Tommo purchased Humongous Entertainment in Atari's bankruptcy auction last July (except for the Backyard Sports franchise, which went to The Evergreen Group, and Moonbase Commander, which went to Rebellion).
They've been doing all the right things with their acquisition so far. They renamed the company back to Humongous Entertainment, brought back the Humongous website, brought Putt-Putt Joins the Circus to Android, and they're looking for more avenues to re-release the junior adventures produced by the company that Ron Gilbert and Shelly Day built in 1992.
Humongous Entertainment just re-tweeted a message from twitter user George Q. Greg: "Night Dive. That gives me hope." In addition, last month Night Dive asked their Facebook followers if there was any children's games that they remember fondly.
This is just as much of a rumour as the Night Dive/LucasArts situation. However, this one probably holds more weight, as Tommo actually has proven they want to do the sensible thing and sell the games they own through digital distribution to get some of their money back. As usual with rumours like these, we'll just have to take them with a grain of salt, and see how they pan out.
georgeqgreg
clone: Interesting. imho they messed with too little, such as keeping references to things that are no longer relevant. (Like mac help file, was it? Or mac engine? I forget. But I do remember laughing a bit. Oh, and the credits of FF3 have the old name. That's another I recall)
I do think I misread your original comment in some way. Yes, they're all the nimbus versions. As far as I know they're still using their work, or rather, they're basically re-releases of the Nimbus versions with a new company name and not much else.
That reminds me of something else. One of these days I should get around to buying the new Windows port of Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo and see what it's like more closely.
Retrodude
The thing is, I'm fairly certain that most of the Humongous games that aren't ports of the DOS-era titles will actually work perfectly well on modern systems with only slight adjustments. (Some of the games work better if you use the .w32 file as the .exe, for example.) I think that if PC releases on GOG or otherwise are in their future, they'll either use ScummVM or be retooled so that the games don't force 256-color mode, since that's one of the few roadblocks for being optimized for modern computers.
georgeqgreg
clone: They've actually got Brad P. Taylor doing the port work. (He also worked on the original Windows engine and --I think-- a few Lucasarts things.) So I doubt they're using Scummvm code. I think the wii thing scared them to death. They're also adding a few new features into the engines with new versions of the data code, such as afaik HTML-based subtitles.
Anyway, wow. A news story made of a rumour and a follow friday. Thanks for mentioning me though!
clone2727
This is probably the same horrible porting job as the iPhone versions that appeared recently. Of course, they (and normal users) should just use ScummVM...
Tommo didn't purchase all of HE's assets though. I know Moonbase Commander made it to another company.
The thing is, I'm fairly certain that most of the Humongous games that aren't ports of the DOS-era titles will actually work perfectly well on modern systems with only slight adjustments. (Some of the games work better if you use the .w32 file as the .exe, for example.) I think that if PC releases on GOG or otherwise are in their future, they'll either use ScummVM or be retooled so that the games don't force 256-color mode, since that's one of the few roadblocks for being optimized for modern computers.
Tommo didn't purchase all of HE's assets though. I know Moonbase Commander made it to another company.