Udvarnoky

In fact, Microsoft even insinuated that it would help Double Fine find a new publisher: Clearly, Double Fine and Activision are on worse terms that that. Your points make a lot of sense though - it doesn't seem like Activision could have put much or any money into Brutal Legend. It certainly couldn't have been to the tune of $15 million...could it? If Double Fine was missing deadlines, it would have been deadlines set by Vivendi, I'm pretty sure. It sounds like everything kind of halted for Brutal Legend once the acquisition happened, and the game was dropped not long after the merger took place. How many milestones could the team have really missed in that timeframe? But here's the really interesting part. Check out this fascinating quote from September 2008, when Double Fine started looking for a new publisher (remember, this is before EA was ever involved): Tim is probably someone who considers retaining his IP to be an extremely important part of any publishing agreement he strikes - Psychonauts was always Double Fine's property, and obviously the EA Partners relationship has Double Fine retaining its IP for this game as well. Maybe Tim found an extremely sneaky (but still legal) way for Double Fine to retain the rights to Brutal Legend within the fine print? Maybe Activision signed a Willy Wonka contract and are pissed off about it? Or maybe not. The point is, either Double Fine or Activision is 100% wrong about who actually owns the rights. One company's lawyers were outsmarted. I really hope this turns out to be stupidity/greed on Activision's part rather than indiscretion on Double Fine's. With any luck, this will do nothing more than give tons of publicity to a game that EA has already succeeded in making a big deal. If Double Fine was in the wrong, well, a mere settlement is something I'd pray for, though in any event that scenario wouldn't exactly bode well for the developer's future. One thing's for sure, a fight between EA and Activision's lawyers will be an interesting battle indeed.

Obviously very exciting news. I'd like to see this expand to PC and Wii releases, but it's nice to see LEC even acknowledging the existence of their classic adventure titles after literally five years. Between this and the Fate of Atlantis unlockable in the new Indiana Jones game, maybe LEC will treat their back catalog with a modicum of the respect that it deserves.

I play my DS all the time (still my favorite system of the current generation, and certainly the one with the best library) but I have no interest in upgrading. I like my GBA backwards compatibility.

This is a fake trailer for a fictional movie that's been making rounds on the 'net, but it was apparently done with a decent budget and they got Christopher Lloyd to participate.

Agreed. A Boy and His Blob is one of those games that you pretend to love because of its originality, but it's effing impossible. I've always loved the concept and WISHED I could get further than ten minutes in, though.

Is there any reason to believe that Activision is actually onto something (legally) with this rights business and that Double Fine did not properly sever ties with the company before signing on with EA? My gut tells me that this is nothing to worry about, that Double Fine and EA's lawyers would have been too smart for that and that Activision is just trying to see if there's an opportunity for some cash, but if the tumultuous history of this game and its studio has taught me anything it's that you can't be too cynical. In the past year there have been these vague rumors about a "loophole" in Double Fine's contract with Vivendi that enabled the former to retain the rights to the IP (something I know was always important to Tim), but I mean, those were just weird rumors. I'd really hate to think that Activision, despite having no interest in the game itself, would somehow succeed in making Brutal Legend not worth it financially for EA to publish. It seems like everytime you think you can finally relax about the security of Brutal Legend, something like this happens.

I was under the impression that World of Goo did well?

What's amazing to me looking back at that trailer is how different the game must have been in 2002, yet at the same time how much of it was in place a full three years before its release. Some voicework for so many characters had already been done?

No, but he is a hood ornament on Corley's hover-limo. If I remember right some cars that can hover a few feet off the ground are depicted. I think the game is meant to takes place in The Future in the sense of "a few years down the road" rather than "after the apocalypse." Granted, the inclusion of Chitlins Whiskey and Skirt is confusing but evidently that was not meant to be story-related.

You two are obviously both heretics for insinuating that Tim doesn't have an elaborate, airtight backstory that explains these seeming discrepancies. Additionally, Riggs and Throttle are the same last name.

All I need is verification that Raz's dad was their band manager before going acrobatic, and I'll be satisfied.

Random fact: In Day of the Tentacle if you have Hoagie look at the horse dentures, he mentions a fellow roadie named Eddie who "eats raw sewage on stage."

Hopefully someone will upload a video with the complete introduction, including when Black refers to Schafer as "the man of...no...the angel of...no..the archangel of...no...THE ARK OF THE COVENANT of video game wizardy!"

The show went down as any MTV production could be expected to go, but the portions relevant to Brutal Legend were obviously satisfactory. Can't wait to download giant versions of the trailer whenever EA decides to post it.

Given everything that's happened to them over the course of their near ten-year existence, I don't know whether Double Fine is ridiculously cursed or ridiculously lucky.

I can't be the only who heard about this? A new Mega Man game for WiiWare, made intentionally with 8-bit limitations? They're essentially making a new NES game. This is amazing. :tup: :tup:

Remaining foolishly hopeful here.

I don't recall Loom being mocked in other LucasArts games, at least not in some derisive way. There was that crack in CMI about no one knowing the game exists, but that's not a jab at the game's quality.

Won't have a chance to get it until tomorrow, but this has always been my most anticipated Wii game and I'm pretty stoked.

Great trailer. The awesomeness of the band contributions is incontrovertible, but I hope there's still room for a Peter McConnell score a la Full Throttle.

Man, the GC version of Majora's Mask pissed me off so much. It would freeze a lot on me, and the way this game works, that's pretty devastating. Anyway, keep battling through it. The game does get better.

The idea that Tim is vehemently opposed to sequels as a principle is something that somebody made up and then spread all over the Internet specifically to fool you. If you read any interview where Tim is asked about sequels, his answer is more along the lines of, "I preferred to make something new at the time" than "I hope sequels get cancer."

Hey, I feel really bad about what happened. I reported it as a rumor, didn't I? And the site claimed to have gotten its info freely from a Vivendi representative which didn't exactly smack of SCANDALOUS LEAK to me. If fan sites only posted press releases they'd be official sites. I found an interesting Double Fine item (the last one being, what, a year ago?) and linked to it on Mojo. If I'd known Double Fine would have a problem with it I wouldn't have put it up in the first place, obviously. I don't think it was online for an hour before it got taken down. Of course, that's all it took for everyone and their mother to see it on google cache when every game site on the planet got wind of it, but what can I do? I fucked up.

While Telltale is probably very interested in the Virtual Console, it's my impression that a hypothetical Sam & Max Wii port would be released on a disc and not downloadable off the service. Just my guess given the space limitations.