October 2003
GDC ’04
Atusiya has pointed out that Oddworld Inhabitants will be at the Game Developers’ Conference 2004, as shown on the list of exhibitors. OWI will be in booth 1934.
Xavier then pointed out that Lorne Lanning will also be giving a 60‐minute lecture, the date of which is yet to be announced. The site includes not only details on the subject of his speaking, but also the fullest biography of Lorne I’ve ever read.
The Game Developers’ Conference takes place in San Jose, California from the 22nd to the 26th of March next year. Further details can be obtained from the website.
In other news, while Xavier has been employed by Abe Babe to work as a news reporter for Oddworld‐Web since the closure of Oddworld Maniac and Oddworld News, he’s got his sights set on bigger things. You could see him keeping his own uJournal, converging with OddBlog as a second columnist, or running his own French mirror of OddBlog for the ever‐upcoming grand opening of l’Encyclopædie d’Oddworld, the French mirror of The Oddworld Encyclopædia. Stay tuned!
Sources: Atusi’s father
Pre‐ordering
IGN now has Oddworld 4 on their Xbox Release List, the release date said to be ‘TBD 2004’. Curiously, there is also the option to pre‐order for $49·99. The pre‐ordering page reports that the ETA is April ’04, supporting Paramiteabe’s findings.
If you follow the link, you’ll notice that Abe Babe has attributed the discovery of several MO GBA reviews to Xavier. Far from blame my friend, I’m grateful he’s keeping news of OddBlog quiet for now. Good on you, mate.
Sources: Oddworld‐Web
Firol interviews Abe
Xavier showed me this a while back, but I was not really into updating OddBlog then, or I’d never even started it. Neither of us, it has to be said, said anything about it on the Forums. Luckily for all other Oddworld fans, the ever‐lovable Atushi has made a topic about Firol’s interview with Abe. It also features information on the little‐known Sligsi Max drink (parody of Earth drink Pepsi) and teen sensation Britney Spears. However, before you start jumping about in excitement, bear in mind that this is not canonical, and that interviewer Weespect is blatently not actually associated with Oddworld Inhabitants.
Also, Forum member Abeguy has reported seeing Abe with a female Mudokon in some picture. It’s probably just fanart, but you never know. Did we ever find out if M.O.M’s claim of seeing Abe playing football (soccer) to advertise Raki was accurate?
Sources: Atushi
Freezy keeps quiet
Long term Forum member Oddsville has reported that EGM has interviewed Microsoft Game Studios’s Ed Fries. At one point EGM asks him about the next Oddworld game, but he merely replies that he can’t say anything about it. Not so much news, but it’s good to know the more mainstream media are starting to get curious. If this keeps up, OWI are possibly going to feel they should give some information away, which for us fans who feel like they’ve waited for an eternity, simply cannot be a bad thing.
I tried searching the EGM website for this interview, but found only this small 3‐paragraph biography.
Sources: Oddsville
Another 1%er observation
Forum member and long‐term online Oddworld fan Niteowl has made an observation about the 1%er image: read about it on Oddworld Forums. Essentially it spots similarities between the 1%er and Interns.
Sources: Niteowl
Release date for OW4?
Regular Forum member Paramiteabe has unearthed an exciting prospect: a potential release date for the next Oddworld game. After asking for a printout of all Xbox games to be released next year, he was surprised to discover ‘Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee 2’ listed as being released in April. If true, this is great news, as it means we have little over 6 months to wait, rather than the previously suspected 12—although the nature of the bizarre title is just another mystery concerning the new game.
