SUATOM! Dungeons and Dragons for Wii U (Concept)

As everyone I’m sure noticed, I didn’t write a new edition of Creative Day yesterday. Honestly the reason is simply that I was damned tired by the time Day 1 of E3 was over. I feel my obsessive tweeting (sorry) and Brad and my conference recaps make up for this, but if it doesn’t then I guess sorry again. Rest assured that Creative Day will be back next week with something theoretically creative and maybe even enjoyable. Fancy that!

Now it’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for another edition of Shut Up and Take Our Money! This week I thought I would change things up and not mentioned something from Kickstarter. Instead I’m going to bring you a special E3 edition of SUATOM!, brought to you by the Twitter feed of Scott Johnson of FrogPants Studios fame:

That sound your hearing is your mind exploding! Seriously, the moment I read that I completely froze and missed everything else being said during the press conference. Now look, I’m not a fan of Dungeons & Dragons; hell you’re more likely to find me mocking people who play it. I have nothing against those who do, hell one of my best friends plays it every weekend. What I am against is the excessive tedium that goes along with playing it. This is actually odd, because anyone who knows my gaming habits knows that I LOVE tedious activities in my games. Sadly that doesn’t seem to transfer over D&D.

Now imagine that some company released a top-notch, AAA game that allowed you to play Dungeons & Dragons with your friends, either online or with couch co-op. The game handles all the stat sheets, character information, and story info in-game, freeing your time up to create and play. Using the Wii U Gamepad to allow dungeon masters the world over to control the action would be phenomenal. All I know is that I have a potential group of five people who would throw down some serious cash for this game.

Someone hammer out a basic concept, put it up on Kickstarter and let me know, because I’m already sold on this!

Shut Up and Take Our Money! Spellbound Magazine

Another Tuesday, another day to yell unto the internets and demand that they take our reasonably hard-earned money. Every Tuesday I scour the internet (or more accurately click the first link I find that looks appealing) to find awesome and possibly amazing things that we should be spending money on. This can be a really cool item from ThinkGeek or a badass t-shirt featured on TeeFury or Threadless. More than likely a lot of stuff featured will be assorted Kickstarters, seeing as my bookmark folder is filled to the brim with campaigns ending every few days over the next two months.

Today will be a SUATOM! of the latter, as we feature and interesting campaign focused around a new children’s fantasy e-zine called Spellbound Magazine. I first became aware of Spellbound Magazine through a tweet from the amazing fantasy author and overall badass, Neil Gaiman. Your should know who Neil Gaiman is if you’re one of our regular readers, or if you have even a partially functioning brain so I’ll leave off the rest of the gushing over the man’s amazingness.

Continuing on, this isn’t about Mr. Gaiman, but about the awesome magazine he alerted me to. Spellbound Magazine was once upon a time a quarterly children’s fantasy magazine that was published from 1999-2003. Due to budgetary concerns they were forced to shut down, but now they’re back and looking to crowd source their way into the competitive world of e-zine publication. The new Spellbound Magazine will continue the original’s quarterly release schedule and they already have up a planned line-up for it’s first year as well as subscription information:

We will be publishing four issues per year in ePub format. Issues will be available from Amazon, B&N and Smashwords for $5.00 each. Subscriptions will be available with issues being e-mailed to subscribers. Subscriptions will be $20.00 a year. We will continue to center each issue around a specific fantasy creature with the first year’s line up being:
• Winter 2012 – Rings and Other Magic Things
• Spring 2013 – Changelings and Doppelgangers
• Summer 2013 – Dragons
• Fall 2013 – Creatures of the Deep Dark Woods
If we get the funding the first issue (Winter 2012) will be published December 2012.

The rewards for funding the project are fairly straightforward: for donating $5 and up to $30 you can get ever-increasing rewards of magazine issues, subscriptions, and a thank you in the inaugural issue. That doesn’t mean you have to stop at the $30 mark of course, but it’s good to know what you’ll get. In the end though, and excuse the schmaltz I’m about to lay down, the best reward is knowing that you helped in resurrecting and spawning a new generation of children’s fantasy magazine.

If this looks like a magazine that you would likely subscribe to, then you should consider donating at least $25 so that they can get on their feet and so you can get a subscription to their magazine. The project only has another 11 days left with just under half their goal of $4000 remaining. Check them out and help bring about another place for fantasy authors and readers to find up and coming work.

If you have or know of a Kickstarter that you would like to see posted in a future issue of SUATOM! you can let us know in the comments, or email us!

Tomorrow we bring you our first issue of Ultimate Back Issue our name still in progress column about comics and my reading of them.

SUATOM! Telltale Games “Almost Everything Pack”

During our upcoming podcast (which will be posted tomorrow) Steven and I briefly discuss the upcoming The Walking Dead videogame. After Steven weighed in on his thoughts I decided to look up Telltale’s site to see how much it was selling for. Well it turns I came across way more than I was expecting.

