th at Chronicle’s 680 Second Street outlet, and the book itself will be released more widely in mid-December.
Rogue Leaders signing [Chronicle Books]
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THE GAMER’S GUIDE TO THE WILHELM SCREAM
I obviously haven’t been spending near enough time plumbing GiantBomb’s user-generated depths, because this is the first I’ve noticed of the growing list of games that use the ubiquitous Wilhelm Scream. As the description notes, the Scream is a delightfully obscure in-joke amongst Hollywood sound-mixers, who’ve been tucking the clip into anywhere and everywhere they could, and once you’ve heard it a few times in a row, you’ll never be able to un-hear it again.
The biggest repeat offender on the list is the LEGO series (Star Wars and Indy) and various other Star Wars titles, which is no coincidence, as LucasFilm sound effect designers Ben Burtt and Richard Anderson were the pair credited with starting the trend. I’m going to have to replay Bionic Commando Rearmed and Team Fortress 2 with more open ears next time, though, and apparently even Halo 3 got in on the action.
Wilhelm Scream (video game concept) [GiantBomb]
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BLACK MESA IN MOTION
The week’s off to a good start: as promised, mod team Black Mesa Modification has shown off the first trailer for their original Half-Life remake, which is shaping up better than we could’ve imagined.
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YOU’VE GOT TO SPEND TO SAVE
File this under practical nostalgia: tchotchke megamart StrapyaWorld is offering new Tetris and Breakout LCD toy arcade machines done up in the style of Coleco and Nintendo’s original 80’s tabletop units which serve dual purpose as piggybanks, apparently charging a penny per play.
I’m sold, but I’m also holding out some scrap of hope that Tomy will have the good sense to localize BankQuest, their RPG piggy bank (which, coincidentally, was part of a recent Wired photospread).
TETRIS/ ATARI Breakout Arcade Gaming Piggy Bank [StrapyaWorld, YouTube video]
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MUSIC TO GET A BRUTAL BEATING FROM YOUR SUPPOSED FRIEND BY
On top of the hip-hop tribute Capcom put together for its Live Arcade/PSN remake Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, it worked with game music uber-community OC Remix to set down a reimagined version of all the game’s themes, which the site is releasing for free. Personal favorites: all of Malcos’s Dhalsim stage mixes, and Vurez’s perfectly Morricone-esque spaghetti Western themes for T.Hawk’s stages.
OC ReMix: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Official Soundtrack – OCRWiki – OverClocked ReMix
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MORE LIKE LITTLEBIGDEATHOFINNOCENCE, INNIT
I’m stuck square in between horrified and delighted to see via Alice Taylor’s Wonderland blog that Sony has partnered with the UK edition of Vice — your monthly celebration of all things debauched — for an all-LittleBigPlanet blowout, including “Sackboy fashion shoots, fake Sackboy ads for perfume and clothing,” and, most disturbingly, the usual back-cover American Apparel ad with the little Sack lying alluringly in his/her banana-colored panties.
That said, anyone willing to send a copy overseas to Offworld HQ will be our new favorite person — I think we yanks are stuck with the (actually quite good) No Photos issue.
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SEAMAN DEV GOING IPHONE WITH GABO
Yutaka ‘Yoot’ Saito hasn’t quite yet become a household name, but if you were gaming throughout the Dreamcast era you’ve probably at least heard of his work: he’s the creator of the wonderfully grotesque Leonard Nemoy-voiced pet simulator Seaman, as well as the designer behind Maxis’s SimTower (which later was released to GBA and DS as The Tower) and GameCube feudal Japan pinball/strategy game (!) Odama.
While we in the West haven’t been treated to Saito’s work since Odama, he has continued to rework his Seaman idea since, with a mobile phone version and a proper Seaman 2 sequel for PlayStation 2. Unlike the fishtank first, that sequel featured a Peking man with a disturbingly pert umbilical cord called Gabo, whom you communicated with as he went about his daily life (with a now more-evolved Seaman working as your companion).
Though it’s fairly clear we’ll never see a proper English version of Seaman 2, Saito has now revealed that he’s bringing Gabo to iPhones as a low-priced app that lets you more directly poke at, pester, feed, and clean him, with what looks to feature about as much functionality as your average Tamagotchi.
His company DigiToys has uploaded a quick demonstration video of what to expect, and, after watching him mutter quietly to himself while tweaking and twisting his cord and then screaming impotently into the watery void, I have to admit I’m already forming a fast bond.
Gabo! ver1.0 [DigiToys, YouTube trailer]
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CIPHER PRIME’S LIGHT-SYMPHONY PUZZLER AUDITORIUM GOES COMMERCIAL
One of the games that unfortunately fell through the cracks in the first months of Offworld was Cipher Prime’s liquid musical puzzler Auditorium, but with the developer just announcing the release of a full commercial version, I can happily correct that oversight.
Auditorium is as gorgeous a game as it is deviously challenging, and is as organic a puzzle as they come, with no clear correct answers and no binary switches to impact its world. The best you can do is influence its light-stream through subtle gravitational bends, filling up receptors which conduct the underlying music.
It seems to tickle the same part of my brain as ‘fill-in crosswords‘ — the ones with a wordlist, but no clues. You know the answer is there, you can visualize how its streams will eventually intersect, but there’s no easy way to know what your first step should be, or even, at any given moment, how far off the path you are.
Where the demo version — still online to get a taste of what lies ahead — is spread across three acts, the just released full version contains 15 acts, promising some 70 levels.
Auditorium [Cipher Prime]
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