Majesco Entertainment is the latest company to get in on the Good Old Games action. What does it mean for us? Surprisingly good things.

Available now completely free of DRM are Psychonauts ($9.99) and Advent Rising ($5.99). Alongside BloodRayne and BloodRayne 2, more Majesco games will be appearing on GOG in the near future.

Anthony's Games that time forgot article on Advent Rising (excuse the formatting; old post is old) always made me want to play the game, but as usual, I never got around to it. The chance to do so for six bucks without leaving the house? Sounds easy enough.

[Image: CytosisX]

Tim Schafer. Tim f**king Schafer.

He's a man that most of us know. One of the writers behind The Secret of Monkey Island, and the man behind Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and Brütal Legend, Schafer has remained on the cutting edge of game narrative and humor. It's with good reason that at the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards, Jack Black decided to chant Schafer's name for a solid two minutes: it's one of the biggest in the industry.

That's why I was so excited when I was faced with this opportunity: a one-on-one interview with the man himself. How could I say no? So I went to the event, played some Brütal Legend, ate some sandwiches, and settled down with the guy.

What did we talk about? Well, you probably already know about stuff like the game's eight-player multiplayer, his commentary on Monkey Island, and the issue of creativity, but I'll let you know: those quotes don't do it justice. We talked about lots of things, from the state of the industry to how things have changed in 20 years. In an industry swathed with secrets and hush-hush/wink-wink attitudes, to talk with someone like Tim Schafer with candor and fun was refreshing. You'll definitely want to take a look at it for yourselves.

Hit the jump for the full interview with Tim Schafer.

If anybody knows a thing or two about good games selling poorly, it's Double Fine's Tim Schafer. His last game, Psychonauts, was notorious for a disappointing sales performance despite widespread critical acclaim, but unlike the gamers who rage at such injustice, Schafer is taking it in his stride, not too worried at all.

"Fans worry too much about sales, to tell you the truth," explains the designer, swallowing another chill pill. "As long as you make a cool game, publishers want to talk to you… [They say,] 'We liked Psychonauts, and we think we could have sold it better."

Backed by Jack Black, Brutal Legend looks to have a lot more mainstream potential than Psychonauts ever did, and Schafer is aware of that. He also swears that Brutal Legend's mainstream appeal was a creative decision, not influenced by marketing. Double Fine works to make each game radically different from the last, which is this one, in Schafer's words, "is a game that natually has more commercial hooks, like hot babes and Jack Black."

Brutal Legend is looking to be this year's hot commodity among the hardcore elite, and we're all looking forward to it here at Destructoid. Hopefully it sells far better than Psychonauts did, even if Schafer isn't losing sleep over it.

We are possibly just falling into a ploy by Double Fine to get some attention, but we figure Double Fine deserves it. A few days ago, the studio launched a Psychonauts themed Web site, The Psychopedia, and today we've spotted a new post that talks about Psychonauts 2.

Of course, there is no Psychonauts 2 ... at least, not officially. After the first game suffered disappointing sales in the face of critical acclaim, it was pretty certain that we'd never see another. In fact, even The Psychopedia calls it "The Unicorn of Gaming." So why is there a page on it, and why is there even a Psychopedia in the first place after all this time? 

Is this all gearing up to the fabled sequel, or is Double Fine simply yanking our chain? At least the developer has an outline of what we could expect in a follow up: "After doing Psychic stuff, he fights things, finds things, goes into things, goes out of things, eats things, drinks things, learns things, knows things, rescues things, and saves things."

The page then laments the inability to be more descriptive. We join it in lamentation, before being arseholes and telling everyone that the page spelled "protagonist" wrong.

[Thanks, Dexter]

While we'd love for Double Fine to be quietly working on a sequel to Psychonauts, that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon. But even having their hands full with Brutal Legend, Psychonauts is not forgotten. 

"Psycho-pedia," an online compendium of all things Psychonauts related has launched in a pre-release phase over at Double Fine's official Web site. It looks like it will be home to all things Psychonauts related, including game information, fan artwork, and more. It's a work in progress, but there's already some great stuff there, including a bunch of killer concept art. 

