Trenches 2 was previewed on Destructoid last night, so I thought I fire the link up…

• Destructoid Preview

While I’m at it, here are some others too…

• Touch Arcade Preview
• Slide to Play Preview

Only 13 days to go…its almost here :)

It looks like Trenches 2 has had a slight delay and wont be released until the 15th of December now.  Sorry guys.  To partially make up for it, here’s a sneak peak of the British and German tanks :) I’ve also included an image showing how the main two soldiers have evolved from Trenches 1 to Trenches 2. As I hope you’ll agree, they’ve come on quite a bit :)

Roll on December 15th!

Hey Everyone,

Well, I’ve been tweeting about this project for about 8 months now, possibly even longer and its now been announced! The worldwide AppStore smash hit Trenches now has a sequel!!!! Trenches 2 will be hitting the AppStore on December 1st and is being published by none other than EA!

I’ve been working on this on and off for the best part of a year and let me tell you, it’s probably the biggest war/action/strategy game on the iPhone…by a LONG stretch, it’s MASSIVE! I’ve been drawing, painting, airbrushing, vectorising and designing for this puppy for soooooooo long and every second has been insanely awesome!

First up I want to cover what has to be my biggest creative accomplishment in my entire 12 years in the industry, the HUGE A1 promo poster that I created recently.

I was blessed with a 2 week budget to create this poster and was basically given something that as an artist you almost never get…the right budget!  As I’d been given such a generous project (as part of the much larger project) I wanted to make this my show piece, the one piece of art that would allow me to take my next step up and genuinely improve my abilities. Needless to say, I spent a significant amount of time sketching and ran through an entire sketch pad putting this together!  Once the sketch was roughed out, reviewed, amended and put into its final state, I was VERY, VERY excited!

My goal was to create a cartoon image in my personal style that reflected the stunning Udon/Capcom character collages that adorn the stunning Udon comics and posters, and while I know I’m no Alvin Lee, I was determined to make this MY take on such a composition.  I started with the star of the show, the German soldier and wanted to create a story around him that portrayed the game.  The overall vision was to tell the story of the Germans out weighing, out gunning and standing terrifyingly tall over the allied forces of WW1. Trenches 2 now has multiple nationalities, so I had to include each of these within the poster, each one displaying his own very distinct character.  All very tongue and cheek too which made it even more fun :)

With the sketch completed it was time to get into the colour rendering…this was going to be fuuuuuuuuuuun!

As I had the time to do so, I had chance to lay down some colour schemes before getting started and after a few iterations I settled on the warm glow of a fiery, war torn battlefield.  This just seemed fitting, and all the browns, oranges and yellows just made for a really indulgent palette that soothed my eyes :)

The scene just seemed to explode to life as each drop of colour adorned the screen, it was a spectacularly rewarding illustration to be working on and I simply couldn’t wait to move onto the next bit as the current part was completed.  My mind was so focused on the final image that I was almost dreaming about this poster whenever I was away from it.  And without further ado, here it is…

One of the other elements that made this so exciting was the final scale of the image ( A1), so my detail level had to be about a gazillion times higher than my usual ‘on-screen’ work and boy oh boy did that make for some memory challenges…

This puppy rolled in at a whopping 1.5gb as a PSD (I like my layers ;) and was quickly becoming a beast to deal with. Even with 8 cores and more RAM than you can imagine, this sucka was still loading after I’d finished making my morning espresso!

Aaaaaaaaanyway, I’m babbling.

I hope you enjoy looking at this as much as I enjoyed making it!

Oh, and here’s a couple of cheeky screenies of Trenches 2 to whet your appetite…

…now I’ll save my rambling on these until my next post :)

Lastly, and VERY importantly, I want to say a MMMMMMMMMMASSIVE thanks to Thunder Game Works for inviting me to be their lead artist once again.

Mike.

Yesterday’s Stenches launch was little short of mindblowingly epic! Not only did we get reviewed as TUAW’s Daily App, but we also got a killer review from Touch Arcade & Slide to Play…but that’s just the tip of the iceberg…we also got the AMAZING accolade of Apples (US) ‘iPhone Game of the Week‘! OH MY GOD!

Thanks to everyone out there that is saying amazing things about Stenches you are all so, so awesome!

Thank you world!

Mike.

