Aussie Ben

Well, downloaded the trial version of Pac-Man Championship. Then I got hooked and got the full version and before I knew it it was 11:30pm. This version of Pac-Man is a lot more hectic, which I like. Each different mode is timed (either five mins or ten) - you have a limit to get a high score. The basic rules are that you're in a widescreen maze, and you need to clear the screen of pellets. The maze is divided into left and right halves where the pellets are allocated. If you grab all the pellets for one side of the maze, a fruit will spawn in on the opposite side of the ghost lair. For example - if you finish your last pellet on the right, the cherry will appear to the left of the lair. When you grab the fruit, all the pellets are replenished on the initial side (in the example given, the right pellets). They don't always all reappear, meaning that you might need to aim for specific areas. You can now chain the power pellets, too. If you grab a pellet and gobble up all four ghosts, you can grab another pellet while the music's still playing and eat all four ghosts again, earning even more points. You can keep doing this for as long as you keep eating pellets, but the ghost score maxes out at 3200. Lives are much easier to earn than the initial game, but of course, this means that it's much easier to die, as well. If you keep grabbing those fruits and don't die, the speed increases quite a bit. Once you die, the speed goes down a level or two to allow you to get back in the groove. There's even a neat trick where you can hold the Control Stick or D-Pad in the direction you want to turn before you take the turn - doing this will shower sparks and give you a burst of speed. Quite handy to get away from those ghosts! There are some interesting new mazes - one is a large layout of pretty much nothing but horizontal lines which wrap around. Another is the regular maze in the dark, but you can see the pellets and the ghosts - it gets quite tough! And the coolest one I saw was a very basic maze with few turns. In this maze, it gradually constructs and becomes more complex the more fruit you gobble up. I never EVER thought I'd write this much about Pac-Man. I liked the original but wasn't a huge fan of it - this game, however, is a really nice package. Well done Namco.

So, at the start of this year, I decided to work on an indie game called MacGuffin's Curse. Bloody scary, I can tell you now, but it's been very exciting to work on something with full control over from the start, rather being told "No" to your ideas. The game is a top-down puzzle game (elements of Sokoban if you've ever played that, if not, think of the dungeon puzzles in the top-down Zeldas) with some adventure game stuff mixed in (so for example, inventory puzzles and branching conversations) because I've always liked those elements. The puzzles revolve around being able to switch between two different characters, a thief and a werewolf version of himself, to solve each puzzle. Each character can do some tasks but not others, so the player needs to use them both to be successful. Every Friday, we take a bit of time out to talk about some game-related thing that's happened that week. Partly for ourselves, and partly because it's awesome to tell people what you're up to and give them a little look into what's happening, I think. I always enjoy that kind of stuff, anyway. We also have a reporter character, and I have been told to include the phrase "hot scoops" in her dialogue at some point, so I guess that'll be in there somewhere.

Finally, I've conquered the werewolf fan market! ...I'm not sure if I wanted to do that.

Ah, I see. Yeah, it's been a while since I popped the disc in, but it seemed to be okay to control the Pikmin with the pointer. Taking a look at the manual now, and the controls page specifically states "You cannot use a Nintendo GameCube controller with Pikmin 2.". Which is a bit odd. =/

Thanks all for the kind words. It's been a crazy year, and it's nice to see the game is actually out and purchasable. (It's kind of weird, actually.) Rest assured that I am reading all comments and feedback, thanks for all of that. And most importantly, I hope you enjoy it!

Time to chime in with the congrats. Well done, Chris! (Actually saw the tweet earlier this morning, but it seemed too difficult to reply back then.) Hooray!

Yeah, the only real difference is that you can use the Wii pointer to aim the circle that tells your Pikmin where to go. Some SFX play from the Wii Remote speaker, too. Nothing much else, I'm afraid.

Hope you enjoy it guys - it's been exhausting. Also, I've been told that this is apparently very important to the Idle Thumbs crew: https://twitter.com/#!/AussieBen/status/192793826660851712

My Lego Rock Band tracks (which I imported into Rock Band 2 explicitly so I could play Ghostbusters) automagically turned up in Rock Band 3 when I first booted it up.

