While working on the recent Special Edition of the game, Lucasarts’ Adam Bormann says he had to go back into the code for the original Monkey Island. And while in there, poking around for puzzle AI, he found a ton of content left in the game by its developers, including Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer.

Seems every time the original developers made a change to a puzzle or a piece of dialogue, they simply left the old stuff in the code. So Lucasarts have yanked it all out and posted it. Some of it’s all-new content, others added lines to existing chit-chats, but for fans of the series it’s all good reading.

Secret of Monkey Island – The Deleted & Extended Scenes [Lucasarts]

It’s not that Schafer’s made so many games that he has to be on every list (like the Final Fantasy games). It’s just that his games are so diverse and bizarre that they usually stand out enough to make somebody’s list of “Gaming’s Greatest/Worst [Insert Noun Here]“. This week, he makes GamesRadar’s list of “18 awesome games that died at retail” not once, but twice!

Psychonauts to me is the obligatory Schafer game everyone includes on their list. But thankfully Grim Fandango made the cut this time. Of all Schafer’s works, it’s still my favourite so far.

It’ll be interesting to see whether or not Brütal Legend qualifies as a great game that dies at retail. Currently, it’s got a Metacritic score of 84, but the jury’s still out on how well it’s selling…

18 awesome games that died at retail [GamesRadar]

It is a historical fact that it began its life as an RTS game, inspired by Herzog Zwei. But then as we worked on it we simplified it, and simplified it, and focused it more and more on the player avatar and the combat. Every time we focused the gameplay on the action, it became more fun. The end result is something much more action-oriented, and I think, totally unique. If you try to play the stage battles in Brütal Legend as an RTS game then you will lose. First you will get mad, then you will scream, and then you will lose. But if you are open to a new kind of action experience, you will have a blast.

Read the full letter, also sent to Kotaku, on the jump.

First, a note on the differences: In an RTS game you float high above the action, making one split-second strategic decision after another. You often command individual units to position them based on their heath and context. In Brütal Legend, you make strategic choices once in a while, but then you jump into the battle and slug it out in person. You can fly, but it’s mostly for quick scouting and transportation. You will spend a few seconds every once in a while popping into a menu to build troops or pick a guitar solo, but then you should be right back in the action. To play the game most effectively you need to be on the ground with your army most of the time, mixing it up with your axe, and your guitar, but most of all — using your Double Team attacks.

Double Team attacks are critical to your success in Stage Battles. Every friendly unit in your army has a move that they can only perform in conjunction with the player character. These moves are extremely varied, extremely powerful, and extremely fun to perform. Sometimes you might simply gain control of that unit’s weapon—for instance, when a Razor Girl jumps up on your shoulders—but when you do so you increase its damage significantly. Other units, like the Bride, seem to be just passive, debuffing units most of the time (the Bride slows down enemy units) but when you Double Team with her she has a devastating lighting attack. More complicated Double Teams include the Frightwig, who Ophelia can pick up and throw onto an enemy unit. The Frightwig then wraps itself around the enemy’s head and causes the victim to join Ophelia’s side in the battle. (You can even use this to commandeer the enemy’s Rock Crusher!) The Organist is another passive unit whose Double Team attack allows you to gain direct player control over an enemy unit, giving you command over whatever attacks they normally have.

There are important strategic choices to make in Stage Battles. Should I spend my fans to upgrade my stage and gain access to more powerful units, or should I spend it now on cheap infantry? Which fan geysers should I fight for and which should I concede? What is the right time to block my enemies troop production with a Rock Block solo? Would anti-infantry units be better against the current enemy army, or should I switch to anti-vehicle? But these strategic decisions only take a second, and then you should get right back in the action. You should never be up in the air or away from the battle for too long.

Some people find it hard to split up the army and give individual orders to individual troops. This is kinda true, mostly because you shouldn’t be doing it! That’s how you play an RTS game, not how you should play Brütal Legend. True, there are times where you might want to split your army, but it’s not common. I play complete Stage Battles most of the time without issuing a single Individual order. Your army is most effective when it’s together. The AI automatically groups your warriors into battle formations where the troops support each other. Many of the units buff or heal each other. When they are together they can all be enhanced with a single Battle Cry (or other buffing) solo. And when they are all together and you are in the middle of them, that is when you have the greatest number of options for Double Team attacks.

