http://www.retronick.com/retronick-radio-the-live-stream/
Just wanted to let you all know that Chris Jones will be interviewed tomorrow night, August 7, on RetroNick Radio at 8pm EDT. he will be answering some fan questions, and I'm sure we'll get some interesting tidbits. If you can't make it, a recording will be made available later. Check back at the link below when the show starts.
http://www.retronick.com/retronick-radio-the-live-stream/
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Dave (aka Lack78 on YouTube) has posted his new interview with Mat Van Rhoon (aka Cubase) regarding the development of Tesla Effect. They discuss a whole bunch of different things, such as how Mat first discovered Tex Murphy as well as how he became involved in the production of Tesla Effect. Check it out below, or by clicking here. I thought I'd take a moment to share with you how I found Tex, what led me to starting this site and my feelings on Tex's future post-Microsoft takeover.
My discovery of Tex happened quite randomly. My dad went to Las Vegas for a convention (not sure what, but maybe it was the Consumer Electronics Show if its been around long enough). Intel was at the show, and as part of the tie-in with their new powerful Pentium chips, they were giving away free copies of Under a Killing Moon. My dad was lucky enough to get one. At the time, my family didn't have a computer quite powerful enough to run it, but a few months later my dad got a Pentium 100MHz. Once it was setup, one of the first things my dad did was install the game as a test. I remember waking up that morning, walking into the computer room/office and found my dad playing it. He let me play a bit and that was that. I was hooked. That was sometime in 1995, when I was only 11. Tex has been part of my life for nearly as long as I can remember. In August of 1996 I was browsing through a gaming magazine at the store and discovered Tex was coming back in a new adventure - what I thought at the time was The Pandors Directive. I went to the store shortly thereafter asking about it, and found a copy at the second one I visited. Though I started Pandora in August, I didn't finish it until February - I was so scared of the part where you need to defeat the Black Arrow Killer that I just could get past it. I'm glad I eventually got over that! Overseer I discovered online. I don't recall the site, but I do remember it had an all blue background and a large font with no images - it was 1997. It told me that not only was Overseer coming out, it was going to be released on something called "DCD". I had no idea what that was, it was only later I found out it was supposed to be DVD and that it was the future of storage media. Overseer was a day one purchase... Actually it was a day -1 purchase. I had read on the Unofficial Tex Murphy message board from a fellow Canadian that a store here - Compucentre - had released the game early. I got my parents to take me to the mall and I got my copy, complete with blinking red light. That light still works with the original batteries. I completed Overseer in about two weeks. It was around this point that I had started playing with Microsoft Front Page, and I started building my Tex Murphy site. On April 15, 1998 I opened my GeoCities account and launched the site. Everything went well for the first year in the world of Tex Murphy. There were delays expected due to Links Extreme and Access's new project, Black Pearl, but it seemed things would eventually happen with Tex's next adventure. But in April of 1999 Microsoft purchased Access Software and things changed. Next time I'll discuss my various feelings, ups and downs during the time between 1999 and 2012. In the meantime, how did you discover Tex? Discuss. The Dark Age that I refer to is, of course that period from 1999 to 2011 where hope slowly faded that Tex would ever return to our computer screens. It started, of course, with the purchase of Access Software by Microsoft in 1999. Sure, we had a few glimmers of hope - the radio theatre, the establishment of Big Finish Games and the tease of "Project Fedora" before it became the name given to the Kickstarter campaign - but it was still hard to imagine what would happen in May and June of 2012. So where have I been during that time? Well, as some of you know, I kept my site alive until 2003 when keeping the site fresh simply became harder and harder due to the lack of any major developments. Since then, I've completed both an undergrad and a certificate program at university, started my life in the working world and moved out from my parents house. When I first played Tex Murphy in 1995 I was only 11. I'm now rapidly approaching 30. But even though I disappeared for a while, my love for Tex Murphy has remained, and though I was pessimistic about the future of the series I never completely have up hope. After Tex, my next greatest entertainment "love" has been Star Trek (pre-JJ Abrams!). I spent a fair bit of time in the online community at TrekBBS, but that felt more like being in a big city where you're friends with only a few, compared to how things were back when I was most active in the Tex community in the late-90s where everyone knew everyone. I've played many games, some if which I loved, but over the last 10 years my feelings towards the game industry have grown increasingly negative. Few games give me the sense of excitement or immersion as Tex does (more on this in another post). My few travels have taken me to California where I was able to visit some of the iconic locations featured in the Tex series, most notably Coit Tower and Alcatraz. I admit I tried to find the closest approximation to Chandler Ave around Coit Tower, but all I could find was an only-in-San Francisco super-steep street. Oh, and no sign of J Saint Gideon's Overlord chamber at Alcatraz either... I just returned from another trip out west, this time to Vancouver, home of Elijah Witt. After checking out Google street view, I decided visiting his address on Maple St wouldn't be too fun. No high rise stands there yet. It's just a nice little residential neighbourhood. They've got 30 years to get that condo built, and the way that city is developing, they probably will. My next trip should probably be to the International Space Station. Probably the closest I could get to the Moon Child at this point :)
Despite my absence from the community, I had continued to lurk, but only rarely participated in any discussions prior to the start of the Kickstarter campaign. I'm excited to be back, and I hope I'll be as accepted now as I was a decade ago. I'm sure I will be, there may not be a stronger little community on all of the web! So, where have you been during the "Dark Ages"? Feel free to discuss in the comments! |
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