» 2004 » February
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Return of the King wins Best Movie, ten others
In case you missed it, there are now eleven more reasons for New Line to make The Hobbit. Only Titanic and Ben Hur won as many Oscars in a single year as The Return of the King just did. Now if only Decipher would keep publishing the dozen or so LOTR RPG products that are already written, despite getting rid of the remaining RPG department staff, roleplayers could give Decipher some money.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
D&D Minis go Huge in June
The price increase on Expansion Packs of D&D Miniatures didn’t come to pass, thankfully. At least, not yet. The Archfiends set releasing next month will still carry the MSRP of $9.99 per box, but the price will go up with the Giants of Legends set in June. Perhaps in an effort to justify the cost increase, the June expansion will not only offer regular Expansion Packs (at the new price of $12.99), but “Huge Packs” as well for $19.99. Huge Packs will have 8 randomized minis, plus one huge one. How huge is huge? Try up to 8 inches tall (watch your back, Galactus). Expect dragons and giants to be the big figures of the set. The whole Giants of Legends set will have 72 figures, 12 of which are big boys. But will the Huge Packs still say D&D Miniatures on the box, or would D&D Action Figures be more appropriate? [UPDATE: There’s been confusion over the number of figures in the Huge Packs. It seems the actual total is 8 regular figures and one huge one.]
MLB SportsClix hits stores
The much-hyped MLB SportsClix becomes available today, and begins its true test to see how well it can sell. While the baseball miniatures’ stats are based directly on the previous MLB season’s official stats for each player, I haven’t found many HeroClix or Mage Knight fans that are anxious to play the new game. In fact, I overheard a WizKids Envoy (their “official” demo guys) who had seen MLB SportsClix already saying how little he liked it. But that seems to fit with WizKids’ strategy of not cannibalizing the fanbase of their other titles to make new titles successful. The idea is to get new fans, not just make the old fans happy. To each customer his own, and if WizKids can find hordes of new customers amongst the vast legions of sports fans, more power to ‘em.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Ogres in Love contest winner
It took a while of debating, but we’ve finally selected the winner of our Ogres in Love contest, David Vega. We’ve selected several other entries that were in the running for the best submission, and posted them along with David’s prize-winning poem of an Ogre’s Valentine’s Day (a disturbing prospect at best). David’s well-earned copy of The Slayer’s Guide to Ogres will be on its way shortly. Have a look at the best entries we ended up with.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Rio Grande Offers More Trading and Building
A new Rio Grande Games newsletter is upon us, and the theme seems to be lots of trading and building. Games described in detail include Power Grid (a redesigned reprint of Funkenschlag), 5th Avenue (a skyscraper-building game), Goa (involving spice trading), Saint Petersburg (in which players develop the title city) and Marco Polo (a race to the East). Other news includes the fact that, alas, the Bohnanza expansion has been delayed. Still, it seems there will be plenty to tide us all over in the meantime!
Invisible City releas…AAAAAH! PROBES!
It’s once again free game time at Invisible City Productions, and this month’s offering is something a little different. In Alien Abduction, one player is the abductee while the rest are aliens. Each alien chooses a different phobia with which to afflict the abductee as a result of his or her terrible experience in space. As the abductee role-plays through a normal day, the aliens interrupt his or her actions whenever a phobia might be triggered and the abductee tries to identify the terrors before it’s too late. This one should be great at parties!
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Microsoft licenses Catan for MSN Zone, Messenger
Today’s other big news is that Microsoft has picked up the license to every Catan game there is, I think (naturally including The Settlers of Catan, far and away the most successful German game in the US), for inclusion in their online gaming stable. Because it’ll be part of the Premium service, it won’t have a spot in the Start menu under Games in the next release of Windows, which would be about like having a five-level store in Times Square, but still, this is huge. This means that the hordes and hordes of casual online gamers (you know, women in their thirties, non-gaming businesspeople… the ones the industry ignores while they try and figure out how to clone EQ again) will get sucked into the magic… unless of course they look at it, scratch their heads, wonder to themselves why anyone would play a complex game they don’t already know, and wander back over to Bejeweled. Whichever way it goes, we’ll find out this summer. Mayfair has issued a press release, which we have included below with typos corrected, ho ho.
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Mongoose announces Paranoia XP, designers blog it live
In the wake of the industry seminars at DunDraCon (on which more later), it’s kind of nice to have some good RPG news to report. Paranoia creator Greg Costikyan is finally throwing down on a new edition, he’s got some highly talented friends doing the heavy lifting, and the treasonous rumors that Mongoose was the publisher turn out to be true. A live development log will be kept on Costik’s site, and comments will be at least sort of open. I cannot possibly impress upon you with mere words how psyched I am for this. Read on for press release hilarity - seriously, you want to read this.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Green Ronin to publish for Human Head
Green Ronin Publishing and Human Head Studios have partnered up. Starting now, all Human Head tabletop game products will be published by Green Ronin. First up will indeed be Dracula’s Revenge, designed by Matt Forbeck, Director of Human Head’s Adventure Games Division.
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Saturday, February 14, 2004
Last dance, last chance for love
You’ve only got until tonight at 12 midnight PST to enter our OgreCave Ogres in Love contest. It’s an easy one: just come up with a few sentences describing an ogre’s Valentine’s Day, and you could win a copy of this month’s new Mongoose Publishing release, The Slayer’s Guide to Ogres. So look at the rules (I think there’s only two, actually), and type up a contest entry while there’s still time. What’s that? Girlfriend? Nah, she can wait.
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