Episode 477: Fleeing Irma

This week is a week late due to various issues, but Hurricane Irma was not one of them, as Scott recorded his part of the podcast from Georgia, while Jonah and T.J. live far away from hurricane zones. In the meantime, T.J. goes from being disappointed with Destiny and being ecstatic with Destiny 2.

This week’s news includes:

  • Destiny 2 passes 1 million concurrent users
  • Half-Life writer posts possible Half-Life 2: Episode 3 plot
  • American McGee is ready to make Alice 3
  • Settlers of Catan is coming to virtual reality this year
  • Act 1 of Homestuck adventure game Hiveswap coming out this month (from PC Gamer)
  • Pewdiepie threatened DMCA takedown following his use of the N-word on stream
  • Okami HD spotted for PC, PS4, Xbox One

This week’s Gaming Flashback is the original Assassin’s Creed. Let us know what you think of the game.

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Episode 440: Wasteland 3 AnnouncedEpisode 440: Wasteland 3 Announced

This episode is late due to Jonah having to do some film work, but this show also has some huge news items as well.

The news items this week includes:

  • inXile announces Wasteland 3 – and it’s got multiplayer
  • No Man’s Sky is being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority
  • Destiny 2 rumored to be coming to PC
  • PlayStation 3 was way overpriced and still lost money on each unit, former Sony exec says

Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Episode 265: See You After E3Episode 265: See You After E3

This episode is a little late due to the holiday, but at least it’ll give everyone something to listen to when there’s no episode next week due to Jonah Falcon and Paul S. Nowak heading to E3.

In the meantime, the gang covers the following news:

  • THQ: “Linear is not a dirty word for an FPS”
  • Pachter decries on-disc DLC as “just plain greed”
  • Crysis 2 returns to Steam
  • The Old Republic still has one of the biggest dev teams in industry

Along with the usual Reader Feedback, the crew this time asks the readers to ask some questions, instead of the other way around. Let us know what you want to know.

Gaming Flashback: River Raid (Atari 2600)Gaming Flashback: River Raid (Atari 2600)

One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.

This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.

The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.

A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.

Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)

Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)

All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.