It looks like Scribblenauts’ sales have been a resounding success because Warner Bros. just announced that it plans to release a sequel to the dictionary-based DS title from last year.
The game, tentatively titled Scribblenauts 2, will release in fall 2010 and will include an adjectives system that “allows players to push the limits of their imagination to create their own experience.”
From the press release:
“In this new game created and developed by 5TH Cell, players use the stylus and touch screen to help Maxwell, the game’s hero, acquire the ‘Starite,’ the prize earned from solving the puzzle in even more robust challenges and redesigned levels. Players now have the ability to write any object that comes to mind and modify it in any way they desire using adjectives to reach the goal in each level. Adjectives can change the colour, size, elements, behaviours and many other aspects of the object they are describing. Multiple adjectives can be combined together to produce incredibly creative objects, allowing the player’s imagination to run wild for a truly unique and individualistic experience.”
A sequel to such a creative title sounds wonderful, but let’s hope 5th Cell submarines the bug from the first game which allowed you to beat the title with just two words.
A small group of loyal King’s Quest fans have been toiling away on a fan-made sequel to the classic adventure series for eight years. Eight years! At one point, Vivendi, the IP rights holder, got all uppity and made an attempt to shut the project down, but an agreement was reached that allowed the team to continue working on the project. Known as “The Silver Lining”, the team hoped to release the game, for free of course, at some point in 2010.
Unfortunately, Activision recently came into possession of the King’s Quest IP and are now acting like big, throbbing dicks. That’s a technical term, look it up. Activision has demanded that all materials relating to King’s Quest be removed from The Silver Lining Website, in effect destroying eight years of dedication and labor…and for what? They weren’t going to make any money from this project. The Silver Lining was made for fans by fans. No threat whatsoever to Activision’s license.
A sad turn of events that makes Activision the Darth Vader of the gaming industry, at least until the next corporate snafu comes along and pisses me off.
In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.
We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.
Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.
As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise.
We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say.
Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.
What the future holds for us, as individuals or a team, we cannot say. We have an amazing development team, however, filled with talented and hard-working individuals, and we hope the teamwork and rapport we’ve developed won’t go to waste. We hope that when we do know what the future holds for us, our fans will be there to enjoy what we can give them still.
Again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been a long and crazy road, full of more twists than we could’ve anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could’ve ever hoped for. And for that, to all of you and to everyone on our team, we will always be grateful.
Go ahead, take a look at the video above. The footage is from a DSiWare title called “Rittai Kakushi E Attakoreda” that adjusts your viewpoint based upon how you tilt your DSi. It is the craziest simulation of 3D technology we’ve seen without actually being 3D, and it instantly reminds us of holographic cards. Perhaps Nintendo will find other ways to utilize this new gameplay style for larger titles.
In the video above, the player is looking for the letter “A,” so apparently, the game involves players simply looking for things. Not too shabby compared to the majority of unimpressive DSiWare titles out there. The downloadable game should at least impress your friends and family.
For more information (assuming you’re fluent in Japanese), you can visit the game’s website here.
You can’t even say “Comic-Con” without preceding it with “San Diego”. The San Diego Comic-Con has been a yearly phrase ever since 1970, when it first began operations. But, with time comes change, and with success comes competition and this is what San Diego is facing now as several cities are making a big push to host future Comic-Cons.
Anaheim, Las Vegas and Los Angeles are the big three, licking their chops at the fact Comic Con’s San Diego contract expires in 2012.
Hotels near San Diego’s convention center have offered Comic-Con 300,000 square feet of free meeting space and have proposed doubling the number of dedicated convention guest rooms to 14,000 in an attempt to lock in the convention through 2015.
By then, convention center officials hope to have completed a planned expansion that would leave the event with ample space.
“San Diego and Comic-Con go hand in hand like Batman and Robin,” San Diego Convention Center Corp. spokesman Steven Johnson said. “We want to make sure that dynamic duo stays together.”
Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer acknowledged that the event has been straining against the limits of its current home and that it is considering whether the San Diego proposal would assuage those concerns.
“We love San Diego. The majority of the people who put the show on live here,” said Glanzer, who did not know when a venue would be chosen. “But we have to make a decision that’s based on what really is best for the event.”
