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LucasArts classic 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors' heads to current consoles this summer
Lucasfilm Games is bringing back one of its 90s classics to modern platforms.
Classic Star Wars game 'Jedi Outcast' arrives on PS4 and Switch
Fans of Star Wars games just got a rare nostalgia trip on modern consoles. As teased during Nintendo's Direct earlier in the month, Aspyr has released Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast for the Switch and PS4 at a modest $10 price. The revived 2002 title puts you in the shoes of series hero Kyle Katarn after he cut links with the Jedi and the Force, only to realize he needs to return to the fold to fight off a growing menace. It's not a visual overhaul by any stretch (get ready for blocky characters and maps), but you will have modern controls. Switch owners, for example, can use motion to fine-tune their lightsaber swings and blaster shots.
'Knights of the Old Republic' could become a Star Wars movie
While the Star Wars franchise will take a new direction after the Skywalker arc ends with Episode 9, the next movie might still tell a familiar story. According to BuzzFeed News, a Star Wars film based on the classic LucasArts RPG Knights of the Old Republic is in the works. Further, Laeta Kalogridis, whose credits include Altered Carbon, Avatar and Shutter Island, is reportedly almost done writing the first script of what could become the KOTOR trilogy.
Disney hires for Lucasfilm Games as EA flounders with 'Star Wars' (updated)
There hasn't been a Lucasfilm Games-badged release since before 1991's Monkey Island 2, but that isn't stopping Disney from resurrecting the classic label. The company recently posted several job listings for producers and marketers under the Lucasfilm Games badge, all of whom would oversee the development of games based on "Lucasfilm IP" like Star Wars. The team plans to support a wide range of platforms that could include living room consoles, PCs, smartphones and "AR/VR platforms."
Lucasfilm Games' MMO 'Habitat' source code released
You may know LucasArts for its spread of excellent point-and-click adventure games like Loom or Day of the Tentacle, but do you remember Lucasfilm Games and its massively multiplayer online RPG Habitat that went live in 1986? Probably not. But whether you look back fondly on that year and the short-lived MMO or are simply interested in seeing older nuggets of gaming goodness being preserved, you're in luck. Habitat's source code is now available.
The 'Star Wars' holographic chess game is nearly a reality
"Let's be real: Any article you read about Magic Leap or any AR platform, the first thing they talk about is Holochess." That's Mike Levine, the former senior effects specialist at LucasArts and the current CEO of mobile game developer Happy Giant. Levine is working on a new project with Corey Rosen, the former creature-effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, and legendary monster designer Phil Tippett -- the man who created Holochess for the original Star Wars: A New Hope. Together these sci-fi comrades are building HoloGrid: Monster Battle, a tactical collectible card game that takes numerous cues from the classic Holochess scene. Forty years on, Star Wars still exerts a huge influence on Tippett's life. "It's really weird," Tippett says. "It's like being in some kind of time bubble or Groundhog's Day. It keeps coming back."
Take a trip through the minds behind 'Psychonauts'
Cult classic Psychonauts getting a crowd-funded sequel was perhaps the biggest news out of this past week's second-annual Game Awards. But what about the game that came before it? The one that's celebrating its 10th birthday this year? That's where "The Color of the Sky in Your World" comes in. It features a who's who of Double Fine employees past and present as they talk about the process of making the game, including creative director Tim Schafer and producer Greg Rice.
The amazing 'Star Wars Galaxies' Jedi mode that never was
"Well, my opinion is Jedi are evil." That's how Raph Koster, creative director of the 2003 MMO Star Wars Galaxies, begins discussing the problems that faced his design team back in the day. Jedi were too powerful, too desirable and too canonically rare to be successfully implemented in Star Wars Galaxies as a standard class -- and this was precisely why so many fans ditched the game when its third major patch added Jedi as a starting character. Before launch, the Star Wars Galaxies creative team obsessed over ways to implement playable Jedi into the game, and one solution stands out to Koster as "the crazy idea I still wish we had done." Inspired by Diablo's Hardcore mode, it was a system "that effectively gave a different way to play the game. A method that kept Jedi rare, powerful, and yet allowed everyone a shot," Koster writes. This solution was, in a word, permadeath.
