20th Century Fox and Sega Get Alien: Isolation Ready for Launch

A few weeks ago, I did an update post about the Alien franchise that listed new projects that are currently in development: comic books, a trilogy of novels, and a video game. The video game in question, Alien: Isolation, got a significant push forward this week in terms of media publicity, with a few articles, interviews, video clips, and an official Web site and Facebook page. According to the new information, Isolation should be ready for release by the end of this year. Read on for additional details about Isolation and what it could mean to the future of the franchise's video game titles.

I've never developed a video game before so I have no idea how long it takes to produce a game of decent quality. I've heard that some games flopped because they were rushed into production and then released with serious technical problems; on the flip side, some games have started development but then were put into limbo for years due to complicating issues (e.g., game developer bankruptcy). The development of Isolation's predecessor, Aliens: Colonial Marines, officially began in 2008 and it wasn't released until February 2013 (almost a year ago), yet all that time in development still didn't prevent the myriad of problems that caused it to bomb. I suspect that 20th Century Fox and Sega have set the release date of Isolation at the end of this year as a form of damage control to compensate for Colonial Marines, to prove to both critics and fans alike that Alien is still a viable franchise with a profitable future in video gaming.

Isolation is set 15 years after Alien and it will focus on Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley. According to the latest news, the story of Isolation involves Weyland-Yutani approaching Amanda to help find her mother by retrieving the Nostromo's flight recorder that was somehow retrieved by the crew of the space station Sevastopol. However, when Amanda arrives at the station, its crew are fighting among themselves and an 8-foot tall Alien is stalking the station's halls, vents and crawlspaces to find fresh human prey.

From what I've seen of the game footage, the game's developers at Creative Assembly have gone out of their way to recreate the look and feel of Ridley Scott's 1978 movie. The space station's exterior looks similar to the ore refinery that the Nostromo was transporting, and the technology and build of the station's interior match the gritty, "low-fi" feel of the first film's sets. Players won't have pulse rifles, smart guns or other military-grade weapons to use, but they will have a motion detector that looks like something in between the bulky motion detector that Dallas used in Alien to the smaller, sleeker version in Aliens. Like the original film, the title creature is sleek, stealthy and extremely intimidating; according to the developers, much AI programming is being done for the creature's behavior in order to keep players on their toes.

Even though using Ripley's daughter as the main character may cause some fans to complain about the game's desperation to find a link between the game and the movie series, casting Amanda as the game's lead makes plenty of sense. Not only would she have a motive to search for her missing mother, but her extremely brief appearance in Aliens means that no major retcon of the events in the movies has to happen in order to fit Isolation into franchise continuity (as opposed to Colonel Hicks in Colonial Marines). So far, nothing has been said if Isolation will have any narrative connections to Prometheus or the upcoming Alien novels and comic books.

One thing I've noticed about the coverage of Isolation is the frequent accusation of how the Alien as a monster used to be scary but is not anymore. To paraphrase Nora Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, the Alien has always been scary--it’s the video games that featured the Alien that got timid. Looking back, most '90s era Aliens and Aliens vs. Predator games were designed to capitalize on the then-popular first-person shooter games such as Operation Wolf, Doom and Quake, and that association between shooters and the Alien franchise stuck for years afterwards. Video game developers inevitably became lazy with the Alien license, since it was easier and cheaper to make run-and-gun games with multiple, easy-to-kill targets than to create an engrossing and terrifying survival horror game. Given the ample amount of weapons that players could choose from in Colonial Marines, those programmers were obviously thinking more along the lines of games such as Call of Duty than games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and such thinking isn't going to create a worthwhile horror game.

I have high expectations for Alien: Isolation and that at the very least it will encourage future game developers to approach the Alien franchise from a survival horror perspective. I'm just hoping that the new release date won't compromise the quality of the finished product.

Great Moments in Toy Robot History: Shogun Warriors

The origins of popular and recurring trends in pop culture can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint, especially trends that have gone on for so long that they become an accepted fixture of everyday life. For this post, I'm talking about Japanese robot toys that are imported and sold in the U.S. I'm sure robot fans who are around my age will remember how Japanese robot toys dominated the shelves of toy stores during the 80s, but the trend of U.S. toy companies securing the rights to sell Japanese robot toys in North America actually began in the 70s with Mattel's Shogun Warriors. While the Shogun Warriors line didn't last long, its influence would impact the toy industry for decades to come. Read on for my retrospective of this trend-setting toy line.

