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Archived News:
3D Gamers and
FilePlanet
announce plans to co-premiere the playable demo for Sid Meier's Railroads,
Firaxis' upcoming spiritual successor to Railroad Tycoon. Word is the demo is to
be available on Thursday, October 26.
- Close Combat
The
Close Combat Q&A on Armchair General Magazine talks with David Heath of
Matrix Games and Shaun Wallace of CSO Simtek and
The Wargamer's Close Combat Q&A talks with David Heath about plans to
remake the Close Combat series: "Well this is not the same Close Combat you
played years ago but it will feel like a close old friend. The unit data has
been all reworked and updated. Close Combat – Cross of Iron will include
both infantry and armored units not originally in the Close Combat series.
We also want to expand the Close Combat community with our Close Combat
Battle HQ. This is a multiplayer matching system. You will also find new
maps to fight on. We are not really saying much about this now but I give
you a hint and say gamers may discover something about the campaign system.
I will probably get in trouble for just saying that."
- Eragon
The
Eragon Q&A on
FiringSquad talks with Vivendi producer Tim Ramage about the coming
movie tie-in game: "We were fortunate that Fox gave us the ability to not
only draw from the movie, but also from the entire book universe. This
allowed us to put together a unique franchise plan for Eragon. The console
and PC versions follow the movie the closest. We hit all of the story points
based upon the movie script. However, in order to create a compelling game
experience, we have to go beyond what appears on the big screen, so the book
was valuable in helping us extend what happens in the game beyond the
screen."
- Star Trek
Stargamer.net's
Star Trek's Q&A talks with Pete Hines of Bethesda Softworks about their
coming Trekkie games: "The great thing about this time in the console and PC
lifecycle is that they’re all evolving and each have powerful concepts and
potential to explore new areas of creativity – using the touch screen of the
DS to do ship commands is novel and different, using the wireless abilities
of the DS and PSP to have handheld battles is another. Using the dualshock
controller of the PS2 to create a pretty original control scheme for a high
energy action title – and finally for PC and 360 we get to innovate with
graphics, visuals, - basically, soup to nuts, to bring a hybrid of intense
moment to moment action and tactical squad control to life."
- Dreamlords
The
Dreamlords Q&A on MMORPG.COM talks with Jon Selin, lead designer on
Lockpick's upcoming MMORPG: "The testing is going great, we are letting
bigger and bigger batches of testers on all the time, we just recently made
the transition from Alpha to Beta testing, meaning that all frameworks are
in place and we are now working more on creating more content and tuning the
game. Signing up for the Beta is still very much possible; there is a link
on the front page of www.dreamlords.com."
- Civilizations Chronicles
The
Civilizations Chronicles Q&A on Shacknews is a publisher created
discussion of the upcoming Civ compilation recalling Bruce Shelley's
experiences with the series: "We felt it was an incredible game and as more
and more people were exposed to it in development everyone raved about it. I
don’t think at the time I thought it would become recognized as one of the
best PC games of all time, that it would turn out to be probably Sid’s best
game ever, or that it would live on through multiple revisions, perhaps
forever. So in those terms the success was surprising."
- RPG Roundtable
RPG
Vault's RPG Roundtable #6 gathers together some role-playing game
developers to ponder whether "they don't make RPGs like they used to."
- F.E.A.R.: Extraction Point on
IGN.
Final Wrap.
- WoW: The Burning Crusade on
Eurogamer.
Giants versus the dreaded Cowboys in Monday Night Football tonight! MNF doesn't
seem the same on cable, but that can only help the G-men, who never did very
well on the ABC version of the game. The Giants have also never beaten a team
with Terrel Owens, either, so that's another trend I'm hoping to see reversed as
well.
R.I.P.:
'House of Wax' actress Phyllis Kirk dead.
CITY Interactive reveals plans for Terrorist Takedown: Covert Operations, a
continuation of this counterterrorism-themed first-person shooter. There aren't
many details available yet, but the first four screenshots from the project can
be found on 3D Gamers.
