Chappell Ellison reports on the Cartoon Brew website that the 1989 Capcom DuckTales video game is being remastered for a Summer 2013 release. The game will feature enhanced background graphics, and as much of the original voice cast as possible, including 90-year-old Alan Young as Scrooge McDuck.

DuckTales Remastered is being marketed for nostalgic new parents as much as for a new generation of players.

Young parents who grew up playing DuckTales on NES will leap at the chance to reintroduce the game to their kids on the contemporary consoles of today.

The Cartoon Brew report includes a 2’03” trailer for the coming improved rerelease.

Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop has an interesting article about a pair of independent animation projects in the works — both of which just happen to be very furry. First up is Ghost of a Tale, a new video game designed by Lionel “Seith” Gallat. Lionel has worked as a supervising animator at Dreamworks on movies like The Prince Of Egypt, The Road to Eldorado, Spirit, Sinbad, SharkTale, and others. More recently he’s been a director for Illumination on films like Despicable Me and The Lorax. Ghost of a Tale follows the adventures of a medieval mouse battling rat zombies on a mysterious island. In a very different vein is Dogonauts by Shel and Justin Rasch. “Mortal enemies, a Dogonaut Pilot and a Space Flea, shoot each other down only to awake, marooned side by side on an alien desert planet.” Justin is a stop-motion animator known for films like Paranorman. He and his wife Shel completed Dogonauts in their garage, all the while both of them working full-time jobs. Both of these projects are seeking crowdfunding help to move from their current levels of production up to the next, and hopefully get them out into the world. The Scoop article features trailers as well as the official pitches for each of these projects. Check ‘em out.

The Night of the Rabbit, an upcoming release by German game developer Daedalic Entertainment, tells the story of Jerry Hazelnut, a twelve-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a wizard.

As his summer vacation winds down, Jerry meets the Marquis de Hoto, a magical anthropomorphic rabbit in a snappy suit. He offers to take Jerry on as an apprentice and to teach him the ways of the Treerunners, who use a special type of magic to conjure up portals and travel between worlds. As a demonstration, de Hoto leads his apprentice through a tree portal into Mousewood, a peaceful world inhabited by anthro mice, squirrels, and other critters, which acts as a hub to reach further worlds.

Where have we been? Looks like even classic toys are taking on a furry angle. Legends of Chima is a new line of Lego toys the world-famous plastic brick system introduced this year. From the Wikipedia entry: “Chima is a land where anthropomorphic animals lived in peace with one another until a conflict caused a civil war with the eight animal tribes: Lion, Eagle, Raven, Wolf, Gorilla, Rhino, Bear, and Crocodile. The members of the factions fiercely battle over a powerful natural resource called Chi, which could allow its possessor to create or destroy.” The toy sets are already available — and a TV series based on the line has already been produced by Prime Focus for the Cartoon Network. Later this summer, a free MMORPG of Chima will be available on line as well.

image c. 2013 Prime Focus

On April 10, Soma Games (a computer game company based in Oregon, USA) acquired the game rights for Redwall, the book series by the late Brian Jacques.

Jacques' series, spanning 22 books, was populated by a variety of anthropomorphic animals, including "noble" mice, moles, and badgers, and "vermin" rats, foxes, and weasels.

Soma's game, entitled Redwall: The Warrior Reborn, will be in 3D, allowing players to walk the cloisters of Redwall Abbey. On April 26, Soma Games started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. As of May 1, the campaign has raised almost $8,000 in pledges from nearly 200 backers, of a $11,000 goal. Pledge rewards include the game itself, MP3 and PDF files of game content, and party and mailing list invitations, signed books, and sculptures.

As a first step, a Minecraft build of Redwall Abbey, AbbeyCraft, will be created, to form a 3D representation of the abbey that is as consistent as possible with its literary depiction.

There aren't too many anthropomorphic computer adventure games out there, so I thought I'd review Jolly Rover, a swashbuckling scenario by an Australian company called Brawsome (aka Andrew Goulding). This game is aimed at the casual market, so it's pretty easy-going, taking about 5-8 hours. It's available for less than $9 for PC, Mac, and on Steam. (Watch the trailer.)

The story is populated by anthropomorphic dogs, and the protagonist is Gaius James Rover, a dachshund who dreams of eventually starting his own circus. Hoping to earn money towards this project, he invests his life savings in a cargo delivery of rum - which goes horribly wrong, thanks to a corrupt governor and a band of mercenary pirates. His only hope of financial salvation lies in joining the pirates and locating a long-lost treasure before they do.

Normally, damp or wet fur isn't a pleasant thought or smell, but in this case, it's a very good thing! Five upcoming furry-themed video games have been found on Steam's Greenlight Program, and are given previews in this roundup.

Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin

Currently available for iOS devices and Google Android and coming soon to Windows and Mac OS X via Steam, Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin is the first appearance of the lapine in a video game since his adventures on the Commodore 64, back in 1988 — 25 years ago!

