gathering-of-developers posts

Just before its "shut down" late last week, GoG.com added the first Age of Wonders game to its library of titles. While the other two games in the classic fantasy turn-based strategy series will be added to GoG.com in the near future folks who want to get all three games in the series can now do so via Impulse.

The PC game download service is offering the entire series from developer Triumph Studios in a bundle deal for just $19.99. That deal also includes the soundtrack for each game. You can also get each title individually for $5.99 (Age of Wonders) or $9.99 each (Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic). The games will also be made available to users of the Steam service "soon".

Mike Wilson has had a long history in the game business. He has been the "biz guy" at id Software, was one of the co-founders of Gathering of Developers and Gamecock and currently is the head of Devolver Digital, who has helped to publish Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and the upcoming The Second Encounter.

Now Wilson can add another credit to his resume: film producer. The Austin American-Statesmen web site reports that Wilson is financing the upcoming low budget comedy Austin High. Filming is scheduled to begin in June on the movie. The movies plot has a stoned-out principal of a fictional Austin, Texas high school dealing with a more straight-laced vice principal who tries to "reform the school into a strict, by-the-book institution." Not surprisingly, the real Austin school district declined to allow the filmmakers the use of any of their facilities.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

First person shooters have been evolving throughout the years. Doom bears little resemblance to the modern first-person shooter, except maybe in the dark and gritty nature of its visuals. Even then it's not that similar. The arcade gameplay of years ago has been moved to the side in favor of expansive storylines and heavily scripted scenes. While this is entertaining, sometimes people just want to hop into a game and blow some baddies away with little thought. Since the Doom and Quake franchises have been moving away from their roots, it's up to other developers to pick up the slack, and CroTeam took the challenge. Their first massively successful game, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, blew gamers away with its focus on simple and endearing fun. While they have since remade the game in HD, the original is still worth a look. After all, it can run on practically any system now!

Download the Serious Sam: The First Encounter demo right here on Big Download

The announcement of the Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD title today mentioned the inolvement of a previously unknown company called Devolver Digital, described as a "production and publishing company based in Austin, Texas, specializing in delivering top quality entertainment to gamers worldwide at affordable prices by any and all means available."

Through a little research, Big Download discovered that Devolver Digital is in fact the new company from Mike Wilson and Harry Miller, two of the co-founders of the now legendary Gathering of Developers and later the co-founders of Gamecock. When contacted Wilson admitted his and Miller's involvement with the company "along with a few other old friends."

Wilson told us, "We're basically acting as the production company for the XBLA game, since we are not an official MSFT publisher yet, and will be publishing the PC version of the games." Gathering of Developers was the first publisher for Croteam's Serious Sam games and Wilson told us, "Croteam owns the IP still since they had a g.o.d. deal, and are therefore able to work with us again on the new version(s)." We hope to get more info on Wilson's newest game venture in the near future.

One of the more interesting strategy-sim game series is coming back via a new publisher and a new developer. Kalypso Media announced today that their have aquired the rights to the Tropico PC game franchise from publisher Take Two Interactive. Kalypso intends to release Tropico 3 this summer which will be developed by Haemimont Games.

At the moment details are scarce on Tropico 3 other than it will be based on the first game in the series released in 2001 by Take Two's now defunct Gathering of Developers brand and developed by the now defunct Poptop Software. That game had the player controlling a Caribbean island country as a dictator type in the present day (the second Tropico game, released in 2003, switched the game's premise to being a pirate in the Caribbean in the 18th century). Kalypso did say the game would have "...state-of-the-art graphics, complex gameplay similar to the other titles in the series and a comprehensive multiplayer mode."