A little Space Opera courtesy of Freelancer on the Joojoo tablet

It always helps to have a least one of the brothers Roberts (Chris +/- Erin) coding your space opera , Freelancer was one of the last great space combat /opera games , the last perhaps of its kind.   What killed it was the switch to mouse control , which joystick jockeys found too altruistic  a move . In it`s day Freelancer took half a decade at least to show up in any shape or form , and was  promising to crush all hardware of the time at every show it was outed at . When it did arrive you got a pretty groovy space combat sim , devoid of the famous FMV and multiple choice branching that granted Chris and Erin Roberts free drink status  in far off spaceports and wretched hives of scum and villainy ( ask your dad) across the galaxy. The half of the Roberts team responsible for FMV was off filming really really good looking people in the really real Wing Commander movie , the one with Shaggy from Scooby Doo , Buffy's husband , and assorted cast from Das Boot ( in fact the whole film attempted to riff  Das Boot ), and of course that old Droog Malcom McDowell . So with the brothers Roberts split , we got a Wing Commander game without FMV in the form of Freelancer from Chris  , and FMV without a game in the the form of Wing Commander the movie  from Erin . 


If only they`d mashed up both into one epic multimedia experience!Wait there was Starlancer ....


Any how below you can  see the joojoo flexing its Ion muscles to play Freelancer space combat/trading  classic , and you know I could even get used to the mouse , though you have to slow the mouse acceleration down if you want to use touch to control flight . This game will not run on 64 bit Windows 7 , so once again I find the Joojoo which runs the  32 bit version , invaluable as a gaming device .  

One day Space Opera will return , ( when Volition wake from cryostasis ) till then Freelancer is another classic you need to get experienced .


For collectors check out  the rarest of all Space Combat games , including Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga at thegameveda ecrater store 


more Space Opera to follow !


   


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The $2 Million Return of Chris Roberts : Star Citizen: A New Hope for Space Opera fans

Crowd sourcing has started for Chris Roberts Star Citizen, 30 days to make the $2 million needed to fund the game ... here's how things looked when I added  my $40 worth:currently the Roberts Space Industries site is  down from over use and a back up site is trying to cope ...!

This will be a day long remembered, it marks the possible  return of at least one of the brothers Roberts, to what the Roberts brothers , Chris and Erin did best : S-P-A-C-E O-P-E-R-A-AAAAAAAh! with once great acting talent and a space faring race of tiger muppets... (with whom perhaps Big Bird can seek refuge once he/she has been Romnied) ..starring in games so strong in the power of force feedback they shook the very retainers of a generation of  bedroom/cellar  PC gamers. T`was a generation to whom the word joystick truly meant something totally innocent....really..

This announcement is also seriously significant in that PC gaming is now so powerful that it binds millions of casual gamers together ready to transition from their feeble old hokey cokey console religion... no match for a PC Rig and good Soundblaster at your side kids.. to the full blown PC gaming experience. 

And that experience, part of that experience is the Space Opera Genre .. and so it has come to pass that Chris Roberts ( the movie directing inclined Roberts brah)  has chosen to return ... and in style... the web site asks you question, the answer to which any Douglas Adams fan or binary geek will have already. 

As Chris says he is the legendary creator of the Wing Commander , Privateer and later Freelancer series and has grown up designing and releasing these games .  And we have grown up playing them, have we not ? There were many reasons PC gaming tanked in the 90s:  the overblown development teams of 100s of coders ( Origin were not so much creating worlds as employing them), over ambitious design briefs and 5 years of previews of cgi game action that was never going to possible in game .. just trace the dev of Freelancer to see what I mean.

I cannot wait to get my hands on the new game, but I remember the experience of watching Freelancer devolve from epic space opera to mouse controlled dumbed down follow the coloured vapour trail sub par Elite clone...

Which is the reason my Force Feedback Pro Sidewinder whatever (the one that jumps into your hand and gives good shake) has gathered dust ...waiting ... waiting for HAT happy genres that are now returning : Space Opera with Star Citizen and Mech Sims with Hawken  

Now the question remains will we see the return of space tiger Muppets and which B grade actors is Chris taking pity on this time? 

The Wing Commander series itself is amongst the most revered of PC game series, get the cheapo versions on GOG. The actual physical boxed versions of the games are also amongst the most collectible and valuable PC games, particularly the Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga of which very few exist to day of the original limited run. 

It is great to see Chris Roberts back, let's hope that all those years of experience have led to a leaner meaner design and coding ethic and that video really is in game action as claimed and not some mock up ... 

