Looking back 20 years ago to 1990, a video game company by the name of SNK teamed up with ALPHA DENSHI (ADK) to develop a video game console. That console was made for arcades, yet at the same time was completely compatible for home use. It was called the “NEOGEO,” meaning “new land,” and owns a significant chapter in the annals of 1990s video game history.

The museum comes hot on the heels of a Japanese announcement that the company has also curiously restarted their repair service for the console. The service was previously shut down three years ago in 2007.

While the website remains relatively barren as-is, I fully expect the website to see more updates later, at the very least to the advertisement gallery. That being said, what I would have enjoyed the most is a crash course –like history into the extremely convoluted spelling policies of the console! Think about it: Neo Geo, or Neo-Geo? Or Neo•Geo? NeoGeo? All-uppercase NEOGEO!?

First off, we would start with installing the official v1.1 patch. This is not required for 2CD versions of the game, though I’ve never come across those. After that, the smartest choice is bigg’s unambiguous Widescreen Mod, currently sitting at v2.2 – as an added plus, it works for other games built on the Infinity engine, too. To get more bang for you buck with the bigger resolution you just got, you should also install GhostDog’s PS:T UI mod for the aforementioned. According to the site, it makes “1280×800, 1280×720, 1280×768 and 1280×1024 resolutions viable for Planescape: Torment by changing a number of things in the UI.”

Here are a few examples of the improvements (via The Codex Forums):

Finally, there is an unofficial Fix Pack available (v1.37) that attempts to rectify some issues not already solved by the official 1.1 patch.

Now, if you want to go the extra mile, you could also install the “Planescape: Torment Ultimate WeiDU Fixpack“, which promises to fix “hundreds of bugs and thousands of typos” (and additionally comes with the fixes contained in the Fix Pack above plus more). The most experimental of personalities can also proceed with the “Planescape: Torment Unfinished Business” and “Qwinn’s Planescape: Torment Tweaks” patches, all three of which were released by Qwinn.

Here’s each of the aforementioned steps:

1. Official patch v1.1
2. bigg’s Widescreen Mod v2.2
3. GhostDog’s PS:T UI mod v1.21
4. Fix Pack v1.37

1. Planescape: Torment Ultimate WeiDU Fixpack
2. Planescape: Torment Unfinished Business
3. Qwinn’s Planescape: Torment Tweaks

Any other mods and/or patches you would recommend?

Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection

This is a rather shocking turn of events after a wildly successful reintroduction of the classic LucasArts back catalogue to audiences old and new, and indeed strikingly qualitatively different from the previous batch of releases, especially so when taking into account that fixes to some of the aforementioned issues are in fact readily available! For instance, players who already own the games on CD can simply extract the original wave audio for their background music to work (thanks Richard!).

It is only natural, however, to find the company trying to think up ways to maintain the newfound revenue flow and subsequently benefit from the excitement caused by these re-releases. Therefore, it’s also all the more disappointing that oversights such as the aforementioned might considerably affect the public perception of the company’s current endeavours.

Macintosh version of Dark Forces

There may also be a specific, underlying reason as to why such a difference in-between the apparent quality of the re-release treatment exists: Earlier this year, the wonderful industry veteran and MAME developer Aaron Giles revealed that he had been commissioned to work on a few titles from the company’s back catalogue. Perhaps LucasArts have Giles, the self-described “completist”, to thank for laying out the conversion groundwork? Perhaps the digital launch for the SCUMM titles was as successful as it was because of heartfelt attention that Giles offered?

Speculation aside, I would like us to sequence into the concept of goodwill. The OED defines the term broadly into two distinct forms of usage: Commercial, or “the possession of a ready-formed ‘connexion’ of customers, considered as an element in the saleable value of a business, additional to the value of the plant, stock-in-trade, book-debts, etc” and attributive, or “favourable or kindly regard; favour, benevolence”.

In terms of the current model for gaming business, these two descriptions obviously go hand-in-hand – the question is, how, exactly? Beyond developing and shipping quality products, can a company accumulate goodwill via a string of genre-defining releases? Can goodwill be lost via the cancellation of announced titles, overall poor effort, rehashing or even selling out?  And finally, can goodwill be potentially regained via rehabilitation? Do temporal and/or intentional factors count?

Rogue Leaders - The Story of LucasArts

After all, LucasArts – or rather, LucasFilm Games and LucasArts Entertainment Company – were originally, as illustrated in Rob Smith’s book, “Rogue Leaders”, a trailblazer and an industry leader, both technically and artistically. The company pioneered the use of fractal graphics with Rescue on Fractalus! and Ballblazer, also both originating and popularizing the point-and-click adventure gameplay with Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. They even created the forefather of the online community, Habitat.

