This week’s episode takes a look at this week’s Gaming Flashback, Viva Pinata.
The news includes:
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Bad economic times mingled with company acquisition spells disaster for many game titles but the story ends well, we hope, for Ghostbusters. The game was slated for a Holloween release, last year, but was given the boot by Vivendi when they merged Activision and Blizzard. There is only so much room for projects and management when two companies combine, Ghostbusters was given boot.
Atari picked up the franchise once it was slammed to the cutting room floor and the team has since been given a second chance. Not only did Atari give them access to a channel for publishing, they asked the developers for a wish-list of things they could have done different. They then granted all the changes, in effect, giving the developers a second chance to update the title and make the story telling and game better than it would have been if they hit their original date.
Being picked up by a developer and being given the chance to update the game in ways you really only had dreamed means we, as gamers, will be getting the real title. The biggest factor for a crappy game is the time and money to get the job done. Unfortunately time and money are in constant battle with money usually arriving as victor.
Now, developers are being given the time to do it right at the expense of a little more money in the investment. A once in a lifetime change that could put a “would be” dead franchise in the top spots.
(Thanks, BlendGames)
If you’re a rock band fan, you’ll want to checkout their new hype wagon trailer. Nothing new here, really, looks like they’ve added some “70’s style” effects to the character animations on certain areas. The Rock Band 2 title seems to adopt much from its original game in terms of graphics, rendering and overall design.
Notice the fret board looks the same, they’re sticking with the “square” pattern matching boxes for playing specific notes/beats. Some folks prefer the Guitar Hero “circle” patterns but so be it, they’re sticking with their current design. Hopefully, they’ll glow the hammer-ons or make them a bit more apprant because many Guitar Hero folks have a steep learning curve with the smaller notes for hammer-ons.
Lode Runner, a game many of us logged hundreds of hours upon. Lode Runner has a great deal of replay value thanks to its great map editor. The game was first published by Broderbund in 1983, but was first prototyped by Douglas Smith, an architecture student at the University of Washington.
The Lode Runner prototype was called Kong and was originally written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer on campus, but shortly after it was ported to the VAX minicomputer. Originally programmed in FORTRAN and utilized only ASCII character graphics (the most basic of characters).
In September of 1982 Smith was able to port it to the Apple II+ (in assembly language) and renamed it to Miner. In October of that same year he submitted a rough copy to Broderbund and he’s said to have received a one-line rejection letter, “Sorry, your game doesn’t fit into our product line; please feel free to submit future products.”
The original title had no joystick support and was developed in full black and white…not exactly exciting. So, Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. Around Christmas of 1982, he submitted the game, now renamed Lode Runner, to four publishers and quickly received offers from all four: Sierra, Sirius, Synergistic, and Brøderbund.
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