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Hey, ah. I gotta split, so um...Viva la Revolución!
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Just when you thought you couldn't get any more excited for tomorrow's release of Grim Fandango Remastered, here comes a fat new interview with Tim Schafer about all things Land of the Dead.
[...] Schafer heard competition to license Grim Fandango was fierce. "We didn't think we'd be able to do it as we'd heard someone else was trying to do it, and we were like 'oh no!'" When asked who this mysterious competitor was, Schafer says "It turned out to be Adam Boyes [VP of publisher & developer relations at SCEA]."
"Adam was like, 'we weren't trying to mess anything up. We just wanted to make that game come out again," Schafer recalls. "And we were like, 'Us too! But we think we should do it because we can remaster it the way it should be done.' And they agreed, so we decided to work together." Schafer notes that there were other companies vying to license Grim, but Sony came the closest.
There's a lot more, like Tim's correct observation that Double Indemnity and Sweet Smell of Success feature some of cinema's best dialog, as well as some mysterious claim that the game features a new camera pan and hints about future adventure remakes, but you'll just have to read it all, my good man.
Source: Eurogamer.net
Now we know for sure this is an actual game. The screenshots and videos featured on the site seem to be things you'd have already been exposed to, but it's pretty much all worth it for the paper mache version of the Double Fine logo. Unless that's old news too.
Bit of trivia: The site's only been up for hours, which means that it's roughly on par with the sum total of Mixnmojo's uptime since 1997. Thank you! Thank you!
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Source: Grim Fandango
Those who didn't back the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter at a tier high enough to get a boxed copy have a chance to get a retail version of Broken Age (although not the same one as the one on the Kickstarter, as that one is a Kickstarter exclusive). Nordic Games will be publishing Broken Age at retail in Europe and North America shortly after Act 2 is released online.
The Kickstarter boxed collector's edition will be arriving at some point after that, since it also includes the documentary, and that can't be mastered until the final episode of the documentary is released.
In other Double Fine news, they have started a new YouTube series with 2 Player Productions called Devs Play, where Double Fine developers play through and talk about games from time gone by, and sometimes are joined by the developers of those games. They've covered Aladdin and Lion King for Genesis, Mother, Earthbound, and Mother 3, and Gauntlet for the Nintendo DS so far. They'll be playing through The Legend of Zelda, Doom, and speed running through Psychonauts with a YouTube speedrunner who has found some techniques to speed through the game by way of glitches (and the Psychonauts team will be there to talk about the glitches, which should prove interesting).
While playing the Costume Quest series, did you ever wish that the collectable creepy treat cards that the kids used for powers to battle their opponents could be collected in real life? Well, now you're in luck, because Double Fine has created Creepy Treat Combat: The Card Game.
You can purchase cards at $6 a piece for 10 random cards (containing 8 common cards and 2 rare cards) or in a 4 pack deal for $20. Then you can use them to battle your friends. For those out there who want to collect them all, there are 45 cards in total.
This would have been sure to have been a hit for the Christmas shopping season, if I wasn't weeks late in reporting it. But, hey, that fits right in with the spirit of Mojo. Happy holidays everyone!
Polygon was able to prod Tim a bit about the recently announced Day of the Tentacle remake, which is still in its earliest phases but which he promises will remain 2D. Beyond assurances of faithfulness, we'll just have to wait to learn what this upgrade will really look or sound like (while wondering what the LEC Singapore sweat shop kids came up with first).
When asked about the business side of securing the license in the first place, Tim describes a situation that really makes me hopeful for the future.
"There were just some people at Disney, Sony and Lucasfilm that care about these games," he said. "They're old enough that some of these people who are executives played them when they were kids. I've been really impressed with the fact that these kind of deals have come together because there's so many reasons for this deal not to happen. There's so many parties involved and so many people who could've said no, that it really took a passionate drive by people in the right places to escort it through the process."
