Thief II: The Metal Age Remastered Soundtrack up for Download

About two or three years ago if not longer, it was announced on TTLG and Thief-The Circle that the soundtrack for Thief: The Dark Project, originally written and composed by Eric Brosius, was available for download. Only this time it was remastered by Child of Karras, a forum dweller over at TTLG. It was called “The Golden Soundtrack”, and had 23 tracks all on one mp3, plus some fancy CD artwork and a booklet in PDF format with the entire tracklist.

I just read the other day that after a long while, the sequel, Thief II: The Metal Age’s soundtrack has received the same treatment and is now available online for free.

Quite fitting as earlier on this year, this classic title celebrated its tenth anniversary.

This time it comes in two forms. You can download the whole collection in one mp3, or you can get them separately. And the interesting thing I read about it is that it blends melodies from the English and German versions of the soundtrack. I likely haven’t heard some of those.

Thief 2 Soundtrack Gap-less MP3 [114 MB]
Thief 2 Soundtrack Single MP3s [100 MB]

You can bet that I’ll be recommending this some time for the NAG October 2010 Cover DVD Request Thread, which was opened recently. I’ll likely try my hand at downloading it myself as well though. Can’t wait a month until the next NAG!

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Source: Thief 2 - The Soundtrack Age [TTLG]

Thief II: The Metal Age Remastered Soundtrack up for Download

Video Game Urban Legends: Duke Nukem 3D’s Secret Cheat Code

You know, I like conspiracy theories, mysteries, and secrets. They’re fascinating.

I bought the new NAG magazine recently, and saw that GameTrailers have come out with a new series that explores these urban myths, and seeks to prove them fact or fiction by testing them out. It’s called Pop Fiction, and it’s quite thorough, and I actually want to see more of it. The show’s inspiration obviously comes from The MythBusters, when I look at the format.

The one about whether Reptile was in every original and perhaps every Mortal Kombat game in existence was one that captivated me, seeing as he’s likely one of my favourite characters in the franchise, next to the other ninjas like Scorpion, and my childhood idol – Sub-Zero. He was cool.

I also came across something interesting on Digg the other day, and it was a list of the Most Widely Believed Video Game Urban Legends. It’s like urban legends and so on, but relating to video games obviously.

There were only a few that I actually had heard about. And only a few of those were games I’d actually played.

Anyhow, on this list, I added a comment which explained one of the most memorable urban legends in video games, from my childhood. It went as follows (edited a bit):

When I was young and still in school, a friend (now ex-friend and bitter enemy) told me of a secret cheat in Duke Nukem 3D. He’d heard of it through a friend of his who claimed to have made it work. This cheat was known as DNLIPSTICK.

Practically all cheats entered in Duke Nukem 3D began with “DN”, which no doubt stands for “Duke Nukem”.

What the cheat allowed you to do was this:

When you’re in the Red Light District [E1L2] area’s strip club, and you enter the cheat correctly, Duke will allegedly be able to screw one of the strippers there, who so eagerly bare their assets when handed cash. Why not go all the way with the “cashman”?

In the past I tried and tried to make this cheat to work, but to no avail. My friend told me to try entering the code in different ways, and in different combinations, with some in capital letters and others not. But with no console back then, it made it difficult to see how you were typing it. It’s hard enough to just type a cheat normally and activate it.

So my opinion of this urban legend, if I have to be thorough about it is that it’s very likely fiction. Duke Nukem 3D was controversial enough back in the day without this sort of “interactivity” going on in it. This code is also not mentioned anywhere on lists of codes for the game, and due to my personal past experience with trying to get it to work, it doesn’t.

Plus, I’ve also talked to a bunch of forumites over at Duke4.net, and even though one might have heard of a similar rumour, they hadn’t seen or heard of DNLIPSTICK – the cheat code which is associated with it. Hell, if you google “Duke Nukem 3D DNLIPSTICK”, you’ll only get a few hits on a page – and they’re all from me, including this one.

The one reply pointed me to his website where I saw this and shook my head:

“To get the naked girl ending you have to beat the game 10 times in a row on the hardest setting while only using kick and you also have to not kill any lizards. If you do this you will get a movie with the lady from the strip club on level 2 show off her whole body and **** duke nukem!”

This guy also heard it from a friend at school. Go figure. They lie.

And to top it off I even contacted George Broussard of 3D Realms via Formspring. He said he’d never even heard of it. Okay, so he didn’t respond, but that’s life, huh?

Myth Busted.

Video Game Urban Legends: Duke Nukem 3D’s Secret Cheat Code

September 2010 Issue of NAG out This Week

It’s nearly that time again. Yeah, last Thursday of the month. And that means NAG time! The post detailing it over at NAG Online was up early this time.

As you can see, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II gets the cover, and should also get an award for one of the longest video game titles in recent memory. It makes Rage a great pleasure to type in comparison.
Previews include Dead Rising 2, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (there’s a review of it in the Techno Times supplement that comes with the Cape Times – it turns out it ain’t that good, just average). There’s also a look at Portal 2, Fable III, which will be hitting the PC this time too, and Killzone 3.

Reviews don’t seem to have anything special apart a feature review on StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Cracking game that. I’m playing it right now.