As most of you know (especially folks on twitter) I’m a mad collector of retro games and arcades boards, and I mentioned on Twitter recently about some dedicated display cabinets that I was having built to house the entire collection.  Well, these cabinets were finished recently and look beeeeeeautiful.  They span the width of the room their housed in and stand from floor to ceiling…yes, floor to ceiling ;)  I’ll be cataloguing the whole collection soon, but as a rough guide there’s over 300 games and over 30 consoles :)  This is the outcome of a lifetimes collecting, so whenever I see something worth adding…I add it :)

Everything you see is boxed, with instructions and in either good, great or as new condition.  I’m rather fussy about that part ;)  There’s some real gems in here too, a boxed and as new Virtual Boy, a rare Japan only Sega MegaJet, a mint Multi Mega, plus loads of other crazy stuff.  The core of the collection is focused on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, so a very large amount of the games are for this system.  Man I love the Mega Drive!!

So to any of my wonderful games customers that happen to be reading this, if ever you needed any further proof of my obsessive love for this industry, look no further ;)

Anyway, without further ado, say hello to the collection!  Its split over two sides, one side for games, one side for hardware.

The Games:

The Hardware:

I hope you enjoyed the show!!

Mike.

P.S. Yes, that’s an official replica of Conan’s Father Sword hanging on the wall…call it my security system ;)

One of the recent iPhone games I’ve been busy on, is the sub-story follow up to the worldwide AppStore hit, Trenches,  attractivly entitled, Stenches!

After the phenominal sucess of Trenches and the huge expression of love from the players regarding secret unlock-able ’Zombie Horde Mode’, Thunder Game Works decided to create a whole game based around this awesome little mini-game.

So you can imagine my excitement when I was tasked with bringing this vision to life!  I love anything Zombie related, so couldnt wait to get my teeth into this!  New characters, environments, branding, menu’s, everything!  Absolutely awesome fun!!!  Just to give you a preview of what’s to come, I’ve showcased the main zombie characters below, and as you’ll see, there’s quite a mix in this new game :)

The game is crammed with awesome new features and game modes, but I wont babble on about those here (you’ll hear more in the press real soon) and I’ll leave you take a look at the concept sketches.

If you’re a fan of Trenches and/or Zombies, you’ve got to grab a copy of this puppy when it launches as I can honestly say it’s absolutely SUPERB!!

I hope you like them :)

Mike.

I know I’ve been talking about this almost none stop recently and haven’t posted the final photos, but that’s because I’m too fussy, and am re-art-working the machine as we speak ;)

But, just to appease a few folks, I decided to show the machine as it is now, before I apply the new artwork.  As you’ll see, the room my two machines live in, is our tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny spare box room, just wide enough for two arcade cabs, a bookshelf and little else.  Perfect for a miniature arcade :)

I’ve decided to make the new machine a mock Neo Geo MVS cab, so its going to be a beautiful mix of rich red, black and white…very old school.  Anyway, here’s a few pics of my babies running.  Awwww, dont they look cute together :)

Oh and I’ve gone even crazier since the last post as I got the chance to pick up some truly amazing original arcade boards in bulk…so I bought them…and blitzed that already depleted budget into non-existence ;)  The collection now sits a little something like this…

• Art of Fighting
• Fatal Fury
• Fatal Fury 2
• Fatal Fury Special
• The King of the Fighters 94
• The King of the Fighters 2001
• Metal Slug
• Metal Slug 2
• Samurai Showdown
• Samurai Showdown 2
• World Heroes
• R-Type 2
• R-Type Leo
• Caddilacs and Dinosaurs
• Golden Axe
• Knights of the Round
• Street Fighter 2 – Champion Edition
• Super Street Fighter 2 X
• Street Fighter Alpha 2
• Darkstalkers
• Vampire Saviour 2
• X-Men Children of the Atom
• Carrier Airwing

I’ll post the final, final, final pics when the new artwork is applied and finished :)

Mike.

I’ve been tweeting a lot about this arcade project of mine for quite a few weeks now (or maybe months actually) and intended to put a dedicated site up about the build.  Well, me being me and never having 5 mins spare, I decided to throw a quick blog post up instead.  There will eventually be a site, but just not quite yet.  For now, here’s a few piccies of the project during the build and the final finished shots will be posted up very soon.  I’m just tidying up the edges at the moment.

Step 1 – Shopping!

Ok, so initially I started ordering in all the parts, which was just going to be…

• Bare cabinet
• Monitor
• Controls
• Jamma wiring
• Power supply
• 1 jamma board, most likely Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition

Well that didnt quite go to plan, as my games collecting madness took control and I decided to order a few things more…well…a lot more.  This is when a few of the large boxes started arriving…

Before I knew what had happened, I’d gone and blown my budget on the following games…

• R-Type Leo
• Golden Axe
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs
• Street Fighter Alpha 2
• Darkstalkers
• Vampire Saviour 2
• Super Street Fighter 2 X
• Metal Slug 2
• King of the Fighters 2001

…Ooops.

