The race is on for Patrick and Koji as they play a game of hide and seek in search of their missing friend. But the boys realize they’re the ones who should be hiding and they decide to show a bully that they’re tougher than they appear.
You can purchase this Episode in HD from the ‘Official Website’ or you can SUBSCRIBE to the Season One account and have each episode digitally delivered to you every Friday as they are released. If you want to learn more, please visit mindseyeseries.com.
A light-hearted game after school turns sour when Illia and his friends are stood up by one of the gang. Insult turns to injury during play and Illia is left with more than a headache to think about.
You can purchase this Episode in HD from the ‘Official Website’ or you can SUBSCRIBE to the Season One account and have each episode digitally delivered to you every Friday as they are released. If you want to learn more, please visit mindseyeseries.com.
Illia Fairchild is a twelve-year-old boy. He likes to draw and build forts. He likes to fantasize about far off lands filled with Knights and Wizards and Pirates. He fights with his Grandfather sometimes, dozes off during math class, and is pretty good at baseball. He has a crush on a girl but is terrified of telling her. He wishes he had a dog. He doesn’t know it but he’s being hunted.
For centuries a war has been fought between the terrifying Daemon and the Righteous Seraphim. They are searching for a human with the power to tip the balance of power in their favour and finally put the war to rest.
Closing in on Illia the war is spilling into the streets and one small suburban town is becoming a land filled with mystery and danger.
Illia is not alone in his fight. His neighbourhood friends are Humanity’s greatest heroes and they’ve sworn to protect Illia from the harsh reality of the war until he is old enough to understand his place in the world. Known as Dreamweavers these heroes possess the ability to alter reality with their imaginations. Powerful warriors from different cultures and time periods the Dreamweavers disguise themselves as children and work behind the scenes to give Illia a chance to find his own way in a world filled with expectations.
You can purchase this Episode in HD from the ‘Official Website’ or you can SUBSCRIBE to the Season One account and have each episode digitally delivered to you every Friday as they are released. If you want to learn more, please visit mindseyeseries.com.
Welcome to the new Earth year, 2011! This day marks a joyous occasion as we launch the first page of the new web comic, Galaxy Raiders. Following the launch of the comic is the launch of the new Galaxy Raiders website. Currently the features of the website are very slim, but we are still working on growing and improving them further.
One feature we would like to point out is the Transmission Feed. We ask you to send in your transmissions and distress calls, which will then be displayed on the homepage. Simply tweet us @GalaxyRaiders.
Please let us know what you think and find us on Twitter to stay up to date with all the latest updates!
Marvel Comics made a name for themselves featuring heroes with “real-life” problems, but we’re sometimes skeptical. Oh, sure: Peter Parker has dating woes, and Iron Man’s a souse. But are these really the biggest issues such characters would face? Where are all the lawsuits over property destruction? The civil rights acts that protect mutants? Does Superman qualify as an illegal alien, and if so, how would you deport him?
Thankfully, we have the work of James Daily and Ryan Davidson to help us out. Both are actual lawyers, and yes, they spend their free time thinking about issues like these at their blog, Law and the Multiverse.
Watchmen and The Incredibles envisioned scenarios wherein superheroes were simply banned, but it’s hard to imagine those heroes wouldn’t take advantage of all the law has to offer and countersue in the face of such discrimination. Either way, it’s going to be a tough court battle if the defendants can utilize telepathy, shape-shifting, and all that good stuff. In the end, we gotta think these cases would probably come down on the heroes’ side. President Obama has been seen palling around with the likes of Spider-Man and Youngblood. When the chips are down, we imagine he might step in with an executive order or two.
For now, Law and the Multiverse is for entertainment purposes only… but if you’re ever bitten by a radioactive spider due to lab-tech negligence, you might want to drop Misters Daily and Davidson a line.
Happy New Year
To welcome 2011, we’re offering 25% off select products, including some of your favorite tees and outerwear. You’ve spent enough on other people. Buy something for yourself and win.
Which other webshow had a 7 minute kung fu fight between Neil’s & Gannon’s Asian doubles? C’mon, vote NeilClicker.com best web comedy serial! Only 3 days left. You can vote once a day per computer! No registration required. Takes 2 seconds. The more awards we win the more Atom/Comedy Central is going to want to make the DVD! Thanks for your help and happy new year!
Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) fans (or MSTies for short) have been waiting a long time for this game, and I think I speak for all of them when I say it was well worth the wait. When J. Allen Williams first came up with the idea of creating a game, he called in his friends and started the decade-long labor of love that is DARKSTAR. It’s not just a game though, it’s an interactive movie, with your decisions leading to various outcomes, some continuing the story and others bringing you to a dead end (sometimes literally).
As Captain O’Neil, you’ve just awoken from a 312-year sleep that has robbed you of all of your memories, including your identity. You immediately discover a gruesome murder, a sleeping beauty and a missing shipmate. As you begin to explore your surroundings, you discover things about yourself, your crewmates and your mission. You also discover something has gone very, very wrong.
DARKSTAR is similar to the King’s Quest or Myst games in feel and style of play, and features high-quality graphics and textures. There is a mixture of interactive environments, exploration and puzzles, but it’s the video that really sets it apart from traditional adventure games of this style. Hours of video woven throughout turn it from a game into an interactive movie. One of the key parts of the story is a series of short, historical films that have been created for your mission, to be presented at your final destination. These films document the reason for your mission and stress the importance of your success. I can’t give much more information than that without providing spoilers, but I can say that the films are broken up into pieces and you can only access it as you unlock different parts of the game, typically by activating or restoring power to a part of the ship. Each of these, if you pay close attention, will provide hints and clues that will help you with the next step of your exploration.
At first, I found myself spending a lot of time exploring, but not accomplishing much. Then I realized I wasn’t looking hard enough. There are many hidden items, hidden clues and hidden panels. Once you find a few, you start to know where to look and will progress faster. Because there are so many variable outcomes of the game, based on where you explore and in what order, you may miss a large amount of the game without realizing it the first time around. I took a look at the All Revealed Guide (which is in PDF format) and realized that there are several videos I missed out on, especially relating to SIMON, the ship’s smarmy maintenance robot. I was having a bit of a problem with my video being choppy (more on that later) and at one key point, I missed out on an interaction with SIMON that affects his appearances throughout the game. The lesson I learned was that if the game seems to pause, don’t start clicking right away; give it a moment just in case it’s changing from a stationary scene to an animated one.
On that note, I should point out my video-related issues with the game. Here’s my specs:
Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 3
NVidia GeForce 8200 Motherboard with integrated graphics
AMD Athlon 64×2 Dual Core 5000+ (2.6Ghz)
3.25 GB RAM (XPs limit)
When I first installed the game, I couldn’t play it. I would receive an error message during the splash screen that informed me that iShell had crashed. I tried visiting the website for help but, at the time, there wasn’t any information there or patches available to fix the issue. I spent a few days off doing some web searches and the best suggestion I found was to roll back Quicktime. I uninstalled Quicktime (I was running 7.6.8) and reinstalled 6.0, and then installed updates up to version 7.6.5. The game finally ran properly but still had a few hesitations when switching to a video or animated scene. I saved the game frequently and it helped relieve the stress of lost progress in case of game crashing. I did discover that Quicktime tries to automatically update to the newest version, so while you are playing the game, it may interfere with your iTunes account. Hopefully they will be able to patch this soon, as I did have to go through the process of rolling back Quicktime several times because I had other multimedia programs that required the latest version.
Other than the video issue, which I finally figured out, I had no problems with the game and truly enjoyed playing it. It took me a little longer than I thought it would, but part of that is because I took the time to zoom in on what I’d consider Easter Eggs in the game, such as the bookshelves and personal items in the crew’s cabins. While SIMON’s room is blatantly an homage to MST3K, as is SIMON himself, there are lots of other more subtle touches throughout the game, but if you have no previous knowledge of the MST3K universe, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything. Well, maybe you will a little bit, but hopefully that will just encourage you to learn more about the DARKSTAR folks and their previous and current projects.
In addition to the 13 hours of video, the soundtrack includes 38 compositions featuring several genres of music. Much of the music is ambient with a dark, brooding and ominous feel, but you’ll also find classical piano scores in a few “scenes”, and the battles and other action sequences are backed by high-power rock. As my cohort here at ÜberSciFiGeek said, “The soundtrack is great! It has a hint of heavy metal sound that gets the adrenaline pumping, without being distracting.”
