I somehow missed the official announcement (I got an email in February announcing its imminent release, but not the actual event), but Return to Dark Castle is finally available for purchase and download. You can get it off of the SuperHappyFunFun site. There’s also some information on the ZSculpt site about the level structure for those who want to a head start on designing their own levels.

I’ll be purchasing my own copy tonight and I’ll try not to let it delay the next show any more than it already is. 🙂

Start practicing your litany of fear; there’s sudden revival of the old platformer Earthworm Jim. First, later this year (the press release says “soon”) the Sega Genesis versions of Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2 will be available on the Wii’s Virtual Console (along with two other Interplay titles: Boogerman and Clayfighter). Second, plans are in motion at Interplay to do a sequel, with creator Douglas TenNapel as a consultant: Earthworm Jim 4. Finally, as part of the work on that sequel, Interplay will launch a new TV series and a feature film.

Now if they’d only bring back The Neverhood — that game was awesome. I still have the soundtrack that I picked up at E3 one year. Digging around, I see there are also plans to make it into a feature film, which would be interesting. Given Doug TenNapel’s connections, perhaps Frederator will be working on Earthworm Jim as well?

In case you haven’t heard the news, Valley Games is now working with Eagle Games to handle their pre-orders. Because of this, it looks like you’ll have to re-order Titan and other games you might have already pre-ordered, but other than that I think this is good news. Full press release follows:
Read the rest of this entry »

Over at Andy Baio’s Waxy.org blog, he reports on some archaeological work he did on an old backup drive from Infocom. As part of that, he found the history of a never-completed sequel to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe game. Fascinating, and a great example of what can go wrong in the development of a game, or any large scale artistic effort. He also makes two prototypes available for download.

One of the downsides (besides there not being stuff for you guys to listen to) to not doing podcasts for a while is that I miss out on reviewing games that this show is actually qualified to do. Seems like Black Ops would be a natural. Oh well. I’ll see about covering the revamp when it finally comes out for the public.

As far as the next show, I’m working on it now. With the recent (as in the past few months) passing of Bobby Fischer it seems appropriate to finally cover chess. I’ll be talking about my personal history, ways to get into it for novices, and ways to make it more interesting for those who either are tired of it or didn’t think much of it in the first place. If you have thoughts along those lines, drop me a line. Hopefully I’ll be recording this weekend, though with my daughter’s play and my friend’s seder, it might be tight.

And don’t worry Gygax fans, I’ll be doing D&D at some point, too. Fischer’s just first in line.

The Vintage Gamer begins its triumphant return with a special interview episode with the Tic-Tac-Toe Champion of the World. If that’s not enough, we have a new sponsor! And the usual intro and outro music. So yes, it’s a chock-full episode.
Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download