The Cover DVD has a demo of Kane & Lynch 2 on it (my brother all ready bought the game – I’ll have to ask him if it’s worth a try). It also says there on the contents page that there are 11 Free games, and of course the videos. All 200 of them. Well, it’s not that many – about 153 at least – but close enough.
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Source: [NAG Online]

September 2010 Issue of NAG out This Week

Fallout 3: Chicken Licken [Random Madness]

I saw this clever advert on TV recently for Chicken Licken – a local restaurant and takeout chain.

It involved a family who in 1994, decided that because of the fears surrounding the upcoming election at the time and the changing of the guard from one government to the the other, along with the end of apartheid and the beginning of democracy (look up South African history to find out more), that it would be safer to move out of their house… and move underground; exactly underneath the plot in a bunker or vault of sorts.
They lived there for the next sixteen years, living off of nothing but canned food until one day, the father in the family got sick and tired of the living conditions and left to go topside – the first time in over a decade and a half.

After a few days, the son, now grown up and a young adult, decided that his father had been away for too long. Fearing the worst, he packed his bags and went up onto the surface himself to try and track his father down.

A family who has been underground might expect the world to be a very different place – and it was. As the son emerged from the depths of the underground, he found himself in… a Chicken Licken restaurant. The place had been built where the old house used to be.
After looking around in awe for awhile, he locked eyes with his father who was sitting down at one of the tables, hogging out on loads of chicken pieces, after having to put up with viennas and canned spam for a long time.

“Pa?” the son uttered.

The father stopped chewing ravenously for a short while to say, “Se vir ma ek’s nou daar.” (Tell mom I’ll be there now).

It was one of the more amusing ads on TV, but it took a few showings for me to make connections. It’s obvious that the story here and the one in Fallout 3 are quite similar; apart from the time frame and the conditions which lead to the father leaving. But it did involve living in a vault, with the father leaving after a time, and the son following him.

Of course in Fallout 3 the player character had never been to the surface until the day he went looking for his dad, James, whereas the son nicknamed “Boetie” in the ad was born on the surface but left with his family to move into the vault at about the age of three or four. When he emerged however in 2010, he was about the same age as the player character in Fallout 3: nineteen.

Coincidence? Interesting, nonetheless.

Fallout 3: Chicken Licken [Random Madness]

New Article: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Could be the Death of the Series

The other day S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was officially announced. I took the opportunity to publish an article the other day on HubPages that talked about how it might not be such a good thing.

The game’s engine is a multiplatform one, with console versions becoming more likely with the sequel, and part of me thinks it could end up being the end of a great PC exclusive series. Rough, raw, and largely unpolished… but still great. Here’s to hoping that the sequel actually comes through.

New Article: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Could be the Death of the Series

Chaos Kenridge Moving Next Month

Chaos Computers is the fastest rising computer and technology-orientated retail chain in the Cape. There are stores in Kenilworth, Cape Gate, and Parklands.

The store that started it all is in Kenridge, Durbanville. Initially it was located in a pokey room which used to be an apartment overlooking the local petrol station and shopping centre. But eventually the first floor was used for businesses instead, with the ground floor belonging to a car showroom. Slowly it expanded and incorporated the room next to it, and after that another room.

The last time I visited, the store was barely half the length of the Kenridge Computer Academy’s floor space. But that’s about to change, seeing as I read in the paper the other day that after all this time, they are going to be taking the leap and moving to another location.
Next month, on 1 September, Chaos Computers will be moving from Kenridge to Willowbridge Shopping Centre.

It’s a move that I anticipated long ago. I thought they would either end up going to Willowbridge, or Tyger Valley Shopping Centre – which is just across the main road. But there are all ready established computer stores in TV - like Computer Mania and CompuCity, which have been there for years. I think Willowbridge was a good idea in this regard seeing as there’s less competition.

The only thing is that seeing as Willowbridge is a more upmarket venue than before, I have doubts that the low prices that made Chaos so favourable in the past will still be adhered to. The rent of a bigger store in such a place, which is often frequented by tourists and the like, and considered by some to be more upmarket, may end up pushing up the prices.

Well, we’ll have to see. The Grand Opening of the new and improved store will take place on Friday, September 3, 2010.

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Source: Chaos [via TygerBurger]

Chaos Kenridge Moving Next Month

New Article: The BrotherHood – Celebrating Hoods!

Hoodie Day [12 August – NZ]

I put up a new article on one of my HubPages profiles just lately. It’s been a while since I’ve done one. This one is called The BrotherHood: Hooded Characters in Video Games.

As you can tell, it’s about hooded characters in video games. Think Garrett from Thief.

I decided to put it up there as an article, seeing as there’s quite a lot of content to go along with it. I was initially going to post it here on the blog, but thought I would just do this short post talking about it instead and link to it.

There’s pictures of each of the characters mentioned, or most of them anyway, along with a poll to vote for whoever is your favourite. Games are mentioned in chronological order, right from ROTT in 1995, up to Thi4f, which is yet to come out.

I thought it was a good idea to to publish it now seeing as this week, on the 12th, today, is Hoodie Day. Well, in New Zealand, anyway, alongside the UN's International Youth Day. I started working on the idea about a year ago. It’s been sitting on my HD since then, and I was just waiting for this particular day to come along.

New Article: The BrotherHood – Celebrating Hoods!