The idea of importing toys from one country and then selling them in another is not a new idea unto itself. However, what made the Shogun Warriors different was that included merchandise from many different points of origin but was sold under a single brand name. Mattel marketed the robot toys as if they all inhabited the same shared universe but they actually originated from over a dozen different Japanese "Super Robot" anime series, series such as Brave Raideen, Gaiking and Voltes V.

To encourage the perception of a unified product line, Mattel gave the licensing rights to Marvel Comics to create a Shogun Warriors comic book series, where the robots coexisted as a single force for good against an evil alien force. There was also a syndicated cartoon series called Force Five that was set up to show five of the anime series upon which the Shogun Warrior toys were based. Unfortunately, the Shogun Warriors line was winding down by the time Force Five made it to the air and only a handful of TV markets carried the series for the brief time that it ran.

Not to limit itself to Super Robot anime, Mattel also secured the rights to Godzilla and Rodan, two monsters from famous Japanese Atomic Age kaiju movies, so that they could be added to the Shogun Warriors line as monsters for the giant robots to fight. As far as I know, Shogun Warriors is the only toy line that has combined Super Robot anime with live-action kaiju films; from that perspective, Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim (2013) could also have been named Shogun Warriors: The Movie.

A Godzilla figure from the Shogun Warriors line, complete with 

launching spring-loaded claw and extendable tongue of fire.

Shogun Warrior robots came in three different sizes: 24 inches, 5 inches, and 3.5 inches. Even though the 24-inch robots are what most people remember about the Shogun Warriors line, you could see some items from the robot toys' original anime series in the Shogun Warriors' "Action Vehicle" toys. For example, the Rydoto Action Vehicle was actually from the Brave Raideen anime series and the Kargosaur Action Vehicle was from Gaiking.

 

Curiously, some of the Shogun Warrior Action Vehicle toys had nothing to do with any Super Robot anime series; they were just toys that Mattel apparently decided to include in the line anyway because they looked similar enough to the robots. After all, none of the anime series upon which the Shogun Warriors toy line was based aired on U.S. television during most of the line's release, so it wasn't as if the kids who were buying the toys would know the difference.

The Shogun Warriors' Heli-Capter Action Vehicle 

(Japanese TV show of origin unknown).

The Shogun Warriors line didn't last long and completely disappeared from toy stores within a few years of its launch. Regardless, its approach to licensing Japanese robot toys in bulk was also used by other toy and model kit lines that were released in the U.S. during the 80s:

* Hasbro's Transformers line was a combination of Takara Tomy's Diaclone and Microman lines, and the Transformers marketing campaign depicted the robots and sentient beings from another planet.

* Matchbox's Voltron line was a combination of robot toys from three anime series: Beast King GoLion, Armored Fleet Dairugger XV and Lightspeed Electroid Albegas. However, when the Voltron cartoon series was assembled to help promote the toy line, footage from Albegas was not included.

* Revell's line of Robotech model kits combined robot kits from three anime series as well: Fang of the Sun Dougram, Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Super Dimension Century Orguss. Yet when the Robotech cartoon was assembled, footage from Dougram and Orguss were not used and Macross was edited together with footage from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.

One of Revell's Robotech model kits that's originally from 

the Fang of the Sun Dougram anime series.

Over time, the concept of mashing together Super Robot anime series into a single line of merchandise eventually made it back Japan itself with the arrival of Super Robot Wars in 1991. Super Robot Wars is a series of tactical role-playing video games where players can choose from a selection of Super Robots from various anime and manga series. This selection also includes the titular robots from Mazinger Z and Getter Robo, two of the robots that were also featured in the Shogun Warriors toy line. The Super Robot Wars game series continues to this day, and has since expanded to include anime and manga series of its own.

To learn more about the Shogun Warriors, check out the following fan sites:

* Wildtoy's Shogun Warriors Page

* Weird Science-Fantasy's Shogun Warriors Page

* Ted Terranova's Robot Page.

A Shogun Warriors Halloween Costume.

Alien Franchise Update: Reboots, Sequels, and a Prequel Sequel

As a horror and sci-fi nerd, I do what I can to keep my franchise scorecard up to date. Right now, Star Wars and the superhero universes of DC and Marvel are currently developing a selection of movie and TV releases, while many other franchises are stuck in some form of reboot--either making another reboot sequel (Star Trek), preparing to release a reboot (RoboCop), or starting pre-production of a reboot (Terminator). I've also been keeping current with developments in the Alien franchise, which has a number of projects in development but only one movie in the works. Read on for more details about what 20th Century Fox has in store for the horror franchise where no one can hear you scream.

