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¦ News ¦ Dreddcon 2004
Update 1
Things to come...
Leigh
Shepherd attended the "Things to come" section at this years Dreddcon.
Here's what he discovered...
Firstly, can I
recommend the look of Mongoose's forthcoming "Gangs of Mega-City One"
game? I had a go at the demonstration table and while my hardy gang of punks more
than met their match against the stalwart Judge Brunt, at least we took one Badge
out! Basically, it's a miniature skirmish game, which will come with a dozen plastic
punks in order for you to start up your own street gang and go out rumbling -
it seemed very fast moving and easy enough to pick up. As well as the punks, there
are already a set of Bob Naismith sculpted Judges available, plus plans for various
other Mega City denizens such as muties and fatties - I'm now picking through
my old Citadel figures in order to get me a few gang members ready for the November
release!
Onto the actual
talk, which was divided into three parts - Matt Smith gave us a run down of upcoming
thrills, while Jamie Boardman talked us through 2005's graphic novel releases
through to June. Finally, Jason Kingsley showed the teaser trailer for the Rogue
Trooper game. Unfortunately, Alan Barnes didn't appear to be present, so no real
clues as to where the Meg is going next year!
Coming soon
to 2000AD
Interestingly,
given the nostalgia bonanza underway in the progs at the moment, the only returning
series to be mentioned were Atavar promising "more alien weirdness"
(Abnett and Elson) and Nikolai Dante in "Agent of destruction" (Morrison
and Burns).
As for new stories,
Ian Edginton adds another genre to 2000AD's bow with "American Gothic",
a supernatural Western with some nice looking black & white art from Mike
Collins. Also upcoming is Leatherjack, by John Smith and Mark Buckingham (I think,
though Matt could have done with a microphone!) and looks to feature some kind
of bio-engineered mercenary. I'm sure I've heard the name Leatherjack before in
relation to John Smith, so it's possible this is a story years in the making!
Another story that was new to me is the provisionally titled "10 seconds",
which features Mark Harrison utilising a very different art style. It's about
one mans fight back against super-powered beings that appear on Earth and start
slaughtering the humans.
There seem to be
a whole batch of stories in development hell if you look at the previews on this
very site, but we had details of two such strips about to reach us. First up was
Breathing space, the murder Mystery set on Luna 1 by Rob Williams and with art
by Pete Doherty for the first part, with Lawrence Campbell and Lee Townshend completing
the second half.
Second City Blues,
the future sport strip by Kek-W and Warren Pleece appeared to be a strip commissioned
especially by Matt to bring back future sports to the prog. He was quite talkative
about this one, saying that he had been very specific about the kind of story
he had wanted, where the characters were more important than the sport. He sited
the Thunderball and Smokey photostrip from the 80s Eagle as a personal favourite
of his and an influence the new strip. Arriving in time for Prog 2005, we'll see
kids from the rough end of the city whose only out is Slamball, a game featuring
skateboards and an living alien ball!
Graphic novels
for 2005
Jamie Boardman
then went through a comprehensive list of the upcoming releases from both DC/Rebellion
(3 a month) and Rebellion's own range (1 a month). There's no other way to go
through this than to list them all, so here goes!
January
- ABC Warriors:
The Mek-nificent Seven - (The first ABC Warriors story from progs 119-139)
- Sinister Dexter:
Murder 101 - the second collection of Sin/Dex tales, weighing in at 160 pages
for £12.99
- Bad Company -
Basically all of the Bad Company stories up to and including the Krool Heart,
plus Simply, the one off Steve dillon strip. This is a whopping 256 pages for
£13.99
- The Rebellion
hardback for January is Shakara, featuring a new Henry Flint cover, a sketchbook
and covers gallery.
February
- Rogue Trooper:
Future War - a complete collection of the early Rogue strips (as opposed to the
Titan volume that omitted some tales). This is £9.99 for 160 pages
- Devlin Waugh -
a huge 264 page collection of pretty much all the Devlin Waugh tales up to present,
and including the unseen 7 pages of Red Tide that Jock completed before Colin
MacNeil took over, priced at £15.99
- Skizz - the Alan
Moore tale for £7.99
- The Rebellion
book will be Carver Hale, retailing at £8.99.
March
- Dredd vs Death
: The usual Bolland Dredds
- Nikolai Dante:
The Great Game - 200 pages for Dante tales for £13.99
- Slaine: as with
the Rogue Trooper book, this will finally see the reprinting of all the Slaine
stories in order.
- The Rebellion
book will be Lobster Random.
April
- Strontium Dog:
The Early Cases - sadly not the Starlord strips, this edition will feature all
the strontium Dog stories from the Galaxy Killers through to the Schicklegruber
Grab - 168 pages for £11.99
- Robohunter: Day
of the Droids
- The Rebellion
book will be Fiends of the Eastern Front.
May
- ABC Warriors:
The Black Hole
- Sinister Dexter:
Slay per View - another 240 pages of Sin Dex
- Anderson, Psi
- this will collect all Anderson tales form the Four Dark Judges through to Hour
of the Wolf
- Leviathan is Rebellion's
book for May.
June
- Rogue Trooper:
Fort Neuro
- Ballad of Halo
Jones
- The complete Indigo
Prime - basically collecting Killing Time along with all the other Indigo Prime
one offs, spin offs and short stories.
- Rebellion's book
for June is Bek and Kawl, featuring all the stories up to Eevil.com.
Rogue Trooper
- the video game
Then, Jason Kingsley
introduced the teaser trailer for the Rogue Trooper game. Unfortunately the publishers
have a moratorium on showing in-game footage, but the trailer was produced using
the game engine (the Asura engine previously seen on Dredd vs Death). We see a
couple of decapitators patrolling the trenches around a Nort base, before an Atmocraft
swoops down and we pan towards two Nort sentries, who are discussing Rogue Trooper
in comedy European accents. One Nort scoffs at the others claims that "If
he sees you, you're already dead", until his comrade is silently killed...
It was clear from
the trailer that a lot of attention had been put into being faithful to the character
and setting. The storyline is being written by Gordon Rennie, and is set in early
Rogue continuity. As reported in some games magazines already, you will be able
to leave your bio-chipped equipment to operate independently, hopefully creating
some more complex and involving gameplay than simply point and shoot. Expect a
lot of stealth kills as well as the ability to pour a lot of damage on those filthy
Nort scum! This is provisionally pencilled in for a September 2005 release on
X-Box and PS2, with the possibility of a PC version still being discussed.
Jason also spoke
about his wishes for future games, citing another Dredd game (possibly GTA styled?)
and a Slaine game as possible releases. However, he has found publishers are not
that keen on "axe" games (despite the popularity of Lord of the Rings,
which they claim as the exception!). Apparently, war is the current flavour of
the month in the gaming industry. Hopefully, the DC deal will raise the profile
of characters such as Slaine in the US market and make negotiations a little easier!
Coming soon
- more Dreddcon coverage from the Big Panel and more...
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