First launched in 2016, Hearts of Iron IV is yet another of the grand strategy games to come from the great grand strategy Santa’s Workshop known as Paradox Interactive. Mixing sandbox style play and real-time war simulation, the title allows you to start in 1936 or 1939 and take one control of one great power — leading them to victory over the rest of the, you know, World War. Today, the third major expansion for the game was announced. Man the Guns develops the naval side of war, including the addition of modular design for warships.

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Back in January, zombie publisher Atari suffered the legal ire of its past-life contractor Frontier Developments over unpaid royalties for 2004’s theme park sim RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.

There’s been no word as yet of how that particular dust – alleged by gossip site TMZ to be worth some $2.2m – settled, but I suspect many of us would raise an eyebrow or six if someone told us that RT3’s sudden removal from Steam and GOG yesterday was merely a coincidence. But, well, it might be.
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Everyone loves witches. That’s just like, you know, facts. Bullets? Some people are into bullets. Some people are not. But a witch that has bullets? How could that possibly go wrong? Well, three years before we were gifted with Bayonetta, developer Cavia attempted to fuse Western and Japanese sensibilities into a post-apocalyptic monster battle adventure game. Unfortunately, the reviews for the game were just brutal. Which is why it comes as a bit of a surprise to see Bullet Witch finally getting a PC re-release… twelve years later.

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“EAT ELECTRIC DEATH” declares Tempest 4000 as noises and colours and particles and numbers explode all over. Yup, that’s certainly what I’d expect from Jeff Minter’s return to the arcade shooter series. Minter was behind Tempest 2000 and 3000, Minterised remakes for Atari of the ’80s arcade game. But when he tried to make the similar TxK for himself, the creature wearing the skin of Atari sent in their lawyers and got the PC release shut down. I’m astonished that Minter and the creature are now working together but am delighted that Tempest action is coming to PC. Watch this: Read the rest of this entry »

Jeff Minter is revisiting Tempest later this year in Tempest 4000, the creature wearing the skin of Atari announced today. This is mighty surprising, considering Minter has said the creature tried to kill his TxK, the Tempest-ish shooter he released in 2014. Their apparent reconciliation is definitely welcome news, mind. No one does loud, colourful, intense, and silly arcade action just like Minter. He was behind Tempest 2000, the widely-admired Tempest remake first released on Atari Jaguar, and has only grown more Minterly across the years through games including Space Giraffe and Polybius. Read the rest of this entry »

The creature wearing the skin of Atari has announced astonishing plans to launch RollerCoaster Tycoon World [official site] next Wednesday, November 16th. It’s been on Steam early Access for seven months. The surprising part is: Frontier’s theme park sim Planet Coaster comes out the very next day, Thursday the 17th. Given that Planet Coaster looks the better game by far, it’s a bit silly. Perhaps the eyeholes on the creature’s skinsuit have slipped and it’s stumbling blind, groping in the dark, accidentally typing up announcements. We’ve all been there. Read the rest of this entry »

Rollercoaster Tycoon World [official site] will have players create their own parks and rides in-game, of course, but it’ll also let people make brand new things outside the game. The theme park-building game will have simple tools to create new scenery objects and people and doodahs through a Unity plugin then share them over the Steam Workshop, a new trailer explains. Come see how that works below:

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It’s been a ride full of… (if I say “ups and downs” will you continuing reading, dear reader?) turbulence for Rollercoaster Tycoon World [official site]. Since it was first announced in 2014, it’s already been through three different developers and has long passed its original “early 2015” release window. It was then scheduled for a December 10th launch, however has now been pushed back to “early 2016”.

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Alone in the Dark: Illumination [official site] is a curious name for a game that’ll have you neither alone nor really in the dark, but strange things happen when games carry papers plucked from the corpses of fallen franchises frozen on the battlefield of the industry. The shooter named after ye olde survival horror series launched last night with class-based shooty action and support for co-op with up to four players.

I suppose you are in the dark mostly, but there are lots of convenient fires and your guns do have flashlights.

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“This ain’t your grandpa’s Asteroids,” I wish the creature wrapped in the flesh of Atari would hiss. Sadly not. That’s the kind of line I’d like when a classic game becomes something so very, very modern. And what way to reinterpret the vintage space shoot ’em up could be any more modern than a multiplayer sandbox survival game? That’s Asteroids: Outpost [official site], you guys, and it has launched in that thoroughly modern manner: onto Steam Early Access.

“Welcome to the new gold rush” is its wholly unironic slogan. Oh, go on, that’ll do. Atari are only getting started with weird takes on old games too.

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Jeff Minter has been making tip-top arcade shooters for a good thirty years now, including classics like Space Giraffe, Gridrunner, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, and Tempest 2000. That last one is coming back to bite him in the bottom.

TxK [official site] is his latest loud and colourful and silly and exciting shooter, and I’ve been waiting patiently for the PC port since its Vita debut last year. That port is now scrapped, thanks to the terrible creature wearing the skin of Atari. Minter says the publishers of Tempest 2000 claim that TxK is ripping it off, and he can’t afford a legal battle to defend it.

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I don’t enjoy being cynical or tearing into things, so news that the shambling husk of Atari is slapping the Asteroids name on a multiplayer craft-o-build-a-surviver only leaves me tired. It’s named Asteroids: Outpost [official site]. Words like “We’re paying homage to the original Asteroids by incorporating classic features such as asteroid blasting capabilities, while introducing a completely new premise and gameplay” from Atari CEO Fred Chesnais make me tired. And yes, these pictures are all concept art. I’m so tired.

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Whoever’s currently wearing the withered Atari skinsuit plans to release a new Alone In The Dark game before year’s end, and whether the fact they’re only putting out the first trailer now is a sign of confidence or otherwise is for looser tongues than mine to speculate about. I’m too preoccupied with the distinct absence of alone time in Alone In the Dark: Illumination, given it’s a four player co-op monster shooter. I guess Together In The Dark sounded too spicy? I’d have gone for Foursome In The Dark myself.

Other naming crimes include that Illumination is being developed by a studio named Pure FPS. I can clearly see the player characters’ shoulders, so that’s a damned dirty lie.
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Atari today is not the company behind the Atari 2600 and Atari ST of The Good Old Days. The name and the brands it owns have been passed around for years in oh so many buyouts and licensing deals. Atari today is a tiny company subsisting on marrow sucked from the corpses of its faded brands; in March it employed only ten people. However, they do still have some big (or once-big) names to sling around.

This week Atari announced new Alone in the Dark and Rollercoaster Tycoon games. And, sure, a new Haunted House too, I guess, whatever.

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