Sadly, the book also encapsulates the LucasArts days of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Hal Barwood, David Grossman, Steve Purcell, Aric Wilmunder, Noah Falstein, Larry Ahern, Michael Z. Land, Peter Chan, Peter McConnell, Clint Bajakian, Sean Clark and Bill Tiller. In a tragicomic display, the entire second half of “Rogue Leaders” is almost entirely dedicated to Star Wars, effectively drawing down the curtains on LucasArts as we knew it, both metaphorically and physically.

Reaching the end of the book can be a disappointing experience; after all, since the release of Tim Schafer’s gloriously creative Grim Fandango eleven years ago, the company’s output has bordered on the disenchanted. Previous LucasArts CEO Jim Ward’s tenure from 2004 to 2008 was especially formative in terms of our current understanding of the company: After all, Ward’s focus was always, first and foremost, on fiscal responsibility, performance and profit. No matter how much the public perception of adventure games as commercially unviable was the result of spin doctoring, stereotyping and the constant propagation of a self-fulfilling prophecy, they simply did not seem to fit in the equation.

In a leaked internal memo from July 2004, for instance, Ward dismisses, in illustrative fashion, the company’s yearly bonuses after a mere eight weeks on the job:

Our performance, qualitatively, strategically and financially, just isn’t there. One of the primary consequences of this lack of performance is that we have to make some tough decisions, like this one, to get back on track.

In a June 2006 interview with MCV, Ward chose to focus on the importance of competitive strategy:

“We’ve adopted new philosophies at LucasArts which, frankly, the whole industry should adopt. We make kick-ass games, but on time and on budget. Failure on any one of those three points is failure for the project.” “We are very serious about that strategy and we’re able to deliver on it. As a result we’re successful on a revenue and a bottom line basis.”

Even in leaving his post, Ward underlined performative factors:

“Together we’ve rebooted the company and set LucasArts on a path to even greater success. This is a fantastic team and they are positioned for their best year ever.”

Monkey Island Special Edition

After an ill-fated string of attempts to revive old franchises (Full Throttle: Payback, Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels, Sam & Max: Freelance Police and Indiana Jones & The Staff of Kings, respectively) resulted in a devastating PR fallout during Ward’s reign, antagonistic reactions to the company’s apparent misdirection reached an all-time high. A 2004 SCUMM Bar “Open Letter to LucasArts” rather candidly encapsulates the fears and worries that many adventure enthusiasts wore on their sleeves. With LucasArts’ reservoir of goodwill trickling thin in the form of lawsuits and cease & desist letters against innocuous fangames, even a website solely dedicated to LucasArts bashing appeared.

In light of these past years, then, should we perchance be alarmed by this recent misfire with the Jedi Knight collection? Let’s admit it: Lending out Guybrush over to Telltale Games makes complete sense now, but who in their right mind would have expected LucasArts to part with him just a year ago? No way, Jose. No way. I wouldn’t oppose in the least if we all were to agree that LucasArts, as a corporate entity, simply painted itself in the corner, and ultimately had no other possibility but to change – or wither away.

Nevertheless, I would not be opposed to perceiving the recent changes in management as a natural culmination of the company’s know-how, perseverance and heritage, either. After so many years, who’s to say? Either way, the company seems focused, perhaps more so than in over a decade, on attempting to carve out an all-new new identity after being creatively lost for so long in a galaxy far far away. Certainly, the SCUMM re-releases, the Monkey Island Special Edition, and their latest title, Lucidity, all seem to point towards the latter. The new LucasArts CEO, Darrell Rodriguez, certainly echoes this sentiment in an interview with Develop:

“We’ve also been able to put an IP pipeline in the works with a team dedicated to creating new IP and new ways to reinvigorate some of our favorite heritage products such as the recently announced Monkey Island franchise.”

Jordan Mechner by Stuart Pettican

I’ll be the first to admit I had very little interest in Jordan Mechner‘s latest activities just a few months down the line. We may have had the latest Prince of Persia coming out from Ubisoft, but then again, Mechner had very little to nothing to do with that particular project. All this changed the moment Mr. Mechner started re-posting his old personal journal entries from the late 80s!

In his journal, we discover a moody young man in his early 20s, candidly writing of his wish to become a Hollywood scriptwriter(!) and the hardships of trying to stay motivated and working on a computer game seemingly destined for failure. That is, a game that later received an endless amount of ports, sequels and turned out to be one of the most iconic platformers of all time…

The constant air of disappointment, dissatisfaction and disillusion make the journal entries quite interesting to read. At the beginning of the entries, Mechner is just coming off a successful game in the form of Karateka, and is about to sequence into what became the first Prince of Persia. The posts begin from July 4, 1985; at the time of writing, we are up to August 8, 1990. Mechner does state that he planned to stop posting when Prince of Persia got ready in October 1989, but he soon realizes – the scriptwriter that he is – that at that point, the story has only reached its climax, but the payoff in the form of resolution is still nowhere in sight.