In case you're wondering, this is what Double Fine was teasing back in October when everyone jumped to "sequel" conclusions. No, this isn't quite what we had in mind, but it'll do while we wait. We are waiting, right?

[Thanks, Shaun!]

Tim Schafer, in a conversation with Playboy.com -- the Internet's answer to boring, highbrow pornography -- revealed that Grim Fandango and Psychonauts, while excellent games, will not be getting sequels. Here's a quote:

"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."

I can't say I'm shocked as Psychonauts sold a total of four copies (Linde sleeps with one under his pillow), and Grim Fandango's contributions to the modern consciousness have largely been adopted and co-opted by Tim Burton; should a Grim Fandango sequel ever appear, obese fourteen year old girls would waste years of their increasingly depressing lives searching for the Jack Skellington cameo. I wouldn't blame the man for not wanting to be responsible for furthering the societal decay best left to artists more familiar with manscara and the bizarre quirk of evolution that makes unattractive people attractive to other unattractive people.

Still, it's a shame we won't see more of these strikingly original settings. Fan fiction can only do so much, and it all invariably degrades into disgusting descriptions of how well Manny's posthumous skull lends itself to "ocular coupling".

*shudder*

[Via G|L] 

What, you expected a new Psychonauts game? Pffft. That game sold, what, four copies? So what if it was really, really good. That story we (and everyone else on the planet) ran earlier about a mysterious Psychonauts "Coming Soon!" teaser images was just that -- a tease. 

Double Fine's Tim Schafer tells 1UP it was all a big misunderstanding:

"It's crazy, isn't it? We just put that in there as a placeholder for the Psychonauts page we're eventually going to have. But we made it dark and people freaked out," he told us. "While I'm sorry people got their hopes up, I'm happy that people got excited about it. Who knows? Maybe some clever publisher will see how much excitement that dark little banner generated, and send us a few million dollars to make a new Psychonauts game! :)"

Well what did you expect, posting a teaser image with the original Psychonauts logo on your Web site? Oh yeah! A page about Psychonauts! What were we thinking, all hopeful for a sequel to a great game? Silly us.

Looks like we just have the brutality of Brutal Legend to look forward to, and with all of that blood and metal, that's good enough for us. For now.

It has been hailed as a modern cult classic and like those that came before it, many lamented its lack of sales and poor marketing. Hope for a new Psychonauts may have seemed dim, but it's been served a little more ignition today, thanks to developer Double Fine and its recently posted teaser image (above).

Right now, nobody exactly knows what's "coming soon," but it could be anything from a Wii port to an entirely new game. It could also be nothing at all, and gamers' heartstrings are being cruelly pulled. Whatever it portends, there's no denying that eager fans everywhere will soil their pants on command for new Psychonauts news.

What do you think Tim Schafer's playing at? Is an entirely new Psychonauts on the way? Is it heading to the Wii or DS? Get those overactive brains working and let us know your theories. 

[Update: From Mr. Schafer himself: “Man, who knew how much excitement a little darkness could bring? The truth is we are just putting together a new page about 'The Excellent Game Psychonauts.' We're not announcing any new games or anything. Sorry if we confused anybody! We lightened up the image to hopefully make things clearer.”]

[Via CVG]

This NeoGAF thread contains the below image of the latest cover of Game Informer magazine who apparently picked up the exclusive rights to announce Tim Schafer's Axes & Axes epic Brütal Legend. Since I can neither read nor have a copy of the magazine, what you see in that image is the entirety of our knowledge on the subject, but what's there tells at least an epic small paragraph of love, betrayal and whatever other wacky concepts Tim wants to jam into this one.

You might remember Mr. Schafer from the extremely overlooked Psychonauts, a title defined as much by its stunning visuals and creative gameplay as it was by the fact that none of you ever played it or have any idea what I'm talking about.

Thankfully, with Tim at the helm, you can be pretty sure the title will be experimental, original and as bizarre as a night at the fair with Salvador Dali's reanimated corpse. Plus, that dude totally has a guitar behind his back. Double points if Freebird is included as unlockable content.