Archive for September, 2007

Download and burn Star Wreck 4 and a Half on DVD.

September 28th, 2007 by Samuli Torssonen

Star Wreck 4 and a halfBack when we were making the Legacy DVD we excluded Star Wreck 4½: Weak Performance in a sudden moment of self-criticism. Since then it has been missed by many people, far more than we would have ever guessed! So, now it’s time for Star Wreck 4½ to come to a DVD player near you, and make your Legacy collection complete.

We’ve set up a BitTorrent download for an .iso file that you can burn to a DVD and enjoy the film. For instructions on burning a .iso file check out this site. If you don’t have a BitTorrent client installed, we recommend µTorrent.

Go and Download the .torrent!

You can also watch the film online, without downloading anything!

We’re Not Alone.

September 27th, 2007 by Antti Hukkanen

Sympathy for the devilI’m ashamed to admit that I only today learned of the Baen Free Library project. To those not In The Know, it’s an online service by the publishing company Baen Books that offers electronic versions of their books for free. It’s been around since 2000, and currently offers 98 titles. To quote First Librarian Eric Flint: “I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any ‘losses’ I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience.” So they’ve been saying (and proving) the same thing that we demonstrated with Star Wreck – that free distribution cannot but benefit the authors – since the turn of the millennium. So we weren’t quite the first, although apparently, Mr Puskala endorsed the Free Library on our forum already in 2002.

So why is this fact so hard for show business to admit? Why is the industry trying to clamp down on online piracy when it’s so obviously counterproductive – more regulations means higher costs means artificially-elevated prices means piracy appears more attractive? Beats me. Probably because it’s so much easier to cling to what you grew up with instead of trying to change with the times. Possibly because the prevailing ideological climate seems to be moving in a more draconian, paranoid direction. We can only hope that successful endeavours like the Free Library (and Star Wreck) will eventually convince the movers and shakers that free distribution is an opportunity and not a threat.

Actually, I know the true reason. It’s because only good authors benefit from the publicity generated by free distribution. Let’s face it: without the artificial hype generated by massive publishing efforts – if people knew what it is they’re buying – would the likes of Dan Brown or Ilkka Remes ever sell a copy?

And would we really be any worse off for it?

Space Nazis are gathering in Finnish bookstores.

September 27th, 2007 by Jarmo Puskala

Ilkka Remes: Pahan Perimä

There have never been this many swastikas in Finnish shops. The new Space nazi touting Ilkka Remes book we wrote about before has hit the stores last friday. And being a very potential bestseller bookstores and supermarkets have huge piles of the books – right next to the pepper mills and cookbooks.

A Brave soul from our forum by the name of swreckie has already read the book and tells that nazis on the moon are mentioned in one sentence on page 312. That’s it. I guess we don’t have to fear any competition.

Hitler rap.

September 25th, 2007 by Jarmo Puskala

In Star Wreck we had Spaceballs as the benchmark, with Iron Sky we’re still kind of trying to out-do Mel Brooks – this time with nazi humor. Only that while Spaceballs was 80’s Mel, we’re now up with The Producers from the 60’s when he was really funny. Anyways, seems Mel also updated nazi musicals to the 80’s with this clip from To Be or not to Be. Though I have to admit I’ve never seen that one.

This Is the Voice of the Redrunner.

September 24th, 2007 by Antti Hukkanen

Even though running Energia Productions is very much a full-time job for us, we do sometimes find the time for side projects – each according to their skills. For my part, I was delighted when a fun fellow named Aleksi Eeben asked me to contribute to a computer game he was making – for the Commodore 64, no less! The game in question, Redrunner, is the sequel to his earlier award-winning Greenrunner (can you see the pattern here?). Both are rather hectic action games in the old-fashioned, fast and shallow way, and very fun to play (though you do need an emulator like VICE).

My part in the proceedings? Voice acting, of course. Aleksi’s game features cool graphics (for a C64 – there are many nifty little details), top-notch music, and appropriately arcade-ish sound effects – and speech. Though I humbly acknowledge the superiority of The Voice of Greenrunner, Elaine Walker, I must say Aleksi has managed to make my voice sound surprisingly good through the SID chip. Finally I have realised my childhood dream of being part of a C64 game project!

If you’re into this sort of stuff at all, you can do a lot worse than to check it out now – and remember, these days it’s fashionable to be “retro”.

Update: The title screen with great retro music and Antti’s smooth voice: