Apocalypso's Atomic Arcade: 12/27/09

2010/01/01

AAA Update: Happy New Year!

It’s New Year’s Day today, and Friday to boot, so I’m taking the day off of writing of any sort as usual. So this post you see now is a scheduled one I wrote yesterday.

I just wanted to say that I’ve been adding some new widgets to the blog. Most recently, I’ve put up a new poll widget which will run for the next few days, as well as a countdown timer, and a recent posts and twitter updates widgets to complement the related posts one that I’ve had on the blog for a while. I like experimenting and trying out some new widgets and such that make the blog fun, so have a look and see.

By the way, Happy New Year!

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What did you get for Christmas?

I’ll start off by posting what I got”

Terminator 1& 2 on DVD – both classic films, but I prefer T2, and this DVD contains scenes I hadn’t scene before. And of course the theme song by Guns n’ Roses, “You Could be Mine” is awesome.
Operation Flashpoint GOTY Edition, Deus Ex, Thief II: The Metal Age, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin – these are classic games I was able to pick up at Musica for low prices each.
Left 4 Dead 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, Resident Evil 5, Fallout 3 GOTY, and Red Faction: Guerrilla – new games that seem to be among the best released in 2009 that I didn’t all ready have.

And I also got a permanent marker for my backup discs I make each month (fear of another HD failure like a while back).

How did I afford all this? Well, I didn’t buy it all myself. The classic games I mainly bought myself, but the Terminator DVDs were given to me by my brothers, and the money to get the rest came from my aunt who is quite well off.

Besides all that stuff, I got some new T-shirts, a cap, and some Ferrero Rochers – one of my faves. There’s likely some other stuff I got that I can’t remember. Oh, some frames for my certificates and so on.

So, if you like, tell me what you got for Christmas in the comments.

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2009/12/31

NAG Magazine is out now in Cape Town

On the official website of NAG magazine, they stated that non-subscribers in Cape Town would only be able to pick up the latest January issue on 7th January 2010, when other people were able to obtain it on the 24th of December. But I happened to go down to my local 711 today and I found that the issue was in. It was delivered on the 30th of December - yesterday.

So, all that stuff about having to wait until next year is false. It was only about a few days to a week’s delay. So, if you’ve been waiting for it, go and get it!

There is one thing you can all look forward to on the 7th of January 2010 however: if you’re a student in school, that’s when your matric exam results come out. I hope my neighbour fails. Spoiled little brat. Then again if he passes, at least his daddy will send him off to college or varsity and I’ll be rid of him.

Anyway, I guess after the whole New Year’s weekend is over, I’ll have a post written up detailing my impressions of the magazine and the Cover DVD and so on.

Original Gordon Freeman Model Unveiled

New Year’s Eve

I read this on Digg originally. Have a look at this character:

That’s one ugly son of a monkey!

Apparently this was the original model for Gordon Freeman in Half-Life. You can just see here that the game truly did use the Quake engine (yes, with elements of Quake II, yada yada). As you can see, the HEV suit is yellow with “Research” printed on the back. Of course in the final release of Half-Life the HEV suit was orange. Most of the design is the same though.

I don’t know whether they would actually hire someone with a beard like that. I’m sure this guy would be mistaken for the lab specimens all the time.

Comparisons have been made to other characters, including Beast from X-Men, a typical lumberjack, a Viking, and Zangief from Street Fighter.

Gordon Freeman as we now know him may be mute, but at least he’s a little good looking, besides having glasses.

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So Easy a Gordon Freeman Could Do It (Original Game Model)

2009/12/30

End of the Year Deal on Direct2Drive

Okay, so it has been going on for the past few days, but the sale is still going until the 1st of January 2010, Friday.

Direct2Drive had their 24 days of Christmas sale where they put 24 (at least) games on sale for 24 days before Christmas day. Now they are offering one last sale for the year, where over 50 games are on sale, some at half-price or more, and others just a little slice off the price.

D2D End of the Year sale

These are the games and how much you can save if you buy them by Jan 1st, 2010.

Dragon Age: Origins - $49.95 - now $39.95
Torchlight: $19.95 - now $9.95
Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim: $29.95 – now $7.50
Mirror's Edge: $19.95 – now $4.95
Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Bundle: $49.95 – now $19.95
Mercenaries 2 World in Flames: $9.95 – now $4.95
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor: $29.95 – now $7.50
Section 8: $49.95 – now $12.50
Need for Speed ProStreet: $19.95 – now $4.95
Champions Online: $29.95 – now $14.95
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut: $39.95 – now $19.95
The Sims 3: $49.95 – now $39.95
Need For Speed SHIFT: $49.95 – now $24.95
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: $9.95 – now $4.95
Prototype: $39.95 – now $19.95
The Lord of the Rings: Conquest: $19.95 – now $9.95
Resident Evil 5: $49.95 – now $24.95
Trine: $19.95 – now $9.95
Mount and Blade: $29.95 – now $7.50
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II: $39.95 – now $19.95
Street Fighter IV: $39.95 – now $19.95
Machinarium: $19.95 – now $9.95
Battlefield 2 Complete Collection: $29.95 – now $14.95
SPORE: $39.95 – now $19.95
Empire Earth 2 Platinum: $19.95 – now $4.95
Empire Earth 2: The Art of Supremacy: $9.95 – now $2.50
Empire Earth II: $14.95 – now $3.75
Empire Earth III: $19.95 – now $4.95
Eufloria (formerly known as Dyson): $19.95 – now $9.95
Osmos: $9.95 – now $4.95
Battlestations: Pacific: $49.95 – now $37.50
Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition: $9.95 – now $7.50
Deus Ex: Invisible War: $14.95 – now $11.25
Hitman Bundle: $29.95 – now $22.50
LucasArts Adventure Bundle: $9.95 – now $2.50
Star Wars Republic Commando: $9.95 – now $4.95
Thief: Deadly Shadows: $19.95 – now $14.95
Tomb Raider Bundle: $44.95 – now $33.75
Star Wars Jedi Knight II : Jedi Outcast: $9.95 – now $4.95
Assault Heroes: $9.95 – now $4.95
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition: $9.95 – now $4.95
Caesar IV: $14.95 – now $7.50
Quantum of Solace: $19.95 – now $9.95
GUN: $19.95 – now $9.95
The Dig: $4.95 – now $2.50
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: $4.95 – now $2.50
Star Wars Starfighter: $4.95 – now $2.50
SWAT 4: $14.95 – now $7.50
Swat 4 Gold: $19.95 – now $9.95
Lucidity: $9.95 – now $4.95
Manhunt 2: $29.95 – now $14.95
Singles - Flirt up your Life: $19.95 – now $14.95
Aces of the Galaxy: $9.95 – now $4.95
Ground Control Anthology $19.95 – now $9.95
King's Quest Collection: $19.95 – now $9.95
TimeShift: $19.95 – now $9.95

D2D End of the Year sale

Random Madness: Wild Hogs: Level 12 of Doom

I saw that movie Wild Hogs the other day for about the tenth time. Some argued it was just a major cash-in attempt, with a bunch of funny guys involved in a crappy story, but I actually sort of liked it. You’ve got plenty of well known stars in there like John Travolta, Ray Liotta, William H. Macy, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence.

Anyway, I just laughed at two of the gaming-related lines in that film, said by Charley, the sheriff:

“Hey, I took my law enforcement course on the internet! For arms training they just told us to play Doom!”

“Man, that was like Level 12 of Doom!”

He said the second line after the standoff between Damien Blade and his son, Jack. In other words - it was really intense.

Now to get all nerdish, I looked up to see what the actual level was he was talking about. I presume he’s talking about Doom 1, seeing as he didn’t say Doom II or Doom 3, although it would make more sense that it would be Doom 3 seeing as it was released only a few years before this movie.

Anyway, in this case, if it’s the PC version of Doom, then it would probably be E2M3: Refinery in the Shores of Hell Episode.

View Full Album

Not a particularly hard level, but some nice scenery and a rocking soundtrack, inspired by “Regular People” by Pantera. If they wanted to talk about a hard level, they should have said the level with the ol’ Cyberdemon. Anyway, you know what Hollywood’s like: clueless.

2009/12/29

Video Game Deals on Amazon

Promotions:

PC Gaming Gear from Microsoft at Great Prices

Video Game Accessories Promotion (December 25 to January 16, 2010)

10% off all top accessories and up to 25% off select accessories

Video Game Deals:

Band Hero Stand Alone Software - $39.99 - Save $10.00 (PS3)

Fossil Fighters - $19.99 - Save $9.50 (DS)

A Boy and His Blob - $19.99 - Save $10.00 (Wii)

Working on Three Articles at the Moment

I took a break over Christmas, but I started working on three articles earlier on in the month, and my plan was to have them done by the end of December, but it doesn’t look like that’ll happen. I think I’ll have to aim for sometime next month.

The three articles include “Games I’m Most Looking Forward to in 2010”, “Top Games of the 2000s”, and “Top Games of 2009”. I think I’ll likely put them on my one HubPages profile seeing as they’re all long articles and there’ll be other stuff like pictures and so on. For it all to go in a blog post would make it look a bit cramped, but I will still put up some posts here on AAA and link to the articles when they are done.

I’ve got a number of unpublished articles that I should put up some time.

2009/12/28

George Broussard’s Interesting Duke-Inspired Tweets

Just an interesting thing I came across. for the past day or so, George Broussard of 3D Realms has been getting creative on Twitter with some Duke talk in his tweets.

“Duke Nukem 3D code for XBOX 360. CPT4Y-J823X-J68HH-RCWXW-PT7BY Hail to the King, baby...”

“Duke Nukem 3D code for XBOX 360. W34VY-CWKQ9-FJF9C-9HTXR-3K6FG What are you? Some bottom-feeding scum sucking algae eater?”

“Duke Nukem 3D code for XBOX 360. TFXFY-DQXJ6-TRWC8-Q3TQ6-DHRH3 Your code, your ass, what's the difference?”

“Duke Nukem 3D code for XBOX 360. K8CQY-YX74M-J3YGH-MW73T-2H3MM Ho-Ho-Ho. Freakin' Come Get Some...”

“Duke Nukem 3D code for XBOX 360. P2MMV-KQ8W9-KYWV8-9G7QJ-X6V7W Nobody steals my codes....and lives...”

These tweets are related to Duke Nukem 3D codes for Xbox 360 as you can tell, and even though I’m not completely sure what it all means, the tweets were kind of funny.

Here are the dukeisms or Duke talk quotes they’re based on, with wavs too:

“Hail to the king, baby!”

“What are you? Some bottom-feeding scum sucking algae eater?”

“Your face, your ass, what's the difference?”

“Come get some!”

“Nobody steals our chicks....and lives!”

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georgeb3dr

Video Games Coming out This Week – 12/27 – 01/2

Okay, so this week is the last week of 2009 and it includes the first couple of days of 2010 too. It seems to be another dry week, but what do you expect? The DLC for Borderlands, Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (a title obviously inspired by Mad Max), is supposed to be coming out this week for the Xbox 360, and the only thing seemingly worthwhile for the PC is Divinity II: Ego Draconis, although some say it will be next week, so, not sure.

A dry week indeed.

Video Game Releases:

Divinity II: Ego Draconis, Wildhollow

Mac

Wildhollow

Xbox 360

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot, Divinity II: Ego Draconis, Four Player Tangerine Fight, London Taxi: Rush Hour

Learn Chess, Learn Geography

Wii

My Fitness Coach 2: Workout & Nutrition, World Party Games

The Magic Obelisk

iPhone

Bebbled: The XMAS Challenge, CatTaTa, QuizQuizQuiz Xmas

Mobile

Halloween Nightmare, Skee-Ball

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Gspot

2009/12/27

Tramell Isaac’s The Wild Ride: Part IV

…or Part Foe as he would say.

If you can stomach all the jive talk in the post, and if you aren’t a hater (towards DNF or 3DR), then you might like to read it. This is the fourth part in a series of posts on what it was like to work at 3D Realms, developing Duke Nukem Forever, written by Tramell Isaac, the former Art Director on the project.

“ENTER BRIAN HOOK (insert wu-tang sound effects). Ok for those that don't know Brian Hook, he had a reputation for being somewhat of a d-bag. I say that with the utmost respect because I love the guy. But that was then and this was now...BHook is not a d-bag. We couldn't have gotten as far as we did without him and 'that's my word son'. Bottom line, he has a strong personality, he's a get it done (right), no BS kind of dude. He was the perfect guy for the job. Brian knew what was broken and exactly how to fix it. Insert screw-driver and turn clockwise....DONE! Brian helped us shave the b-jive and focus on what needed to get done.”

The whole series:

The Wild Ride- part 1

The Wild Ride Part II

Wild Ride Part III

Wild Ride Part FOE

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http://talkinrealatyou.blogspot.com/2009/06/wild-ride-part-foe.html

3D Realms’ Scott Miller Says There Will be More Duke Nukem

Scott Miller of 3DR in an interview in Gamesauce magazine (it’s new, I know – I haven’t heard of it before, has made some claims that Duke Nukem Forever’s future may be in question, but there will be more Duke games, some coming out within the next year.

Some outtakes from the interview on Shacknews:

"The next few years should see a strong resurgence in Duke,"

"There are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year. We are definitely looking to bring Duke into casual gaming spaces, plus there are other major Duke games in production."

"Almost all of these are unannounced,"

“Duke Nukem 3D was made for $300,000, and we made back 25 times our investment--not to mention all of the third-party Duke console games that sold well. Plus, we made a killing with Wolfenstein 3D. And we made the biggest killing on Max Payne! We made $30 million in royalties on that game (off of a $2.5 million investment), plus another $48 million selling the IP to our publisher. Oh, and we were also part owners of Gathering of Developers when that was sold to Take2. And finally, we have been pretty lucky with other investments, both in the stock market and in other studios.”

"I think I would have abandoned internal development six or seven years ago," he replied when asked what he would have done differently. "I much prefer to work with external studios to develop games, as we did with [Remedy Entertainment on] Max Payne and [Human Head Studios on] Prey. Radar [Group] is following this very model, with no internal development...it's much more cost effective for us, with lower risk."

So, to summarize, it looks like there will be new Duke Nukem games in 2010, some for casual audiences on mobile and handheld platforms, and maybe even some “major ones” too.

It’s interesting too to note how the fight with DNF is still going on, and that Scott says it’s not over, even though many others say it’s been cancelled or development has stopped, and even the Duke Nukem movie is still around. The last time I heard, they were thinking about getting Dwayne Johnson, the actor formerly known as The Rock, to play the part, but that may have been nothing but speculation. All we do know is it’s being produced by Scott Faye, who also produced the Max Payne movie.