To highlight some interesting entries, one entry consists of one of Mechner’s workmates exuding fears over how the “Apple IIe market has started its long downward spiral”. Another has a good friend of Mechner’s telling he’s “…too dumb to appreciate what you’ve got and too lazy to finish what you’ve started”. A staff member offended by breasts on the game’s cover art. An earthquake. Too many great anecdotes to list!

The historical value of these posts is tremendous, and allows us considerable insight into the development of POP: Heck, even the game’s original source documentation is available! Nevertheless, the most interesting element of these posts is their confessional style: Without doing anything in particular, he paints to us a vivid picture of a young man, free of constraint and financial burden but badly self-positioned in-between two realms – scriptwriting and game design – often indecisive and highly uncertain of what the future may bring.

What I’m saying is, the guy was blogging before blogging was.

But by the time I got to Larry 7, I actually did know “how to do this!” But, damn the luck, that was the last one!

In my earlier, wistful post about ex-Sierra developers, we ended up somewhat brushing over Al Lowe‘s most recent exploits. Suitably then, Noise to Signal talked to the very esteemed game designer in an excellent, good-humoured interview last November. Last November?! Yeah – I had all but forgotten about it until I recently bumped into Narrative Flood’s recent discussion of the Leisure Suit Larry series. Though the interview is ostensibly on the longer side, it still remains a breeze to read through – and more than worth your time if you’re intrigued by Lowe’s trademark topics!

Leisure Suit Larry 2

After all, Lowe has a fantastic reputation as a soft-spoken funnyman – with a dazzling résumé to boot. Nevertheless, having been unable to auctioneer his latest game, Sam Suede, off to publishers, the Leisure Suit auteur is now fully retired from the gaming industry. The interview thus courteously chooses to focus on themes from Lowe’s past, and that’s more than fine with us here at The Slowdown: We don’t have the “Time Machine” category for nothing!

After the jump, I’ve embellished paraphrase from the review with some commentary and tidbits of my own.

Lowe has, ever since building himself a wonderful career at Sierra On-Line (whence he was forcibly, discourteously removed), been delightfully open about whatever he happens to find wrong with the gaming industry. This makes Lowe a fun-tastic interviewee, as readers can always rely on Lowe to relay amusing anecdotes and nostalgia. This applies to this particular interview too, for much of its length is indeed spent lamenting the great decline of the adventure game.

Fortunately, Lowe has a clear-cut vision as to how things went down. For one, Lowe believes that both player expectations and qualifications have changed vastly since the 90s: “…people were used to solving puzzles. You had to be a puzzle solver just in order to get that damn DOS to work!”

Leisure Suit Larry 3

He also pinpoints a more paradigmatic shift in the marketing and sales sectors: Bigger budgets, fewer hits and a focus on triple-A. Repeat after me. Lowe, however, prided himself in stringently keeping to his allotted budgets, and always sought to “…do something that won’t cost a lot of money but will sell enough that Sierra will make some money on it and I’ll make a little money on it, and then we can all do it all over again. But at the end of the adventure game business, that was lost, that philosophy went away.”

Lowe also emphasises the importance of the role Ken Williams, then-CEO of Sierra played in the business: “In the old days, Ken Williams was a committee of one. He’d strive to find a niche that wasn’t filled.” Roberta Williams actually echoes a very similar philosophy, in speaking of The Colonel’s Bequest:

I always like to look and see what people aren’t doing, what needs to be done to be different, unique, plus areas that people obviously have an interest in.

Winnie the Pooh

Lowe also touches on difficulty level, a Sierra touchstone back when LucasArts games seldom allowed players to die, and states that “Of all the Sierra games, and of most adventure games, my games were always the easiest.” Indeed, and it’s very easy to forget that the father of Larry also has an impressive pedigree of children’s games too: Winnie the Pooh, Mickey’s Space Adventure and Donald Duck’s Playground are all available free of charge on Lowe’s site.

He also touches on the way he designed games:

“…made lots and lots of lists; lists of embarrassing situations that I could put him in, lists of jokes that I thought would be funny, and lists of things I could do that we hadn’t done before. And as they occurred to me, I’d build lists of special animations, sound effects, dialogue and jokes.”

These “lists” are intriguingly available in the game design section of his personal website. It contains documentation to Leisure Suit Larry 5, 6 and 7, Freddy Pharkas and Torin’s Passage, among others. These are important, intriguing points of comparison seldom available to other developers. I highly recommend to take a look if you’re even the littlest bit interested in game design; the documents contain some surprises indeed.

