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| I still think this image is amazing |
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For the last ten years or so at least I've been going on about how the 8-bit classic video game Elite needed a reboot, and not in that rubbish Spider Man type of way last year - that wasn't a reboot, that was just a short pause...I'm pretty sure some types of whale have pregnancies that last longer than the space between the Toby McGuire Spider Man and that new fella with way too much hair to fit on his tiny, tiny head. Yeah, try telling a new mother whale she's just had a 'reboot' and the chances are she'll bite you in half...I should imagine. Anyway, I digress. No, by a reboot I meant a new imagining of the game. Sure, Oolite has been out for years (for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) and not only is it free but it's a damn fine game but it's not official and it's really only a modern port. No, what I wanted was a new game with the same passion and vision that the original from 25 years ago had. I tried explaining this with a passion to my friends Red Michael and Randy Andy from across the street. Randy Andy just started going on about 'classic' films he'd like to see remade (I won't mention them here but one had the word Dallas in the title) and Red Michael just filled his cheeks as much as possible with air like some sort of human puffer fish and, as usual, went red in the face. I did ask him what he was doing but he said he didn't know. He can be a bit odd, can Red Michael. No, it seemed that my dreams were falling on deaf ears.
Then, late last year and totally out of the blue came this: Elite: Dangerous on Kickstarter.
I can't tell you how pleased I was about this but the goal of reaching £1250000 seemed like an impossible stretch. Needless to say, I pledged a full £2 straight away, such was my yearning for this to come to fruition. Sadly, as the first couple of weeks went by it appeared that funding had stalled. Even though I kept trying to get my huge 15 or so Twitter followers to make a pledge my massive promotional push just wasn't massive enough. Even the regular videos posted by the developers didn't seem to get things moving.
Check this out, funsters!
However, all was not lost. Towards the last few days and with a few celebrity endorsements via social networking sites not only did Elite: Dangerous reach its goal but it surpassed it by over quarter of a million - this extra money means developers Frontier Developments have promised a Mac version to be released just three months after the Windows version and they'll also be adding an extra ten playable ships to the game.
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| The game play still holds up today, believe me |
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The Kickstarter funding has now closed but if you fancy supporting the game then you can still make a pledge and I think that they're still honouring the pledge rewards if you do it through their site via PayPal (I'm not too sure - you'll have to check it).
Well, in the end I got Red Michael and Randy Andy from across to the street to make a pledge. I won't say how much because I don't want to embarrass them (Red Michael gave £1 and Randy Andy pledged £5, the bloody skinflints).
Oh, and me? Well, I upped my pledge to £37 in the end. I chose 'no reward'. Why? Because I ballsed the bloody thing up on the website, that's why. I'm an idiot.
Just one last thing - most whales wouldn't bite you in half it seems because they eat plants or something (my Smoking Brother's just told me). A killer whale might because they don't eat plants. No, they eat penguins.