So to summarise my advice for playing Brütal Legend Stage Battles:
Get in the centre of the action!
Use Double Team attacks!
Don’t stay in the air too long!
Use Double Team attacks!!
For the most part, keep your army together!
Use Double Team attacks!!!
Don’t think of it as an RTS game!

If you have tried the Stage Battles before reading these tips, and felt overwhelmed by the controls, or frustrated with the lack of detailed troop controls, I’m hoping you will be able to take this info and go back into the fray and be much more successful. We know that the Stage Battles are tons of fun for most players — and for people who are open to new kinds of action gameplay experiences, they are in fact the core of what makes Brütal Legend a fun game experience and unlike any other. I’ll see you online!

-TimOfLegend (that’s my name on both XBL and PSN. Play against me and you’ll get an achievement!)

P.S. Here are some more tips from our Lead Designer, Erik Robson:

General Tips
*Early in the game, low-level troops are vulnerable to enemy Avatar harassment; make sure you watch over them and protect them if necessary.
*USE YOUR DOUBLE TEAMS!
*Don’t play timidly. The game is about projecting power and taking control of territory. If you try to play defensively and stay in or near your base, you’ll be at a resource disadvantage.
*If you set the beacon on a building, your dudes will attack the building until it’s destroyed, ignoring any incoming attacks.
*The right solo played at the right time can be devastating – don’t forget you have those tools at your disposal!

Ironheade Tips
*Ironheade is extremely mobile — use this to your advantage.
*Razor Girls’ Double Team is great for dealing with early-game Avatar harassment.
*Remember that you can upgrade your level 1 troops once your stage hits level 3. If you’ve spent the game massing up those small infantry, an upgrade can really pay off.

Drowning Doom Tips
*Gravediggers, while more numerous, have lower health than other basic melee troops. They may need extra support in the early game.
*Use your debuffers (Bride, Organ, and Dirgible). They’re powerful, and the Bride and Organ stack their debilitating effects.
*Bride’s Double Team is great for dealing with early-game Avatar harassment.
*Remember that you can upgrade your level 1 troops once your stage hits level 3. If you’ve spent the game massing up those small infantry, an upgrade can really pay off.

Tainted Coil Tips
*Your hierarchy units (Nuns, Warfather and Overblessers) are extremely vulnerable while alone. They’re much safer when they’re surrounded by minions, because they get a small stacking healing bonus from each nearby minion.
*Punishing Parties’ Double Team is good for dealing with early-game Avatar harassment.
*Remember your Superior and Divine troops — for example, if you build a Warfather, he can then build a Superior Nun, which in turn can produce Superior Soul Kissers and Punishing Parties. Superior and Divine squads are more powerful than the basic troops, but cost the same!

Brutal Legend designer Tim Schafer appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night.

This is the clip of his appearance. Watch it. Do it!

Daily Highlights Oct 09 [Late Night]

We don’t know much about the content of the appearance, other than our expectations: lots of Brutal Legend talk, some questions about Jack Black’s involvement in the game, and Schafer likely having better comedic timing than Fallon. What we don’t expect to see is Schafer or Fallon in a red jumpsuit.

For those about to justify, we salute you. Alex Charlow of EA, we’ll give you 30 seconds, go!

Schafer will be the second guest on the October 2 show, appearing sans Jack Black, just like was asked, Gavin Purcell says.

Purcell says he will be talking about the game and “other stuff” and that the show will get to show off to the rest of the non-gamer world just how awesome Schafer is.

In July, shortly after interviewing Fallon, Kotaku posted a short list of video gaming guests and ideas we wanted to see take centre stage on the show. At the number one spot was Schafer, who we pointed out didn’t really need Jack Black at his side to shine.

Purcell later told Kotaku that the show was already working on a few of the ideas we had listed.

One word of warning Fallon: Don’t run late for Schafer’s appearance, he may end up crying in the rain.

At a Friday evening panel here at PAX in Seattle called Spike Sneak Peeks, Game Trailers TV host Geoff Keighley flexed his exclusive-bearing muscles and got developers Tim Schafer and Amy Hennig to show off new parts of their major October games.

