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]]> 14 May 2008 04:27:40 Directly following from the events of the first game, the newly-proclaimed Hero of Spielburg travels by flying carpet with his friends Abdulla Doo, Shameen and Shema to the desert city of Shapeir. The city is threatened by magical elementals, while the Emir Arus al-Din of Shapier's sister city Raseir is missing and his city fallen under tyranny.

After defeating the four elementals that threaten Shapeir, the Hero travels to the city of Raseir. There, he is imprisoned by Khaveen and under hypnosis helps the evil tyrannous wizard Ad Avis to resurrect the evil genie Iblis. In the final fight, the Hero attacks the palace and battles with Ad Avis, who falls to his presumed death begging for assistance from his Dark Master. As thanks for the Hero's success in liberating Raseir and restoring its lost splendor, the Sultan of Shapeir, Harun al-Rashid, rewards the Hero by adopting him as his son.
- from Wikipedia

]]> 22 Apr 2007 07:55:46 Made during the height of the "interactive movie" boom in the computer game industry, Phantasmagoria is notable for being one of the first adventure games to use a human being as an on-screen avatar. Actress Victoria Morsell spent months in front of a bluescreen filming the hundreds of actions players could direct her character to perform. The game was released on seven CDs to accommodate the massive amount of video generated by this process. Today it still stands as a record of sorts for the largest number of media cuts used in a game, though several other games including an adventure game based on The X-Files television series have matched it in the sheer number of CDs used. However, if it were to use modern day video compression codecs while keeping the same resolution, the game could probably have shipped on as little as one or two discs. On the other hand, however, the seven discs were used to highlight the seven days, during which the story takes place - the game could easily fit about five discs, even without the advanced video compression. Also, it is worth mentioning that large portions of data were repeated on each CD, to avoid disk swapping when playing the game.

The game script was about 400 pages long, four times the size of a regular movie script, and an additional 100 pages of storyboards set the style for the over 800 scenes in the game. The game required four months of filming alone and over 200 persons were involved in the production, not counting the Gregorian choir of 135 persons that was used for parts of the music in the game.

Source: Wikipedia Article

]]> 14 Apr 2007 12:45:09 When a giant asteroid headed directly for Earth is discovered, a group of five scientists are sent to take a space shuttle to the asteroid and plant explosives on it knock it out of its course, and prevent it frome ver reaching Earth.

The team is made up by Boston Low, a retired astronaut, Dr. Ludger Drunk, an archaeologist and geologist, Maggie Robbins, a reporter and linguistics expert, Ken Border, the shuttle pilot, and Cora Miles, NASA technician and political candidate.

But the mission turns out to be far from what they expected.

]]> 09 Feb 2007 09:21:31 It's Kayla's birthday tomorrow, and her stuffed animal Fatty Bear wants to throw a surprise party for her. Guide Fatty Bear around the house to help him get everything ready. He has to find ingredients for a cake to make it, get presents, and set up party decorations. In addition to the adventure and puzzles, there are games to be played as well. These games include bowling, piano playing, and dress up with Fatty Bear.

]]> 08 Feb 2007 05:13:00 Another World, known as Out of this World in the US and Outer World in Japan, is a 1991 cinematic platformer designed and developed by Eric Chahi. The graphics and box art were designed by Chahi, while the music was composed by Jean-François Freitas.

While not a great commercial success, Another World was innovative in its use of cinematic effects in the graphics, sound and cut scenes, with characters communicating through their facial features, gestures, and actions only. This cinematic style granted Another World cult status amongst critics and fans.

The protagonist of the game is Lester Knight Chaykin; a young, athletic, red haired physicist. Lester arrives at his high-tech underground laboratory during a thunderstorm, and continues to work on his experiment using a particle accelerator. Right before the particles reach their intended destination, lightning strikes the lab and interferes with the accelerator causing the unforeseen teleportation of Lester to a barren alien planet.

The player can control Lester using the keyboard or gamepad using four directions buttons and two action buttons: one for main actions, and one for jumping. Depending on the player's current position, movement, and status, the main action key performs a variety of actions including attacking and interacting with Lester's environment. At the start of the game Lester can only kick to attack, but later he can acquire a gun. While the movement keys normally make Lester run, the game also features sections where the player must swim, roll, or drive a vehicle. The player only has one life, but there are multiple checkpoints he can return to by entering the relevant pass code given at each one.

]]> 10 Dec 2006 09:53:52 One day, Purple Tentacle and Green Tentacle are out for a walk when Purple Tentacle decides to drink toxic waste. The waste causes him to grow arms, become evil, and eventually take over the world. It is up to Bernard, Hoagie, and Laverne to travel back in time and turn off the Sludge'o'Matic before Purple Tentacle can drink the ooze and become evil. Because Dr. Fred used an imitation diamond in his time machine, it breaks and sends Hoagie 200 years in the past and Laverne 200 years in the future. You must get everyone back to the present and save the world!

]]> 26 Nov 2006 01:03:10