So I've been playing Pokemon Black (got my seventh badge last night, yay!), and boy does this game have a massive tonal shift, as far as Pokemon goes. The main plotline has the latest evil gang, Team Plasma, questioning people about how the Pokemon themselves feel about being captured and used - which is a pretty reasonable question, actually. And some of these Pokedex entries, man. Yamask is perhaps the most terrifying of them all: SOMETIMES THEY LOOK AT IT AND CRY. Blimey. Nothing like capturing the ghost of a human, then forcing it to fight for the rest of its afterlife against electric mice and fire dragons. And when you get bored of it, you send it to PC Box purgatory on a whim. Overall though, I'm enjoying the game a lot - it's gotten rid of a lot of the niggling problems I hated about the old Pokemon games. You can reuse TMs over and over so you don't have to agonise over which Pokemon gets that move and Doctors and Nurses are strategically placed in dungeons so you don't have to trek all the way back to a Pokemon Center if you're in trouble. A cool new feature is the possibility of an instant capture when you throw a Poke Ball - very rarely, you'll here it go "PSSSSHHHEOOOOWWW" and the Poke Ball shakes once and catches it. It's such an awesome feeling when it happens. Also the fact that the old Pokemon are completely unseen before you finish the game really helps make it feel as though it's a "new" game. It really does feel like you're playing Pokemon for the first time again, with each new Pokemon and evolution being a totally new discovery for you. Has anyone else been having a go of the new Pokemon games? Have you been enjoying them at all?

Well, I have Black, so get white! Haha. There's apparently two different areas to visit. In Black, you get a city (of the FUTURE) called, Black City. In White, you get a special forest called White Forest, which makes no sense at all. There's more version exclusive Pokemon there. And of course, in Black you get one super special Pokemon, while in White you get the other one. Aside from that, I'm pretty sure that's all the major differences.

Well, I joined Brawsome for Jolly Rover, and did some writing, scripting and a lot of proofreading/QA on it. :-) But yeah, Andrew Goulding, Brawsome's director worked on all those games. We're working together on MacGuffin's Curse, it seems to be working well, as we haven't killed each other yet!!

I think my favourite Assassin's Creed-related glitch was in the first one, when I killed someone and then just sat down on the bench, while people ran around me shouting AHHHHHHHH THERE'S THE KILLER AAAAAHHHH MURDERER Glitches can be fun - who on earth would have played Stunts if it wasn't glitchy?

Ho ho, I love how they end these games, they always make me laugh with their awesome nonsense cliffhangers. I find the games are great fun. TAKE THAT, MINSTREL The fact that with this one, you could summon an army of ninja-like Assassins to appear from nowhere and "dispatch" anyone you point at was totally awesome. It reminded me of The Magic Finger, in a way, only with less ducks and more murder.

Oh! I keep meaning to ask! I am working on an indie game, and I'd like to ask if people are interested in it, BUT - I don't want to be all like "HEY GUYS, I AM AN ADVERTISING ROBOT, BLARG READ THIS" cause that's not cool at all (and besides, would not be very pleasant). Are there rules that I should be pointed to regarding talking about my game? Is it okay to do so? Cheers guys.

Al Lowe seems pretty cool, if you flick through his Larry 5 design doc he posted on his site, even then he was pushing for the removal of frustrating deaths and stupid copy protection stuff.

Thanks! Sorry it took so long to return. If Sierra games taught me one thing, it was this - life is cruel, unforgiving and full of punishment, so save when you win, and load when you lose. It did help me through secondary school when computers would crash, because I was a compulsive saver, so thanks Sierra for grinding that into me!

Poor, poor Cedric.My favourite King's Quest was definitely 6 - the least moon-logic-y, I found. Some of the puzzles were a bit abstract of course, but they made sense in their own kind of way. Except of course the unfair puzzle where you had to remember what the genie's bottle looked like - shown once, way at the start of the game, in a cutscene - so you could replace it. I also liked that there were two possible marriage endings - one where you married, and one where you married and RESURRECTED YOUR WIFE'S FAMILY FROM THE DEAD. Mmmmm, necromancy!

