oddworld-abes-exoddus posts

The re-release of all four games in Oddworld Inhabitants' Oddworld series last December has so far been restricted just to the Steam service. Today the Oddworld web site announced that starting the week of March 7 the four games ( Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee , Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus and the all new PC ports of Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) will be released on other PC game download sites like Direct2Drive, Impulse, GamersGate and others.

During that week the Oddboxx games will also have a 50 percent price cut which includes the Steam releases. Finally two of the games will be getting some updates. Munch's Oddysee will add new achievements, widescreen support and more while Stranger's Wrath will add Xbox 360 controller support and other features.

Last December PC gamers finally got the chance to play Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, the last game in the Oddworld series from developer Oddworld Inhabitants. However players soon discovered that the port of the Xbox game, released as part of the Oddboxx collection of all four games in the series, had lots of performances and other bugs in its new PC version.

A few days ago, the development team in charge of the Stranger's Wrath port released a new update via Steam. The patch supposedly fixes some of the performance issues and bugs and adds a few new features such as a screen resolution selection, v-sync option and joystick selection to the game's launcher. It also adds customizable controls to the game, widescreen support and more. So if you have been on the fence on getting the PC version after all the previous bug reports, perhaps this new patch will help out with that decision.

The recent release of the PC ports of the Xbox action games Oddworld Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld Stranger's Wrath has been met with some tech issues, as we reported earlier this month. The official Oddworld web site has posted up word that the main issues with Munch's Oddysee with the game crashing early on has been fixed for most users.

The other issue is performance and speed while running Stranger's Wrath on an ATI Radeon card. The web site states, "We are working with ATI to discover the root cause of the issue, and will hopefully be able to update you all on this as soon as we can." In related news, a post on the Steam message board forums indicates that the development team is thinking about putting in the graphical improvements for the PS3 version of the game in a future update for the PC port.

[Thanks to Joystiq for that hookup]

This week, PC gamers finally got a chance to play the final two games in Lorne Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants' Oddworld action-adventure game series. Both the PC ports of Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath (first released on the original Xbox) joined the previously released Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus in a new collection called, appropriately enough, The Oddboxx.

While the PC ports of the two new games have had some tech issues after their release on Steam last Monday (the development teams are working to fix them ASAP) the fact that these two games have been brought to the PC after all this time is an achievement in itself. Big Download got Stewart Gilray of Just Add Water (who handled the Stranger's Wrath port) to give us some more info on how The Oddboxx got made.

Oddworld Inhabitants' plan to release all four games in the Oddworld series under the Oddboxx bundle for the PC via download is still on. However let's say you already own the first two games in the series (Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus) that have been available to purchase and download for the PC. Wouldn't you want to just get the two games that are finally being ported to our platform (Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) ?

Sure you would. Which is while in addition to the $24.99 pricing for the Oddboxx four game bundle you can get Munch's Oddysee seperately for $9.99 and Stranger's Wrath for $14.99 when the games are released sometime this "holiday". Abe's Oddysee and Abe's Exoddus will be priced seperately at $4.99 each, by the way.

Earlier this week Oddworld Inhabitants announced that the long awaited Oddboxx bundle of all four Oddworld games for the PC would be released sometime this holiday season. Today the developer revealed that the Oddboxx bundle of games ( Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus and the all new PC ports of Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) will be priced at $24.99.

The bundle will be made available via download on several download sites including Steam, Direct2Drive, Impulse and Amazon.com. However the Steam versions will also add new Steam achievements to the Munch's Oddysee and Stranger's Wrath PC ports.

It's been a while since this project was first announced but today Oddworld Inhabitants announced that its PC collection of all four previously released games in the Oddworld action-adventure game series will indeed be released sometime in the 2010 "holiday" time period.

The Oddboxx bundle will have both Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (both previously released for the PC) as well as Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee (shown above) and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath which were first released for the Xbox consoles and will be ported to the PC for the first time in this new collection. Oddworld Inhabitants states that these games will also be getting "a few new additions and enhancements" but specifics were not mentioned. Pricing for The Oddboxx bundle has not been announced

Oddworld Inhabitants' founder Lorne Lanning loves Steam and is not afraid to say it. The creator behind four of the most unusual mainstream games of all time chats with Game Informer in a new interview where he talks about the impact of releasing the first two Oddworld games on Steam a while ago.

He states, "I've got to tell you, we were blown away. For the first time, we're able to tell where our sales were coming from, how many dollars we were making per day. What territories sold better last night than the night before – was it Eastern Europe, was it Southeast Asia? We're able to see it all. We never got to know who our customer was before." Over a year ago Lanning stated in another interview that the other two Oddworld games that had not been released for the PC would be ported and released via download with the first two games in a collection called the Oddbox. Sadly we have yet to hear any more about those plans.

Most of the interview concerns The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot, the fifth Oddworld game that was announced just one month before Oddworld Inhabitants decided to close its main development studio in 2005. The game was supposed to be published by Majesco. Lanning stated, "Sometimes developers get fired by publishers and sometimes developers fire publishers – and that's probably all I should say about it." He also talks about Oddworld's future plans, including perhaps releasing free-to-play games with micro-transaction support. Lanning states, "It's a whole different chemistry coming. And that's what we're interested in."

Last October it was revealed that the final two games in the Oddworld action game series, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, would finally be released for the PC after being Xbox exclusives. Since then there's been no word on the status of that conversion project but a recent post on the fan message board Oddworldforums.net has an update from Oddworld Inhabitants founder Lorne Lanning.

Lanning stated that porting the games to the PC has taken longer than they had hoped, especially for Stranger's Wrath. He states, "Stranger has proven much more difficult as we really pushed some rendering aspects on the Xbox and bringing that over to DirectX is a bit of voodoo." He did say that the two titles, along with the first Oddworld two games in the series which were released for the PC, will still come out sometime in 2010 via Steam. He also added that all four games will have added support for Steam achievements.

Steam's weekend deal is a pretty good one for all concerned. This time the game download service is offering the two Oddworld PC action games from developer Oddworld Inhabitants at a massive discount for this weekend only.

Both Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus (first released by 1998) and Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (first released in 1997) are now on sale for just $2.50 each via Steam. That's a 75 percent discount off their normal $9.99 price. Furthermore you can get both games in a bundle deal for just $3.75 compared to its normal $14.99 bundle price. That's a lot of classic game playing for just a few saw bucks.