mdk posts

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!

Interplay is known for a few incredible and classic franchises. While the two most famous are Fallout and Baldur's Gate, there's a few others, such as Descent and Earthworm Jim, that are considered timeless games. We've covered all of these games on Boot Disk before, but there is one last franchise missing from the list: MDK. It features plenty of the Shiny style, from strange characters to unique sequences, and it stands the test of time despite being over a decade old. While its DRM-free version is currently absent from the market, Steam still has this masterpiece available for sale, and it's a must buy for anybody who loves classic games.

With the exception of a few of their older games ported to downloadable console titles, Interplay hasn't actually released an all new game since 2004. The once mighty developer and publisher has been working for years to port the Fallout franchise into an MMO (an effort that's now in court with Fallout's current owners Bethesda Softworks). Now comes word that the publisher may have gotten a cash infusion to fund new game projects.

The Fallout fan site Duck and Cover have pointed to a new SEC listing from Interplay where the company says it sold a large amount of stock, as much as 10 percent, to both Microprose and its managing director Frederic Chesnais. According to the site, word from an Interplay investor called "Frymuchan" is that this development, " . . is very good news for stockholders. He claims the stock sale will allow Chesnais to fund new Interplay game projects. The games named are Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Descent and MDK. Oddly enough, Interplay listed those games two years ago as titles they were planning to develop as new sequels.

After all of the after Thanksgiving-Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales deals in the past week, things are settling down to something of a semblance of normal on the PC game download front. Today the DRM-free site GoG.com has added Tropico Reloaded to its ever growing list of games.

This a bundle containing the first two games, plus an expansion pack to the first title, in the island dictator series that was first released by publisher 2K Games (the second game actually is a pirate island sim game, but who's counting?) If you are a faithful reader of Big Download, you likely know that Kalypso Media took over the franchise and is now the publisher of both Tropico Reloaded and the all new game Tropico 3.

In related news, GoG.com has put the classic action game MDK on sale this week. You can purchase an download the game for just $4.99 until Sunday.

GoG.com's weekend sales deal is one of the best, if not the best, they have offered so far. From now until the end of the day on Monday, the DRM-free game download site is giving a 25 percent discount on all of their Interplay action games.

The games in the sale include Die by the Sword, Earthworm Jim 1 + 2, Earthworm Jim 3D, MDK, MDK 2, Messiah and Shattered Steel. Simple put one or more of these games in the GoG.com online shopping cart and before you finish buying the games put in the promo code ACTION to get the 25 percent discount. GoG.com also has a special treat; a chat with BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk as he talks about the making of MDK 2, one of the earliest games from the now acclaimed RPG publisher.

Wow. It looks like our readers love going back down memory lane to speculate on bringing back some of their favorite PC game franchises. We have put up not one but two such installments this week and they have been some of our most popular features we have posted on our site.

The nice thing is that there are still a number of great franchises that we would like to see come back and we think you might agree as well. So let's head back to the Wayback machine to see what other PC games would be good for an eventual comeback. Among our choices this time are a sci-fi multiplayer shooter, a medieval sneaker game and a classic adventure title.

Click on the image above to read more on another 10 PC games that need a comeback

The great folks at the DRM-lacking game download site GoG.com have a new last minute holiday deal for its customers. From now until 11:59 pm Dec. 31 they are offering several Interplay published game bundles for $9.98. These bundles will let gamers save $2 over their regular prices. If you already own one of the games in the bundle you can get the other for $4.99 or $1 off its price.

Without further ado here are the available GoG.com game bundles:

Fallout 1+Fallout 2
Descent+Descent 2+Descent 3+Descent 3 expansion
Stonekeep+Lionheart
Freespace 1+Freespace 1 expansion+Freespace 2
MDK +MDK 2

Interplay isn't dead yet. At least that's what its latest financial results says. The game publisher, which hasn't actually shipped a game to stores in several years, revealed today via a press release that the company had just over $6 million in revenue for its last fiscal year that ended December 31, 2007. Of course, nearly all of that revenue came because Interplay sold its Fallout IP to Bethesda Softworks for $5.75 million last year (Bethesda has been working on Fallout 3 for some time; the post-apocalypse RPG sequel is due out this fall).

The press release reiterates that Interplay retains the rights to make a Fallout MMO game and it has also re-launched its in-company game development studio. It also claims it will try to develop new titles based on the properties it still owns including Earthworm Jim, Dark Alliance, Decent and MDK. Quite frankly, we will believe it when we see it. It takes a lot of money to develop even a small scale title these days and an MMO game takes even more time and financial effort. Interplay will either have to convince folks to invest some cash in the publisher or sell off even more of their properties to really jump start their operations again.