Sources: paramiteabe
More GBA MO reviews
While it may seems the GameBoy Advance version of the second chapter in the Oddworld Quintology is somewhat lackluster, judging by reviews posted about, it may be interesting to note that both Play Magazine and Game Zone have given it reasonable marks. As should be expected, GameSpot have littered their review with errors that I haven’t seen for years—confusing Sligs for Glukkons (I’ve only ever seen this the other way round before) and describing Mudokons as ‘mud‐creatures’. Oh, and a word of advice—don’t try and understand the Eurogamer review. Kristan Reed obvious is a complete imbecile when it comes to the English language, which is of course why she’s based her job around it. Here are the reviews from best to worst score:
- Play Magazine: 14/20
- Game Zone: 6·9/10
- GameSpot: 4·1/10
- Eurogamer: 4/10
- Game Informer: 4/10
- IGN: 4·0/10
- GameFAQs Reader ‘Endz0r’: 3/10
GameCentral review, and Saphire
Today was the first time in a long while I checked out GameCentral, a teletext‐based video game new/reviews/previews/letters “site” found on page 375 on the UK’s Channel 4. By pure chance, it was also the day GameCentral reviewed Munch’s Oddysee for the Game Boy Advance, meaning I was able to transcribe the whole review for you:
Munch’s Oddysee (GBA)
Here’s an interesting factoid for you: after the original Abe’s Oddysee became a multi‐million‐selling hit in Europe and the States, its publishers took it to Japan expecting similar success.
And it was an absolute mega‐flop.
Turns out Japanese gamers found Abe, with his stitched‐up lips, simply repulsive. Good game or not, they couldn’t get past that hurdle. (Hence the cuteness of many Japanese game).
But I’m always willing to look beyond the aesthetics. And in any case this “conversion” from the Xbox is quite pretty in a warped kind of way.
Abe is full of character, and, instead of simply using a sprite that stays the same throuhout like most GBA games, Oddysee plays around with scale, viewing from afar in some environments and moving in closer in others.
It’s a dandy little touch.
Despite such innovation, like so many GBA titles, Oddysee is muddy and dark and some graphical details are so tiny that it makes playing a headache.
This isn’t helped by some fluffy collision detection which hinders your ability to easily gather up a troop of chums to help you on your quest.
But there are some cool ideas at work here, including the ability to switch from Abe to Munch as the need arises.
While the two differently‐attributed characters concept worked well in the likes of Head of Heels, in Munch’s Oddysee it can be a chore.
Munch may be a bit handy in the water, but controling him with snail‐like speed on land is an exercise that tests your patience to the limits.
On the upside, Abe’s ability to sneak adds a little variety and jumping around levels is handled solidly.
What’s perhaps most unusual is the developer’s decision to produce a conversion of the Xbox game rather than one of the PS1 iterations. Those games, with their proven side‐scrolling mechanics, would be ideal for GBA.
Instead we get a half‐hearted approximation of a middling title from a top‐down perspective. With flaws.
This won’t be big in Japan, nor probably anywhere else, either.
Overview:
of only slightly‐above‐average Xbox game.For:
Dual‐character concept is a welcome one. Some puzzles are rewarding.Against:
Munch can be loathsome. Some puzzles are tedious. Generally lacks spark.Score: 3/10
I haven’t played the game, but this seems to be the general idea of the GBA MO, going by what the reviews say. It’s interesting to note that while THQ have produced a game whose storyline is rather different from its Xbox predecesor, many aspects have remained remarkably intact—at least the negative ones. That is to say, we have Munch being dreadfully slow on land, Abe doing somersaults, tedious puzzles and murky environments.
On a different note, my friend Eddy has informed me that he will be setting up his own computer business soon enough. It was with some surprise I heard that he was negotiating a deal with Saphire, who, the more vigilant fans will recall, were the team behind Oddworld Adventures on the GameBoy and its sequel on the GB Colour. Apparently they’ve moved on to hardware manufacturing, and should a deal be struck, Eddy will become the first ‘company’ in the UK to be sponsored by Saphire.
NB—I’ve this feeling that the company I’ve referred to as Saphire is actually spelt ‘Saffire’ or something similar, so forgiveness I’m incorrect, but it’s too late to check right now. They are not, of course, to be confused with Sapphire, a long‐standing and dedicated Oddworld fan and friend of mine.
Sources: GameCentral
Oddworld: Dwayne’s Legacy?