Nintendo’s 2010 Media Summit is fully underway, and with it has come a wealth of information on upcoming games and the larger DSi model, the DSi XL. Here is a breakdown of the information from Nintendo’s press release:
- The DSi XL launches March 28 at an MSRP of $189.99. Will be available in both Burgundy and Bronze colors, and comes loaded with the following software: Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters, Brain Age Express: Math and Photo Clock, as well as two free applications: the Nintendo DSi Browser and Flipnote Studio. The system also includes the larger pen-like stylus.
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 launches May 23 for the Wii. Aside from Yoshi, the game will feature a drill that lets Mario tunnel through solid rock.
- Metroid: Other M launches June 27. Nintendo has confirmed that “While much of the game is reminiscent of 2-D side-scrollers, players can switch the perspective into 3-D at any time as they explore the twisting passages of a derelict space station and delve deep into a cinematic, never-before-told story of bounty hunter Samus Aran’s past. This new approach uses a new control scheme in which players use the Wii Remote controller held sideways to battle enemies and navigate the expansive, gorgeous environments in classic Metroid fashion, then aim at the screen with the Wii Remote pointer to blast foes in first-person and hunt the world for clues and hidden passages.”
- Nintendo will publish Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies in the Americas some time this summer.
- Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) will launch April 20. Free online has been confirmed, and Wii Speak support has been confirmed as well.
- Sin and Punishment 2, the sequel to the Japanese-only Nintendo 64 title, has been renamed Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. It will launch June 7 and feature international online leader boards.
- FlingSmash is a new Motion Plus-only title for the Wii launching this summer that “will test players’ Wii Remote skills as they bounce a ball-like hero through countless side-scrolling stages, combining the precision of racket sports with the unpredictable fun of pinball.”
- Picross 3D is launching for the DS on May 3 and will offer more puzzles to download via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection after launch.
- 100 Classic Books will launch for the DS on June 14 and will be highlighted by 100 works from authors such as William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Jane Austen, Mark Twain and more. Readers can adjust the size of text, place bookmarks and even download new content via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.
- Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands from Ubisoft will launch May 18 on both the Wii and Nintendo DS platforms. As an added bonus, the Wii version of the game will exclusively include the 1992 Super NES version of the original Prince of Persia game.
- Disney Guilty Party is the official title of the first collaboration between Disney Interactive Studios and its recently acquired studio, Wideload Games. The mystery party game is set for release in the second half of 2010, exclusively for Wii.
- Majesco’s Nintendo DSi exclusive Ghostwire: Link to the Paranormal uses incredible augmented reality technology through the Nintendo DSi Camera. Launching this October, the game lets players become a ghost hunter as they interact with the paranormal.Nintendo also announced a variety of games available to download directly to the Wii console from the Wii Shop Channel via the WiiWare service, and directly to the Nintendo DS via the DSi Shop and DSiWare services.
- Mega Man 10 launches on WiiWare March 1.
- Max & the Magic Marker launches on WiiWare March 8.
- Cave Story launches on WiiWare March 22.
- WarioWare: D.I.Y. Showcase launches on WiiWare March 29.
- Nintendo’s Art Style: light trax and Art Style: Rotozoa launch on WiiWare this Spring.
- Rage of the Gladiator will launch on WiiWare this spring and utilizes Motion Plus.
- And Yet it Moves launches this spring on WiiWare.
- Super Meat Boy launches this summer on WiiWare.
- Nintendo’s Photo Dojo launches on DSiWare this spring.
- Nintendo’s Metal Torrent launches on DSiWare this spring.
- Nintendo’s X-Scape launches on DSiWare this spring.
From time to time we come across things on the periphery of gaming, or even outside of the subject all together, that we think would still be of interest to our readers and post them here with the tag “Splash Damage”. Movies are one of the subjects that frequently finds its way on to the pages of GameAlmighty with that tag and one of last year’s movies I was most anxious to watch and then review here came and went before I had a chance to see it in theaters. The film I missed tells the timeless tale of two cultures in conflict. One is comprised of a dark-skinned race of people who are misunderstood and are being exploited by another group who considers themselves superior. In an attempt to gain total control the second group hatches a plot that takes advantage of medical science and uses the enemy’s own bodies against themselves. They also lie to one of the males and trick him into working as their inside man in order to keep the peace and prevent larger-scale violence and destruction.
While it sounds like I may be describing Avatar, that’s actually the plot of a different movie mentioned more than a time or two on our sister site, InfoAddict. The smaller independent film I am referring to is Black Dynamite and it had so limited a release for such a short span of time that I never could find it playing anywhere close at a time where I could make it.
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