DARKSTAR: The Interactive Movie for PC and Macintosh
2-disc Sountrack Album with 38 songs by Progressive Sound and MetalWorx
PDF downloads of the All Revealed Guide and DARKSTAR Coffee Table Book
Pre-printed (not hand-signed) Cast Glossy
XL DARKSTAR T-Shirt
The All Revealed Guide definitely came in handy. While I tried playing most of the game without it, I did have to check through it a few times to see what I was doing wrong. It listed events out of the order in which I explored the ship, so I did get a few spoilers that I wasn’t looking for. Since it’s a PDF picture format, you can’t search for keywords, so be careful because you may see something you don’t want to know yet! If you stumble through DARKSTAR the first time around without the guide, check it out for your second round of gameplay to make sure you get to see all the cool death scenes and Easter Eggs you may have missed.
The DARKSTAR Coffee Table Book may be a PDF file, but it looks like one of those “The Art of…” movie books you see for Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of DARKSTAR and includes some beautiful images that I can imagine on high-gloss, archive quality paper. I think some of them should be available as prints, they are so impressive. In addition to images of the creation process, you’ll find information about the cast and crew and all the hard work that went into creating DARKSTAR. I think maybe they should make this available on Amazon or some other Print-on-Demand service. It’s really a gorgeous book and, as much as I love my computer, nothing beats holding a real book in your hands.
The Cast Glossy and T-Shirt are a nice bonus. The photos are high-quality photos printed on heavy card stock and the black t-shirt is made of 100% cotton, nice and thick — not the flimsy stuff you often find printed shirts made of. It’s sure to stand up to lots of wear and washing.
The only thing about DARKSTAR that needs improvement, as my cohort pointed out, is that the game is packaged in a large, bulky case with both discs on one side, resting directly on each other, instead of a 2-disc streamline case. While most games include printed material, and the larger case would be perfect for holding that stuff, everything is digital with this game so it takes up more space on your bookshelf than it really needs to and you have to be a bit more careful not to scratch a disc while removing one to get to the other.
Overall, DARKSTAR is a fun and funny game, and a fabulous addition to any adventure gamer or sci-fi geek’s collection. Unlike most games where, once you play it, you put it away, the film-like aspect, hours of footage, and multiple outcomes, death scenes and other scenarios ensure that you’ll most likely play this game several times and, rather than give it away, tell your friends to get their own copy.
New J!NX Design Arcade Winner
The Design Arcade continues to run rampant with awesome designs. This time around, mike reisel honors the legendary battle at Thermopylae. Of course, even the most valiant of warriors can succumb when faced with overwhelming odds. Luckily, the odds were in his favor this round, and he takes home some WINSAUCE for his OMGWTFBBQ.
Vote for Your Favorite Designs EVE Online players from around the world have gathered their creative genius and submitted dozens of designs into the J!NX EVE Online Design Contest. Score the submissions and you can help decide which will turn into the next wave of EVE shirts from J!NX.
Didn’t get your girlfriend the jewelry she wanted for the holidays? Good news. We’ve got a chance for you to redeem yourself and serve your own selfish desires, all at the same time!
nOir Jewelry’s geek-friendly line of rings, necklaces and bracelets is inspired by the funny books’ fiercest females. Some pieces are straight interpretations, like the Supergirl and Wonder Woman rings.
We’re partial to the items that are a little more abstract. But be aware; sometimes beauty and danger are the same thing. Giving your lady the bejeweled Catwoman claw? You might not want to give it as a make-up gift unless you’re sure the fight has been resolved. If your geek-girl’s okay with going a little over the top, she might dig the Gotham City ring, which evokes both an air of high fashion and the ability to poke the eye out of a mugger’s head.
Admittedly, it’s not exactly like taking your lady to the mall to pick out some heavy ice. It’s more like taking her to Hal Jordan’s hq to choose a power ring. But you never know. If she likes superhero bling, you just might be able to convince her she’d like a superhero costume of her own, too. Which means you could end up with your very own cosplay Star Sapphire in the near future. Think, dude. Isn’t she worth it?
