Man the video game industry is really taking a hit lately. First Midway starts closing down multiple development studios, now Free Radical has completely shut down. For those of you not familiar with Free Radical, the studio consisted of a team of developers that worked for Rare and created Goldeneye 64 and Perfect Dark 64. They created my favorite first person shooter series of all time and that was TimeSplitters. Combining fast action and over the top weapons and characters, it brought back the great times of sitting around my Nintendo 64 playing Goldeneye all night with my friends. So it is sad to hear that this studio closed, considering they were working on TimeSplitters 4 and a rumored Star Wars Battlefront game for LucasArts. So we bid you a fond farewell Free Radical, you supplied me and others with fantastic games. Hopefully these guys will find work at another studio and maybe we will still see the release of TimeSplitters 4.

Today Lucasarts may not be putting out their best efforts when it comes to video games, but 10+ years ago pretty much every PC title they put out was fantastic. From Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle to their early Star Wars games like Tie Fighter; Lucasarts has been a “force” to be reckoned with since the beginning. And coming soon (no release date yet) will be a coffee table book reviewing the history of the company. The book is available for pre-order at Amazon for $60. Could be an interesting read.

Through an official announcement from Lucasarts this morning, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will have a single level demo available this thursday (8/21) on PSN and XBLA.  This is one of the most anticiapted games for me and many others this year and I am quite excited for this demo.  The Apprentice on Soul Calibur 4 is fantastic and I can’t wait to see what he can do in this game.

This news has been out there for a while, but I thought I’d share the fantastic news with all my new fans out there.  Anyway Sam and Max Season 1 is coming to the Wii this fall.  Season 1 will consist of the first 6 episodes from Telltales episodic/adventure game.  If you haven’t played the old Sam and Max PC game from 13 or so years ago, I recommend giving this one a shot when it comes out.  It plays just like the old Lucasarts point and click adventures like Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Maniac Mansion.

And if you aren’t into the video game aspect, try to track down the Sam and Max comics by Steve Purcell, I found trades recently at a local library.

Screenshot courtesy of destructoid.com