Double Fine chief Tim Schafer took the main PAX stage to chat with Keighley and unveil the opening cut-scene for the demo of his team’s game Brutal Legend. The clip showed the game’s protagonist, Eddie Riggs, in modern day, miserably fulfilling his duties as the roadie for the band Cabbage Boy. The group’s lead singer, a man who wears a Phantom of the Opera half-mask and can’t stop texting, tried to flatter a brooding Riggs, complimenting the Brutal Legend hero for his roadie skills.It didn’t work. After all the lead singer’s band stank. The opening metal chords of Cabbage Boy’s set — which perked Riggs up just a bit – were followed by the band’s DJ scratching a record and the least-metal heavy metal song I’ve heard in some time.

“I can fix everything except that,” Riggs said. “Metal is dead.”

As with the rest of what’s been shown for Brutual Legend, the voice-acting was strong and the comedic timing perfect. Schafer wanted the scene to get laughs and it did. It also did a fine job of establishing Riggs’ misery in the present and his desire to get to older, more Metal times.

There were some other jokes — one of them interactive — but it’s seldom funny to re-write someone’s punchlines.

Amy Hennig, the creative director at Uncharted 2 development studio Naughty Dog, followed Schafer. She used her time on Keighley’s panel to talk about wrapping up her game as it nears its mid-October release. Hennig assured the audience that the game’s single-player was not being compromised by the addition of multiplayer. She also described the game’s graphical upgrade from its PlayStation 3 predecessor as the equivalent of a console generational leap.

The thunder of Hennig’s portion of the evening was the gameplay clip she showed of a new Uncharted 2 level. She set the clip up, saying it occurred halfway through the game and realised a goal of her team’s: Enabling gameplay on moving objects. Drake would start at the back of a train and try to get to someone he wants to rescue in the front. Yes, Hennig acknowledged, there have been plenty of train levels in games. But this one would not just put you on a static train that has a background zipping past you, she said. Uncharted 2’s train level would feature a freight train that is fully-modeled, takes turns, has its separate cars and supports all of the climbing and shooting gameplay available to player.

What she showed in the recorded gameplay clip appeared to contain the dynamism and physical reality she promised. The level was set on a verdant mountainside with a lake resting beside train tracks. A freight train rumbled through. At the start of the clip, series hero Nathan Drake climbed onto the top of the back car and machine-gunned some enemies. He tried t advance but fell through the top of a boxcar. A helicopter, as they so often do in video games, swooped in for the assault. The following sequences had Drake jumping from car to car as helicopter rockets rocked the train. Enemy soldiers filed down the train and fired, as Drake cursed them. The train cars all seemed to behave as if they had their own weight, proving Hennig’s claims true. They seemed to rock as the battle rumbled them. Cars were detached or blown up. One was sent hurtling off its rails in a fiery tumble toward Drake. Camera angles kept switching as the battle proceeded in phases, but throughout the scene it looked like a player could enough control to scramble, cover or shoot.

The train reached a tunnel, the battle far from done, and the clip ended.

Keighley’s third guest, Valve writer Chet Faliszek, talked over a live gameplay demo of part of Left 4 Dead 2’s Dark Carnival campaign. The section he showed matched material I reported about from my visit to Valve earlier this week, but Keighley himself did command from the stage for me to write one bit from this part of the presentation: An audience member asked for an update on the Half-Life series. Faliszek dodged, saying the company prefers to discuss projects that are closer to being delivered. But, he teased, “The G-man is Gordon from the future and Alyx is Gordon’s brother.” Keighley spotted me in the front row and said I should put that “on the site.” Sure, Keighely, but we all know Chet was joking.

The Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 sneak peeks, as different as they were, showed in equally convincing ways that two of October’s biggest video games are coming together well. There was visual polish and precise timing to both, more good signs that these games are in good shape.

Are video games creatively narrow, or rich? Epic Games’ Cliff Bleszinski calls this “the most loaded question I’ve been asked in five years.”

Amid much discussion on whether games will one day be perceived as relevant art, one thing’s clear –it’s on today’s leading creators to break the cycle of sameness. What do games need to truly diversify?

If many of us gamers had our way, we’d play games and little else. For others, as much as we prize our favourite pastime, we’ve often lamented the same-ness of the experiences on offer – often, the biggest blockbusters are derivative of one another, cycling us through near-indistinguishable experiences again and again.

