TxK - Vita gets more sheep and llamas, Minter style!

I have to say I think I preferred the art style of Tempest 2000, but it definitely is a worthy spiritual successor.

I really hope this migrates over to PS4.

I hope this gets ported over to EVERYTHING.

Eurogamer’s review pointed out a few new mechanics:
[ul][li]Hold the L bumper to stop your movement, and move the stick left/right to “lean” and shoot into the next lane. (I never use this…things are moving too fast anyways.)[/li][li]If you’re grabbed by a flipper and are being dragged into the tube, a supertapper (renamed from superzapper) or your droid can kill the flipper and save you.[/ul][/li]I’ll add two more for now:
[ul][li]You can begin on any level: dpad left-right jumps 1 level back-fwd, while dpad up-down jumps 10 levels fwd-back.[/li][li]Supertapper actually launches something that moves down the tube, beginning from where you are, killing the closest enemies one at a time, until it exits the tube at the far end. (This is described in the manual.) The tip is: you can JUMP first, and then hit supertapper, and it’ll take another 3 seconds before it comes back down to the near end of the tube. That’s 3 extra seconds of double-score enemy killing![/ul][/li]
p.s. Friend me on PSN to compare scores! Same name.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/02/11/txk-out-today-the-history-development-and-gameplay-of-llamasofts-latest/
Jeff Minter’s thoughts on his design goals of TxK, abridged.

http://www.minotaurproject.co.uk/devblog/?p=74
Jeff’s longer thoughts on his design goals of TxK. Goes into Space Giraffe also.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/02/12/txk-a-beginners-guide-to-vitas-trippy-new-shooter/
Tutorial. (!?! I guess youtube video might not be enough?)

http://www.minotaurproject.co.uk/devblog/?p=93
About the OST, which can be purchased at the link below:

After 2 weeks, my high score in Classic mode is 1.4 million, while the world’s highest is 9.5 million. I’ve slowed down playing this game, but it’s good to play in short bursts, like 15-30 minutes.

TxK is on sale this week on the NA PSN store. $4.89 for PS+ members, $6.99 for all others.

I admit I haven’t touched this game since March. So many other games to play. Isn’t 21st century awesome?

Thanks for the heads up - I’ve been meaning to pick this up since I got my Vita, so I just did!

TxK is free for the month of September for PS+ members! QT3 Source, PS Blog Source.

I should play again, but I’ve got little free time, and those are tied up with the JRPG that Shall Not Be Named.

Man, tell me about it. I don’t know what game you’re talking about, but I looked at my save file in P4G today and had to do a double take: what I thought at first was my character level (which is almost at the cap) was actually my playtime…ouch.

Bad news for anyone wanting to play this game on anything other than Vita, and possibly even people wanting to play it on there soon.

Oh no! That’s an amazing game that deserves to be played by many people. It routinely kicks my ass in the best possible way.

I feel so sad now, I need to kill something neon-ish.

Do I need to lay low, so Atari doesn’t notice my avatar?

Guess it’s time to use content manager to backup our copies of TxK? Just in case?

I hope not, that would be an incredible pain in the neck, 'cos PS+ freebies…

Note: It’s been updated with a comment from atari saying they’re not suing anyone.

But really: perhaps Minter should make a new game idea?

That’s different than saying they weren’t planning on blocking his attempts to push it out to multiple platforms. Pointing a gun at someone and saying ‘well, we haven’t actually fired the gun’ is still pointing a gun.

I wonder if he can pull the Fogerty vs. CCR record company thing where he can claim similarity due to being the same dev (ie. voice).

Yeah, but’s he’s damned good at that one. Maybe Miyamato should stop milking Mario & Zelda too, but he doesn’t because he’s damned good at it.

Not the greatest choice of person to make an analogy too, surely?

Miyamoto is extremely prolific in terms of games he’s designed or created the idea for. He doesn’t just take NES Mario and add more whacky graphics and make him jump a bit higher and continually release that and only that. How many gaming magazines say “well, it’s basically NES Mario?”, as they did with TxK? Sure, there’s a common theme between Miyamoto games, but he’s not really just milking the same 2 game ideas that he designed in the 80s. (Though Mario and Zelda he really does milk to death. But even then, each Mario or Zelda game is usually quite different from the last. Just Look at Mario 3d, or Mario Galaxy).

It’s hard to know exactly what he worked on and how involved he’s been, as he’s listed as a producer/director for virtually every Nintendo game. I know he spawns a lot of game ideas that he then doesn’t actually design and even helps out in games that he’s not designing (e.g.Pokemon). So I hitup wikipedia, and the games where he’s listed as designer, or the games where here’s listed as producer or director and wiki mentions significant involvement by him:

[ul]
[li] Donkey Kong[/li][li] Mario Bros[/li][li] Excitebike[/li][li] Super Mario Bros. (different enough to Mario Bros to be an original idea)[/li][li] The Legend of Zelda[/li][li] SMB II: (Milking it.)[/li][li] Zelda II: (Sideways! semi-original idea)[/li][li] SMB3 (semi-original gameplay, but with overworld map, which is original)[/li][li] Pilotwings?[/li][li] Super Mario World: (semi-original/milking it)[/li][li] Star Fox (original idea)[/li][li] The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (milking it? though it’s very different from 2, and quite different from 1)[/li][li] Super Mario 64 (unoriginal theme, original idea)[/li][li] Star Fox 64?[/li][li] The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Never played it, probably milking it? Probably new ideas)[/li][li] The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (Never played it, probably milking it?)[/li][li] Pikmin series[/li][li] Nintendogs[/li][li] Super Mario Galaxy (semi-original idea)[/li][li] The entire “wii” series: e.g. Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Music[/li][li] Countless more Mario and Zelda games not listed (all milking it)[/li][/ul]

Minter makes the same 3 games over and over again. Virtually every review says “it’s like the older one, but a bit better”. Most of the games are even named the same as the old one with “221221” or something on the end.

I guess this is why Atari went so hard against TxK. Happy ending, I guess? Kind of surprised they’re not making this an exclusive for their new “console”.

Geebus, I feel like my head’s been in the sand since I last posted.

  • YAK has released a brand new game (Polybius)? On a not-dying platform? One that I actually have and can buy said game?!?
  • something something nine inch nails something video something
  • Atari is now…Atari not Infogrammes but (reading wikipedia) I don’t understand it at all
  • There really is an Atari console coming?!?
  • Tempest 4000

I now know what’s the next game I’m playing after Persona 5.