‘Tis the season for remakes.
A fresh Activision press release arrived in the inbox today and the word was that Lucasarts has jumped on the polish-and-re-release bandwagon too, combining the special editions of Secret of Monkey Island and Secret of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s revenge together with limited bonus content to the delight of point-and-click fans the world over.
Along with the features previously offered by the special edition titles including seamless switching between classic and updated graphics and a remastered score, the Monkey Island Special Edition Collection includes all-new features such as directly controlling slapstick protagonist Guybrush Threepwood in a more modern style than ‘click to walk here’ in Monkey Island 2. There will also be commentaries from veteran Monkey Island beardmasters (Okay they might not all have beards…) Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, as they share their collective thoughts, memories and anecdotes on both old and new incarnations of Lucasart’s premier point and click story-based piracy simulator.
On top of these digital delights, the collection also seems to contain unreleased storyboards and concept art from both games, as well as some from an unreleased Monkey Island animated movie, which allegedly wasn’t released by Industrial Light and Magic.
As bundles go this isn’t half bad, especially if you’re already a fan of the whole Monkey Island shebang. What might tick off players who have already purchased the special editions of both games are obviously the features they’ve missed out on, and the fact they have to re-buy both titles in order to get hold of them. Whether the collection will be too pricey for those who already have the titles remains to be seen, as the price was not included with the early (read around the 9th) September release date. The collection arrives on the major current consoles as well as the PC, but not on anything made by Nintendo… strange, as the games would probably be well suited to the Wii. Perhaps there may be some more Monkey Island flavoured content arriving to Nintendo fans soon…
Nintendo bigjobs, Reggie Fils Aime included, have always decried the smartphone downloadable content gaming industry, with Reggie himself saying that it’s killing the market for more serious creative projects via saturation.
“Cheap, disposable smartphone games are one of the biggest problems facing the games industry today,” Reggie said when asked for his angle on smartphones and the games played on them. “I actually think that one of the biggest risks today in our industry are these inexpensive games that are candidly disposable from a consumer standpoint”
But recent information has placed Nintendo’s poster child, the Pokémon series, as one of the latest games on the market to receive the app treatment. A tentative cover art (if you could call it that) screenshot for a title loosely translates as ‘Pokémon Say Tap? BW’ which is, well, some kind of game apparently.
Say Tap is based on the current generation of Pokémon, those which appear in the newer Black and White Pokémon titles. The game reportedly uses Pokémon cards and music as part of the game experience.
It’s important not to jump on the current media bandwagon; ‘Nintendo is making Android/iPhone games’ as Nintendo stockholders did when this information was released (raising Nintendo stocks by a convenient percentage).
Remember, the Pokémon company, who are responsible for Pokémon and everything that governs the sweetly sadistic animal capturing franchise, are only partly owned by Nintendo. Partly enough that the Pokémon company can license the use of the full catalogue of creatures whenever they want, meaning that an app game is entirely possible for the Pokémon franchise.
Hopefully Nintendo themselves will focus their attentions on the serious business of Pokémon-ing up the younger generation on real game platforms for many years to come.
How does the thought of watching Nico Bellic stealing a car and racing with Cousin Roman through the Streets of Liberty City on the big screen sound to you? Or John Marston having a full blown Saloon shootout with local uglies in the Wild West?
Well it could all become real very soon as the makers of the hugely successful Red Dead Redemption, LA Noir and GTA games, Rockstar, have just patented a new “Rockstar Films” trademark.
Rockstar’s parent company Take Two registered the name some time ago but the studio is now go and hopefully we can look forward to the great storytelling and set pieces that we have come to expect from the studio’s games, but this time in movie form.
The idea of a Rockstar films group has been coming for some time with Take Two registering the Films trademark back in 2004, also owning Rockstarfilms.com and Rockstarfilms.net since then, yet they have done nothing with them.
Back in April Rockstar’s Dan Houser had told the Hollywood Reporter “If we were attempt to make a movie, we would like to make it ourselves or at least work with the best talent, so at if it is bad, we can know we failed on our own terms.”
SO we could all be seeing a GTA or Read Dead movie in the coming years. Hell. Yes.
If gamers got crazier they’d be… we don’t know if that’s possible, actually.
A dedicated collector of Playstation 2 titles has amassed a complete collection of NTSC Playstation 2 titles, from Ape Escape to Zone of the Enders (No, I don’t know the first and last PS2 game alphabetically).
The master collector himself was recently interviewed by the guys at Playstation Collector, and the interview can be found heeeere…
And Finally…
Infinite-Excitement!