arne360

Thanks to the lack of internet at my house this weekend, I’m a little late to join the mass congratulations to Cheapyd and Mrs. Cheapyd for the birth of their baby boy, Tai.

A heartfelt congratulations!

I look forward to what will no doubt be the copious amounts of hilarious videos to come from the la Familia Cheapy.

Somehow I think not too many people will really feel the pain of my predicament this weekend. I suspect the actual feeling might be closer to jealousy — unless you’re a QA tester. I strongly encourage you not to show up at my doorstep, pitchforks and torches in hand, looking for justice due to my insensitivity to the non-video game industry plebs.

Unfortunately, I have to work this weekend. By work I mean play the crap out of two of our upcoming titles for this holiday so I can be intimately familiar with them.

The combination of needing to learn how a particular game plays quickly and having access to early code so I can actually do that hasn’t happened much in the past. Usually my education on a game title is a combination of being privy to parts of the development cycle for at least six months, if not significantly longer, a combination of reading different documents about the game and playing the game or watching it being played, of course. This will definitely be an interesting experience as I don’t believe I have come close to completing a game since the release of Gears of War in holiday 2006.

Working on these titles means that I’ll have less time to play Halo 3, The Orange Box, Project Gotham Racing 4, Puzzle Quest, Everyday Shooter … and the list goes on and on. I really do wish I could make the weekend significantly longer, just so I could do more work. I clearly do not deserve any pity.

Hidden deep in the farthest reaches of the internet I have discovered this rare artifact of one of the greatest games never to be — Mr. T’s Adventures for the Xbox 360. Ok, so it probably never got past the mock-up of the control scheme, but who wouldn’t want an adventure game that shows how Mr. T really does pity the fool(s)? Ok, ok! So the whole control scheme was probably a joke, but that means somebody had way too much time on their hands.

Any of you fancy independent developers with experience in adventure games and humor, who think they can wrangle the greatness that is Mr. T, get in touch, this game begs to be made.

It does, but don’t contact me, I have no idea how to begin working on this and I’m busy enough as it is. Josh, that means this is your next project.

FilePlanet opened the briefly subscribers-only stress test for Pirates of the Burning Sea to the public yesterday afternoon. It’s a 4 GB download AND there is a patch after that once you install. I say go download it and give it a try. I mean, who doesn’t like pirates right?

The stress test runs October 4 through October 7. Sign-up, get the download and registration key at FilePlanet.

See you on the high seas, matey!