For just $22.49 you can order The Walking Dead, however for just an addition $20 you can also get the Telltale “Almost Everything Pack”. No seriously, I don’t think you understand how awesome that is. This usually sells on its own for around $89.99, so  to get it plus a new Telltale game for less than half the cost is outstanding. Here’s what you get in addition to The Walking Dead:

 

• Sam & Max Seasons 1 to 3 – Holy shit! If I didn’t already own Sam & Max Seasons 1 & 2 on the 360 and Season 3 on the PC I would jump at this just for them. The original Sam & Max Hit the Road is easily in my favorite games of my childhood. Sam & Max Seasons 1 & 2 were just amazing games/game series. Season 3 however blew both of them out of the water with the change in visual and story style. You would be quite the ridiculous individual to hold off in playing these amazing games.
• Back to the Future – Wait, frell…seriously? Ok, I LOVED the Back to the Future game. It didn’t hurt that when they released the first episode I had just come off of a BttF movie marathon, but still. Much like other Telltale Games, Back to the Future is a brilliantly constructed adventure game. Much like Sam & Max before it, it’s not perfect, however it still a delightful story that fills in as Back to the Future IV. How is that you ask? Well Because the original creators of BttF worked on the project. Also they got Christopher Lloyd to reprise the role of Doc Brown. AJ LoCascio does the voice of Marty McFly for this game in lieu if Michael J. Fox, but there’s nothing wrong with that. AJ does a better Marty McFly impersonation than Fox might be capable of nowadays. Don’t worry though, Michael J. Fox does make a late-series cameo that is worth sticking around for.
• Jurassic Park – From this point on my excitement is going to die down a bit as I haven’t played any of the other games in this collection. I’m a huge fan of the Jurassic Park movies, and this game looks highly enjoyable, though I have read a handful of less than favorable reviews. Still, you get it essentially for free, so what’s not to like.
• Law & Order – Alright, if you thought I knew next to nothing about our last entry, than put on your frustration caps, cause here we go! Law & Order is a game based on the classic TV show and it’s made by Telltale Games. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got…sorry.
• Hector: Badge of Carnage – I read both a preview and review of Hector back during last year and it raised my interest. However at the time I was lacking funds, so it was neglected. Still looks like an enjoyable romp.
• Puzzle Agent 1 & 2 – I received the original Puzzle Agent for free with a purchase awhile back and have been meaning to play it, but the backlog of games only grows instead of shrinking. Still, it seems like a good addition to the collection, as well as its sequel.
• Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People – I recently discovered that I own Telltale’s take on the Strong Bad classic web series (before that was even a term). Which is odd since I missed the Strong Bad movement myself. However, it is now lying towards the top of my PC gaming backlog. Hopefully soon I will find the time to journey into it’s world.

There you have it, The Telltale “Almost Everything Pack” with The Walking Dead. You should go buy it before they stop offering it. Trust me, it’s worth it.

SUATOM!: Kickstarter Campaigns We Like (or Love, But That’s Quite The Commitment.)

Before we kick into the latest edition of SUATOM! I thought I would make a few comments:

First off, from this point on I will be referring to “Shut Up And Take My Money!” as “Shut Up And Take Our Money!” or SUATOM! for short. This seemed like the right choice to make, plus SUATOM! is far more enjoyable to say. Seriously, say SUATOM! out loud right now and tell me that it doesn’t make you chuckle just a little.

Secondly, I realize that I only just wrote the first article yesterday, but I simply did not want to wait another week to bring you some Kickstarter campaigns that I myself am following. Now onto the article itself:

Make Leisure Suit Larry come again!

Let’s just right in with the big guns! Words can not express my excitement over this Kickstarter campaign. I have been a long standing fan of Leisure Suit Larry, going back to around the release of Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail in 1996. Just so we have an understanding, that means I have been a fan since I was roughly 11-years-old. Shh, don’t tell my dad…oh wait, he bought me LSL7 & 1998’s Leisure Suit Larry’s Casino while my mom bought me The Complete LSL after quite a bit of pleading on my part. Damn, my parent’s were really awesome!

Anyways, that leads me to the more recent games not starring the beloved Larry Laffer. Yes, the piss-poor games starring one Larry Lovage (or Loveage as Box Office Bust decided to rename him since the lack of an “E” made it entirely unclear that his last name was a play on love…) are the ones I speak of. Now I just want to say that Magna Cum Laude wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It was not a proper LSL game, but it had a certain twisted overly-profane charm. Box Office Bust on the other hand was an unmitigated post-abortion piece of crap. BOB was actually the very first game I ever traded in. I didn’t even care that I received a pittance of money back; I just wanted it out of my sight and out of my home.

This leads us to last week’s announcement that Al Lowe and Paul Trowe are getting the band back together. This new, but not new, Larry game will be a remake of the original Leisure Suit Larry: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards and there is nothing wrong with that. The idea is to return to Larry’s roots to see if people still love him, which I assure you they do.

They are asking for $500,000 to be pledged by May 2nd for the game to go into production. At just a $15 pledge you get the game via Steam or a DRM free version, which is nothing to play such a classic game in my book. The rewards only grow from there and are worth looking at. Apparently if they surpass their goal they may consider adding additional dialogue to the game, so donate generously! $294,126 is currently pledged to the project and with 19 days to go it seems likely the project will be funded; which makes both my adult and child self absolutely ecstatic.

For further information on the project you can click these links for their Kickstarter campaign and an interview with Al Lowe and Paul Trowe.

Shut Up and Take My Money!

Mass Effect Hoodie Project

I caught sight of this while hanging around Twitter earlier today. Apparently a deviantART user by name of lupodirosso posted the image below of some Mass Effect hoodies he designed and submitted to BioWare.

I mean, all I can say is holy crap those things are awesome. I’m a huge Garrus fan and as such would gladly purchase the featured Garrus hoodie, but honestly it’s amazing what else this guy came up with. The designs for Tali, Kaidan, and the Collector are simply gorgeous.

Derek Clarke, Community Manager for BioWare, "discusses" the hoodies with the Treehouse Brand Stores Twitter representative.

So with that I would like to apologize to my wife ahead of time for the massive *smirk* drain on our checking account that this will cause if BioWare follows through in making these a reality.