Industry veteran and Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis, most recently creator of quirky Wii Ware title Bonsai Barber, agrees that the thematic range of games isn’t very broad. “Pauline Kael famously criticised films as being only about violence and romance: ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang’,” he says of the great film critic. “Games are virtually all about violence, or at least conquest and dominance. So we can say games are all ‘Bang Bang, Bang Bang.’”

Raven Software’s Manveer Heir has firsthand experience with the “Bang Bang, Bang Bang” – and agrees with the general idea that a lack of creative range is constricting games.

“There are some outliers, but we continuously make the same games about the same things,” says Heir, who worked on this summer’s Wolfenstein sequel. “The only things that change are our mechanics. We regularly have white male generic space marine characters as protagonists. Our NPCs are often cookie cutter and stereotypical. We use the same backdrops of post-nuclear apocalypse or colonizing Mars, or crazy fantasy worlds.”

The Sameness Cycle

Among gamers, Double Fine president Tim Schafer has attained the sort of hero status reserved for the coolest kid in school thanks to his consistent originality. He has a theory on why this same-ness keeps happening.

“There is a cycle in game development,” he says. ” People making games usually make games that appeal to themselves, and choose from a narrow set of inspirations — Star Wars, Aliens, Blade Runner, Tolkien, World War II, super-hero comics, and a few more.

“Then, those games appeal to a certain set of fans, and some of those fans will eventually grow up to make games themselves, and those games end up looking like the previous generation, because they were made to please a similar bunch of people. That loop just repeats and stays the same size forever.”

“I think any medium that only looks to itself for inspiration is limiting its scope of possibility,” says writer Marianne Krawczyk, who counts the God of War franchise among her projects. “It’s been a mantra of mine for a while now that we need to look outside of games (and movies and TV, for that matter) and start letting other art forms and other kinds of experiences influence development.”

For example, Braid artist David Hellman drew from the art of French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne for the painterly style used in that game by . Although that decision came primarily from Hellman’s own tastes, he finds a parallel between Cézanne’s creative goals and those of the game: “Braid is about worlds of subjective perception and also about ideas and laws,” muses the artist. “Cézanne married impressionism’s transient play of colour and light with a powerful geometric order.”

“Games are very inspiring to me, but only for gameplay, not subject matter,” says Schafer. I will experience something awesome in a game, and I will think, ‘That was awesome.’ But then, I’ll think, ‘Why was that awesome?’ And try to deconstruct the experience down to its essence to find out why it works.”

Schafer says he got the idea for cult hit Grim Fandango from reading Mexican folk tales; Psychonauts was inspired by a class he took on dream psychology; Brütal Legend came from heavy metal album covers, and Full Throttle took its cue from something as simple as the story of his friend’s summer vacation.

“You never know where inspiration is going to come from,” says Schafer. “I think the secret is just to make sure you are exposed to a variety of inspiring influences all the time… I trekked around Nepal once, but that didn’t give me as many game ideas as just reading one book on Mexican folklore did.”

Risky Business

“Creative people need to look at all avenues of creative expression,” agrees Krawczyk, who says she’s fascinated by the Bigfoot legend, of all things. And one doesn’t even need to be an expert in their external hobbies and interests to draw inspiration from them – Krawczyk has had little success learning guitar, attempting surfing or trying to draw, but she keeps at it anyway.

“I allow myself to fail miserably, which opens up a kind of creative freedom that translates into the work I do care about,” she says. “If you are open to failure, at least in the beginning, you’ll take risks and eventually get something that is better than if you had played it safe.”

Risk-taking is a key element – Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello called Brütal Legend a “significant creative risk” — just before the publisher announced it’d be the one to rescue the title from its post Acti-Blizzard limbo. Fervent gamers now look forward to its breath of fresh air.

“We need more games that are willing to go out on a limb and try something new,” says Raven’s Heir. “And we need them to be smaller-budget games that are very successful at first, so that large companies will take the risks down the road.”

The Emerging Market

Trying innovative, smaller-budget titles with a creative bent is the tack that Zoonami’s Hollis has chosen. He’s been focused primarily on Bonsai Barber of late, but he’s also so humble that perhaps few gamers know that during his career, he was one of Rare’s earliest programmers and directed and produced not only critically-acclaimed Perfect Dark, but widely-beloved Goldeneye 007, a dorm room mainstay for a generation of gamers.

