Phantasm on the Vectrex; wtf?!

Who says a game has to be from a commercial company to be good? For those with an anti-corporate leaning, there's nothing like a game from an amateur programmer, especially long after the system has been supported.

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Phantasm on the Vectrex; wtf?!

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For those who don't know, the original Phantasm movie was a bit of a cheesy, low budget sci-fi/horror flick, involving an older grave-robbing guy (only known as "The Tall Man") that stole corpses to make into midget beings and ship them off to another planet...for some reason or other. Oh, and there were these balls that would fly around and spikes would pop out of them and embed themselves into people and usually kill them; whee.

It took several years before the much-improved sequel came out, with a much bigger budget (although still costing less than $10 million), a much better look and with The Tall Man gaining power, as he was emptying out entire towns' graveyards by then. This is usually the favorite movie of most "phans" of the series, save for Mike not being played by the original actor, but he would return for 3 and 4.

3 was just released in Spain and to the home market everywhere else, going mostly the comedy route and thinking it would be cool to have a little kid in it again (Mike was very young in the original), but ended up being Home Alone meets Phantasm and not really working as Mike and Reggie kept with their pursuit of the Tall Man.

4 was also only a home release, and didn't seem like Phantasm at all, but upon giving it a second watch (as recommended), I thought it wasn't bad at all. It appeared the Tall Man had actually been around for many years previous (or maybe he's a time traveler? Who knows, no one really knows what the series is really about) and that he and Mike are somehow related.

Phantasm 5 has been delayed forever and has had rewrites and all; the guy who wrote Pulp Fiction with Tarantino had a great idea of it being set in the future where the Tall Man had destroyed almost the entire country. Bruce Campbell was supposed to be the "badass Marine" to stop him. But then after years of delays (creator Don C. [however that last name's spelled] would pitch the idea to studios and they wouldn't offer any funding) this plot was abandoned and I don't know what this incarnation is supposed to be about now, due to quitting the Phantasm forums years ago, so I don't know what the current story of 5 is supposed to be. There's supposed to be a remake of the original being done so who knows, it could reignite the series once more.

So now, you've got this news from Vectrex homebrewer Fury Unlimited announced this week...

George P. (forget what is last name is exactly; Pelonois?) of Fury Unlimited has made several original games, which makes this Phantasm offering very puzzling indeed. There are two ways to look at it, of course, as to it being fake or real. Of course with April Fools being the other day that would explain it; I don't know if this was up on April 1st (I only ran across this this morning), which that would make sense, but then the B*nq homebrew for the Atari 7800 started off appearing as supposedly an April Fool's joke, but then it ended up being legit. If it's a hoax then George just hasn't taken it down yet, obviously.

But then, if this were to be real, why would it be Phantasm? It seems pretty odd that George would make a new game based on something as obscure as Phantasm (why not Gilligan's Island or something?). Perhaps he became familiar with the Atari 2600 homebrew of Phantasm a while back and figured he could do something cool with it, since the Vectrex can handle 3-D way better than any other home system out there from back then could. Because rather than expecting silly vector images of the Tall Man, Mike, Jody and/or Reggie and other company, I would imagine 3-D renditions of The Ball hitting the screen, as you can see YouTube videos of a similar animation with 3D Sector-X and you just reverse the mine laying ship of Mine Storm and wha-la, there you go, it's pretty doable.

Or maybe George only just now discovered Phantasm, just like how I only just now discovered numbers radio stations in the last few weeks, yet they have been around for nearly 100 years! But then, most people in general don't know about those.

I think the latter would explain it, since he suddenly decided he could do something with the concept and is currently bashing out this idea, since his 3D Vec Trek was originally scheduled for a Christmas release, but now it's been pushed back to 2011, with Phantasm now being listed as the Christmas release instead.

So there you go; weird, eh?
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Re: Phantasm on the Vectrex; wtf?!

Post by Rob »

I'm down for it! Hopefully it will be better than the 2600 version. Have you seen the Evil Dead 2 for the 2600 yet? Talk about obscure! That one's actually fun to play though, it's a hack of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

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Re: Phantasm on the Vectrex; wtf?!

Post by Darryl B. »

Nope, haven't played it. Or Halloween.

I suspect that this doesn't have anything to do with the 2600 version at all, if it's legit in the first place. The whole thing's odd though, but then I usually don't have any problems with new Vectrex homebrews anyway :)
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