Comic Books: The only reboot that's planned right now for the Alien universe is being done by Dark Horse for its lines of Aliens, Predator and Aliens vs. Predator comics. According to io9's interview with the creative team behind the reboots, the new comics are being planned in conjunction with each other along with Dark Horse's new line of Prometheus comics. Presumably, this new expanded Alien, Engineer and Predator universe will be much more unified than the previous Dark Horse comics, which I think is a step in the right direction.

While the new comics will regard all of the previous stand-alone movies as canon, it appears that the AvP movies will not be referenced in any way by the new comics. Then again, since those movies cribbed most of their key ideas from Dark Horse's AvP comics anyway (such as Predators hunting Aliens as a rite of passage and the possibility of Alien-Predator hybrids), I don't think that the omission of specific details from those films will make much of a difference in the new comic stories.

Movies: So far, the only movie that's planned for the Alien franchise is a sequel to Prometheus, the 2012 Alien prequel. Director Ridley Scott and cast member Michael Fassbender have both confirmed that Prometheus 2 will happen and it will most likely go into production in 2015.

Video Games: Even though Sega's Aliens: Colonial Marines was a disaster, that hasn't discouraged the company from trying its hand at publishing another Alien game. According to Kotaku, Sega is overseeing the development of a new game called Alien: Isolation that will place a greater emphasis on survival tactics over run-and-gun action. Isolation will take place on a space station and most of the game will feature only a single Alien; however, the most interesting details about this game are that its protagonist will be Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, and its other characters will include clones. (FYI, Amanda is mentioned in the extended director's cut of Aliens, not the theatrical release.)

Amanda's presence in Isolation suggests that it will take place between Alien and Aliens, although why Amanda is being used at all outside of her obvious connection to Ripley remains a mystery. Furthermore, clones don't appear in the Alien saga until Alien Resurrection, which takes place 200 years after Alien 3. Perhaps Isolation will provide more background details about certain plot points in Resurrection, but that's just speculation for now.

Novels: A new novel entitled Alien: Out of the Darkness will be published in January 2014. Written by Tim Lebbon, Out of the Darkness is the first of a trilogy of novels that take place between Alien and Aliens. The other two books in the trilogy are being written by other authors, but each novel has been developed under the supervision of 20th Century Fox with the intent of making them part of franchise canon. Whether the new novel trilogy will have any connections to the Alien: Isolation game is currently unknown.

Lebbon has already said in interviews that the plot of Out of the Darkness will involve Ripley and Ash. According to him, some of Ash's android consciousness remained alive in the computer of the Narcissus escape pod, but he hasn't said how Ripley will be involved in the story while also remaining in hypersleep. I'm guessing that the novel with have a situation along the lines of the early scenes of Prometheus where the android David was watching Elizabeth Shaw's dreams--maybe the disembodied Ash will be invading the dreams of Ripley.

I think that each of these projects have great potential for continuing and expanding the Alien universe. However, the fact that 20th Century Fox is only willing to develop "canon" stories in video games and novels suggests to me how reluctant it is to commit to a new Alien movie project. Ridley Scott may still be working on Prometheus 2, but that doesn't mean that Fox couldn't support the production of a new Alien movie in the meantime. Furthermore, even though Fox is willing to label certain non-movie Alien projects as franchise canon, it's questionable as to whether such classifications will be maintained over time. For example, the Colonial Marines game was hyped as being "canon", but I suspect that the game's poor sales and critical drubbing has since caused Fox to retract that claim.

Imperial Items I'd Like to See in the Star Wars: Rebels Animated Series

This year's New York Comic Con (NYCC) came and went last weekend, and it had the usual geeky fanfare: panel discussions, celebrity appearances, cosplay, and previews of upcoming films, TV shows, and merchandise. From this particular NYCC event, the one event that really stood out from the others was the preview presentation of the upcoming Star Wars: Rebels, a CGI animated series that will debut in the fall of 2014 on Disney XD. The presentation was given by Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo, and it gave many tantalizing glimpses into the series that will show fans what the Star Wars universe was like during the rapid growth of the Empire after the Clone Wars and the early days of the Rebel Alliance.

