Category: Blog

If I Announce It, Then Surely It Must Happen

The day is nigh my friends, for exactly 5 weeks from today, on Sunday August 3, the first game from legendary (and mysterious) game design trio FloBeRo entitled Menagerie Of The Gods might will be released!

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This game has been in (sporadic) development for many, many months, and sometime on or about Thursday, July 30th a ‘game jammay will be held to force the game through alpha, beta and final crunch so it can be released on time!

Here’s a mockup screen from early in development:

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As you can see this is a word game. More specifically, this is a divine word adventure game in which the player – in the role of Noah himself – must fight off the attack of savage and legendary unique beasts who are angry they were not invited on the Ark. You attack by completing words from a given pool of letters. The longer the word, the more damage you take. But beware, since these beasts fight back. How many can you defeat? How far can you get? How high can you raise your score? Time will tell…

And who are FloBeRo, the creators of this epic game? Well they wish to remain anonymous, but I was able to secure a quote from each of them for their fans:

Lead Art Designer ‘Furonzo: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away!”

Lead Programmer ‘Lotus  4-5-6‘: “In space no one can hear you scream!”

Lead Game Designer ‘Electric Blue‘: “You’ll believe a man can fly!”

Wow, heavy stuff there 🙂

Mark your calendars everyone: August 3. On that day, the future of electronic gaming will arrive right here on this blog…

How Did My Resolution Go?

Last year I made a post detailing what I felt was an enormous amount of books, games and DVDs on my ‘list’ that I felt I really needed to get through. It became a resolution or sorts, to shrink all lists in 2013. How did I go?

Books

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I made great progress in this category, reading the majority of the approximately 50 volumes that were sitting on my shelf this time last year. The only one I haven’t yet found time for is In The Wake Of The Sea Serpents, the 800+ page magnus-opus by Heuvelmans. In addition to those I had this time last year, I purchased and read many new books during the year, mostly manga and fantasy novels. I try and read every single night before sleep at the least.

However – and to my delight since I love books – I have to admit my ‘to read’ list is hardly smaller than it was last year, replenished as it was by a large variety of other books. Heuvelmans tome is now accompanied by 3 other cryptozoology books, and they share a shelf with about 20 novels (mostly fantasy), a handful of manga (not much I am interested in is released nowadays), and a half-dozen or so RPG manuals such as the one pictured above. Add to this a couple of Doctor Who books, an art book or two and four books on video-game and pinball history and I should have enough to keep me busy well into 2014!

Movies & TV

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As with my books, I made great progress on the DVD ‘watch list’ of February 2013. Ultraseven, Lexx, Claymore – all the box sets have been watched. In fact almost every single item we owned last year has been watched months ago, and many more have now filled their place.

In fact, the ‘watch list’ as of today is actually longer than it was last year. Two items alone: the Inspector Morse DVD box set and the Monkey DVD set sum to over 100 hours! Add to these several other anime DVD sets (Spice & Wolf, Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!), another Japanese sci-fi set (Ultra-Q) and about a dozen assorted DVD movies (almost all sci-fi/fantasy) and we’ve got our watching cut out for us.

Games

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As with the other two categories, I made bold strides into my piles of unplayed games. As of today I have:

– 8 unplayed PSP games, only one of which was actually purchased in 2013
– 8 unopened 3DS games, most of which are less than 6 months old
– only 1 unopened Wii U game (Pikmin 3, which I may start playing today!)
– 2 unopened PS3 games (both of which I owned last February as well…)

As you may recall from the blog post a month ago, I purchased much less games in 2013 than I usually do, which allowed me to play a lot more games I already owned. I expect during this next year to ‘finish’ the PSP games as well as possible the PS3. Since I currently have no plans to obtain a PS4, I imagine this section of the list will be much reduced this time next year.

Last time I looked at the piles of unopened/unread/unwatched media and thought “Why do I even buy more stuff?!”. Now I look at the smaller piles and think “I’m looking forward to opening that!”.

In other words, I think my resolution was a success 🙂

Christmas Cards

No, not those cards, these cards:

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That’s a selection I obtained through my usual sources (ie. purchased at a Con). I was debating what to do with them for a while and since I’ve gone overboard with Xmas gifts already decided it was time to open them all. And so, in no particular order…

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I recall having some of these cards before I ever saw the film. I think I was a bit scared of some of them actually, especially the alien ones. If I lived in the US I may have joined the fan club!

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Gremlins was a bit of a phenomenon when it came out wasn’t it? And yet these days I only seem to recall the effect Phoebe had on me (and probably every other teenage boy that watched it). Looking at these cards reminds me I haven’t seen the film in 20+ years. I wonder how it has held up?

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The Jaws 3D cards are as dreadful as you’d imagine, but the curiosity factor is certainly raised by the inclusion of a ‘3D viewer’. How good is the 3D effect? Well, using a bit of technomancy I can let you judge for yourself:

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It’s almost like the shark is jumping out of the screen isn’t it? 😉

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The Black Hole cards do an equally good job of making me want to see the film again, after 30-odd years. And who among you isn’t impressed by concept art stickers?!? But the most nostalgic part of these cards was actually on the back of the wrapper:

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OMG! I remember this candy! I used to buy the coffin containers, and all the little pieces were bone shaped. Tasted terrible, but I loved the little plastic boxes 🙂

The Jurassic Park cards were very disappointing in their design, being less impressive by far than all the others. But to my excitement, the pack contained an incredible lenticular hologram card:

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And even more amazingly, it’s a sticker! This is one of the most amazing chase cards I have ever seen, and I certainly didn’t expect to pull it from a $0.50 pack of 20-year old cards!

I guess Christmas came early this year 🙂