grim fandango

Tim Shafer Publishes Original Grim Fandango Design Doc

11:30AM Michael McWhertor | We’re a decade on from the undisputed greatest year in video gaming, a year in which we saw the release of the Tim Schafer designed Grim Fandango just one of 1998’s many, many highlights. Schafer, perhaps feeling the sting of nostalgia of the release of Grim Fandango, has graciously released the classic adventure game’s original design document, submitted to LucasArts for in 1996. More »

Tim Schafer Prefers New Games To Sequels (We’d Like Both, Thanks)

10:20PM Luke Plunkett | The internet got a little excited a while back over Psychonauts. Can you blame us? It’s like saying Eddie didn’t die, and the Cruisers are reforming for a world tour. The world is also holding its collective breath for more Full Throttle, more Day of the Tentacle, more Grim Fandango…shit, more of anything Schafer’s done. Thing is, the guy prefers new stuff. He even says so in an interview with Playboy. Playboy: Does that mean we’re not going to see a Grim Fandango 8? Schafer: I’ve toyed with that because I love those characters and that world. I would love to go back and spend time with the characters from any game I’ve worked on, and I would love to make a sequel to any of them. But I also want to make something new. If there were five of me I might make sequels, but there’s always some new idea I want to explore. Playboy: What if you had the opportunity to farm out a sequel — not farm out in a negative sense, but… Schafer: Phone it in? Squeeze it out? Playboy: If you could give the reins to someone you trusted to execute a Psychonauts sequel, where you had basic veto power and could do general shaping… Schafer: It just all depends on the person. If it was a team that I knew and trusted then, yeah, that would be great. The team that made Monkey Island 3 was not under our control at all. They were really clever, smart guys and they wrote really great dialogue so in that case it worked out great. You know, the sad thing is, dude’s got a point. I can already picture Christmas 2010, we’re all a little older, a little balder, and we’re sitting around complaining about how badly we want a Brutal Legend sequel, and Schafer’s all “nope, time for something new”, and the cycle just repeats itself until we’re all dead/have lost interest. Write the Lightning [Playboy, via Game|Life] More »