Gaming Podcast’s Jonah Falcon and Shack News’ T.J. Denzer do a totally-not-ripping-off-Zero-Punctuation’s-Let’s-Drown-Out video of the former playing Prince of Persia 2008 as they discuss some of the news of the day.
VIDEO: GamingPodcast Plays Prince of Persia
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VIDEO: GamingPodcast Plays Bus Simulator 18VIDEO: GamingPodcast Plays Bus Simulator 18
Gaming Podcast’s Jonah Falcon and Shack News’ T.J. Denzer do a totally-not-ripping-off-Zero-Punctuation’s-Let’s-Drown-Out video of the former playing Bus Simulator 18 as they discuss some of the news of the day.
Gaming Flashback: Double Dragon II [NES]Gaming Flashback: Double Dragon II [NES]
Double Dragon II: The Revenge, this is a sequel title to a game which arrived earlier on the NES as an arcade port, something pretty standard back in the day of arcades, and like it’s original port, has variations from the arcade.
The trick is, the variations are much less than that of the original (which might as well been it’s own version of the arcade game but sucky). I was a huge fan of the original Double Dragon title in the arcade and was met with extreme disappointment when I found out it was strictly single player on the NES console.
This game was 300% better than the disappointing Double Dragon release on the NES. Granted, the NES version was fun to play, in single-player, but I purchased it for the two-player nature of the arcade version so I could play the game with my friends. Double Dragon II, on the NES had finally restored my faith in Technos Japan and the american publisher Acclaim. They took a bad situation and made it much better in the second release, why they didn’t make the original multiplayer is beyond me.
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Sierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into HistorySierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into History
One of the great downfalls of an acquisition or merger, in the game industry, is the loss of great franchise titles. Sierra, or Sierra Online, once stood on its own as a company with great gaming titles but later fell into the depths of Hades under many different company names.
Sierra’s last stop on the acquisition highway was Vivendi, years after much of Sierra’s steam had slowed. Now, they’re part of Activision Blizzard so we had high hopes they’d find a great use for some of the old Sierra properties long since collecting dust. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and especially Gabrielle Knight were some of our favorites, but times have changed.
“We are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced. We will not publish any other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and we are currently reviewing our options regarding those titles,” says Activision Blizzard (joystiq)
This is unfortunate news, Activision Blizzard now has a large set of franchises on their hands, many of which have collected dust for years. Those dust collecting franchises could rise from the dead and reinvigorate their old fan base… or be dropped to the earth as unwanted scrapes after a big hunt with the vultures awaiting their take (sorry, too much watching of Animal Planet)
A reworked Kings Quest or Gabriel Knight could have seriously awesome potential in this time and age, imagine a dark comedy version of Gabriel Knight or a huge scaled world in King Quest using todays graphic engines. Although, these titles could also go the way Atari has gone and taken a well remembered franchise and made mud of its great name (*cough* Alone in the Dark).
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know the distance an old franchise could go in this new world. We’ll have to pull out an old copy of our prized posessions and remember just how great they once where.