The DEFCON
Website now offers a new version 1.1 patch for Introversion's recently
released global strategy game. The update is for the boxed version only, the
Steam version gets its own separate automatic update.
The change
notes outline what's new and different. Thanks Ant.
The Official The Mark Website is
online, offering a Flash home to the upcoming first-person shooter. Word is: "The Mark web site includes a wealth of new materials, such as
two brand new videos showing off the single and multiplayer modes, a whole
library of new screenshots, character information for both good and bad sides,
and finally a break down of the kind of weapons, that the players will get
chance to use in the game, to either kill or be killed by - example, AK47, Z
300, Colt Commando M4."
TotalWar.com now offers a pair of new faction movies from Medieval II: Total
War. The clips can be selected the group of Flash thumbnails in the middle of
the page, with the profiles of the Byzantine and Russian factions offering
movies (thanks Frans). Also, a new World in Conflict movie shows off Massive
Entertainment's upcoming Cold War strategy game, showing off a Soviet attack on
the US town and the resulting US counterattack. The clip is available on
3D Downloads, 3D
Gamers and
GameSpot.
- Chronicles of Spellborn
The
Chronicles of Spellborn Q&A on Ten Ton Hammer talks with Marco van Haren
of Spellborn International about their upcoming MMORPG: "The key to success
in Spellborn will be to know your skills, those of your party members, and
those of you opponents. The combat in Spellborn is intense and frantic and
players will need to learn to depend on each other. While this might make
some of the encounters difficult, the feeling of accomplishment is a lot
bigger. Each player in a group will have the feeling that he is an essential
member of the group which gives the game much more of a dungeon crawl
feeling then just another quick run for items."
- Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
The
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Q&A on Ten Ton Hammer is an interview about the
MMORPG with Brad McQuaid of Sigil Online Games set in an article-format,
even though it directly quotes the questions as well as the answers: "It’s
all planned out. We have it all mapped out for the next 7 or so years. My
dream one day is to create the never-ending MMO. People talk about a game
where it could take you years to see everything. How about if there’s no
flippin’ way you could see everything?. I’m going to be experiencing things
at the character level where I go, ‘Oh, cool! We put this in? That’s
awesome!’ And so...I want to create the never-ending MMO. I think it could
be Vanguard."
- World in Conflict
The
World in Conflict Q&A on GameSpot talks with Martin Walfisz of Massive
Entertainment about their upcoming Cold War real-time strategy game: "From
the start, we focused on getting multiplayer right, and it is now very fun
and very intense, just the way we want it. There is obviously still some
work being done on this side of the game. New features, more game-modes and
so on, but presently our focus is on making the single-player experience
just as rewarding. A majority of the team is now fine-tuning the story,
implementing the campaign flow and creating all the single-player missions.
The single-player campaign is all about taking the player through a range of
emotions and experiences. When we see our game testers getting goose bumps
and shivers of excitement, we know that we're on the right track. War is
truly coming home, and it's a very chilling experience."
- Entertainment Consumers Association
The
Entertainment Consumers Association Q&A on FiringSquad talks with Hal
Halpin about this newly formed consumer advocacy group: "It was following an
IEMA board meeting that I realized that the industry was extraordinarily
well represented, with the IGDA (developers), ESA (publishers) and EMA
(retailers), but the most important group was being neglected, consumers. I
knew that our team could effectively apply a lot of the lessons learned and
experience gained over our nine years running the IEMA and organically grow
a membership organization. So we set out to partner with every game-centric
company out there in order to get our message out. And the response from the
trade and gamers alike was overwhelming. It was clear that the time was
now."
- Question of the Week
Gamasutra's
Question of the Week: Do Games Industry Professionals Buy Their Games New or
Used? Offers answers from folks in the industry.
Thanks Mike Martinez and Ant.
Don't know how I noticed this, but today is the sixth anniversary of the move of
the BlueTower from Brooklyn. Time sure flies when you're having fun… though
one of these days I should take that anniversary as an inspiration and unpack
the last of the boxes from the move.
R.I.P.:
'Father Knows Best' mother Jane Wyatt dead at 96. Spock's mom.
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