Has Roberts Space Industries over estimated the numbers of space sim fans out there?  ...of which ... like the Riders of Rohan ...there were never many ... who knows may be they are legion like Fremen waiting for Muad`Dib... we will find out in 30 days : For all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.

Remember if Chris fails ...there is another hope ....Erin... ! And failing that it is only a matter of time before some bright soul starts Kick Starter-ing Freespace 3... Come on Volition! 

Hawken ( which I cannot talk about except to say WOW!) and Star Citizen (silly names are mandatory for PC game classics ... it helps when mis translating them for the none existent Japanese market) are just two signs PC gaming, traditional pre core flight sim joystick and full keyboard in hand are alive and kicking :the audience never went away, it took an evolution of free to play, the rise of independent gaming,crowd sourcing and improvements in Internet speed for game delivery, the removal of obstacles like physical retail stores who refused to stock pc games and the ongoing exodus of now grown up console gamers from their dying white and black plastic toasters to the illuminated Windows 8 Quad SLI hex cored rigs they have in front of them now ..but only currently use for facebook and twitter...heck even iJustine has one now that is evolution! 

Let the good times role....the way of gaming is changing and it is nice to see a hero like Chris Roberts returning.. 

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Worried your 30K Rig won't run the Star Citizen menu screen? Well why not buy and play EVERY Wing Commander and Privateer game for around $12 ?

Bored polishing your Star Citizen ID card ? Nonplussed at the delayed " Combat " Module ..? Sick of duct taping toilet roles together in an effort to win Chairman Roberts latest space ship design-a-thon?

There is as the cliche goes another hope...


Back in the day Chris and Erin Roberts would require the utmost devotion from Space Opera Combat Supplicants  ... the first thing above all would be the purchase of THE most expensive and beige PC hardware existing at that time ..  then only then once you added in the cost of a flight stick or two..not forgetting to hook it up to your Soundblaster card .. would you be deemed worthy of playing the technical marvels I am about to promote the sale of to you ...

this is not the view from a T 800 but a red filtered poignant intro shot .... I like to call the calm before the storm ...

For today  only (till the next sale ) you can OWN the entire Wing Commander Series on PC .. at 75% off  .. that's around $12 in 2013 money .. and this includes all your favourite PC game FMV stars ... like Biff from Back To the Future , him from Episode IV V VI ( and maybe IX ..or is it XI?) and the ever crazy Malcom Mcdowell as well as of course a very young Clive Owen ...Brian Blessed, Jurgen Prochnow , John Hurt and Christopher Walken .. and that last lots' just some of the cast that Erin Roberts got together for the FMV of Privateer 2 ... you see some shots of here 

Marvel at the power of Erin Roberts ... who got Clive Owen to wear eye liner... in a PC game FMV segment something which the great Spike Lee could not make him do .. .

Today of course we can run all these classics on our phones or the most humble of smart fridge displays ... 

These are pieces of collective gaming history that no gamer should be without , not least because, their production  costs alone destroyed what passed for PC gaming development at that time ... with hype and over blown dev team and media Pizza consumption and spiralling private investor costs rendering such games design unsustainable and eventually the 100+ strong developers with their ever expanding Pizza consumption.. unemployable... until ...that is until 20 or so years later they surfaced with Kickstarter backed projects... of which Star Citizen is the most anticipated and well backed ... by fans at least if not publishers..

Privateer 2 is a game where John Hurt gets to be your bar tender .. don't worry in the game you will see him in close up.. 

All very interesting  .. as our Chris has us dreaming/saving up for  18K triple 4K display PC Rigs and Virtual Reality headsets ...for Star Citizen the spiritual successor to the Wing Commander series ... 

the game runs depressingly slowly on my 10K rig .. just what do you have to do get a Roberts bros game running ? ..only kidding... all these games need slowing down ..

The causes of  the Wing Commander series, of which I include Privateer here ...  great successes and failures, which were to be honest not entirely due to an ever expanding lunch time Pizza budget,  rest in the series you can now pick up from Good Old Games... 

I hope the team at Roberts Space Industries ...many of them  like the rest of us now with PCs and smart Fridges able to run these games ... 20 years on ... take some time to reflect on the lessons that can be learnt from re playing these games .. 

Perhaps ...in their lunch breaks ... waiting for the pizza  to be delivered .. hopefully not as long as we are left waiting for our Star Citizen combat modules ... 

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