Posts Tagged ‘fan games’

Fan-sandbox Mega Man Maker adds old friends & foes

Mega Man Maker

We’ve covered Mega Man Maker a couple times before, but it’s worth a renewed mention now on account of the multitude of updates it’s received since launch, with its largest – Version 1.3 – being major enough to be worth a shiny new trailer. Plus, it’s something fun and free to leave you lot with over the weekend.

If you’ve never played before, then you’re in for a treat, assuming you like NES-era platformers in the slightest. Inspired heavily by Nintendo’s Mario Maker, Mega Man Maker is an online, fan-made Mega Man construction kit, allowing you to create your own levels, share them with the world, and inflict your terrible spike-laden ideas upon poor, unsuspecting strangers.

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RPS Feature Martyr Man

The lovely disasters of Make a Good Mega Man Level

megaman1

What do Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More, mythical Norse tree Yggdrasil and comedy ogre Shrek have in common? They all feature in fan creations made for the recent Make A Good Mega Men Level competition. Read on to find out more about these and other strange takes on Mega Man, including the world’s most hazardous ice cream factory.

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Let’s Guess The Fate Of The Fate Of Atlantis Fan Remake

Sofia, with a funny haircut

Option 1) Disney give it the thumbs up and it carries on to completion, rapturous acclaim and a whole host of olden LucasArts titles getting a similar do-over.
Option 2) You know. The other thing.

For now, let’s just admire the effort and care this five-person team are putting into a 3D remake of classic LucasArts pointer-clicker Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which as we all now know is really about kissing. (And, frankly, that raises other concerns about just how carefully this project needs to be treated in order to not upset its delicate balance of characterisation and comedy). Take a look at work in progress below, anyway.
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RPS Feature Fly me over the moon

Back In The Cockpit: Wing Commander Saga

Okay, so my aiming's a bit off. It's been years!

Wing Commander Saga isn’t the long-awaited big budget continuation of Chris Roberts’ epic space combat series, but on the plus side, it’s not some Facebook bastardisation of it either. No, it’s a huge, spectacularly ambitious fan-sequel that’s been in development for the last ten years, which combines burning love for the franchise with the Freespace 2 engine to create a brand new, old-school instalment. But can it live up to its name? We jumped in to find out.

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RPS Feature Where No Fan Has Gone Before

Space Quest: Roger Wilco Not Over And Out

Ah, Mr. Vohaul, we meet again. Wait, we've never met. You were totally retconned for the sequel and your connection to Slash Vohaul who actually was in that game only ever mentioned in tie-in books.

For a classic series like Space Quest to get a fan-made sequel is an achievement. To get three in one month is unprecedented. First came the polished-up remake Space Quest 2 VGA, in which intrepid hero space janitor Roger Wilco finds that saving the galaxy comes with a price, followed by two full-length, brand new adventures picking up where the series left off back in 1995 – Vohaul Strikes Back and Space Quest: Incinerations. But are any of them worth digging your trusty Golden Mop out of storage for? I played them all to find out…

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There Is No Silver Lining

They're going to bed, never to get up again.

Goodbye The Silver Lining. Our culture is formed by the sharing of ideas. Throughout history, for millennia, every piece of art, music, literature and entertainment has been the result of a worldwide collaboration. It’s been an astonishing act of creative evolution, the most vibrant and extraordinary gene pool of imagination and inspiration, from which all were free to draw and create. It has been exceptional, and in the last 50 to 100 years it has come to an end.

The tragedy of the abuse and misuse of intellectual property and copyright cannot be counted. After centuries of sharing, we have allowed a “MINE!” tag to be affixed to every thought, string of notes, doodle on a page, or merest whim. We have committed a grotesque cultural suicide. And the extent to which this has reached should be a parody. We have now allowed ourselves to be in the situation where art museums ban sketching – something that should surely make anyone whose understanding of art history goes beyond yesterday scream in fear. And it exists in our world of gaming in a similarly berserk form. And so it is that Activision has closed down work on not-for-profit fan creation The Silver Lining.

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