Star Wars, Geek Culture, and Power Converters
GOG.com wasn’t finished with the six games they added yesterday.
Joining the growing LucasArts library are three more titles. Empire at War and Rebellion are a pair of popular strategy game titles. Meanwhile, Rogue Squadron 3D was the arcade combat flight simulator enjoyed by gamers in the 90s with access to a PC or a Nintendo 64.
Head over to GOG to see the complete collection from LucasArts
Available starting today at Good Old Games are six more LucasArts titles that have been optimized to play on your modern PC.
The titles available feature combat flight simulators X-Wing Alliance and its multiplayer predecessor X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. If you’re picking up X-Wing Alliance, be sure to check out the XWA Upgrade Project, which replaces the default ship and background textures int he game with re-designed high res packages.
Dark Forces brings you back to the height of the PC FPS era by putting you in the shoes of Kyle Katarn and a giant arsenal of blasters from the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Galactic Battlegrounds was an isometric strategy game ala Civilization and Age of Empires. Battlefront II featured a bit of everything for Star Wars fans. Ship combat, third-person shooter fun, and a level of fun that had fans clamoring for a sequel for ages.
Finally there’s Knights of the Old Republic II. The ambitious sequel to Knights of the Old Republic was maligned for bugs, a very rushed second half, and an ending that was probably too vague for its own good, but it was still a very fun and thought provoking game. If you pick this one up, you may want to also look at The Sith Lords Restoration Project, which adds back in a bunch of content that were cut from the game due to production time restraints.
Some of these games are currently on sale, so go check it out!
You wanted to be him. You know you did.
It’s time to find that old joystick and hope it still works, because the old TIE Fighter and X-Wing games are finally getting re-released. Kotaku reports that they’ll be released for $10 each on Good Old Games, possibly as soon as tomorrow, though that remains unconfirmed.
Update: The games are available right now on GOG.com! Also available are Knights of the Old Republic, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.
So buckle up–it’s time to get back to some of the best story lines Star Wars has ever seen.
The first Star Wars-related announcement has come in from the New York Comic Con festivities and it’s certainly not something we expected. Bandai Namco has unveiled Star Wars: Battle Pod, an arcade game in which the player sits in a simulated cockpit and pilots various kinds of vehicles on missions. From the official site:
The game includes five stages that recreate the fiercest battle scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy. Loaded with features and unique gameplay elements, players can experience the impact of the explosions and destruction that will leave them with a sense of actually piloting and taking part in action-packed scenes from the films. Enabling the player to be surrounded by gameplay images and experiences on the dome screen, players will truly take command of the vehicles that appear in the films such as X-wings, snowspeeders, speederbikes, the Millennium Falcon and TIE Advanced.
The game will be available to play at participating arcades in the United States starting January 2015, but fans in New York City have an opportunity to play it early:
Players experienced their first hands-on gameplay of Star Wars: Battle Pod this week in New York City at an announcement event at Marquee NY. The game will continue to be on display at Dave and Buster’s in the Times Square location through the New York Comic-Con.
Bandai Namco does not seem to have information about the game up on its site as of yet but will hopefully have some soon.
@BlueJaigEyes, of The Wookiee Gunner, took video of the game trailer shown at the unveiling, which includes footage of what we hope is the Death Star Trench Run:
She also livetweeted the event, including pictures of the interior of the machines. See some of her tweets after the jump. Continue reading
Several months ago, we let you know that Firefly Online was going to be A Thing. (The fact that I can’t find that post says something about my inability to tag my posts.)
Today at SDCC, we just got the news that the entire cast will reunite for the game, Alan Tudyk will be providing several roles, and Niska, one of the most terrifying of Mal’s personal nemeses, will also be returning. More details can be found at the Firefly Online website.
Yesterday, Star Wars.com announced Star Wars: Attack Squadrons, a multiplayer online game being developed by Disney Interactive and Area 52. All we’ve really got right now is this pre-rendered cinematic and a few screenshots of what might be in-game action. I can’t even find anything on developer Area 52, which appears to be a new studio that’s working with Disney to create the game.
Attack Squadrons is being designed as a free-to-play game boasting three PVP modes and customizable starfighters. I would guess that this means there will be some sort of microtransaction system that players can buy into, but we’ll probably hear about that later. For now, you can sign up for the beta testing program.
