The jury is still out on the PlayStation's long-term health and ultimate legacy, but at the very least, the immediate future of the handheld keeps looking brighter and brighter.
Destuctoid reports that everyone's psychedelic game maker (who also has an affinity for llamas), Jeff Minter, is doing something for the Vita. And not just any game, but the one game everyone wants: an update to Tempest 2000.
And, it would also appear that it's yet another sign of how aggressive Sony has become in terms of courting indie talent:
"… We are happy to announce that we have just begun work on a new game for the Playstation Vita. I’m very grateful to Shahid Ahmad at Sony for the opportunity; he’s a man on a mission to bring a ton of indie talent to the Vita and we’re fortunate enough to have been invited to the party…
19 years ago saw the release of one of the best games Llamasoft ever made, a game which came to be recognised [sic] as one of the best games on an entire system – Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar. I’ve often thought that one day I would like to revisit that game and do some kind of an updated version on modern hardware."
Minter goes on to explain that there have been stabs at updating his most beloved creation, including Tempest 3000 for the NUON, which was good for it was, especially given the hardware, yet still missed the mark.
And then you had Space Giraffe for the Xbox 360, which was not everyone’s cup of tea:
“For those players that got what we were trying to do, SG could be an almost transcendental experience, and those people who love it REALLY love it. In that I still feel that we succeeded admirably. But I also have to admit that the game was divisive; some people didn’t like the complete immersion in eyeball-searing psychedelia and the gameplay modifications that made it not quite the pure shooty T2K upgrade that the initial look of the game seemed to promise."
When first approached to develop for the Vita, Minter considered some of the other games he's done since, and updating those, but in the end, he decided upon TxK…
"We’re going to base it on the essence of the original T2K. It’ll be the pure, straightforward shooter that maybe you hoped for when you first saw Space Giraffe. We’re not going to overload you with ultra psychedelia, but we will make it fluid and colourful and awesome-looking on the Vita’s delicious, vibrant OLED screen. We’re going to give you a perfect treat for your eyes, ears and thumbs with a modern extrapolation of one of the best shooters ever made on hardware that’s just perfectly suited for it, and in a way that retains the purity of the original design."
To this day, some (at least those who have played it) content that Tempest 2000 is one of the best, pure video game experiences, so this is simply phenomenal news. No release timeframe was given, though Minter's output is usually on the speedy side, so it should be soon.
