If there's been any entity who has surprised us over the last year, it's GameTap. The online game service that started off as nothing more than a retro library repository is really turning into something completely different. Starting with Sam & Max, then URU, then their reinvention of sorts at the end of this month including a "free-to-play" service, topped by the leak of Grimm this morning, this isn't the GameTap we once knew. Their latest venture is a website fully dedicated to Lara Croft with a retrospective documentary and a conceptually amazing animated series beginning in July.
Although the 10 year retrospective documentary is definitely interesting, the thing that really catches our eye is the "Re\Visioned" series that starts in July. An animated series of shorts all featuring Lara Croft by artists and writers well known in the animation field. The first three episodes are by Peter Chung, best known for Aeon Flux and a segment in the Animatrix (although his credentials really do go on and on). All the shorts will be available to view for free on this GameTap Lara Croft site. After the Lara Croft series is done, GameTap will apparently do more characters as part of this Re\Visioned series. Even if they stick with Eidos' characters it'd be cool to see Hitman and Kane and Lynch, but they're apparently going in a completely different direction.
The website also includes a bunch of extra content like clips of all the models who have "been" Lara Croft, conversations with developers, sneak peeks at Tomb Raider: Anniversary (which will be "free" to GameTap subscribers on the same day it launches in stores) and just a mess of other stuff. Definitely worth checking out for behind-the-scenes geekery and if you're looking to get a feel for the franchise in a nutshell.
Reader Comments (7)
Posted: May 18th 2007 8:53AM drewmg said
I just signed up for Gametap yesterday, and I was pretty impressed by what I saw. (The first month was 99 cents, so it was a pretty low-risk trial)
The older games don't do much for me. The emulation was kind of shaky (weird skips and pauses in the framerate in sprite based games) but the newer games, tooled to run on modern machines is really neat. I like that I can play old Windows and DOS games without having to worry about reconfiguring my computer. Very handy. A nice selection of at least somewhat modern PC games (Prince of Persia, et al) helps quite a bit.
All in all, not a waste of money by any stretch of the imagination.
BTW - if any of you are GameTap subscribers, and managed to solve the framerate issue in 2D games, let me know how you did it.
The older games don't do much for me. The emulation was kind of shaky (weird skips and pauses in the framerate in sprite based games) but the newer games, tooled to run on modern machines is really neat. I like that I can play old Windows and DOS games without having to worry about reconfiguring my computer. Very handy. A nice selection of at least somewhat modern PC games (Prince of Persia, et al) helps quite a bit.
All in all, not a waste of money by any stretch of the imagination.
BTW - if any of you are GameTap subscribers, and managed to solve the framerate issue in 2D games, let me know how you did it.
Posted: May 18th 2007 11:34AM vid said
I've been using GameTap since August and have never had any trouble with the framerate of any of the older games. Might be something hardware specific? Just an issue between your video card and GameTap maybe?
Posted: May 18th 2007 12:57PM (Unverified) said
Chung Lara = Wicked Cool
Posted: May 18th 2007 12:59PM (Unverified) said
Just watched the first documentary episode on the gametap site. Super cool The model stuff looks like it will be the best.
Posted: May 18th 2007 3:42PM Otimus said
Good ol' Peter "Will animate his crappy crap for anyone" Chung. Seriously, he will!
Posted: May 18th 2007 4:39PM (Unverified) said
God, I love Rhona Mitra!
Posted: May 27th 2007 7:12PM (Unverified) said
#1 Whenever I have frame rate problems, it is almost always some other computer process hogging the CPU or accessing the hard drive. The virus scanning and Internet Explorer programs are usually responsible. I usually shut everything else down when playing Gametap. My computer is about 5 years old.
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