He says he’s often inspired by his own “failed” prototypes, but as for friendly plant-hairstyling Bonsai Barber’s influences: “Henri Rousseau, thematic influence from Magritte, a structural influence from Friends, a game design influence from Animal Crossing, and there is also something ideological within the game,” he says. When it comes to the industry’s influences, “I hope no one looks only at games!” says Hollis. “That is going to lead to stagnant creations. You can’t breathe the same air forever.”

And yet the pattern of the video game industry tells us otherwise. Derivative games sell, sequels are the watchword for the holidays, and the audience’s appetite for war campaigns and space marines seems never to wane. What’s wrong with more of the same, if that’s what people seem to want?

Power Fantasies Sell

Keeping to the familiar can cap games’ commercial potential. While core audiences may not mind the same-old, the gaming audience is growing, andthose narrow tropes aren’t appealing to anyone new. “You can see from the best-selling titles on the Wii that those games aren’t generally the ones that make huge headway into the market,” Heir points out. “Our narrow focus on male power fantasies is going to hurt us in the long run.”

Epic’s Gears of War has become the poster title for that much-maligned “male power fantasy.”. The original game and its sequel have moved more than 11 million units to date, numbers that challenge the assertion that musclemen chainsawing aliens in a sci-fi warzone is a concept with limited appeal.

As progenitor , Gears-head Cliff Bleszinski has become a polarising figure over the years among those who’d like to name the franchise—and Bleszinksi, by association—as simple pap for meatheads. His influences? “A childhood filled with Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, Inhumanoids, MASK, and mountains upon mountains of sugar cereal,” he says.

But Bleszinksi, too, describes non-traditional influences as playing a primary role in his work. “I believe it’s crucial for developers to maintain a competitive edge by playing the games that their peers create,” he says. “However, over the years I’ve found that real life experience can not only inspire the creative process, but also be a wonderful way to decompress from the stress of development.”

He “decompresses” through hobbies like jungle ATV rides and trying out zero gravity on parabolic plane flights. Bleszinski enjoys activities as energetic as the style of gameplay he favours in design, demonstrating that life experience drives developers’ work. “Pursuing new experiences and enjoying the art of fun can translate into understanding how to have a better sense of speed, momentum, adrenaline rushes, or overall satisfaction,” he explains. “You’re channeling that experience back into the sofa when you build a game.”

But Is It All Talk?

People like Krawczyk, Hollis, Hellman and Heir aren’t the only intelligent, creative professionals working in game development. Not every other developer takes their cues solely from shallow, limiting archetypes. And yet the epic games to which so many developers and publishers devote the largest share of their budgets make only occasional progress toward breaking the tiresome loop Schafer describes. ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock and Portal make strong arguments against shallowness and sameness—but how long are gamers going to milk those?

“I think we can use games to reflect society, hold a mirror up and show people how we are as a culture in a way other mediums can’t do,” says Heir. What, then, does a Wolfenstein re-up say about us as a culture – that we’ll never get tired of shooting Nazis?

Multitudes of annual trade events convene developers for discussion on meaningful narratives and immersive art, and yet creative people still do uncreative work. Developers bemoan male power fantasies and yet more games with “war”, “dragon” and “star” in the title, and yet they keep signing up to make them. The commercial nature of the games biz may constrain the risk inherent in breaking new ground, but that’s not a sufficient excuse—all art is commercial.

Consumer demand has the largest influence over the games that hit the market. So, if games are limited, it also suggests that the legions of fervent gamers, bloggers and enthusiast writers who devote endless words to their desire for culturally significant games are simply paying lip service to an ideal they won’t back up with their wallets. Either that, or this most vocal vertex is a segment of the market too small to matter.

The same games keep getting made largely because that’s all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it’s gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.

And even when games great and small take big risks on new ideas, many will still fail to rock the boat. But there’s a glimmer of hope: it only takes one to break the derivative loop, says Schafer. “If you throw a wild card into the cycle—like Grand Theft Auto did with urban crime—then that game reaches a new set of fans, previously unserved. Then some of them grow up to join the industry, and maybe expand it with their own wild card ideas.”

“So, if the games industry is going to keep growing, it has to pull in influences outside those currently explored in games,” he adds. “Life is very broad, and games so far have only sampled a narrow slice of it.”

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]