While I can't share the backers-only video, I think it's safe to say in the interest of promoting the panel, Chris Jones, Aaron Conners, Adrian Carr, Larry Thomas (Lt. Danwicz, The Soup Nazi) and Kevin Murphy ("Voice" in Tesla Effect) will all be in attendance. I can't attend, so I hope there's a recording afterwards, but it should be good!
Just a heads up for anyone in the Salt Lake City area, or who can be the first week of September, there will be a panel for Tesla Effect on Friday, September 6th. For more details on the Comic Con click here, and for a list of panels click here.
While I can't share the backers-only video, I think it's safe to say in the interest of promoting the panel, Chris Jones, Aaron Conners, Adrian Carr, Larry Thomas (Lt. Danwicz, The Soup Nazi) and Kevin Murphy ("Voice" in Tesla Effect) will all be in attendance. I can't attend, so I hope there's a recording afterwards, but it should be good!
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So, while on the topic of games I play, I also own Minecraft. I haven't got into Survival mode so much, and until a month or so ago, I hadn't touched it in a year, but in honour of Tex, I decided to put together a little monument. The entire thing was built the old fashioned way, and I had to blow up a sizeable hill in the middle of it to make the land flat enough to build the silhouette. It's not on a public server or anything, just my own little creative world and I thought I'd share it with you. If you have any Tex creations you'd like to share, let me know and I'll post them! Though the Tex games have always meant the more to me than any other series of games, they are certainly not the only games I've played or plan to play.
I've been playing games since I was very young. Being born in the early 80s, games were really starting to shine as I grew up. Many of my first were children's computer games and several for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Before discovering Tex, the early Mario Bros. games were my favourites. There were a few other games here and there, but it was Tex that opened up the world of gaming to me. Once I discovered the Tex community I was exposed to many other adventure games: Blade Runner, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island. Though it started primarily with adventure games, my tastes weren't limited to just that genre. Some of the more memorable games of the late 90s and early 21st century were The Longest Journey, No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I remember these games quite fondly and have played them all multiple times. Despite only playing the original Half Life sporadically, I was excited when Half Life 2 was finally released in 2004 and bought it shortly after release. It quickly became, and is still to this day, one of my favourite games ever made and began my "love affair" with many of Valve's products. I've played and loved Half Life 2 Episodes 1 & 2 and one of the few games I actually anticipate for the future is Half Life 3 (they've gotta be making it, right?). Of course, I've also played the wonderful Portal games and have spent hundred of hours playing Team Fortress 2 - the only multiplayer game I've ever gotten in to. Then there's the games of Bioware. I came late to the party, starting with Knights of the Old Republic, another of my top games ever. I have continued playing their games, but since the purchase by EA, I've found they're losing what once made them special. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were great, but the sequels were far less engaging. Elder Scrolls is another favourite of mine. I started with Oblivion and then went backwards and played Morrowind and now I've got Skyrim waiting for me on my computer once I get the opportunity. I spent over 100 hours exploring Cyrodiil in Oblivion, I expect to do the same in Skyrim. I've also played all of Fallout RPGs. Though I didn't care much for the original, I quite enjoyed Fallout 2, 3 and New Vegas. I've yet to play Bioshock Infinite, but am looking forward to that, I enjoyed its predecessors including System Shock 2. I've played so much since Tex's last adventure, it really puts perspective on just how much time has passed. Heck, Grim Fandango is a newer game than Overseer! I've had plenty of positive and negative experiences with games, but recently it has trended toward negative. Maybe I've just become too "old school," but I feel that the majority of games fail to tell interesting (or even coherent) stories, and games have become more about the cool technology behind them than the actual game. I fully expect Tesla Effect to be a refreshing change from all of that as it both pushes the technological boundaries AND provides an engaging story and gaming experience. If you're interested in some games I've reviewed check out my profile on GameSpot here. So what games are some of your non-Tex favourites? Is there anything you look forward to other than Tesla Effect? July 31st marked the last day to contribute to Project Fedora via PayPal, and Big Finish has now released the final total: A whopping $657,196 with PayPal bringing in an additional 10% over the money brought in on Kickstarter. It's an impressive feat for Tex to not only bring in the original asking figure of $450,000, but to surpass it by over $200,000. A congratulations to Big Finish for managing to brining in so much, and certainly a thanks to everyone who backed this project is called for, so: Thanks! No specific reason has been given for closing off contributions, but with a publisher becoming involved, it's probable that at some point they would rather sell pre-order copies at more than $15 a piece. I'm sure once all the distribution issues are settled, pre-order will become available. Based on what has been flying around the forums and from Chris Jones's interview on Wednesday, Steam seems to be the main target for distribution, which is great. Steam has a huge user base to expose Tex to. As I write this, there are currently 4.8 million people logged on to Steam. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Tesla Effect show up on GOG as well. Here's hoping Tesla Effect is a huge success! For those who missed yesterday's interview of Chris Jones on RetroNick Radio, it is now available for download here.
There were quite a few interesting tidbits regarding Tesla Effect. The things I found the most interesting are:
When Microsoft bought Access Software in April 1999, things changed dramatically for Tex. adventure games were falling out of favour and Microsoft's interest was in the Links golf series and its underlying technology. The future did not look good for Tex.
Hope remained, however, but it wasn't long before it looked like Tex would never return in the format we know and love. It was the announcement that in place of a full-fledged game, the new Tex would be released in a series of online Flash games or "webisodes", when almost all hoped drained away. You can see my original reaction and follow up here and here. Once I was reassured that the webisodes weren't Access giving up, I felt better, but the future for Tex still seemed bleak. The webisodes idea was soon replaced with a series of radio theatre episodes. While enjoyable, they were not quite the same. They did inspire several in the Tex community, including myself, to help keep Tex alive through the fan-produced Lombard St radio theatre (I recorded several episodes as the narrator. You can find a link to them in Downloads). In the desire to keep Tex alive I wrote and was involved in several fan fictions, several of which I never completed, including one that told the story of World War III and how it tied in with the events of The Pandora Directive. I, along with a fellow community member, attempted to make our own Tex game entitled The Nano War... I honestly don't remember how far we got, suffice it to say, we never finished it. I also created Who Wants to be a Tex Expert, available in the Downloads section on this site, or included free with your purchase of any Tex game on GOG. It was around 2002-2003 when I completed high school and went off to university that I had mostly given up hope. I drifted away from the community and towards the Star Trek community. I continued to be a lurker and hoped that maybe I was wrong, but the more time that passed the more I was convinced Tex was done. In 2008 my hope returned with the launch of Big Finish Games and the tease of Project Fedora. But despite everything, there never seemed to be any developments and by 2010 I was again convinced it was all over. BFG was a valiant effort, but didn't seem to be enough. When Tim Schaffer found amazing success on Kickstarter, I knew that many in the Tex community would insist the idea was the way to bring back Tex. I wasn't convinced. I knew that the community itself would be enthusiastic, I just didn't think it would be possible to get the money needed to produce a game at the level of Tex Murphy. When the Kickstarter was announced, I was 100% on board even if I wasn't sure it would work. It wasn't until the Kickstarter launched that I thought this might actually be just what the entire community had been looking for for 14 years. The sum asked for was modest and the day one haul was huge. I was finally excited at the prospect that Tex could actually be returning. For a short time in the middle of the campaign, it was a bit slow and I started to worry, but all that ended quickly. And I think we know how things have gone since then. So, were you always convinced Tex would return one day, or do you have a similar story to my own? Please discuss in the comments! 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/ 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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