Haha, awesome! I had totally forgotten about the Turtwig trade. Well, I'm hoping to grab a copy of Pokemon (it doesn't matter if you're) Black or White while I'm at GDC, so maybe we can do some more trading! Which one should I get? And thanks for the nice welcome guys, it's good to be back. It really is a nice community!

Hello! The Thumbs forums still remember me! I am amazed. I haven't been here since 2008, embarrassingly. So I thought that rather than jumping in and saying "HELLO ALL" and looking quite awkward, I should reintroduce myself and hope that some people remember me (even though it was so long ago). My name's Ben, and I am from Australia (both as indicated by the name). My avatar used to be a Viva Pinata horse with a sombrero and a moustache. I've been working in the Australian game industry on exciting licensed stuff, like Jimmy Neutron's Generic Platformer and Polar Express - The Pretty But Bland GBA version. But of course I did some stuff I'm quite happy with (I worked on the GBA version of Top Gear Rally, which got published by Nintendo!) - but this was all ages ago. Then I got bored with making licensed game #485 for companies that didn't really care about making fun games, and decided to throw all caution to the wind and work independently. Much more recently, I worked on the adventure game, Jolly Rover, with Brawsome. Right now I'm continuing to enjoy the glamorous poverty of an indie and am working with Brawsome on a new game called MacGuffin's Curse - so take a squint if you're interested. (And if you're not, hey, that's cool too.) We're also gonna be running around like crazy during GDC, so maybe we could say hi and stuff! When I do actually get some free time (which doesn't seem to be often now) I try to play games, because I am such a game-obsessed dork. Slowly but surely making my way through Stacking at the moment. And that's about it!

Lessee... Totally agree about Pepper's, that game was excellent. Taught me quite a bit about American History and Ben Franklin too, considering I knew nothing about it prior because of the whole...you know, living in Australia thing. I loved that there was a "Truth" icon that allowed you to check the historical accuracy of every item in the game - very cool, going to that amount of detail. Lost Secret of the Rainforest (aka EcoQuest 2) was also a very good game. I liked both of these educational games along with the original Carmen Sandiego because although the player was learning something, it was in an entertaining fashion. It wasn't "Hey, 2 plus 2 equals....SHOOT THE ANSWER!". From Apogee, I remember Arctic Adventure being great fun. Of course, I only had episode one and could thus only play through that, but I remember it being a lot of fun. Jetpack is a great little single screen platformer where the goal is to grab all the gems, then head to the exit. 100 different levels of play - sounds pretty basic, but it's very good for a freeware game and even allows you to construct your own levels. Digger is seriously one of my favourite games of all time. Very basic, but a lot of fun - grab all the gems within the level before you can move onto the next one. It's been described as a rip off of Mr. Do!, but having never playing it and not really being interested in playing a game where the main character is a clown, I don't particularly care.

You used a Smord (read: Smooshed Word)! Yes, I know the real word is portmanteau, but we've been using Smord (pronounced 'smurd') at work since we started smooshing words together after being influenced by the episode "Water" of Look Around You months ago. It's kind of stuck. Thanks ants. Thants. Great article, by the way. I loved those mental youtube shortcut videos! Edit: Oh bugger, I just noticed I was supposed to comment in some other thread. Well damn.

I really hope that the Wii port of Okami at least lets you speed up the text during those huge story cutscenes. Having to watch that text be typed out agonizingly slowly, one character at a time, was utterly PAINFUL. And every time a big story scene kicked in, too.

Yeah, warning bells for Guitar Hero III really started going off when I saw this: Interesting choice of words and emphasis, I thought. It really seems to have taken the whole "okay, let's have fun and see who's the best" vibe that the previous games gave, and instead replaced it with "HA HA YOU JERK, YOU SUCK, WOW I MADE YOU FAIL, YOUR STRING BROKE GEEZ YOU CAN'T PLAY FOR SHIT". Which, to me, kind of seems to miss the point a bit. Moos' description of the Battle Mode pretty much confirms what I thought it would be. Not fun. Ah well, there's still Rock Band (eventually) which seems to again focus on working together and having fun rocking out, rather than trying to be your average Xbox Live Headset Troll to your opponent.

I was going to ask "How is it?", but I guess that everyone answered my question, multiple times. Can't wait for it to reach Australia, perhaps in 21XX.