"Matt, what're you doing here?"
"Works been kinda slow since games came to color... but I still got it, Eddie: Boop-boop-bee-doop, boop!"
"Yeah, you still got it...

Ah well, time to go down to the local store and pick up some new game(s). I'm almost done with Freespace (not the compression utility). By the way, should I start calling this page MattNews! or will you JA staffers start mailing your newsbits? And the few people who actually look at this page can mail me if you've got any flames to vent.
 
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum."
Matthew Arcilla

 

Adventure Games Are Sucking... Again.  Here we go again with the weekly PC Data sales chart. From October 18 to 24,  adventure games were nowhere in being the hottest sales items.   This does not necessarily mean that they're doing that bad, after all a hundred titles, with only a few adventures, the chances arriving at the top are slim. Myst, Riven or Titanic: Adventure Out of Time are probably somewhere in the 20s.     Title Units Sold 1 Deer Hunter II: The Hunt Continues 2 Need for Speed III  3 Barbie Nail Designer 4 Diablo 5 Civil War Generals 2 6 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 7 StarCraft 8 Flight Simulator 98 9 Cabela's Big Game Hunter 10 Caesar III    ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  LucasWho, Who, and Who?  Looks like GameSpot has put up an article called "Within Limits", regarding a triumvirate of game designers from everyone's favorite game developer, LucasArts. Those three designers are Tim Schafer (Full Throttle, Grim Fandango), Hal Barwood (Fate of Atlantis, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and Larry Holland (Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, TIE Fighter), mainstays of LucasArts game design.  There's some stuff that most die-hard LucasFans may already know, such as the obvious resemblance between Tim Schafer and the hood ornament on the Corley limo. However, it's an interesting read on what makes development at LucasArts tick.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla

 

I'm sooo excited these days since the deluge of game releases are upon us. Pop Top's Railroad Tycoon II has gone gold, Ritual's Sin will be out this week, Fallout 2 and Grim Fandango are already on their way to Asian shores and I already can't wait for Baldur's Gate, Populous 3, Return to Krondor, Myth II, Mask of Eternity (if it comes out this year) Blackstone Chronicles, and a whole other load of games that defy enumeration.

Ok, I'll stop being as giddy as a schoolboy.

"I don't think my father was ever giddy... or a schoolboy."
Matthew Arcilla

 

Press Monkey Moonlights as Software Pirate.  Sounds like a tabloid headline, don't it? Prior to Fallout 2's shipping, Black Isle Studios sent gold discs to all major gaming publications.   Now some evil person among the press, or perhaps a friend or associate of one uploaded the whole CD into the Internet, making all 650MBs of CD data available for a free, albeit illegal download.  Unfortunately, tracking the pirate down will prove to be difficult since the gold discs sent to the press monkeys are not serialized and BIS have no idea which press organization may be associated with the incident.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Another Company Bites The (Financial Trouble) Dust.  After The Learning Company got rid of Trilobyte, the famed developers of The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour is in big trouble. The developer has been deemed an unsound holding, and is currently looking for potential buyers.   A spokesperson for Trilobyte indicated that they are looking for a publisher or even a complete buy-out.   "We really need to get this sorted out within the next month, otherwise we are going to be in trouble financially because we are fast running out of funds." My, my the economic crisis is hitting everyone. Companies are folding up pretty fast, and the scene is getting pretty ugly.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla.  Ideal World Has Games Related TV Show.  UK-based company Ideal Worlds is  in the conceptual phase of developing a pilot for a TV games show. The program is scheduled to run on UK's Channel 4 during the late night youth-oriented 4 Later slot.   The untitled show, is aimed at slightly older viewers unlike Bad Influence and Gamesmaster. I hated those shows.  Report from GDReview:   "The program will be aimed at "the Fantasy Football audience, not the computer nerds.""  Ideal Worlds is also in the process of recruiting a female hostess for the show. (Yeah, roll in an audience of drooling geekboys whydoncha?)   Despite these already-taken steps, both Channel 4 and Ideal World are stressing that this show is only a concept at the moment.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Redguard Gone Gold.  Bethesda Softworks (The Elder Scrolls series, Terminator Rampage) has announced that The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard has gone gold and will be in stores in at least a week from now.  The game is set 400 years prior to the events in Arena (The first Elder Scrolls game which was released in 1995). Redguard focuses on the life of Cyrus, an exiled Redguard who returns to the island of Stros M'kai to search for his long-lost sister, Iszara.  Redguard focuses on adventure with a little bit of swashbuckling swordplay. Think Bioforge or Alone in the Dark, and you get the picture. This is not the sequel to Daggerfall, as the third Elder Scrolls RPG, Morrowind is due late 1999.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla    "How Odd."  Yeah, Ms. Delaney, you say that about everything. Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, the sequel to last year's best-selling Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee is set to ship this month  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Websites Galore  Seeing as my audience here at JustAdventure and JANews! are adventure and RPG freaks like myself, I'd like y'all to know that Desslock, famed talking head of the CRPG industry, has moved from his previous home at GamePen to a new place at Gamespot.  Also, check out these hype pages. ASC Games, makers of Sanitarium, have had their Werewolf: The Apocalypse site up for a month now, and updates itself every full moon. The game is based on White Wolf's RPG of the same name, and will utilize the Unreal engine.  Westwood Studios has given a gloss over of their hype page for Lands of Lore III, which has yet to be subtitled. Lands of Lore III places you in the world as the illegitimate son of King Richard, whom fans may remember from the first game. They had better make this game good to make up for the horrid Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny, or they'll get some serious press flak... again.   ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Final Fantasy Goes Hollywood.  Square, makers of console RPGs all over has announced that it has signed a deal with Columbia Pictures for the distribution rights to Final Fantasy: The Movie. The deal excludes Japan and Asia, for there it will be distributed by Gaga-Humax.   The film will be developed by Square Pictures. The script was written by Academy Award-winning Al Reinert.   The director of Final Fantasy: The Movie is also the president of Square USA. That man is  said Hironobu Sakaguchi, who has already talked with the press:   "Final Fantasy: The Movie will be the realization of a dream to create a brand-new form of entertainment uniting computer games and motion pictures, using the latest in CG animation technology. With this film, I want to create entertainment that touches the imagination of new generations by setting the viewer on an exciting voyage of personal discovery." This makes Final Fantasy the third game that is currently in a movie tie-in, along with Wing Commander and Tomb Raider.  Fallout 2: Hottest Thing Since Sliced Bread  Kinda makes me wonder what was the hottest thing before sliced bread. Black Isle Studios announced that the much-awaited-with-baited-breath Fallout 2 was, on the basis of telephone surveys among mall-based retailers, the selling PC game past weekend.   Says Interplay's CEO Brian Fargo:   "It's great to see a title like Fallout 2 burst onto the scene and immediately exceed our expectations." Let's hope that this success will bring a turnaround to Interplay's financial status.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Tribal Dreams: Only A Little Dead.  It seems that Tribal Dreams, the adventure development division of Interplay, has not been as vaporized as we thought.   By merging both Flat Cat and Tribal Dreams, the two divisions will now be the development subdivison for Interplay's strategy and adventure titles. This division is now headed by Brian Christian.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla  Eighth Time's the Charm.  Console RPG king Squaresoft has released a few tidbits about the upcoming Final Fantasy VIII, namely character info.   Two of the companions who will tag along with FF8's as-of-yet unannounced main character are Irvine Kinneas and Selphie Tilmitt.   Minimal character information has been revealed actually, but so far all we know is that Irvine is a cowboy and Selphine is a young woman.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla

 

So in case this page looks screwed up or something, it's the monitor's fault. It's also very hard to play Descent: Freespace, which is a space combat sim, and we all know how black and white can render any space game unplayable.

To top this all off, my cappuccino machine went on the fritz, so for now I have to live on (gasp! hitit ng hangin!) instant.

And before I sign off, some person named Brett Andersen emailed me about RPGs, but the reply to address he gave me got nicked by the Mail Delivery Subsystem. So if you happen to be him, here's my reply.

"I'm really sorry about the breakdown in the cappuccino system."
                    ---Relativity
Matthew Arcilla

 

Money Monkey To Analyze Interplay  Regarding Interplay's financial situation, Interplay has declared that they have contacted the services of one Piper Jaffray to explore and evaluate their recovery strategy.   Further details about the Interplay financial trouble that JANews! has not yet mentioned here is that Interplay's revenue performance for the first nine months had nearly doubled in comparison with last year's performance.  What has been reiterated around is that development delays in Earthworm Jim 3 and Messiah have increased costs.  Third quarter YTD revenues were $106.2 million, while 1997's third quarter saw $23.8 million for the company. Losses reached a shocking $66.7 million, or 83 cents per share, made all the more preposterous when compared to last year's losses of $5.5 million, or 49 cents per share.   Interplay's third-quarter losses are supposedly attributed to mitigating factors, such as the company's initial public offering of 5 million shares of common stock and the huge returns of Wild 9 (which JANews! has already mentioned).  In a previous JANews! report, we mentioned president Chris Kilpatrick's statement:  "In response to this, we are attempting to negotiate an expanded line of credit and are implementing a corporate restructuring program."  This resulted in a lay-off of about fifty employees. Most of us are aware of Interplay's stellar looking line up of games under their wing, including (already released) Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate and Descent 3. CEO Brian Fargo has announced to Cnet's Gamecenter :  "I believe in the quality of the company's product lineup so much that I am offering to provide a $5 million guarantee to support an expanded line of credit,"  Cnet Gamecenter also mentioned in a separate report:   "A source close to the company speculated that the recent bad financial news was a result of "Interplay getting all the bad stuff out at once," as opposed to spreading it out.   "Considering the big products they have coming out in '99, they'll be fine this time next year," said the source.    That indeed may be true. With the imminent release of Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate (reportedly Interplay's largest preorder title to date), as well as Messiah and Earthworm Jim 3D in 1999, don't start making funeral arrangements just yet.   If Interplay can recover from this financial setback, perhaps Vulcan Fury's hiatus status will be converted to active and even better, our games won't be affected.  ---c/o Matthew Arcilla