Double-Plus Geekified Gaming: Thief 4

This news is awesome!

My all-time favorite gaming franchise is back for a fourth installment: Thief 4.  Not only did the first installment of this PC game introduce the world of gaming to one of the earliest and best examples of the the stealth genre, it was also my first exposure to the steampunk aesthetic (or at least one vision of steampunk).

Most video games involve blowing stuff up and wreaking havoc with atomic-punches, heavy artillery, and crazy shooting skills.  However, Thief: The Dark Project (1998) -- and it's expansion pack, Thief: Gold -- was a a different kind of gaming experience.  It was more along the lines of crouching silently in dark corners and sneaking around in order to avoid detection.  If you were spotted or heard by anyone, your demise was probably immanent.  While this may sound dreadfully boring, avoiding detection by undead creatures and hammerite cult members delivered some of the most intense gaming experiences in all my gaming years.  Here is the opening movie sequence for the first installment of the game (and here is the game trailer).

The game ended up with an ultra-dedicated fan base, as well as some of the coolest fan websites featuring fan-created missions, fan art, fan fiction (like Correspondence of Thieves), annotated maps, discussion forums, mission walk-throughs and guides, and other stuff  (e.g., the Thief universe timeline).  Websites of particular note include Thief: The Circle and The Circle of Stone and Shadow.

The second installment of the game takes the protagonist, Garrett, into scenarios where he has to deal with a new faction, the Mechanists and their infernal robots.  Here's about 20 minutes of gameplay from Thief 2: The Metal Age (2000).  The Metal Age trailer can be found here.

With the release of Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004), the third installment was not only playable on the PC, but was available on the X-Box as well.  The trailer for that installment can be found here.

Then the franchise died ...  until 10 years later... when it was resurrected with the announcement that Thief 4 will be released in 2014.  Sometimes... life can be good. 

The Thief 4 trailer looks great.  More information here.

80's Gaming Geek Alert: Tempest

Way back in the 1980's there were some fun games tucked away in the mall arcades -- and one of them was a little number by the gaming company, ATARI, called "Tempest."  With neon style electric-like pulses hurtling towards you out of the void, it featured an awesomely fast spinning nob instead of the standard arcade game joystick.

An online flash-version of the game can be found at the Atari website (and at the IGN games website here).

Here are a couple of Youtube videos concerning the game.  The first is a demonstration of the game (in which you can see the spinner control in action) given by a guy that built an arcade in his basement (and he also gives a nice discussion on the difference between raster monitors and vector monitors).  The second is someone showing off his gaming chops on a PC version of the game that replicates the arcade version pretty well.

The word "ATARI" means something to the effect of "to hit the mark."  If you're interested, an interview with one of the game's designers can be found here.

The game was released in 1980.  The ATARI logo can be seen briefly in the movie Blade Runner (1982).  As a result, this game and the movie are linked together in my mind (even though the game itself doesn't appear in the movie) -- perhaps, as some of the British empiricists would describe it (e.g., John Locke and David Hume), it is a mere association of ideas.

Blade Runner, Deckard, with the ATARI logo in the back.

 Here's an image of an long exposure of of the game screen (from Dan Zuccarelli):

The game has no background music, but the following should be suitable music to listen to while you play (even though it's associated with another game and movie).