Leisure Suit Larry 5

Finally, Lowe also discusses the oh-so-skewered public perception and marketing of the Larry series – a phenomenon, perhaps, that these latter-day “Larry” games, Magna Cum Laude and Box Office Bust, have now turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy: “…the packaging at least always promised much more sex than was actually in the games.”

I’ve explicitly paraphrased much of the interview now, but I hope you’ll still take a look at the interview in its entirety at Noise to Signal!

Quest for Glory 3

Let’s look at the current state of the Sierra alumni: Al Lowe is forcibly retired, the Two Guys from Andromeda bitter and battered, the Williamses have not created a game in 10 years and the Coles have zero interest in the genre. Jim Walls worked on a game as recently as 2002, so this only leaves us with Jane Jensen, who is actually and really working on a game.

When an adventure game designer manage to bring up both Lord of the Rings and WoW over the span of a three-question interview, it’s obvious that the Coles – much like the Williamses – have intentionally and very purposely lost their touch with the adventure genre as well as game development overall. While this is a hard fact for an adventure fan to swallow, then again, it’s also utterly impossible to fault developers for doing what they want with their lives; we must remember that one person’s exciting childhood was effectively another’s daily chore.

To get back to the Destructoid interview, when the Coles are asked about playing adventure games, the answer is:

Actually, we don’t play them. The only game we both play regularly is World of Warcraft.  The last adventure games we played were LucasArt’s Monkey Island and Indiana Jones series.

Roberta Williams, in a 2006 interview with Adventure Classic Gaming, has a similar stance:

I have not played any adventure games since then and really have no idea what today’s adventure games are like.

Scott Murphy (the other guy from Andromeda), then, in response to being asked about developing adventure games:

I’ve never given it a thought since I know that world has come and gone. Adventure games have cult status. Companies don’t have interest in the kind of money cult work might bring.

All the aforementioned developers seem to believe times have changed for good, with the last train finally departed. No going back, is there? :D To me, the last few years have felt like quite a bit of an adventure gaming renaissance, especially with great indie titiles coming out. What do you think?

The Doom II -based total conversion can be downloaded here and was intriguingly developed by the core members of ACE Team, now better known as the developers of Zeno Clash. If you do decide to take us up on this tip, there are several revised Doom engines you can use to play; Richard recommended to us either Edge or ZDoom. The original Doom II wad files are not required. Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two engines:

If you’re as big a Batman fan as we are, then you probably won’t mind if we sum up this post with the latest Baz Luhrmann –inspired Arkham Asylum fight trailer after the jump.

The full press release can be read here. For adventure gaming enthusiasts, the most intriguing bit with this new edition is all-new character portraiture by Dave Gibbons – best known for collaborating with Alan Moore on the seminal graphic novel, Watchmen – who is to us better known for collaborating with Revolution Software on Beneath a Steel Sky.

Now, the question is, should we perchance read into this renewed Cecil/Gibbons collaboration as a veiled confirmation of BASS2 (long hinted at by Cecil, and the company even registered a domain for the project back in 2004), especially since GOG.com curiously just released free, repackaged versions of both BASS and Lure of the Temptress?

Though the company released both games as freeware years ago, GOG.com have repackaged the games with wallpapers, a proper manual and even the comic book that originally came with Beneath a Steel Sky. It never hurts to shed more light on “good old games”, and not everyone is familiar with ScummVM either.

Mother 3 is without a doubt the most talked one of the releases and rightly so; it was a mystery to me why Nintendo decided not to release this game outside of Japan. But here it is after two years of fans’ hard work!

While Persona 2: Innocent Sin‘s twin game Eternal Punishment did get (horribly mis-) localized , the first part of the duology never left the shelves of Japan. But now it is here for all the Atlus fans to enjoy. How could a game with the resurrection of Hitler go wrong? At least when the content is viewed as too controversial.

Asmik’s Lennus II never got localized outside of Japan although its prequel Paladin’s Quest did get picked up by Enix. The game looks stunning and suitable for anyone looking for a 16-bit RPG-fix. A surprising fact is that the game got originally released a full month after the release of the Nintendo 64!

Now here’s a little less known game. Exile II for the MSX, while already available for the Mega Drive and the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² and translated by none other than Working Designs, has not suffered from the cencorship the other versions have gone trough, including drug references and religious themes. As such it should be in it’s true form. The RPG is set during the Christian crusades, and features an Islamic assassin attempting to unite the world and bring world peace.

Last but not the least is a project still underway, Namco’s Tales of Innocence for the DS. While the other games in the series have been quite succesfull outside of Japan Namco for whatever reason decided not to localize this one.