But by the time I got to Larry 7, I actually did know “how to do this!” But, damn the luck, that was the last one!
In my earlier, wistful post about ex-Sierra developers, we ended up somewhat brushing over Al Lowe‘s most recent exploits. Suitably then, Noise to Signal talked to the very esteemed game designer in an excellent, good-humoured interview last November. Last November?! Yeah – I had all but forgotten about it until I recently bumped into Narrative Flood’s recent discussion of the Leisure Suit Larry series. Though the interview is ostensibly on the longer side, it still remains a breeze to read through – and more than worth your time if you’re intrigued by Lowe’s trademark topics!
Leisure Suit Larry 2
After all, Lowe has a fantastic reputation as a soft-spoken funnyman – with a dazzling résumé to boot. Nevertheless, having been unable to auctioneer his latest game, Sam Suede, off to publishers, the Leisure Suit auteur is now fully retired from the gaming industry. The interview thus courteously chooses to focus on themes from Lowe’s past, and that’s more than fine with us here at The Slowdown: We don’t have the “Time Machine” category for nothing!
After the jump, I’ve embellished paraphrase from the review with some commentary and tidbits of my own.
Destructoid recently hooked up with esteemed Quest for Glory developers Lori and Corey Cole for an update in response to the recent announcement of the Special Edition version of Monkey Island. The interview mostly touches upon Sierra’s past reluctance to commit to remakes – past quite an admirable amount of EGA-VGA revisions, anyhow. However, as is evident from just a few straightforwarded questions, it also becomes clear that the Sierra we used to know has not existed for a long, long time.
Quest for Glory 3
Let’s look at the current state of the Sierra alumni: Al Lowe is forcibly retired, the Two Guys from Andromeda bitter and battered, the Williamses have not created a game in 10 years and the Coles have zero interest in the genre. Jim Walls worked on a game as recently as 2002, so this only leaves us with Jane Jensen, who is actually and really working on a game.
When an adventure game designer manage to bring up both Lord of the Rings and WoW over the span of a three-question interview, it’s obvious that the Coles – much like the Williamses – have intentionally and very purposely lost their touch with the adventure genre as well as game development overall. While this is a hard fact for an adventure fan to swallow, then again, it’s also utterly impossible to fault developers for doing what they want with their lives; we must remember that one person’s exciting childhood was effectively another’s daily chore.
To get back to the Destructoid interview, when the Coles are asked about playing adventure games, the answer is:
All the aforementioned developers seem to believe times have changed for good, with the last train finally departed. No going back, is there? :D To me, the last few years have felt like quite a bit of an adventure gaming renaissance, especially with great indie titiles coming out. What do you think?
We thought we’d mention that the PC requirements for Batman: Arkham Asylum were underhandedly revealed unto the Eidos Games forums by an “International Man of Mystery”. If you do find yourself struggling to meet the requirements – or simply cannot bear the fact that the game has been officially postponed – then we have an alternative to offer you in the form of Batman Doom!
The Doom II -based total conversion can be downloaded here and was intriguingly developed by the core members of ACE Team, now better known as the developers of Zeno Clash. If you do decide to take us up on this tip, there are several revised Doom engines you can use to play; Richard recommended to us either Edge or ZDoom. The original Doom II wad files are not required. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two engines:
Edge
ZDoom
If you’re as big a Batman fan as we are, then you probably won’t mind if we sum up this post with the latest Baz Luhrmann –inspired Arkham Asylum fight trailer after the jump.
Ubisoft has just announced a special edition version of Revolution Software’s Shadow of the Templars for Nintendo Wii and DS. According to their press release, this “Director’s Cut” comes packaged with new puzzles, a fleshed-out narrative and will take into account the unique control set of both consoles. According to Charles Cecil, the new plot elements will explain “…what happened prior to the start of the original game, and how it ties to later games in the series.” 1)http://www.revolution.co.uk/_display.php?id=87
The full press release can be read here. For adventure gaming enthusiasts, the most intriguing bit with this new edition is all-new character portraiture by Dave Gibbons – best known for collaborating with Alan Moore on the seminal graphic novel, Watchmen – who is to us better known for collaborating with Revolution Software on Beneath a Steel Sky.
Now, the question is, should we perchance read into this renewed Cecil/Gibbons collaboration as a veiled confirmation of BASS2 (long hinted at by Cecil, and the company even registered a domain for the project back in 2004), especially since GOG.com curiously just released free, repackaged versions of both BASS and Lure of the Temptress?
Though the company released both games as freeware years ago, GOG.com have repackaged the games with wallpapers, a proper manual and even the comic book that originally came with Beneath a Steel Sky. It never hurts to shed more light on “good old games”, and not everyone is familiar with ScummVM either.
The month of October has been a real treat for all the followers of the rom hacking scene. Not just one, or two, but a whopping three high-profile releases have come out! Here’s the rundown and a couple of special surprises.
