Doctor Who to materialise on Wii this Autumn
Geronimo!
The BBC's first Doctor Who game in years will be released in October and will be released for Nintendo's Wii, moles have claimed.
The title is said to feature new Doctor Matt Smith who will be placed against the Daleks and the Silurians - both due to make return appearances in the new series, which kicks off next month.
The Daleks turned up in the last full series of the show, in 2008. The Silurians haven't been since 1984's Warriors of the Deep. Before that they made their debut in 1970's Doctor Who and the Silurians.
The Cybermen may also feature in the game, the Sun reports.
Doctor Who gaming circa 1992: Dalek Attack
Trade title MCV said it has confirmed the title's October release and appearance on the Wii.
News that the BBC was gearing up to exploit in software the huge popularity of its Doctor Who revival broke in January.
The last Doctor Who title the Corporation released was 1997's lame Destiny of the Doctors. Our favourite remains the 1992 PC release of Dalek Attack, a rather good platform game, complete with Daleks, Ogrons, Unit troops, K9 and laser-firing Sonic Screwdrivers.
Fans can get a complete rundown of the Doctor's appearance in computer games at The Millennium Effect, here. ®
COMMENTS
Maybe it was just in the book -
As far as I recall, the "Silurians" are an ancient Earth reptile race who stored themselves in bunkers to survive a near-collision with a massive body from space, to be revived after it impacted or missed. Instead it went into orbit as our Moon and the computers never woke them up. This is an interesting anticipation of the dinosaur-killer asteroid theory by about ten years, but was broadcast at almost the same time as real-life astronauts were bringing back moon rocks that strongly support a theory that the Moon is made of debris from the very early Earth's collision with another body, possibly a Trojan companion gone rogue - some computer models of planet formation have implied that this happens more often than you might think - long before any life on earth was more than pond scum and such. So that may be revised.
I hope they don't have a catchphrase like the Cybermen do now but I don't think I'm the target audience for Doctor Who any more... when the Doctor invited Kylie Minogue(!) to become his new companion I think I was not supposed to think "That isn't going to happen, so she probably gets killed later." It was that or she marries the little red spiky person, but once they killed him off it was obviously going to be cheerio Charlene.
Dalek Attack! Dalek Attack!
Wow, someone used a Dalek Attack screenshot! I've kept an old laptop handy just to be able to play that game.
That's just made my day, that has.
No guns, please!
I really hope the BBC keep a tight run on this like they did with the Doctor Who Role-playing game (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Adventures-Time-Space/dp/1907204113). What they did with that was take a really different approach to it that matched the Doctor Who series - the rules encourage non-violent, imaginative solutions and the influence that a character has on a story is separated from their "power-level" in that you can trade story points for character attributes and skills, or keep them to influence the plot in other ways. If the computer game sticks to the same principle of following the TV series in puzzles and mysteries, then great. If the makers are allowed to turn it into running along, picking up sonic screwdriver upgrades to blast your enemies more quickly, then it's going to be a complete waste of the Doctor Who name.
Yes - I like Doctor Who. :D
Play it
No mention of a Speccy game is complete without the requisite link to http://www.zxspectrum.net. And yes, they have Dalek Attack --- scroll down to 1992, and it's right there under 'Doctor Who'.