Of the many details that were revealed during the presentation, one in particular caught my attention: the inclusion of vintage Star Wars toys as part of the series' vehicles and weapons. In particular, the Imperial Troop Transport, a vehicle toy that was released by Kenner as part of their toy line in the late 70s, will be used by the Imperial characters in Rebels.

The original Imperial Troop Transporter toy by Kenner ... 

... and the Imperial Troop Transporter that will be seen in Star Wars: Rebels.

With that in mind--and the fact that toy companies love to reissue old toys to save on production costs--Rebels could bring back many previous toy designs into official Star Wars canon. Read on to see some additional Imperial vehicles and Stromtroopers that could be returned to the spotlight through Rebels.

Mini-Rigs

Shortly after the release of Empire Strikes Back in 1980, Kenner began releasing smaller vehicle toys for its action figures called "Mini-Rigs". None of these vehicles appear in any of the Star Wars movies, but their smaller size and cheaper price made them ideal products for Kenner to squeeze a few more dollars out of the Star Wars license.

Of course, some Mini-Rig designs were better than others. The two that I would like to see in Rebels are the CAP-2 Captivator, which looks like a vehicle than can be used for both space combat and repairs, and the INT-4 Interceptor, a scout craft with retractable wings that looks like a legless AT-ST and was designed to fit inside of Kenner's AT-AT toy.

The INT-4 Interceptor.

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The Imperial Outpost Playset

Kenner's line of Star Wars toys began to wind down during the mid-80s, but it wasn't ready to let go of such profitable series just yet. It put together a binder of conceptual ideas to keep the toy line running through 1985 and 1986, although none of the toys suggested in the binder made it to production. One of the toy ideas is conceptual artwork for an Imperial Outpost Playset. It looks like a modified version of the Imperial shield generator base in Return of the Jedi, and I think it would be great if this idea could be dusted off for use in Rebels.

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The TIE Defender

Galoob was one of the toy companies that picked up the Star Wars license during the 90s, and it is largely remembered for producing miniatures of many Star Wars vehicles as part of its Micro Machines line. Most of the Micro Machines vehicles were from the first three Star Wars movies, although a handful were from Star Wars novels and video games. A replica of the TIE Defender, which first appeared in the Star Wars: TIE Fighter video game, was released in the Micro Machines Action Fleet line, a line of vehicle toys that were bigger than the regular Micro Machines toys and came with tiny figures that could fit inside the vehicle. Even though the Extended Universe stories place the first appearance of the TIE Defender just before the events in Return of the Jedi, it would be nice to see this or some other alternate design appear alongside standard TIE Fighters in the Rebels series.

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and its sequel were two video games that took place in the same era as Rebels. While it hasn't been confirmed as of yet if Force Unleashed is still part of Star Wars canon and if any of its characters and events will be involved in Rebels, it would be a shame to let the alternate Stormtrooper and Imperial Guard designs created for the games go to waste--especially since these designs have already been released as action figures and could be re-released with Rebels packaging. The designs include an EVO Trooper, Jump Trooper, Incinerator Trooper, and Shadow Guard.

Nintendo Goes Retro in Wii Party U

Oh, Nintendo ... I just can't quit you. Even though I don't have the Wii U console and probably won't for a long time to come, I still like to keep an eye on what Nintendo is doing to see the new ideas it brings to the world of video games. With the upcoming minigame collection title Wii Party U, not only will players get the unique experience of asymmetrical game play but they will also get a high-tech flashback to a concept that was popular during the early years of portable video games: "head-to-head" tabletop gaming.

From what I have seen in the ads and articles about Wii Party U, 15 of the two-player minigames will be limited to the Wii U GamePad's display screen and require players to share the GamePad controls to play competitively or cooperatively. The picture below provides an example of what this kind of game play would look like, and the minigames that fall into this format include foosball, baseball, and slot car racing.

When I saw video footage of these kinds of two-player Wii Party U games in action, it reminded me of how early portable video game producers such as Mattel and Tiger would produce battery-powered tabletop games that two players could play together. Most of these games were sports games although there were some exceptions, such as the Star Wars Electronic Laser Battle Game.