Perhaps Tim's dream of revisiting all the old adventures is a bit too good to be true, but still, it's hard to imagine the future of these games ever being more bright, or for a better group of custodians to be assigned their preservation than Schafer's studio. Hopefully those fans strategically positioned at Disney stick around long enough for Double Fine to keep going through the catalog.
Source: Polygon
Hopefully it appears for you below. I understand that our faultless embedding technology doesn't serve everyone equally well, so you can alternatively make the pilgrimage to Youtube.
Oh dear, I do believe I'm getting the vapors!
During the keynote of something called the "Playstation Experience", Double Fine announced a few minor things. One is that Grim Fandango Remastered will come out on January 27th (previously known as "early 2015"). The second is that the complete Broken Age is headed to PS4 and Vita once Act II makes it to Steam.
Oh, they also threw in that they're making a special edition of Day of the Tentacle. No big deal.
While we wait for details on that, here's a new look at Grim Remastered.
Source: Shacknews
Greg Rice has posted an update on the release of the second act of Broken Age. Both Shay and Vella's half of Act II is now in alpha, and the finale is expected to get to an alpha state by the end of this year. On top of that, Shay's half of Act II has the voice overs and animation in, so it's heading towards beta. The last recording session for Vella's half of Act II is happening now, so the animation for all of the voice overs can now be done, which will allow the rest of the game to head towards beta as well.
Since the game is now playable in alpha state to the finale, and they're now almost wrapped with the remainder of the development of the game, that means that they're now aiming to release of Broken Age Act II early next year.
Double Fine's publisher woes haven't improved as of late it seems, as Gamasutra is reporting that one of Double Fine's unannounced projects was unexpectedly cancelled by its publisher, which led to them having to lay off 12 people.
Tim Schafer states that "Broken Age, Massive Chalice, and Grim Fandango Remastered, were unaffected".
We at Mojo hope those affected get back on their feet soon and wish them the best of luck in the future.
Well, basically.
You may have seen this Kotaku article if you were keeping tabs on us on Twitter during our downtime, but why admit to reading Twitter when I'm handing you this convenient out?
The article goes into the sometimes extreme measures that the Double Fine team had to take in trying to track down old Grim Fandango assets for their upcoming remastering.
“I got another name and another name and eventually walked out of Lucas with a tub of tapes that were in this format I’d never even heard of before,” said Schafer. “But we found out that one of our old co-workers collected obscure drives, and we were able rebuild a lot of it. We were able to get a lot of the frames of the original cut-scenes un-compressed and a lot of the Pro Tools sessions of the music.”
Read the full article for more kah-rayzee stories about Grim's excavation.
Source: Kotaku
The Brutal Legend Limited Edition Indiebox has shipped to those who ordered it in October, full of items using concept art from the game. If you missed it, but would like to order it, there's still time. You can pick it up at the indiebox store for $25 USD.
The Massive Chalice beta is now available to all via Steam Early Access. Everyone who backed it at $20 or more should get a Steam code for this version. Oh, and even though it's on Early Access, it is fully funded, so there's no worry about it not becoming fully realized. The 1.0 release is scheduled for Spring 2015, and the game has full funding to make it up to that point.
Game of Thrones is now more than just a title image and a string of cryptic clues. Telltale has revealed the first concrete information about their series based on the HBO show based on the novels. It will consist of six episodes, and will feature five different playable protagonists all from the same house, in this case, the House of Forrester. Some of the people may be blood relatives of the Forrester clan, others may be people who work for the house, but every decision that you make will have consequences that will affect the entire house. The first episode will be called Iron From Ice and is set to arrive for download soon on PC/Mac, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and iOS, with additional platforms to be announced.
As was revealed last month, Double Fine's space sim, Spacebase DF-9, has left early access due to a lack of additional funding. They have polished up the game to a commercial state, adding a tutorial and a system that will let the player work towards concrete objectives, as well as squashing most of the outstanding bugs (for example, the major problems that had made the Linux version unplayable have been resolved now). They have also released the full Lua source code so that fans can make mods for the game.
