Geek News

We get a brief news update every day from our research group here at the office. Today's email was chock-full of interesting nerd tidbits. Some of these items are probably old news, but these days, it's hard to keep up!

- Paul Dini is working on a new Gatchaman (G-Force) feature
- the same folks are also making an Astro Boy animated feature
- George Miller is going to direct the Justice League movie
- Tokyopop is doing a manga prequel of the Dark Crystal
- Genndy Tartakovsky is working on a new Dark Crystal animated feature

That's a lot of cool stuff!

Impossible Mission, Wii

Surfing the web this weekend, I came across the interesting news that Impossible Mission is being remade for the Wii! This is only one of the coolest old-school games of all time. Having played it again at some point in the last year or so on GameTap, it is definitely in need of a reface. Sad thing is, I'm not sure if it is going to be available in the US. The Amazon UK site has a boxed version for sale, though. Further inspection reveals that Impossible Mission may in fact come to the Wii's Virtual Console as a downloadable title. Is this true? Can a Lode Runner remake be too far behind? Seriously, this is all very exciting, but I can't imagine that there are too many gamers out there under the age of 30 who would be interested in something like this. Anyway, check out the screenshot:


I'll be keeping my eye on the Metacritic page. There appears to be DS, PSP and PS2 versions planned as well. I like this quote from a PSP review: "Retro platforming at its most hernia-inducingly painful." Talk about evil villainy. Mwa ha ha!

Halo 3 Psychologists

You probably saw last month's Wired cover story about the development of Halo 3. Microsoft's testing lab for the game studied an extraordinary number of gameplay elements to fine-tune the game for the largest number of players.

Today, NPR reports on the same thing, noting the "psychologists" that Microsoft employs to test Halo 3's playability. I've often scoffed at the mainstream media's insistence that game companies hire psycohologists to make their products "more addictive" -- but in this case, it appears to be the case.

Gee, I wonder if anyone is gonna buy this thing? Find out tonight at midnight!

Reviews = $$$?

Great article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about Metacritc and its relationship to game sales. Side note: I love Metacritic.

Some may think that paying a royalty to a licensor for a poor-quality game (or poorly-scored game) somewhat bullyish, but I really don't see it that way. Why are there so many craptacular licensed games? Because when developers and publishers know they can make a quick buck off of a licensed property, it's not necessarily in their best interest to make a GOOD GAME.

(Actually, I think it is, if you read my earlier thoughts on the matter.)

However, for the Time-Warners of the world, well, they would rather have a better game. As mentioned in the article, Time-Warner may take an additional royalty from a publisher who makes yet another stupendously bad Batman game.

If sites like Metacritic actually help us get good licensed games, then I'm all for it. What's interesting is, as the article points out, many games sell well despite bad scores, such as Spider-Man 3. Hell, if they didn't, there wouldn't be any Spider-Man 4 to look forward to, right?

Metroid Manga

Hey, check out this pretty cool web comic about Samus Aran! I can't tell if it was authorized by Nintendo. Heck, I can't even understand it, because it's all in Japanese!


Fortunately, some of the nice people on the internet have a translation of the comic available, so check it out!

Zzz Hospital

You know, if I ever get down about the projects I work on, at least I can be satisfied knowing that I am not making a game like the creatively-named Zoo Hospital.


Sure, this game basically sounds like an animal version of Trauma Center, but seriously, look at that prone panda in the screenshot! "Help! I'm nearly extinct and trapped in this lousy game!"

Do I really want to "discover how best to calm stressed species through soothing touch" or "administer injections, apply ointment, pull teeth, remove deadly microbes, X Ray organs and much more"? There's even two-player co-op. Wow!

Space Plague!

Straight out of an episode of X-Files, a meteor strikes a remote Peruvian village and the locals come down with a strange disease. That's seriously weird!

MC Flow Update

Check out this piece on MC Flow in the San Diego Union-Tribune!

Genndy's Luke Cage

In case you hadn't heard (I hadn't), Genndy Tartakovsky is doing his take on Luke Cage/Power Man for Marvel:


Newsarama has a nice interview here.

Flash MMORPGs

Has anyone played Dragon Fable, a free massively-single player RPG for your web browser? I just signed up for an account to give it a try. It's a little clunky and ugly...but it's free! There's another one (from the same company, it seems) called Adventure Quest, which has to be the most generic game name ever. Why didn't they just call it "Hero Fight" or something like that?

Apparently, both of these games have something to do with Arch Knight -- the "Original Web RPG" that you probably never played.