To give you a better idea of what these games were like back in the late 70s and early 80s, here are two commercials for portable head-to-head electronic games:

Great Moments in Video Game Licensing History: Alligator People and Planet of the Apes for the Atari 2600

Since early days of their history, video games have been used like any other form of merchandising--as the recipients of licenses for popular characters, movies and TV shows for the sake of making money based on name recognition. It didn't matter how limited the graphics and game play options were in early video games; as long as gamers were willing to associate vague shapes, garbled noises and repetitive tasks with famous characters such as Buck Rogers, Dracula, Popeye and Superman, entertainment companies were willing to add video games to their vast inventories of licensed merchandise.

Yet as with most things in the entertainment industry, some oddities were bound to surface in what would appear to be a straightforward system. Case in point: unreleased games based on The Alligator People (1959) and Planet of the Apes (1968) for the Atari 2600. I can understand why Atari, Intellivision and Coleco were looking for new game content to promote their respective consoles in the early days of home gaming, but using licenses as obscure as Alligator People or in decline as Planet of the Apes to develop games doesn't make much sense even by today's standards. Read on for more details about these strange artifacts from video game history.

How Alligator People and Planet of the Apes wound up on the production list of video game developers during the early 80s is not entirely clear. Both are owned by 20th Century Fox, but the reasons why Fox licensed these particular titles out for video game development have been lost over time.

As a movie, The Alligator People was a ripoff of The Fly and was produced to be shown on a double bill with Fly's first sequel, Return of the Fly. It was produced during the later half of what has since become known as the "Atomic Age" of horror--namely, when horror stories depicted atomic radiation either awakening a prehistoric monster (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) or creating a new kind of monster from a pre-existing animal (Them!) or from people (The Amazing Colossal Man). Atomic Age horror films would provide ample amounts of material for video games from the 90s onward, games such as It Came From the Desert and Zombies Ate My Neighbors; however, the unfinished Alligator People game would have been one of the first video game nods to Atomic Age horror cinema had it been released.

A reproduction box for The Alligator People (photo courtesy of RetroGamesShop).

So what is The Alligator People game about? According to the description provided by AtariAge, "You are lost in the deepest part of the jungle. Six of your friends have fallen under the spell of the Alligator People. They are slowly being transformed into alligators and you are the only one in the world who can save them! ... To stop this transformation, you must inoculate each of them with a special antidote that you gather throughout the swamp. You don't have a lot of time! Not to mention, the alligators are chasing you as you attempt to gather vials of the antidote! The longer you wait, the more antidote you need to reverse the effects of the Alligator People!"

Whether the excitement of the game's description carries over to the game itself depends upon how you feel about retro gaming. While the idea of fighting off horribly malformed human-alligator hybrids sounds like a great idea for a horror survival game, the Atari 2600 Alligator People game has players controlling what looks like a giant hypodermic needle to find doses of antidote and shoot attacking alligators. The game's difficulty can be adjusted to add a constantly shifting maze that hinders the players' movements. Click here to read a profile of Alligator People on the AtariProtos site, and you can see an example of game play in the video window below.

For its time, Planet of the Apes was the premiere sci-fi franchise; Star Trek was still building its fan base during the 70s and Star Wars wouldn't appear until 1977. Even though Apes has appeared in movies, novels, comic books, Saturday morning cartoons and toy lines, this franchise never had much success in the area of video game entertainment. The first official Apes game was released in 2001 as a tie-in to the Tim Burton remake; however, if 20th Century Fox hadn't closed its video game unit, the first Apes game would have appeared either in 1983 or 1984 for the Atari 2600. (Then again, it also didn't help that the Apes franchise was largely dormant during the 80s and 90s, the decades where video gaming began to catch on as a viable market for home entertainment.)

A fan-created depiction of an Atari 2600 Planet of the Apes video game box.

In the Planet of the Apes game, players guide an astronaut who is stranded on the titular planet through different locations until they reach the final screen, the remains of the Statue of Liberty. Three types of apes are in the game--Chimpanzees, Orangutans and Gorillas--and they can shoot at, capture and kill the astronaut. Since this game was programmed for the Atari 2600, each location in the game consists of multiple screens and players have to figure out how the screens for each location connect to each other in order to make it to the final screen. Click here to read about the game on the Planet of the Apes Wikia site, and you can see an example of game play in the video window below.

Given how pop culture shamelessly mines older media brands for the sake of making money from nostalgia, producing games based on The Alligator People and Planet of the Apes for today's market would barely raise an eyebrow. Yet to know that these titles were under development as far back as the early 80s, the fledgling years of home gaming, provides us with a glimpse as to how developers were experimenting with using films from previous decades to create fresh content for what was then a new kind of home entertainment.

