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JA Sells Out!

That’s right, we’re selling out of games faster than we can stock them! Our new online game store is a rip-roaring success and keep in mind, every game you purchase from the JA Store goes to support my Diet Pepsi habit.

Many of our readers have written over the years that it has become difficult to find new adventure games in their local stores. Well, problem solved as we have all of the new releases and even offer pre-orders so you don’t have to worry about trudging through the snow in the middle of winter only to be disappointed when the store clerk stares at you blankly while muttering, “What’s an adventure game?”

My Mummy Will Dig This News

While I cannot yet reveal all of the details – and there are some huge surprises in store - I know the adventure community will be thrilled to learn that Jeff & Karen Tobler have negotiated back the rights to Riddle of the Sphinx I and Riddle of the Sphinx III from Dreamcatcher!

What this means is that Jeff’s company, Omni Creative will be republishing the first Riddle of the Sphinx (albeit with some soon-to-be announced improvements) and publishing Riddle of the Sphinx III, which was never released by Dreamcatcher! This is in addition to the upcoming Egypt’s Ancient Mysteries.

How Jeff manages to juggle all of these different projects is amazing, but he has promised JA readers some more exclusive news very soon.

The G is for Gratuitous Violence

A year ago I cancelled my digital cable so I wouldn’t be tempted to watch the car-wreck known as G4 TV. Now, my local cable provider has dropped G4 down to the basic programming tier. And God help me, I couldn’t help myself, but I peeked – and now my bombarded brain synapses are close to inducing a massive seizure.

Every time I tune into G4 – and I mean every single time – they are either showing video characters fighting, cars wrecking or someone or something getting blown away by a BFG. Or maybe this is just the sad state of the industry, but we know better, don’t we?

Besides the insufferable - excluding Adam who rocks - hosts (could Morgan Webb be more cloying with her condescending face contortions and smirking) my ‘favorite’ moment has to be the Judgment Day installment in which Tommy Tallarico actually reviewed Advent Rising, a game for which he composed the score and sound effects and even admitted such upfront! Sheesh. Can you imagine the uproar if Quentin Tarantino would review his next movie in the New York Times or Stephen King his newest novel?! But in the game industry, it seems anything goes, no matter how unethical.

Paradise Found

Ubisoft to be publish Benoit Sokal’s Paradise next year! Atari’s Indigo Prophecy getting rave reviews. The Adventure Company’s Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None receives major marketing push. Adventures Phoenix Wright & Trace Memory hot items on the Nintendo DS.

What was that Computer Gaming World said about ‘some of the bigger developers abandoning adventure games for other genres?’

Things That Make You Go Hmmm…..

On September 7th, Atari announced that Indigo Prophecy had ‘gone gold’ and that development was complete. ‘Gone gold’ means that the game has gone to the duplicator and will usually be in the stores within the next 2-3 weeks. Gold copies are also considered reviewable product - as compared to a beta or unfinished copy - and this is what is usually sent to magazines and websites.

On September 19th, the November issue of PSM (100% Independent Playstation 2 Magazine is proudly displayed on the masthead) magazine arrived in the mail. On page 74 is a nice, albeit short, review of Indigo Prophecy. Most game magazines have at least a two-month lead-time, meaning articles or reviews must be submitted at least two months before the street date. Even if the PSM reviewer only had a one-month lead (which I seriously doubt), then he would have had the game well before August 19th – taking into account the time spent to complete it – at the very least 3 weeks before it went ‘gold’. Hmmmm…..

Things That Make You Go Hmmm….. Part 2

Majesco management recently issued a press statement that the company – publishers of Psychonauts, Advent Rising and the jiggle-fest Bloodrayne - was on the verge of bankruptcy and warned investors against purchasing company stock.

What’s ironic, is that the critically acclaimed, but sluggish-selling platformer, Psychonauts was supposed to be Tim Schafer’s answer to the supposedly dead adventure genre. Last I checked though, there seemed to be more than a few adventure games on the horizon and not so many platform games. Hmmmm…..

Half a Tex Murphy is Better Then None

Because I’m starting to feel somewhat lazy at this point, I’ll just share this email from Peter Rasmussen verbatim:

Hello Randy

Some months ago you helped me track down Chris Jones. I thought you and Just Adventure readers might like to know the project has advanced now to the point where the Australian director Jackie Turnure will be flying to Salt Lake City to do a voice record with Chris Jones in late November.

Fans of Chris from the Tex Murphy adventures can look forward to again enjoying his dry delivery in this 3D animated Sci-fi detective story “Stolen Life”.

Stolen Life is being created in the exciting new medium called Machinima. This is animation in a game engine of the kine used for 3D first person shooters.

Chris stars opposite Claudia Black of the sci-fi series “Farscape” who we will be recording in Sydney in early November.

Once the record is done we will be putting together some brief teasers so everyone can get a taste of what is to come. More info can be found at the Nanoflix website.

On Your Marks, Get Set, Read!

Stephen Granade informs us that the 11th annual 2005 Interactive Fiction Competition for short text adventures is now underway. Anyone can download the games, play them and rate them. Speaking of text adventures…..

PC Gamer - which does not review even half of the adventure games released yet someone manages to locate every single first-person-shooter or war simulation, including those developed by 13-year-old boys and released as freeware – decided to review Malinche Entertainment’s recent text adventure The First Mile. While I have not played the game and cannot comment on their final score of 19%, PC Gamer should be applauded for breaking new ground by reviewing a text adventure (Ha, fooled you, bet you thought I was going to make some smarmy remark about PC Gamer!).

Hello, Sailor

Harvey Patterson of Classic Dos Games is a man on a mission. C|Net recently posted an article ‘Gratis gaming: 10 Real PC games you Can Download for Free’, and the original Zork Trilogy was listed. When informed that the Zork Trilogy is not freeware, it was removed from C/Net.

Now Harvey wants to ask “nothing more from Activision than that they add the game to their online store and tell everyone there is no tech support for it, or release a game they haven't sold for years as freeware. There is probably no possibility of profiting from the original trilogy any more, but they can score a PR victory and earn fan loyalty out of a freeware release, and make the news on many websites, and that translates into future sales. If they can't make money off of selling the games, maybe they can make money off of giving them away, if you get what I mean. I think that this petition is a hundred times more likely to succeed than a petition to produce a whole new game, and I hope you will support this initiative on your website.

Now, while I am opposed to abandonware sites in general, Classic Dos Games is one of the very few that offers only legally permitted downloads. Harvey has an online petition that he will be submitting to the Activision legal department and it needs your signature.

Goodbye Sailor

As many of you are probably aware by now, Vivendi threatened legal action to shut down the fanmade King’s Quest IX: Every Cloak Has a Silver Lining.

A group of concerned fans, led by Koko Cat, have started a Save KQIX campaign. You can learn at the official site and, hopefully, become involved in this effort to save a much anticipated game.

There’s more behind Vivendi’s decision than has been revealed and we hope to soon impart more details.