I imagine LB still went over better with British audiences than the guy doing the voiceover for this show who was getting on my nerves within the first couple of minutes. Between him and all the quick cut editing, 20 minutes of this is a bit of an endurance test:-

Finding that led onto another programme with Warren Spector from a couple of years later. It’s a brief biography up to Deus Ex 2 which a strong emphasis on Origin and Looking Glass. The presentation is the same but it’s still worth a look:-

I finished the site move last night, if anything still doesn’t work let me know and I’ll fix it. The new host appears to be faster than the old one and the admin tools are better so I’m more than happy so far.

While the site is less than busy, I’ve decided to change my web host after finding an option that is the same price for 2 years as I’m currently paying for 2 months. It sounds a little too good to be true in all honesty but I’ll give it a go and I can always move back. There will no doubt be some teething troubles and/or downtime when I start to make the switch.

UPDATE – The move appears to have gone smoothly enough with the only trouble being my slow upload speed. The database and wordpress installation are copied over and working. All that’s left is transferring all the images and files which is going to take a while.

In the meanwhile, here’s a Wing Commander 3 review from the February 1995 PC Format. It gets a very respectable 87% with the main complaint being loading times which were a serious issue if you didn’t have more than the minimum RAM. I recall it taking a couple of minutes every time I started a mission on my minimum spec PC:-

I’ve got to take the chance to give a shoutout for the Tex Murphy kickstarter. This is one of my favourite series of all time and one of the fundraisers I’ve been waiting for ever since it was announced. Starting with Under A Killing Moon, the Tex Murphy games were some of the very few to successfully combine FMV and gameplay, with The Pandora Directive being one of the best branching storylines I’ve seen in any genre. A sequel is long overdue as the series ended on a cliffhanger 15 years back, much to the frustration of Tex fans everywhere. I honestly thought this project might struggle but aside from some communication issues with whoever they have answering PM’s sending out mixed messages early on, it’s off to a great start having raised over 40% of the target inside 3 days. More wouldn’t hurt though and it’s definitely worth putting down a few $$’s.

I do wish all these campaigns could have spread themselves out a little as it’s a bit much for adventure game fans like myself. Pinkerton Road, SpaceVenture and Tex Murphy will all end up on the same credit card bill and it’s not going to be pretty. There is no way on Earth I could back another campaign at this point and I expect most adventure gamers are feeling the same. If Toonstruck 2 or any other similar project is waiting in the wings I’d suggest staying there for at least two or three months.

Onto the scans anyway. I’ve not read most of these myself yet so it’s just going to be a long list of where I got them from. They are in the order I scanned them which is more or less newest to oldest starting with a Star Wars games supertest from the September 1999 PC Zone:-

A review of X-Wing Collector Series from the February 1999 PC Zone:-

This is an interview with Larry Holland from the April 1999 PC Format:-

A review of X-Wing Alliance from the May 1999 PC Gamer:-

This is a 2 page ad + review for X-Wing Alliance from the May 1999 PC Gaming World:-

A review of X-Wing Alliance from the June 1999 PC Zone:-

This is taken from the top 100 games of all time article in the June 1999 PC Gamer:-

Another review of X-Wing Alliance from the June 1999 PC Guide:-

And one more from the June 1999 PC Home:-

Yet another from the June 1999 PC Format:-

A review of the combined X-Wing and Tie Fighter collections released on the White Label from the August 1998 PC Zone:-

A preview of X-Wing Alliance from the December 1998 PC Zone:-

A review of X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter – Balance Of Power from the February 1998 PC Gamer:-

And another from the March 1998 PC Zone:-

This is taken from the 100 best games article from the July 1998 PC Gamer:-

A preview of Balance Of Power from the January 1998 PC Gamer:-

An X-Wing Vs. Tie Figher review from the June 1997 PC Zone:-

An interview with Lucasarts president Jack Sorensen from the August 1997 PC Zone:-

An allegedly exclusive first look at some X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter screenshots from the February 1997 PC Zone. There are some interesting early Ultima 9 screenshots on this same page:-

Another preview from the May 1997 PC Format:-

An X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter review from the May 1997 PC Gamer + an interview with Larry Holland:-

Another review from the June 1997 PC Home:-

One more from the June 1997 PC Format:-

These are from the top 100 games article in the June 1996 PC Gamer:-

Another allegedly exclusive first look at X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter, this time from the July 1996 PC Gamer:-

A review of Tie Fighter from PC Power Platinum Volume 1:-

A review of Tie Fighter Collectors Edition from the January 1996 PC Gamer:-

A review of X-Wing Collectors CD-ROM from the January 1995 PC Format:-

A review of Tie Fighter – Defender Of The Empire from the March 1995 PC Zone:-

A tiny review of the X-Wing triple pack from the April 1995 PC Review, which caught my attention because I wasn’t aware that there had ever been a floppy X-Wing collection:-

Another Defender Of The Empire review from the April 1995 PC Format:-

A B-Wing review from the March 1994 PC Format:-

A Tie Fighter review from the October 1994 PC Games:-

Another B-Wing review from the February 1994 PC Zone:-

An Imperial Pursuit review from the September 1993 PC Format:-

And another from the October 1993 PC Zone:-

Nearly done with a Tie Fighter review from the September 1994 PC Format:-

This is a pull out from the November 1994 PC Format with 32 pages of Lucasarts interviews and reviews:-

And to finish off a Tie Fighter review from the September 1994 Edge:-

I no doubt missed some articles along the way but hopefully that should be enough to satiate anyones thirst for articles about X-Wing games. I’ll get all these magazines back where they belong and return to Origin games tomorrow.

Also, in the same folder are some unused stickers which in theory would have adorned Ultima Underworld boxes around 1992. The curious thing about these is that the words are the same but the design is nothing like the ones I’ve seen on boxes:-

I got some good news looking at the site stats today. After a falling out some weeks back, Google and my blog have patched things up and the site is now back up the search rankings again. I don’t expect to be top of the lists or anything but until a couple of days back I wasn’t even making the front page on a search for “pixs origin adventures”. Since being given the Google cold shoulder, site traffic had halved and search referrals dropped tenfold and it’s not before time that this got sorted out. I’m guessing the problem was all the Wing Commander 4 posts for the GOG release being classed as spamming so I’ll know not to do that again.

On the subject of GOG, I have to give a quick mention to the Quest For Glory series which was released on there for $9.99 yesterday. This is one of those series that is still on my list to finish but I love the first two games and they are worth the money on their own. I’m not so keen on QFG3 which has always been the stumbling block when I’ve attempted a play through. I’ve still not started on any of the Legend games having been sidetracked by Machinarium and Botanicula so maybe now is the time to give QFG another go.

I’ve also got this developer version of the map poster that came with Prophecy. A decent photo proved impossible but the poster is exactly the same as the regular version as far as I can tell. The only difference is that unlike the ones in the box, it’s not been folded. I only have the room for so many giant Wing Commander posters on the wall so this one is going back to being rolled up for now:-

It includes a brief history of the company, interviews with Richard Garriott and Chris Roberts, previews of coming games (with Warren Spector interviews) and a look back at the Ultima and Wing Commander series. There is so much misinformation in the Ultima history that it beggars belief but there is plenty of good content in here otherwise. According to the Ultima 8 article, at this time Garriott saw the Avatar as being separated from the human plane and more of a supernatural being in Ultima 9 and already had an Ultima 10 plot ready to go.