Although no new features will be added by Double Fine after this release, they will still be offering support for the game and making bugfixes for reported bugs. They have also reduced the price to $20.01 USD and have started a bundle offering both of their games that have now left Early Access, Spacebase DF-9 and Hack 'N' Slash, for $24.99.
In addition, anyone who already owns Spacebase DF-9 will get a free copy of Hack 'N' Slash, and anyone who already owns Hack 'N' Slash will get a free copy of Spacebase DF-9. If you already own both, Double Fine's Greg Rice has confirmed that you will receive a giftable copy to give to a friend.
Midnight City just announced the release date for Costume Quest 2 on PSN for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It will be released on the 28th of October for both systems and will include a Sackboy costume that is exclusive to the Sony platforms.
The beta (which is a near-complete version of the game that can be played from start to finish) for Massive Chalice is out now for people who pledged $50 or more. If you're one of those people, you should have received your codes from Humble Bundle. If not, contact Humble Bundle support and they'll get you sorted. According to the Massive Chalice blog, the plans for the release of the game for those who didn't back high enough for beta access will be announced soon, after the team sees how the beta period goes.
While we're on the subject of Double Fine, they're going to be holding a free to attend Day of the Devs event again this year, on November 1st at the Old Mint Building in San Francisco from 4PM to 11PM. They'll have lots of recent and upcoming Double Fine games to play, like Costume Quest 2, Massive Chalice, Grim Fandango Remastered, and more. There will also be a lot of games available to play from the other developers that are part of the event. To see the full list of games and to make a reservation for the event if you plan to attend, check out their Facebook event page.
It's been awhile since we've had anything firm, hard, or otherwise unyielding to pressure with regard to the second half of Broken Age, but Double Fine has offered an update a few days ago. They published said update on their Kickstarter page, and since there's an installment of the ongoing 2 Player documentary to go along with it, the post is backer-exclusive. Which means I can't really do much but tell you to go check it out, a suggestion I make under the safe assumption that a few of your dollars rest among the 3+ million the project racked up.
In the absence of a link, I can give you the Cliff Notes version, which is that Tim has finished writing the game, and the voice recording is nearing an end. There's a few other milestone factoids like that, but what they get vague about real quick is the release date you likely sought. In light of that I'm gonna go ahead and assume we won't get to play this until 2015, which is fine by me, because Remi has made short work of my free time lately.
Source: Broken Age Kickstarter
Double Fine has teamed up with Indiebox, the subscription service that ships boxed collector's editions of indie games to gamers' doors each month, to release a Brütal Legend Limited Edition for PC, Mac, and Linux to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the release of the game.
You can subscribe for as many months as you want (which will give you another indie game special edition each month), but if you only want Brütal Legend, there's an option for one month for $16.99 USD + shipping and handling.
Double Fine's remastered version of Tim Schafer's magnum opus of his LucasArts years, Grim Fandango, was demoed at Indiecade. Game journalists have played that demo and shared their thoughts.
IGN describes the new version as follows:
You have the ability to toggle back and forth between how the game originally looked, and how it looks now, and holy moly the difference is night and day. Thanks to the new lighting, shaders, and other technical enhancements that flew way over my head, Manny and company now look incredible. Their in-game models appear to be nearly identical to their cut-scene counterparts, which is great. The game is still presented in 4:3, but you have the ability to stretch it to widescreen (for the love of everything good, please don’t do this). The borders are black right now, but I was told that the developers are toying with some ideas for what could stand on the two sides of the screen.In addition, Double Fine has also added some bonus features to the game:
The final big change I stumbled across was the awesome inclusion of nodes scattered throughout the world that contain small snippets of commentary from Tim Schafer, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell, and a ton of other folks who helped make the game so special back in 1998.Polygon has also shared their thoughts on the demo, and have confirmed that the original's tank controls will be an option for the purists who prefer to play the game that way.
It looks like Grim Fandango Remastered is shaping up to be great. The rest of us will get a chance to play it for ourselves once it's released in early 2015.