Hyperspace Beacon: Seven things I learned while writing about SWTOR
This travel through hyperspace cannot be compared to anything else. Not many people get an opportunity to work on something they love professionally, like my writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic. With Massively as we know it coming to an end, it's time to say goodbye to this passenger. Before I actually say my final farewell to Massively, I'd like to leave you, fans of Massively and the Hyperspace Beacon, with a list of things that I've learned from writing this column.
SWTOR dishes out punishment for a major exploit
Last last week, BioWare community manager Eric Musco wrote a detailed post regarding a recent exploit that's plagued the PvE endgame for Star Wars: The Old Republic, explaining the planned punishments and the team's reasoning behind them. "We didn't take these actions lightly," Musco posts, "and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating." Penalties applied to the affected accounts ranged from a warning and one day ban to even full and permanent suspensions. Musco finished up the post by encouraging players to continue to report potential exploits as soon as they are found.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining SWTOR's producer letter
At the community cantina that Star Wars: The Old Republic held this past weekend at PAX South, community manager Eric Musco said that the community team was going to do something different in 2015 during the cantinas. He said that he wanted to reveal some tidbit at each and every event. And this cantina yielded us an early look at Producer Bruce Maclean's roadmap letter to the community. In the letter, he talks about where the SWTOR story will take us, what's on the horizon for flashpoints, personal stories, planets, and the outfit designer. But what is all this new stuff, and should it get people excited about the coming year? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for that. If you play for similar reasons as I do, then there is plenty to be excited about. However, there are certain players, like PvPers, who might be a little frustrated by what they are seeing and not seeing in the letter.
PAX South 2015: SWTOR reveals its plans for this year
When Eric Musco, the Star Wars: The Old Republic community manager, took the stage at the Community cantina last night at PAX South, he revealed that in 2015 the team wants to do something a bit different with this and future cantina crawl events. In the past, it has been policy not to reveal anything at the cantinas; they were intended to be social events where players could get some face-time with the developers of the game that they both enjoyed. However, going forward, the community and development teams have decided that each cantina will reveal that had not been mentioned before. The reveal at this weekend's cantina came in the form of the yet-to-be-published producer's letter by Bruce Maclean. The completely made-up story is that it was stolen from his computer while he wasn't looking and printed out to share with us at the cantina. After the break, you'll find a copy of that letter as it was dictated to cantina goers. The caveat, of course, is that this is not the final version of the letter that will appear on the official site in two weeks, so everything is subject to change.
SWTOR Q&A mentions 12x, soloable flashpoints
Werit has posted a Q&A with Star Wars: The Old Republic's community team. It touches on the well-received 12x experience boost, which BioWare says it will be discussing "later this year." There's also a bit about making older flashpoints soloable and while BioWare says it doesn't want to make all group content accessible to single players, it does have "some major story moments that [it] would like every player to see."
GOG.com adds six Star Wars games, including KOTOR 2
GOG.com added a second helping of Lucasfilm games to its classic PC gaming catalog today, giving players the opportunity to download six Star Wars games on its platform, DRM-free. Three of the games are available digitally for the first time according to GOG.com: Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter ($10), Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance ($10) and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds Saga (Seen above, $6). The other three Star Wars games now available on GOG.com will be 20 percent off for the next three days: Star Wars Battlefront 2 ($8), Star Wars: Dark Forces ($4.79) and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords ($8). Six other LucasArts games were introduced in late October, including The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Those two games, in addition to Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, are also 20 percent off until Friday, January 30 at 8:59 a.m. ET (5:59 a.m. PT). [Image: Lucasfilm]
Star Wars: The Old Republic will address balance and ranked PvP for update 3.1
Star Wars: The Old Republic is launching update 3.1 in about a month, and the developers are using this patch to address some standing issues. The patch also kicks off the game's fourth ranked play season, which is scheduled to last about three months. This season will be used as the basis for some new ranked play adjustments, such as implementing a "floor" rating for picking up the lowest-tier season rewards in Season 5. The season's titles will also be class-specific based on forum feedback. Designers are also looking into balancing classes, starting with the Darkness Assassin and the Kinetic Combat Shadow, addressing issues with survivability and damage in the class. If you've been feeling squishier or less resilient or noticed oddities with abilities, you can take part in the thread yourself. Early versions of these changes have already been rolled out to the test servers for the coming update. [Thanks to Mikey Moo for the tip!]
