Jim, Yes Means No

Almost exactly two years ago in 2008, on April the 22nd, the recovering Interplay had just sent out a press release announcing a new Earthworm Jim game to be developed in conjunction with an animated series and a feature film, with original author Douglas TenNapel working as a creative consultant on the game. 1)http://interplay.com/about/article.php?id=23

Conversely, earlier in the same month, Interplay had just “reinitiated its in-house game development studio, and [was] hiring game developers,” and vouched to “leverage its portfolio of gaming properties by creating sequels to some of its most successful games, including Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK.” 2)http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=20

While we were all painfully aware of the financial and legal turmoil the company had just faced over the past few years, these exorbitant plans sounded good enough – at the very least up until the paragraph in the press release that also cited, in the same breath, the “Safe harbor statement under the private securities litigation reform act of 1995,” which so happens to state that “[t]he risks and uncertainties inherent in such statements may cause actual future events or results to differ materially and adversely from those described in the forward-looking statements.” 3)http://www.interplay.com/about/article.php?id=20

Hence: Two years, no game, no series, no film.

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Maximize Your Torment

Planescape Torment 01As you might have heard, after reissuing a portion of their back catalogue digitally, Interplay also seem to be re-retailing some of their classic games. Make of that ethically what you will – especially in relation to the recent, omnipresent lawsuits – but as things stand, it seems that the earlier Planescape: Torment release date got pushed back a month, and the current release date stands at the 20th – that is, in a few days. That means we have just enough time to outline how to best install mods for the game!

First off, we would start with installing the official v1.1 patch. This is not required for 2CD versions of the game, though I’ve never come across those. After that, the smartest choice is bigg’s unambiguous Widescreen Mod, currently sitting at v2.2 – as an added plus, it works for other games built on the Infinity engine, too. To get more bang for you buck with the bigger resolution you just got, you should also install GhostDog’s PS:T UI mod for the aforementioned. According to the site, it makes “1280×800, 1280×720, 1280×768 and 1280×1024 resolutions viable for Planescape: Torment by changing a number of things in the UI.”

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