A member of the Oddworld Forums has, apparently, found information about an Oddworld game in an old Games Master magazine, which happens to be about something we’ve never heard of before. The exact quote is this:
GT interactive Oddworld: Dwayne’s Legacy (working title) (100%) A full 3D adventure from those barking Oddworld folk. Obvious really.
Is this some misinformation about an early MO, accurate yet highly‐preliminary game development titles, OWI trying to confuse the video game press, a rumour created by Games Master, or ferill simply pulling our leg?
Sources: Ferill
Munch’s Oddysee for GBA
While searching for information about Elisabeth Lutyens for my music homework, I was delighted to discover that AMG, the All Music Guide, actually stands for ‘All Media Guide’, and that it has sections on movies and games as well. I browsed through every Crash Bandicoot game I knew, noting with interest the place has box art and a video of Crash Nitro Kart—I will have to head over to Crash Place to let them know, later—but didn’t find anything interesting about Oddworld. That, however, reminded me that I was going to go over to gamefaqs.com to look for a walkthrough for the new game—that would hopefully provide any new information this game is going to offer, such as information about the Evenwurst Weiner Factory mentioned in the Dear Alf section of Oddworld.com’s October updates. As it happened, there’s no walkthrough yet, but I did look through the board and find some interesting posts.
Firstly, people who have played this game are totally unimpresed. And, as you’d expect, it being a highly public board, they’re flaming it, saying things like “I’m saving your money!” and other ridiculously untempered statements. One person mentioned that the game consists almost entirely of collect “green things called spooce” as if this was somehow remotely interesting news. Surely every true Oddworld fan knows that Munch’s Oddysee involves Spooce by now. However, as I read on I realised these people were highly anti‐Xbox, and so had probably end up not playing MO. They claimed that Xbox was crap because it has no games, that OWI sold out to its PS2 fans and that if they have any sense they’ll return to 2D gaming. I can single-handedly (double‐handedly, actually, since I’m typing) counter each of these ridiculous claims, basically because it’s so simple.
The Xbox is not crap, it is the greatest console on the market. You can hardly blame the Xbox for not having many highly‐acclaimed games, since the Xbox itself does not, strangely enough, create games for itself—that duty is handed out, more often than not, to development teams who spend months beavering away on design, programing and testing. If they don’t want to make any Xbox‐only games, then that’s simply them selling out, trying to get the most money.
It seems strange that these morons are willing to blame OWI for selling out a) when they’re perfectly willing to ignore the blatent money‐grabbing game producers who put their games on every console and b) when OWI have done no such thing. At no point did OWI say they would release their game on the PS2—in fact Paul O’Connor blatently said in the Oddworld Group that they had not even started to program their material into the PS2’s dimensions just two E3s before the game’s release. It was Sony who claimed MO would come out on the PlayStation 2, not OWI. These people ought really to get their facts right before they start resorting to slander.
What’s even more elementary is that there are no such things as OWI’s PS2 fans, simply because there are no Oddworld games on PS2.
Oddworld has been about providing realism right from the very start of its existence. It has always strived to deliver the best performance possible. Only now that 3D gaming has reached a stage where properly realistic and structural secure environments and entities can be constructed have OWI started making 3D games—that’s the sole reason AO and AE were in 2D. I’d also like to know what these morons would do if told to create a series of at least 10 games using the exact same 2D level platform engine. To conclude, these idiots are not fans of Oddworld, they merely claim to be. If they truely knew anything about Oddworld they’d know what SpooceShrubs were even if they don’t and never will own or use an Xbox; they’d know OWI have sold out to no console fans, and they’d be more concerned about the SoBe deal that occured a while ago. They’d also have a clue about what they’re talking about. I considered stepping in and correcting them, but I honestly don’t think they’re worth the effort.
By the way, if anyone knows anything about Elisabeth Lutyens’s String Quartet Number 6, specifically the ‘Secondo’ movement, I’d love to hear from you.