-
happy
cabin & that's why they call it texas net hack
Nacho Libre :|
At least the wrestling
was better than that World Wide
Federation stuff.
Thousand-Hand
Bodhisattva Masterpiece
The
Road Ahead
"Dear Looney Labs: Our family doesn't venture out of
the house without a deck of Fluxx. We've played everywhere from
a houseboat on Lake Shasta to a chalet in Lake Tahoe to on a
Washington State Ferry. We just love your games!"
-- letter from Chris K of Mountain View, CA
Field Trip Photo
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Icebreaker 2 Release Date
Announced! |
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 Wow,
the time sure does fly. I can't believe it's been almost two
years since I
first reported that the 3DO encryption method had been broken,
and that a company called OlderGames
was interested in publishing the unreleased sequel to my videogame,
Icebreaker.
But it's all true, and amazingly enough, everything's on track
for the upcoming release of Icebreaker 2! They've even started
taking pre-orders!
Icebreaker 2 will make its official debut on July 28th at
the tenth Classic Gaming Expo,
held at the Riviera casino in Las Vegas. (Pre-orders not picked
up at the show will be mailed out immediately afterwards.)
The game itself will look & function exactly as it did
when I last worked on it, back in 1996. (Talk about time flying!!!)
Although there are many little things about it which I'd like
to adjust, no updates to the software were possible... even if
I had time to work on it, I don't have access to the antiquated
hardware environment necessary to make updates to my old software.
All I could offer to OlderGames for their new independent encryption
was the final work-in-progress disc I burned for myself before
Magnet Interactive Studios imploded. But it worked! They successfully
took my carefully-preserved disc image, and created the first
new game disc in over a decade that can be run on a standard
3DO multiplayer. And now they're going to publish it, so that
anyone with an old 3DO box can finally play it! Woo-hoo!
Although I haven't actually created anything new inside the
game since 1996, the art you see here (which will be featured
on the packaging) is totally fresh. It was newly created for
this release by none other than Dave
Bondi, the animator who originally brought those pesky little
pyramids to life.
I was particularly keen to get Bondi's involvement on this
project, since his original contributions to Icebreaker 2 are
part of what makes it so cool that it's finally getting published.
By the time I started creating Icebreaker 2, Dave had long since
been reassigned to other projects at Magnet, but even so, he
managed to sneak in the time needed to create new animations
for me as I added new types of pyramids into the mix for the
sequel. My favorite of these never-before-seen animations is
the meltdown of the metal pyramid (which heats up as you shoot
it but can cool down again if you don't finish it off fast enough)
into a pool of lava. (Thanks again for all the extra work, Dave!
You rock!)
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 The metal pyramid
is just one of the many cool features you'll find in Icebreaker
2. For details on the others, check out the
memo I wrote about it in 1996, or watch the YouTube
video I made about it this week. Also be sure to check out
my newly updated Icebreaker
home pages, which include a
list of all the levels in the new game and the names of the
people who designed them!
Most of all, if you want to be able to play my totally new
ancient videogame, and you don't already own a 3DO, it's time
to start looking for one on eBay, because Icebreaker 2 comes
out on July 28th!!!
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 Thanks
for reading, and have a great week! |
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"Icebreaker
2 was created but never released and can only be played at
the creator's house in a custom built arcade style machine."
-- text on the
wikipedia page about Icebreaker, which will need to be updated
soon (it'd be nice if they added my name while they were at it,
instead of just calling me "the creator") |
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A "sleep helmet" has been invented, which somehow
puts you to sleep instantly, and so fully that you get all the
benefits of full-night's sleep in just 3 hours. Finally! That's
the kind of Life-in-the-Future invention I've been waiting for
almost as long as my personal Jet-Pack! As someone who already
experiments quite a bit with how
I sleep, I can't wait to try Giulio
Tononi's Sleep Helmet! |
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"Of course, when the Founders wrote the constitution,
they provided for a war czar, whom the called 'the president'
and designated as the commander-in-chief. Apparently, by trying
to create a new czar, the White House is finally admitting that
George W just isn't up to the job of coordinating his own appointees,
including the secretaries of defense, state, and so on. However,
the performance of our self-proclaimed 'war president' has been
so disastrous that the Bushites are having a hard time finding
anyone willing to take the czar job. Three retired four-star
generals have already turned down the offer. As one of them,
retired Marine General Jack Sheehan, said 'The very fundamental
issue is, they don't know where they hell they're going.'" -- Jim Hightower, from the "Wanted: War Czar"
sidebar to the cover story of the May 2007 issue of the Hightower
Lowdown: "Yet
The War Goes On" |
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