I somehow missed the official announcement (I got an email in February announcing its imminent release, but not the actual event), but Return to Dark Castle is finally available for purchase and download. You can get it off of the SuperHappyFunFun site. There’s also some information on the ZSculpt site about the level structure for those who want to a head start on designing their own levels.

I’ll be purchasing my own copy tonight and I’ll try not to let it delay the next show any more than it already is.

Start practicing your litany of fear; there’s sudden revival of the old platformer Earthworm Jim. First, later this year (the press release says “soon”) the Sega Genesis versions of Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2 will be available on the Wii’s Virtual Console (along with two other Interplay titles: Boogerman and Clayfighter). Second, plans are in motion at Interplay to do a sequel, with creator Douglas TenNapel as a consultant: Earthworm Jim 4. Finally, as part of the work on that sequel, Interplay will launch a new TV series and a feature film.

Now if they’d only bring back The Neverhood — that game was awesome. I still have the soundtrack that I picked up at E3 one year. Digging around, I see there are also plans to make it into a feature film, which would be interesting. Given Doug TenNapel’s connections, perhaps Frederator will be working on Earthworm Jim as well?

Over at Andy Baio’s Waxy.org blog, he reports on some archaeological work he did on an old backup drive from Infocom. As part of that, he found the history of a never-completed sequel to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe game. Fascinating, and a great example of what can go wrong in the development of a game, or any large scale artistic effort. He also makes two prototypes available for download.

Up on Joystiq, they have this awesome movie from the latest Spy Hunter game….

Oh, it’s an ad for a car, you say? Too bad. I would have played it.

This is a bit out of the purview of vintage gaming, but there may be interest so I figured I’d post it. I’m trying to clear out a lot of games that I haven’t played much or probably will never play. Because my primary goal is “Clean up the house,” I’m selling them at the low end of their worth, so you might pick up some bargains.

You can find my half.com store here. Right now it’s mostly Xbox, PS2 and Xbox 360 games with one Wii title. I’ll be listing some PS3 games tonight, and I may have some PC games as well later.

I apologize for not posting this before — I started watching this last week and it didn’t occur to me to bring it up here. Discovery is doing a five-part documentary about the computer game industry. They began with the early days, then last week covered the rise of Nintendo. Looks like this week covers first person shooters. It’s currently showing at 8pm ET/PT on Wednesday nights. Hopefully they’ll repeat it for those who missed it.

The reason this came to mind is that because there is an interview up on Wired with Yoshiaki Koizumi, the director of Super Mario Galaxy. In it, he implies that he’s more involved in the story aspects of the Mario games than Miyazaki is — which is ironic given the focus on Miyazaki in the Discovery program as the father of story games…

I apparently missed this when I reported on Return to Dark Castle a few months ago. Joe Williams of Delta Tao published a link to the latest Mac demo on his blog. It’s got a few interface glitches (which may be due to the fact that I’m running under Rosetta) but it’s the old familiar feel.

I also apparently missed the fact that you can play it on your cell phone, via the current rights holder, SuperHappyFunFun. Hence the discussions to publish the new Mac version. Hopefully they can work all that out and we’ll see Return to Dark Castle soon.

After an even longer hiatus, I’m back — at least for the moment. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with another gaming luminary, Eric Goldberg of Crossover Technologies. We talked for forty-five minutes about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, boardgames and briefly about his later work in online and mobile games.
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After a long hiatus, I’m back. This week I have an interview from GDC 2007 with gaming luminary Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games. We talked for half an hour about his history in the gaming industry — covering wargames, tabletop RPGs, and his later work in online and independent digital games.
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