Archives

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while, but it took some time for me to get my thoughts in order.

For those of you who don’t know, an indepedent merchant on Amazon Marketplace recently offered for sale a Japanese game called RapeLay. Reported first by GamePolitics, Amazon quickly pulled the game and apparently banned the merchant (who charmingly called himself “Hentaiguy”)… but not quickly enough. British MP Keith Vaz got wind of it, and from there the story ballooned rapidly out of control. We’re honestly lucky that it wasn’t picked up by more of the mainstream media.

In April of 2000 I installed an adventure game called the The Longest Journey on my puny little Widows 98 laptop and began to play. Almost immediately I was swept into a fully imagined classic fantasy world. Well, two worlds actually. Stark, a futuristic totalitarian place where the few lord it over the many and where magic does not exist. And Arcadia, a sprawling magical land crammed with impossible races and dream-like settings. The Longest …

With all due credit to Penny Arcade for the image that defines not only Gabe, but Steerpike as well. This comes up because Dave Perry, formerly sort of still of Shiny Entertainment, opined at D.I.C.E. that “the days of single player gaming are numbered.” He goes on to say that “without question, our focus is entirely on multiplayer.” Dave, you’re a frickin’ genius… of course, everyone knew that, since you drove Shiny into the ground, …

Word has recently come across the FFC teletype that Phantasy Star Zero, the latest installment in Sega’s long-running series, will be arriving on western shores in convenient Nintendo DS-compatible cartridges in Q2 of this year. Once again we all have a chance to put on thigh high stockings and battle improbable monsters! Wear big blue hairstyles! Sport unnecessarily pointed ears! All the tropes we love from Phantasy Star. The franchise has come a long way …

In more amusing than average news, recently disabarred attorney Jack Thompson has shared his view that God has caused Take-Two Interactive’s stock to plummet to all time lows in the wake of EA’s abandonment of acquisition talks. Take-Two, as you know, published Grand Theft Auto – among other games, though Thompson neither knows nor cares about that, he’s very single-minded – and therefore have earned the ire of the almighty. The full email exchange with …

FFC fans, please welcome Jason P. Sage as our latest contributor to the Fat Chicks Celebrity Guest Editorial Section. Jason is a hard-working independent developer on the technology and coding side of things. He and I have communicated fairly regularly over the past 12 months, discussing new technologies, the plight and promise of the indie developer, and various other topics. Jason is also the lead of Jegas, LLC, a hosting and consulting provider offering innovative …

The newest installment in Ubi’s money-printing Prince of Persia franchise hits stores today, and the first reviews are beginning to trickle out – notably this one from IGN. There’s really only one way you can take a 9.3, and while I hope that the game actually lives up to this score, I’ve certainly lost all faith in mainstream game journalism since the 8.0-10 scoring the abominable Far Cry 2 received from nearly all ad-supported outlets.

It’s actually kind of old news now, but Turner Broadcasting Systems has sold its GameTap service to France-based Metaboli and it will live on in some incarnation through that company. As a long and vocal supporter of GameTap (and a paid freelancer), I was an outsider who saw in through the window. Know that I don’t mean this as an exposé. I was working a thousand miles away from GameTap High Command and communicating with just a handful of actual Turner employees, and them by email. So it’s not like I was privy to anything big. What you read here is a reflection on my experiences, peppered with what I know or believe to be true, but authoritative it ain’t. I can’t claim to provide even a remotely comprehensive description of what happened to the service, but I can share the observations of one who’d been on GameTap’s periphery since before it had even been named.

New over the news tickers today is the suggestion that failed Maxis “masterpiece” Spore, released to tepid reviews but hella sales in early September, underwent some significant changes to up the simplicity and cute factor and back-burner the SimLife science originally planned by Will Wright and his team. The conjecture is that Maxis employee and outspoken industry dude Chris Hecker is responsible for the change. Whether or not that’s true, the cuteification of Spore actually …

I totally stole the above picture from the indispensible gamepolitics.com site, but it’s worth the theft to share.

A two-game franchise may seem somewhat thin material for a retrospective piece. But the story of the Thief games is one of richer history than many realize—Thief and its successor are much more than the sum of their parts. The adventure that unfolds as you play them is intriguing enough, but when taken hand in hand with the corresponding real-life tale of innovation, corporate downfall, and the subsequent industry ripple effect, suddenly Thief’s dark milieu offers sufficient wealth to produce plenty of interesting reading.

Adventure game reviews, walkthroughs, discussion, and more