This game by Happy Giant is based on the classic comic book series by Stan Sakai. Usagi Yojimbo is renowned for his appearances in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and television series. In the game, you act as Miyamoto Usagi, the rabbit warrior, on an epic journey to restore order to the land of feudal-era Japan, with only your trusted sword Grasscutter to assist you. In the game, you will battle over fifty different types of enemies, with three boss monsters from the comics.

OGPlanet, a publisher of free-to-play, massively-multiplayer-online, downloadable PC games, has announced that their new game Gundog has entered its beta-test phase.

In Gundog, a third-person shooter with card-collection elements, teams of anthropomorphic canines fight in a World-War scenario. The game involves six different character classes, and two rival camps (Union and Empire). The beta-test phase runs over April 4-8.

Most game reviewers are looking into games like BioShock Infinite, but I’m not even going to try and stretch the question as to whether Big Daddy is anthropomorphic, cause I’m sure I’d get drilled. Maybe StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm? Well, zerglings get kinda close, but xenomorphy… are there any aliens out there that have more animalistic qualities?

Ah, here we go, a game about an alien spidy named… well, Alien Spidy. Who'd have guessed? Let's see if the game is out of this world, or just a space case.

Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, everyone! A belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

First off, a quick note: Voting for the 2013 Ursa Major Awards — celebrating the best in Anthropomorphic Everything from 2012 — has just opened, and will remain open until May 15th. Visit the Ursa Major web site to see the nominees and sign up to vote. Then come check out the winners at a special ceremony at this year’s Anthrocon!

Gophers VS. Dinosaurs... erhm, excuse me, Go Home Dinosaurs is a tower defense game; yes, another one. These things seem to continually pop out of the landscape, each presenting their own spin on the game type. With the simplicity of design, tower defense is definitely a good place for a smaller or more independent company to start. Gamers also seem to enjoy tower defense games - but I’m not really one of them. I’ve played a few of them, and they all start to seem like the same game with a different coat of paint.

When this title was added to Steam [there's also a beta on Chrome], I was hesitant to buy. However, seeing as it was anthropomorphic I figured, "well if it's terrible, I’ll at least be able to make a nice scathing review on Flayrah. Or it may also be very good; then I’ll get my money’s worth and post a review as well."

The problem is that it was neither, leaving me in the precarious position of reviewing a game in that muddled area of "just okay", which is the hardest kind to write about.

Oh no, here they go again; Sonic trying to tread on Mario’s toes and milk a little bit of his success by pushing in on his turf. It wouldn’t be the first, and most certainly won’t be the last. But I’m sure the blue hedgehog hears enough about being a faker by a certain black hedgehog — so let’s take a step back to look at the latest game featuring the blue blur with a more open mind. In other words, let’s not question why he’s racing in a car; let's just look at the game.

Disney Interactive’s Epic Mickey video game was pretty popular — it even won an Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Game. Admittedly, some folk complained about the fact it was only available for the Nintendo Wii system, but it sold well enough to be considered a moderate success in the gaming world. The follow up, Epic Mickey 2? Not so much, in spite of the fact that 2 was made available for many game platforms. Now comes the word (according to various articles) that sales of Epic Mickey 2 since its November 2012 launch were poor enough that Disney has decided to shutter Junction Point, the Texas-based game design firm that Disney purchased in 2007 to develop both the Epic Mickey games. From this point forward, Disney Interactive will instead focus their attention on Disney Infinity, the new figurine-based multi-character game (similar in some ways to Skylanders) which will premier in June.

image c. 2013 Disney Interactive

This game is a nostalgia trip. Much like the original Epic Mickey, it highlights a diverse cast of classic Disney characters that don’t always get the spotlight; sure, there’s a matchmaking questline that unites Donald and Daisy Duck as romantic partners, but there’s also one featuring Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. When was the last time you saw those two characters featured?

Well, probably the last Epic Mickey game; you also get that nostalgic kick just listening to the opening screen music if you’ve already played the first game. The world of the Epic Mickey, Wasteland, is a bizarre world of forgotten and buried cartoons; at one point, I found myself looking at a bizarre new form of sedimentary rock formed of discarded Disney paraphernalia. It’s a nice place to visit; I’m not sure if I want to live there, though. It’s strangely creepy.

And the camera still stinks, too.

SPOILER ALERT: I have tried to hide late game plot revelations as best I can, and believe I did an alright job. However, I totally spoil the ending of the first Saw movie after the break.
Update (Jan 29): Disney shutters Epic Mickey creator Junction Point Studios

Wyrmkeep Entertainment, who recently launched a Kickstarter project to fund a sequel to their perennial point & click adventure, have cancelled it, admitting the campaign was insufficiently compelling to non-fans. A post-mortem of the project is underway.

The original Inherit the Earth was released in '94 for IBM-PC and Macintosh computers, and has recently been re-released for modern computing and mobile platforms. AdventureGamers awarded it four stars out of five saying that it was "One of the most enjoyable adventures to come out of the mid-1990's."

Before its cancellation, the project had raised $8,507 of its $135,000 goal from 159 backers.