I recently watched Guy Ritchie’s latest movie, Sherlock Holmes, and really enjoyed it. Though as someone who has never been much of a fan of the character before I have no idea how “authentic” it was. Probably not very.

Afterwards as I was thinking about it, and pondering how I mysteriously didn’t want to punch Jude Law right in the face by the end of it, I realised that it had no game tie-in.

Surely, a mostly family friendly action movie coming out around the holiday period should have a tie-in, right? It would be so obvious. Sections of the film lend themselves easily to levels, from early tombs, to shipyards, bridges, and there’s even a sewer in there. What more obvious concession to the art of game design could there be?

Well bullet time, for one. But look! Mr Ritchie even thought of that. At a few points in the movie Holmes is shown in slow motion, plotting the moves in a fight several attacks ahead in order to best incapacitate his opponent. If that’s not ripe for video game treatment I don’t know what is.

Throw in a few slow paced detective levels where the player wanders around some smaller areas looking to pick up clues, slap it in a box, and away you go.

Could it be that the industry is finally shedding itself of poor quality movie licenses, developed on tiny budgets in 9 months in order to launch at the same time as the box office? Did this one instance just slip by?

Or could it be that the video game rights to Holmes aren’t owned by the same people as the movie rights, and it was a legal nightmare to clear? Given that there are a few Sherlock games on the market right now this seems slightly more likely to me.

Anyway, who knows. I’m off to play Wanted: Weapons of Fate.

Games and game development being the relatively new area that they are, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to find out that people keep finding interesting new things to write about them.

This means that there are always new (or new to me) websites and blogs to stumble across, and spend a few hours catching up with.

Here are a few I’ve found recently, that I thought might be of interest.

A relatively new blog, with only a few posts, but already every single one is fascinating reading. The writing is interesting and also entertaining, and the subject matter is something every game designer should have at least a passing knowledge of. I can’t pinpoint a specific article to get you started on this site, I just recommend going to the archives and catching up as soon as you can.

Retro game websites are fairly common, but with so many old games to cover, it’s always nice to find one that really suits your needs. Many focus heavily on NES-era gaming, while around that time I was in somewhat of a game black hole, only having my trusty Acorn Electron to keep me entertained. After that came the Amiga, which is probably the computer I’m most fond of to this day, and that’s the machine this website aims to focus on a little more. Updates are a little sparse, but hey, who am I to judge? Anyone whose first real post is about D/Generation is ok in my book.

The indie iPhone development blog of ‘SnappyTouch’. Some really interesting articles – in particular I think anyone even thinking about entering the iPhone development market should read his “Making A Living (Barely) On The iPhone App Store” article. It gives details of the sales figures for Flower Garden, and also what he was doing to promote it or affect the figures during each stage. Great information that developers don’t usually share.

Okay, this one isn’t technically anything to do with videogames at all, though they do sometimes feature models based on games. And pretty much every level designer I know lists Lego amongst their favourite childhood toys. So, maybe it has more of a link than it first seems. Anyway, I freely admit to being a bit of a manchild when it comes to Lego (my 31st and 32nd birthday presents from family were Lego), so I’m always interested to see what amazing new creations they’ve posted.

So there you go, a few new sites to check out. Hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as I do. If you have any links you think I’d find interesting, be sure to leave them in a comment, thanks!