Grim Fandango Remastered orders open on GOG, PSN
Few games featuring death make us chuckle, but Grim Fandango is on the short list (right next to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for that "What is a man?" line read). On January 27, we all get to have another morbid laugh when Grim Fandango Remastered debuts on PS4, Vita and PC, Mac and Linux. Today, you can pre-order Grim Fandango Remastered on PC at GOG.com for $14.99 and gain a bonus desktop wallpaper. PlayStation pre-orders are also now available and include a bonus dynamic PS4/Vita theme. Grim Fandango Remastered pretties up the classic LucasArts adventure game with HD graphics, features developer commentary and a re-recorded score.
Hyperspace Beacon: Handling SWTOR exploits
On this week's Hyperspace Beacon, I'd like to discuss the exploit issues that have popped up in Star Wars: The Old Republic as of late. Admittedly, the widespread exploit that SWTOR recently experienced wasn't gamebreaking, and it certainly didn't fracture the economy as exploits in other games have. In fact, I don't even think that a rollback or anything severe was even considered for this particular exploit. However, the community team mentioned some things in its handling of the situation that made me wonder about exploits and cheats that violate the intent of the game designers. I don't know that I will have all the answers in regard to how to handle specific situations, but I really intend for this to be a conversation starter. I want to read your thoughts in the comments.
SWTOR devs looking at lag issues, prepping 3.0.2 and 3.1 updates
BioWare reps are all over Star Wars: The Old Republic's official forums as the week winds down. Thus far we've gotten an announcement about the game's 3.0.2 update which is scheduled to go live on January 13th. We also got a heads-up regarding the 3.1 update currently on the test server. Finally, community manager Eric Musco chimed in with a lengthy post detailing what BioWare is doing about the prominent lag issues introduced with game update 3.0. [Thanks Mikey Moo!]
Be a DOS boss: Play 2,386 PC games in your browser for free
Forget that chubby guy from the North Pole, the real Santa Claus this holiday season is the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library that now hosts 2,386 DOS games that can be played by anyone at no cost. A digital cache of that size brings with it both good and bad news. On the downside, there's bound to be lots of bad games, even notoriously bad ones like the baffling 1989 fighting game Tongue of the Fatman. But on the upside, the collection also includes some legitimate classics like LucasArts' adventure game adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the PC version of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Pool of Radiance campaign. With 2,386 games available there's far too many to briefly describe here, but you can browse the collection by visiting the Archive. The best news, though, is that in lieu of simply archiving .exe files for each game, the Internet Archive listings feature an in-browser version of the ubiquitous DOSBox emulator. It won't be exactly the same experience you had playing these games in the late 1980s, but it's far easier than convincing games from the Reagan era to play nicely with modern computers. [Image: LucasArts/Disney]
Hyperspace Beacon: Five SWTOR predictions for 2015
It's that time again to make my educated guesses on what BioWare will attempt to accomplish in the coming year with Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the last Hyperspace Beacon, I gave my grade card for how I think 2014 went, but now I extinguish the Force ghost of Christmas past and get a visit from the blue-glowy of Christmas yet to come. I don't always get everything right, but I like to make a guess anyway. When you've finished reading my predictions, let's continue the discussion in the comments. I want to hear your thoughts as well.
