Following the surprise E3 announcement that LucasArts was spearheading two new campaigns to revive point and click adventure franchise Monkey Island, the company has also just announced that they will be partnering with Valve’s digital download service Steam to make available a number of its classic (and more recent) adventures.
The campaign will begin Wednesday July 8th with ten games, including three Star Wars titles: Battlefront II, Republic Commando and Starfighter, three Indy Jones games: Fate of Atlantis, Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure and the original Lego Indiana Jones, two classic CD-ROM era adventures, LOOM and The Dig, as well as Thrillville: Off the Rails, and — my pick of the litter — cult 3D shooter Armed and Dangerous, still the finest and funniest work Planet Moon has done since its Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
The company says further announcements about future titles will be made via its Twitter feed.
Another link I’ve probably sat on for a bit too long, but present here for the remaining few: arts program Durch die Nacht mit (Into the Night with) — who are responsible for pairing off and filming a number of unlikely/excellently matched sets of creators like Run Lola’s Franka Potente and John Carpenter or Miranda July and David Shrigley (do need video of that, please) — were at GDC this year to catch a meeting between Passage/Between creator Jason Rohrer and games design veteran Chris Crawford.
While the video above only captures the first moments of their introduction (and sees Crawford perhaps the most delightfully gracious and still cheerfully cantankerous as I’ve seen him in a while), blogger Bruno De Figueiredo has the rest of the episode available on his dieubussy blog, which, he says, sees Rohrer and Crawford “wander about the city, engaging in a rather deep albeit contagious dialogue about the root of video games and the process of their creation.”
Bonus points for spotting Jottobots/Snapshot creator Kyle Pulver‘s background cameo near the end of the clip.
Apparently neglected by more than just me over the holiday weekend: Samorost creators Amanita Design have opened pre-orders for their IGF winning PC/Mac followup Machinarium — due for release in October — and are offering a soundtrack EP and wallpaper pack as an early bonus.
Think of it as Amanita paying you the $3 discount to listen to the game’s music early, and you’ll see that there’s no reason to not support them now for your inevitable download later. [via infinitelives]
Now available in a very limited — and, at $30, very affordable — run of 150 signed editions (well, 149, after I snagged one): Double Fine artist Scott C’s Keeping Them At Bay, formerly known as your ‘one shot’ for May the 28th. Several more of his fantastic designs are also available. [via Scott C]
And then this happened: Atari Museum has dug up, restored, and released the source code for the Atari 7800 versions of: Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug, Robotron 2084, Xevious, Sphinx/Nile Flyer/Desert Falcon, Centipede, Commando, Crossbow, Food Fight, Galaga, Hat Trick and Super Stunt Cycle/Motopsycho, along with the Atari 2600 version of Joust, OS codes, and Atari ST dev kits and animation tools.
Head over to Atari Museum for all the download links, and to thank the author for “climbing into a filthy dumpster at 3am in the morning behind the old Atari building in Sunnyvale.”
Weren’t expecting that, were you: following the release of Terminal Reality’s Xbox 360/PS3 and Red Fly’s Wii versions of Ghostbusters: The Game, Media Molecule are following suit and offering up their own tribute in burlap form. No word yet if — as usual — it will come simply in the form of costume and sticker packs, or whether more level-packs are in the works as well, but even if it’s just the former, insert your own crossing-the-Paintinator-stream joke here.
Logan Walters’ invaders design requires no explanation, does require further meme exploration. (via Puit)
Pinging quietly on my radar for some months and now finally shown off in gloriously overblown video form: UK indie Positech’s forthcoming PC game Gratuitous Space Battles, which may be the new best thing to happen in operatic chaos since, what, Homeworld? [via Positech]
91 pixel artists, one ‘exquisite corpse‘ image (that must be clicked and seen in full res). [via minusbaby]