Any arcade geeks out there will also spot that I had also gone had grown the complexity of the job 4 fold, as this was no longer just an old school Jamma cab, but also a Capcom CPS2 cab, a Neo Geo MVS cab and also a Sega System 16 cab.  Now I really had blown my budget, by a further 50%! Time for another oops.

Step 2 – Jazzing up the rusty old 4-Slot Neo Geo MVS motherboard

It looked nasty, and I wanted it looking pretty.  A clean up, black powder coat and some lovely SNK decals later, it was looking super sexy!

Step 3 – The CGA monitor and the bare cab

Finding true arcade CRT CGA monitors is damn hard these days as nobody makes them.  I wanted true classic CGA goodness, as there is nothing prettier than those damn fine scanlines! Forget HD, forget scaling up to large res LCD monitors, nothing compares to CGA!  I was lucky enough to find a seller on eBay called Digital Systems Design that had bought all of Pentranics CGA stock when they went bust, so he had 100′s of brand new, old stock monitors in stock! RESULT!

The bare cab arrived soon after (Which was made by a cool company in Wales who sell them via eBay)and was ready for building! You’ll notice my other machine in the background, that one is a MAME machine, which is great, but I wanted to a true Jamma classic machine, original boards and 100% true to its roots.  I cant express the warm glow I have knowing I own original 1980′s arcade boards!  These things have been shipped around the world for over 20 years, played by probably 100′s or even 1000′s of people and are now being loved by me :)  Oh, you also need a very understanding wife and spare room ;)

Step 4 – Testing the purchases!

I enlisted the services Barry Parsons from www.gamesroomservices.com to do the build as I already knew Barry and knew his skills were unrivalled, the guy is a pure genius when it comes to electronics and arcade/pinball building.  So, we started by test wiring everything up and testing the monitor and each game board.  This was rather exciting :)  I was especially excited about seeing Golden Axe in all its glory, as I never actually saw this in the arcades back in the day, and had only ever played it on the Megadrive.  It looked SOOOO AWESOME!

Step 4 – Testing complete, time to build!

With all the the games tested, it was time to build everything in!

Wires, speakers, boards, its arcade heaven!

Monitor in…but oh no, it doesn’t fit! The cab turned out to be too shallow, DOH! Some modding was required to the back panel, but nothing too major.

The CPS2 motherboard was mounted on the right side and the MVS on the left, with the Jamma on the shelf above.  Barry had done a truly first class job planning this baby out!

Step 5 – The artwork.

Ok, so this step isnt photographed as yet, I need to tidy the games room up, sort everything out, finish of a few lose edges and get some photos taken :) Watch this space!

I hope you enjoyed the article!

Mike.

Wow, things have been ultra quiet on the site recently, sorry about that!  I’ve been buried under some sersiously intense deadlines for some seriously fun projects.  Here’s a few specific updates to let you know what’s been going on…

Websites:
I’ve been working on a whole host of sites recently, all of which are awaiting release and most of which (bizarrely) are MMO related!  I’ve gone from doing almost no MMO related games and sites to working on 5! Crazy and immense fun at the same time!

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Games:

Wii:
I’m back to work on the Wii game that I started over a year ago (which was paused for about 6-8months) so there will be loads more info on that beauty as it becomes public.  I’m bloody loving this project!

Steam & X360:
For the past few weeks I’ve been working (hard…very, very hard) on the menu’s, HUD and general UI for a kick ass new game that’s due out on Steam and X360.  This is one of, if not the most amazing project I’ve had the honour of working on, its been a blast!  Again, more info soon.

iPhone & iPad:
Man, this industry is booming right now and the amount of iPhone related enquiries I’m seeing is mind boggling.  At the moment I’m working on (working on also includes completed and as yet un-released) 4 new iPhone games and 1 iPad game with a mixture of companies, all of which have been great to work on!  Unfortunetly, none of them are under the Joystick Generals as JG is on pause for the next few months until both Chris and I can settle our current crazy schedules.

Web:
Yep, I’m dabbling in some web games at the moment, actually, more specifically Facebook games on the whole, creating the UI for 3 MMO’s.  This is fairly new territory for me and has been amazing to work on.  I cannot wait to get them into the portfolio.

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Email Delays:
I know I post this message about every 2 months, but its back again.  Due to my workload there has been A HUUUUGE backlog on my email replies and I am doing all that I can to get back to everyone, so if your waiting, thanks for being patient, I havent forgotten about you and I WILL be back in touch as soon as I can.

Thanks everyone, watch this space, there is lots to be released :)

Mike.

WOW, thanks for all the downloads everyone!  Super Turbo Action Pig held onto 8th yesterday, so we’re keeping it FREE…AGAIN!

If your feeling generous, why not drop us a vote http://www.freeappaday.com/app.php?day=27&month=04

Thanks again for the support!!

Mike.