Quick TFB News Update!

After realizing that my RSS reader PHP script stopped working, I went to toysforbob.com and read a quick news update on July 12.  It is a statement confirming that “Above and Beyond” is not the game they are working on and that it has nothing to do with Star Control:

Latest Project

It’s been a while! We’re still working on a game that we think is really awesome and fun, but we can’t talk about it just yet. We would, however, like to clear-up some rumors that have been circulating about a new Star Control game we’re supposedly making called “Above and Beyond”: they aren’t true! The game we’re currently developing has nothing to do with Star Control, but it’s still really exciting and we can’t wait until we can talk about it officially. Stay tuned!

I can’t wait to see what kind of awesome and fun things they have put together in their new video game. Glad to see that it’s not Above and Beyond. I always assumed it was a rumor and at least it threw TFB in the spotlight for a brief moment.  We still have another TFB mystery in our hands and it’s great to hear TFB reiterate that it is awesome, fun and exciting.  It’s so awesome, fun and exciting, that they were given extra time to polish it and make more changes.

I know a few weeks ago, Lukipela wrote about his face-to-face conversation with Paul Reiche over a cup of coffee about what he can tell us about his super secret project.  Some of the many talents of TFB include keeping secrets and plugging leaks:

“…we were so close to announcing that word did break accidentally on a few sites. We yanked the news as fast as we could, but then it started to spread (seemingly automatically) like the zombie virus. It took us a number of days to stamp it out and I still have a number of Google Alerts set-up in case we missed its brain admit comes back to life.”

“I can’t say anything concrete and I must mix in some outright lies. While not in any universe we’ve worked within, the new game is perhaps exactly what one would expect from our studio. If you like Melee or Mayhem, there will definitely be a part of the new game you enjoy.”

- Paul Reiche

Needless to say, Lukipela wrote a very engaging article about his chat with Paul. It’s a must-read for everyone! Nicely done, Lukipela.

With regards to the RSS parser I made, I’ll have to add some extra exception handling to deal with some things I didn’t expect.

Whatever they are working on, I hope it leads them on a path to creating more awesome, exciting and fun games that they have control over.

Links
Toys for Bob
Coffee with Paul Reiche

Above and Beyond

Above and Beyond classification

Above and Beyond's rating on Australian Classification Board

There has been some news that has popped up today regarding an unannounced game from Activision-Blizzard.  It is called “Above and Beyond”.  As of this writing, the only information about this game is from an Australian classification board.  The information given is that it has been given a mature rating and listed as “computer games (multi-platform)”.  Superannuation was the first site to post this discovery.

Please keep in mind that the ESRB does not have “Above and Beyond” listed as of this writing.  The criteria between Australia and North America ratings can be different.  The words “mature” and “violence” does not necessarily mean it will be a bloody game with excessive profanity.  The Australian Classification board has a separate MA 15+ rating for “Strong coarse language”, “strong violence”, “blood and gore” and “strong horror violence”.

Some blogs have even linked back to an article I wrote back in October about Shaba Games closing down.  I wrote to Alex Ness about it because a few years ago, he told me that some employees at Shaba supported the idea of a new Star Control game.  With the announcement of Shaba closing, Alex said that some of the people they hired previously worked at Shaba and their team is starting to grow.  Alex also gave another small hint that their unannounced game will “feel more classic Toys for Bob”.

I have no idea if Above and Beyond is TFB’s new game.  There really isn’t much information given other than the Australian Classification board rated it “mature”, author and publisher is Activision-Blizzard and it wasn’t in this year’s E3 convention.   If more details emerge about this game, I’m not quite sure how the ESRB will evaluate it.  From the above image alone, there is nothing to suggest that it has ties to Star Control or Toys for Bob.  It’s a game title nobody knows about from a giant third-party publisher.  Overall, I’m glad that speculation towards TFB’s secret project and Star Control is spreading quickly through different video game sites.  Sooner or later, there will be more news about this game and hopefully things will be clearer.  After seeing so many E3 videos, it’s obvious this year will be another interesting one for video games.  Just because it wasn’t in E3, doesn’t mean that we won’t hear more about this game in the future.

Links
Farewell Shaba Games
Above and Beyond – Australian Classification Board
1UP.com’s article about Above and Beyond
Superannuation’s article about Above and Beyond
ComputerAndVideoGames.com’s article about Death Ride and Above and Beyond