Two Great Tron Games That Aren't Really Tron Games: escapeVektor and Light Trax

After all these years, I'm still baffled over Disney's mishandling of the Tron franchise: Given the original film's premise and the popularity of its first arcade game, Disney could have used Tron to break into the video game market through a series of games set inside of a computer world. Instead, Disney's licensing of Tron games has been uneven and largely underwhelming. After the original arcade game in 1982, there was another arcade game in 1983, Discs of Tron, and a handful of Tron titles for the Atari and Intellivision home consoles. That batch of games was followed by ... 20 years of nothing.

The impressive Tron 2.0 came out in 2003 but between lackluster sales and poor support from Disney, that game quickly faded into cult classic status while other game franchises thrived. Since Tron 2.0, Tron characters have appeared from time to time in the Kingdom Hearts video game series, and a selection of tie-in games of varying quality were released under the collective Tron: Evolution title when the Tron: Legacy movie came out in 2010.

I'm sure that more tie-in games will be released for the upcoming Tron 3, but that's part of the problem: They're tie-in games for a movie series, not games that are part of an ongoing, stand-alone video game series. Between that and Disney's prompt cancellation of the incredible yet short-lived Tron: Uprising animated series--a series that could have provided game developers with plenty of fantastic ideas, plots and settings--it appears that Disney has relegated the virtual world of Tron to the silver screen and video game cameos and tie-ins. (I've also been disappointed how Disney let the Epic Mickey video game series go to waste, but I'll save that for another rant.)

Nevertheless, the slick neon-lit style of Tron has influenced the look and game play of many video games throughout the years, and this post highlights two that I've recently found that adhere to both the look and the metaphorical, computer-based logic of the Tron-iverse: escapeVektor by Nnooo and Light Trax by Skip Ltd. Read on for my review of these two games, and why Tron fans should add them to their video game collections.

escapeVektor was released through WiiWare for the Nintendo Wii in 2011 and for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita in 2012. In this game, players guide a character named Vektor, who is trapped inside of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU), through a series of maze-like digital landscapes with the hope of escape. However, the CPU has other plans and dispatches a series of enemies--Patrols, Hunters, and Interceptors--to foil Vektor’s plans. Click here to learn more at the official escapeVektor site, where you can also purchase the game’s chiptune soundtrack.

As a game, escapeVektor is reminiscent of two 80s era arcade classics, Pac-Man and Qix. Yet the look and game play logic of escapeVektor follows the visual style and plot of the original Tron movie so closely that it might as well be a tie-in. Between the neon-lit backgrounds, an electronic music soundtrack, a selection of data-based enemies of varying degrees of intelligence and capability, and a hero who is navigating his way through a labyrinthine world that's ruled by an oppressive master control program, escapeVektor is almost like an abstract, minimalist retelling of Tron.

What's your Vektor, Victor?

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Light Trax is part of a series of games that were released under the collective title Art Style. It is a remake/upgrade of Dotstream, a game that was part of Skid Ltd.'s bit Generations series for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, and it was released through WiiWare for the Nintendo Wii in 2010.

Playing Light Trax is like watching a light cycle race from a great distance: A group of bright pastel lines race against each other and avoid a variety of obstacles on a black-and-neon landscape. Light Trax is ostensibly a racing game but like everything in the Tron-iverse, it has its own peculiar logic. The lines in Light Trax can only accelerate their speed by running parallel to another line, but they will decelerate if they collide with or are cut off by another line. The race courses themselves defy gravity, twisting and turning in all sorts of directions in a seemingly endless expanse of 3D digital space.

In addition to the race courses and race circuit series, the game also provides a selection of "Freeway" levels, where players can guide their line along the freeways that connect the different race circuits to each other. While the same rules of acceleration and deceleration apply to the freeways, players can either race to a specific destination through the freeways within a set period of time or they can choose to just "cruise" the freeways as they glide their way through vertigo-inducing trajectories. Imagine watching Tron, Flynn, Beck or some other Tron-inverse character riding a light bike on a mega-highway that connects different areas of the Grid, and that’s how these levels feel. Click here to listen to a selection of chiptune music from the game’s soundtrack.

A Freeway level from Light Trax (virtual barf bag not included).