Perhaps this is the long awaited spiritual successor to X-wing vs. TIE Fighter. I certainly wouldn’t say no to a game like that which takes advantage of far more available broadband access as compared to the late 90s.
The shuttering of LucasArts still stings for a lot of fans. Many hold Disney accountable for closing the venerable game studio, but did problems for the developer begin before the sale? According to a Kotaku profile by Jason Schreier, LucasArts was in trouble years before Disney came into the picture.
Over the last five months, I’ve talked to a dozen people connected to LucasArts, including ex-employees at the company’s highest levels, in an attempt to figure out just how the studio collapsed. Some spoke off the record; others spoke under condition of anonymity. They told me about the failed deals, the drastic shifts in direction, the cancelled projects with codenames likeSmuggler and Outpost. They told me the stories behind the fantastic-looking Star Wars 1313and the multi-tiered plans for a new Battlefront starting with the multiplayer game known asStar Wars: First Assault.
All of these people helped paint a single picture: Even before Disney purchased LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, in November of 2012, the studio faced serious issues. LucasArts was a company paralyzed by dysfunction, apathy, and indecision from executives at the highest levels.
It may not have been just 1313 and First Assault that wound up meeting untimely demises either:
In news that will certainly crush anyone who enjoyed LucasArts-branded adventure games, the team at LucasArts Singapore was working on a remastered version of the classic point-and-click game Day of the Tentacle, according to three people familiar with that project. Like the special editions of the first two Monkey Island games, released in 2009 and 2010, the remastered Day of the Tentacle would be pseudo-3D, with remade background art and cut-scenes redone to run at 30 frames per second…
…The list of cancelled projects goes on and on. There was Smuggler, a game designed for cross-platform multiplayer that would let you play as a customizable character within the Star Warsuniverse, smuggling and trading between Facebook, tablets, and consoles.P
There was Outpost, the Star Wars take on Zynga’s FarmVille that would let players build empires, one click at a time.P
There was Death Star, the iOS game in which you’d get to control your very own version of the Empire’s iconic space station.P
There was the online service that would be LucasArts’ very own version of Origin, EA’s network for distributing games and servicing online multiplayer. Like Origin for EA, this LucasArts-branded network would help the company distribute Star Wars games and in-app purchases. According to one person familiar with plans for this network, it would have launched alongside Star Wars: First Assault, which would have had some sort of microtransaction store.
Shortly after LucasArts closed, I cautioned fans not to blame Disney. The anger was understandable, the studio closure came right on the heels of The Clone Wars getting cancelled. From my outside perspective, it looked as if LucasArts had been in trouble for years and issues had cropped up almost a decade earlier. This piece by Kotaku lends more to the idea that the company had merely been on life support from Lucasfilm for some time.
Be sure to read the entire Kotaku profile, there’s a whole lot more there that paints a much clearer picture that the problems that befell LucasArts come from within, not from Disney.
Congratulations, gamers. Battlefront III is happening which means you can stop asking when it’s going to be made at convention panels completely unrelated to video gaming.
There were some rumblings last week that popular Star Wars RPG Knights of the Old Republic would be making its way to the iPad. This week, it became official and IGN sat down to review the port. Long story short? It’s a must-buy. Here’s their bottom-line verdict:
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic still holds up, and remains a must-play for younger players who didn’t catch it the first time around. Though the iPad version’s touch controls make movement clumsy, most of its changes are for the better. If you haven’t played it before, or want to experience it again, this is a great way to do it.
For those who haven’t had a chance to play this game, I can’t recommend it highly enough. For those who have, maybe it’s time to revisit it on a new platform. No release date has been announced yet, but once it’s available, I know I’ll be picking it up.
Edit: Hey look it went live a little after we posted this!
Fans have been clamoring for a new Battlefront game for ages. For a long while, it seemed like it was never going to happen thanks to troubles within LucasArts. Now that EA has the Star Wars IP? Well, things are looking up according to Gamespot.
Electronic Arts has teased that one of its multiple in-development Star Wars titles is an all-new Battlefront game. Speaking today during the Stifel 2013 Technology Conference, CFO Blake Jorgensen offered the hint.
“The opportunity to do a new Battlefront, for example, which is one of the very popular Star Wars games, or some of the other traditional games that were made, is very exciting.”Star Wars: Battlefront III, despite never actually being announced, was reportedly 99 percent complete, though this claim was contested.
Me? I’m hoping it gets made just so people stop asking for it at completely unrelated Star Wars event panels at conventions.