This Video Game Industry Is So Exhausting Some Times, and Other News

Even though video games peaked in 2004 there’s still video game news happening, so let’s check, check, check, check it out.

Tony Hawk is back – Literally!

Do you love the soundtrack to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater? Do you love skateboarding or at least pretending to skateboard on a video game console? Do you love going outside and doing things? Then boy howdy do I have good news for you.

To celebrate 25 years of Tony Hawk’s pro Skater, the Fortitude Music Hall will have two sessions on January 27, one all-ages and one for those of us who were around when the first game came out, that will feature bands playing music from the game, an area set aside with consoles for you to play the games, a giant vert ramp and none other than Tony Hawk himself!

Bodyjar will be there at the 18+ gig playing their contribution to the classic game soundtrack, and Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of a Tony Hawk Cover Band) will be playing all the classics in addition to acts like Alex Lahey and Teenage Joans. Skate legends Lizzie Armanto, Elliot Sloan and Reese Nelson join Tony Hawk himself and other pro skaters to show off their skills. It’s gonna be totally late ‘90s-riffic.

Find out more info at thps25.com.au

South park calls out Baldur’s Gate

The latest South Park special made a snide joke about Baldur’s Gate 3’s cross-platform saves not working, prompting developer Larian to respond publicly on social media.

In the show, the kids of South Park travel to an alternate universe where they’re in different bodies. Alternate reality Cartman complains about how they’d already sunk 50 hours in to Baldur’s Gate 3 and wanted to know if save games could cross between multiple universes. The reply from Stan jokes that cross saves don’t even work between PCs and PlayStation 5s.

In reply, Larian posted that while cross-multiversial barriers are beyond their technological abilities, cross-saves between PC and PS5 in this dimension do indeed work. So there you go folks, next time you want to complain about something in a game not working right for you, just start up a multi-million dollar entertainment franchise and use it to complain directly to the developers.

Atari Keep Buying History

Long-time video game publishers and my #1 enemy on Earth Atari keep buying up companies. After a string of acquisitions including the AtariAge website, video game history database Mobygames and the back catalogues of classic computer game developers Accolade and Microprose, they just announced the acquisition of Digital Eclipse. They’re widely known as the premier software house that deals in remastering classic games for modern systems, and recently released The History of Karateka, Teenage Mustant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection and Atari 50.

The $20 million US Dollar Deal means two things – one, Atari now has a top-tier studio that can handle their preservation and re-release efforts, and two, someone’s given Atari 20 million dollars and I want to know who it was. Confess your sins, heathens! Atari does not show pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop until it buys everyone. Who’s next?!

More layoffs for everyone!

Isn’t the video game industry great? As a reward for all their hard work on Destiny 2, Bungie this week announced a massive slew of layoffs in the company, kicking an estimated 8% of the company to the kerb. Apparently it’s because a line didn’t go up in some spreadsheet, or didn’t go up enough, it’s hard to make clear from the HR-filtered press statements issued by Bungie, but the long and short of it is that not enough people are playing Destiny 2 these days. The people who Sony gave 3.6 Billion US Dollars to for buying Bungie are doing fine though, so that’s all that really matters right?

And now for the latest game releases!

Today sees the release of:
RoboCop: Rogue City PC / PS5 / Xbox Series
Thirsty Suitors on PC PS5 PS4 Xbox Series, Xbox One and Switch

Tomorrow is all about
WarioWare: Move It! On Switch
Boulder Dash Junior 8 ½ for the Commodore 64