All Hail Stephen Colbert, Tolkien Overlord Stephen Colbert is a walking, talking Tolkien robo-freak? Who knew? I mean, he is the epitome of the talented, charming uber-nerd, but I for one had no idea his credentials were quite so authentic. Colbert turns out to have major Tolkien cred, although sadly his secret supergeek origin story is […]
Author Archives: Game Writer Guy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide Game is Back
The BBC have kindly revived the classic Infocom text adventure game version of Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” for its 30th anniversary. The Hitchhiker’s Guide webgame can be played in your browser for free… and the spiffy web version comes with wireframe graphics, sound effects, and some preset buttons for navigation and […]
Bioshock Co-Founder Calls It Quits
Surprisingly, Irrational Games’ co-founder Ken Levine recently announced that he’s shutting down that studio. This means that future Bioshock games will almost certainly have much less of his handiwork. He did also say that he will start a new studio under publisher Take-Two that will focus on smaller, digital-distribution games. The new studio will only […]
Free Football Videogame for Texas Gamers
Free football videogame? No joke! It’s Superbowl time, and that means Texas’ Game Over Videogames, a game store that specializes in vintage and retro games (but also sells current games), is having their annual football game giveaway. This Saturday and Sunday, gamers can visit one of their locations for a free football videogame as long […]
Man Walks Miles in the Snow to Honor Qbert
See this fellow? He walks miles in deep snow, for hours, for a noble cause. To honor the arcade game Qbert. Here’s what that snow art looks like: I can hear Qbert jumping from cube to cube right now! Spoing spoing! Okay, maybe it isn’t actually Qbert-themed. Simon Beck is our snow artist and apparently […]
Did My Sister Design the 3DO Logo… At Age 4?
As some of you know, the late great 3DO was one of the game developers where I’ve hung my hat. Good stories, great people, late nights, inevitable collapse, the usual game industry situation. Anyhow, appropos of nothing, my sister brought a little item to Christmas a few weeks ago — a bookmark made in the […]
Remembering Rocket Jockey
Rocket Jockey, the Myth, the Legend Rocket Jockey was the first and arguably the best published game I worked on. Published in 1996 to very little notice, RJ was well-received by videogame critics who happened to notice it. And it was worthy of notice, although I should note that the bulk of the credit goes […]
npesp32.dll: A Virus False Alarm
Beloved geeks, Just a quick note about npesp32.dll, a little-known and horribly undocumented Windows DLL. For some reason, my antivirus program, the unremarkable but free AVG, took a disliking to npesp32.dll, tagging it as the host for the “Generic22.BYCR” virus. I quarantined it and fortunately did not delete it, because shortly thereafter, both iTunes and […]
Hulu Plus Review-ette
Hulu Plus Sounds Useful You know, it’s not hard to like Hulu Plus. One of the big wins for me is that Hulu Plus has a huge catalog of Criterion collection movies. These are classic arthouse movies and canonical cinema landmarks from a wide range of eras. And they have some essential TV shows that […]