Neither escapeVektor nor Light Trax are official Tron games, but they capture the aesthetic of the franchise so well that they should provide many Tron fans with a satisfying game experience. Given how poorly Disney has handled the Tron franchise overall, I’m happy to take what I can get.

Xevious Reborn: Hot Wheels RC Terrain Twister

It's amazing how something things never go away. They just appear again under a different name.

Early this year, I did a retrospective piece about Namco's classic arcade game Xevious, its sequels, spin-offs and model kits. One of the items that I looked at was a Grobda model kit, a kit based on one of the enemy vehicles in Xevious that also had its own spin-off arcade game Grobda. As you can see in the model picture below, a Grobda tank doesn't have continuous track treads; instead, it has two spinning corkscrew tubes that propel it across terrain and over the water.

The Grobda tank makes for an interesting-looking detail in a video game, but who would want to actually see something like this move in the real world? Fast forward to today, where we now have the Hot Wheels RC Terrain Twister toy, which I have pictured below. Notice any similarities?

Apparently, this toy has been around for a while. It was first released almost a decade ago by Tyco under the same name "Terrain Twister", and it has recently been re-released under the Hot Wheels license. It's advertised as an RC toy that can go through dirt, sand, grass, water and snow, although I hear that it doesn't do very well on smoother surfaces. If you're a die-hard fan of the Xevious and Grobda games, you might want to give this toy a try. Not only does it actually move, but it's also much, much cheaper and easier to find than the official R.C. Berg Grobda model kit that I posted above.

Support Interactive Digital Insanity Through the Neverending Nightmares Kickstarter Campaign

Just as the falling prices of film and video production equipment has spurred the work of independent filmmakers, the falling prices of computer technology has likewise spurred the work of independent video game developers. Of particular note is an upcoming project called Neverending Nightmares by Matt Gilgenbach, an indie horror game that is advertised as being "inspired by the developer's battle with mental illness." Sweet!

According to the description provided inspired by Gilgenbach on the Kickstarter page he set up to raise funds for his game, "Neverending Nightmares is a psychological horror game inspired by the real horror of my battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. It features a truly interactive narrative structure allowing you to shape the outcome of the game. It will take the psychological horror genre in a new direction by eschewing many traditions that don’t contribute to creating an immersive horrifying experience such as limited save points, item collection/ammo hoarding, and puzzle solving. ... The gameplay focus is on exploration. Horror is amplified by vulnerability, so you won't be picking up guns and shooting monsters. While there may be some very light combat mechanics, you will have to work to avoid confrontation. ... We want to make a game that is accessible and fun for a wide variety of skill levels. In Neverending Nightmares, the punishment for death is that you either wake up in the same nightmare (like a checkpoint) or "dying" will transport you to a different branch in our narrative than if you had succeeded."

Since I'm a huge fan of exploration-based horror games that emphasize madness and vulnerability (games like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Calling), I'm excited to see what Neverending Nightmares will be like once it is completed. Click here to go to the Neverending Nightmares Kickstarter page, which features more information about the game such as gameplay, controls, art style, and more. The page also features a disturbing teaser video, which you can see in the window below.

Behold the Power of Nostalgia: Bif Bang Pow's Classic Battlestar Galactica Action Figure Line Continues to Grow

Regardless of what you might think about the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, one thing is for sure: This single season, late-70s space opera certainly has a much longer shelf life than anyone ever expected.

Galactica first experienced two brief resurrections in the '90s through comic books published by Maximum Press and Realm Press, resurrections that also produced a few toys. In 2003, a Battlestar Galactica video game was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles, which featured voice tracks recorded by original cast members Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. Even now in 2013, after the run of the "re-imagined" version of Galactica, classic Galactica merchandise still appears in fan conventions, comic book shops and online catalogs. Dynamite Entertainment still publishes comic book series that are set in the classic Galactica universe, and Bif Bang Pow! is continuing to produce characters for its 8-inch Mego-styled line of classic Galactica action figures.

Bif Bang Pow! displays the upcoming additions to its line of classic Battlestar Galactica figures at Comic-Con 2013.
(Photo courtesy of Mego Museum.)

Seeing the number of figures that Bif Bang Pow! has produced so far makes my head spin--it's much more than the action figure selection that was produced by Mattel during Galactica's original run. As you can see in the picture above, the classic characters of Athena, Boomer and Tigh are finally getting their own figures--complete with accessories--35 years after the original show's premiere. If there's any evidence that the geek community is alive and well and has oodles of disposable income to spare, this is it. It's also proof that we haven't seen the last of Battlestar Galactica anytime soon.

Four Tips for Building a Better Alien Video Game

In the many months since of the Aliens: Colonial Marines video game, Gearbox attempted to fix a few of its many errors in the game by releasing a stream of upgrade patches and downloadable content (DLC). The latest DLC, which was released on July 24th, has been titled Stasis Interrupted and it is a complete campaign that depicts how Corporal Dwayne Hicks escaped the grim fate that was depicted for him in Alien 3. Click here to see a post on the AvP Galaxy site that features video clips that cover the entire campaign.

From what I've seen in the video clips provided, Stasis Interrupted really is the kind of story that Alien franchise fans were hoping for when Colonial Marines was first announced. It's not a perfect story, but it's a significant improvement over the original game's plot and mechanics. The cast of characters in Stasis Interrupted are much more interesting than the ones in Colonial Marines, the Aliens behave more like the stealthy, calculating threats that they're supposed to be, and returning Aliens cast members Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen are given much more interesting things to do with their respective roles. Sadly, the fact that Gearbox has treated Stasis Interrupted as an insignificant afterthought by quietly releasing it six months after the release of the main game is just another line item to be added to the extensive list of everything Gearbox did wrong with its contribution to the Alien franchise. Click here to read my original post about the disastrous release of Colonial Marines.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions that I have for game developers who will be developing whatever Alien games are commissioned in the future. For all of its improvements, Stasis Interrupted still treated the Aliens as nothing more than moving targets that are meant to be shot. Read on for four Alien attributes that game developers can utilize to make a superior video game experience.

1. The Alien is extremely resilient. As the franchise has depicted on many occasions, the Alien is ready and able to survive in even the harshest of environments. Thus, an Alien game could put players in a situation where they have to survive against an Alien onslaught while stuck in a hostile environment (e.g., a toxic atmosphere, frequent incidents of extreme weather, a lighter or heavier gravitational pull, etc.). Here's where developers could learn something from The Thing video game that was released back in 2002: In addition fighting against attacks from the titular Thing monsters, players also had to frequently find shelter from the relentless Arctic cold before they froze to death.

2. The Alien can rapidly evolve to meet changing environmental demands, such as new kinds of hosts and prey. As it was hinted at throughout the franchise and directly addressed in Prometheus, the Alien has a genetic plasticity built into its parasitic reproductive process that allows it to assume new shapes, behaviors and abilities. For example, the deleted cocoon scene in Alien suggested that the Alien could function as a solitary predator, while the hive present in Aliens suggested that the Aliens could organize themselves into a social hierarchy for the purpose of overtaking a large population of hosts/prey in a short amount of time. A future Alien game could take place on worlds with forms of life that produce a very different kind of Alien, or it could introduce a new Engineer artifact that would greatly influence the evolution of the Alien.

Imagine what an Alien video game would be like if it were set in the Avatar universe.

3. The Alien has acid blood. When considering what is known about the Alien, video games that are built around it should provide fully destructible environments that can be damaged by the Alien's acid blood. In most Alien video games, the acid blood that erupts from shooting an Alien at close range may damage the player, but it doesn't eat through floors, walls or other surfaces like it does in the Alien movies; thus, these games emphasize the shooter aspect of game play while ignoring one of the Alien's most distinct characteristics as a movie monster. When fighting a horde of Aliens in an enclosed space, shooting them by the dozens with a machine gun will be the last thing you want to do, since their blood would compromise the structural integrity of the building, space station or space craft that surrounds you. Thus, an Alien game should allow players to use alternate forms of weaponry--weapons that shock, cauterize and incapacitate rather than puncture, shatter and explode--which will put a greater emphasis on strategy and survival than firepower and marksmanship.

4. The Alien is very, very weird. I'll give Colonial Marines credit where credit is due: It expanded upon the designs of Weyland-Yutani technology used by humans, but it did nothing to provide something new and bizarre from the biomechanical world of the Aliens and their Engineer creators. There's much more to Alien and its sequels and prequels than claustrophobic spaces and heavily industrialized environments; at its most disorienting and intimidating, protagonists in each film are confronted by something unmistakably alien. Game designers for future Alien games should spend plenty of time reviewing the grotesque and erotic artwork of H.R. Giger in order to take gamers further into the universe where no one can hear you scream.