It's not that Schafer's made so many games that he has to be on every list (like the Final Fantasy games). It's just that his games are so diverse and bizarre that they usually stand out enough to make somebody's list of "Gaming's Greatest/Worst [Insert Noun Here]." This week, he makes GamesRadar's list of "18 awesome games that died at retail" not once, but twice!

Psychonauts to me is the obligatory Schafer game everyone includes on their list. But thanfully Grim Fandango made the cut this time. Of all Schafer's works, it's still my favorite so far.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not Brütal Legend qualifies as a great game that dies at retail. Currently, it's got a Metacritic score of 84, but the jury's still out on how well it's selling...

18 awesome games that died at retail [GamesRadar]

"Mainly I've used an x-acto knife and three tiny screwdrivers to do most of the carving," ceemdee said in an email. "I used some wood carving tools to scrap out the bigger areas on a few of the pumpkins and a needle is used to trace the image. They were all carved in the last four weeks. It's actually only four pumpkins (one a week) with three carvings on each. :)"

You can check out unlit views of the pumpkins here.

Got any more? Send pictures of 'em my way!

Reader Tonks - who also made those Noby Noby and Phoenix Wright kicks - sends us his latest work, showing that his love, like ours, is as strong as ever for Tim Schafer's wonderful adventure game.

And as strong as ever for wonderful video game sneakers. Even if they are purple.

The Grim Fandango Converse. [Kyozo Kicks]

That's what Iain Reekie did with these Grim Fandango figures, which are amazing not only for the likeness, but for the fact that he did the entire sculpt. Then again, he had to, really, since there aren't many Marvel or GI Joe figures lying around you cannibalise for heads like these.

Wonder if he's taking requests for a Monkey Island set?


[via Offworld]

The doc, penned by Schafer, Peter Tsacle, Eric Ingerson, Bret Mogilefsky, and Peter Chan, is available publicly as a 72-page PDF. It's full of fanboy giddiness-inducing behind-the-scenes details, character sketches, puzzle designs and stuff from the cutting room floor.

Schafer points out on the Double Fine Action News feed just how much had to be cut from the game to get it done in just three years, including heretofore unknown characters and a "five-puzzle action climax with Hector LeMans!"

"If only we had one or two more years!" Schafer laments. "Well, reading about them ten years later is just as good, right?"

Schafer also reveals Grim Fandango team's design doc subterfuge, writing "We didn’t have the last puzzle designed when I wrote that document, so I wrote two nonsense paragraphs and then overlapped them in the file so it would look like the final puzzle description was in there, but obscured by a print formatting error. That way I could turn the document in by the deadline."

If you have even the least bit of interest in Grim Fandango or game design in general, we urge you to download yourself a copy. (Psst. We've added a bandwidth saving mirror right here, just in case.)

Just One More Grim Thing [Double Fine Action News]

October 13th was Monkey Island Music Day (special thanks to Joystiq for ordaining it so), and by association, LucasArts Adventure Game Music Day. To celebrate I posted a broken link (now fixed) to a Monkey Island music archive and told a sad story about my disappointing Video Games Live LucasArts themes experience.

I was directed to a shitty video of the same performance, which didn't do much for my estimation of the event, but adjacent to it on the YouTube list was a better video from the same concert. This one captures the Grim Fandango theme on ShakyCam, but the visuals are unimportant. The music is what counts, and I'm wondering now what acoustic curse kept it from sounding this good in the picnic seats where I was planted. Eliza Gauger

Previously on Kotaku: Monkey Island Music Day

"The Sierra team has been awesome to work with," said Tim Schafer, president and CEO of Double Fine Productions. "Everyone we've met brings experience from a small developer background, so they know where we're coming from and what we have to do to make a great game. Combine a developer-friendly attitude, support for innovation, major-publisher status with a worldwide scope and you have a perfect match for Double Fine."

Why should you care about something that sounds so... business-y? It means that Double Fine isn't going anywhere, despite the financial disappointment that was Psychonauts.

Unfortunately, no other details were released, but whether its original IP or an update to a classic Schafer-driven franchise we win in either case. Michael McWhertor

Jesus creeping crap, how did I miss this? I blame you, lazy tipsters! It's only thanks to Elias of North93.com that this got through the heavily-landmined zone of terror in front of Kotaku HQ at all.

According to Playfuls.com, Burton was quoted thusly on "a film blog":

Well, I'm currently working on Sweeny Todd , which will be released in mid-2007. After that, I'm going to start working on a new script that was sent to me recently: Grim Fandango. It sort of follows the style of The nightmare before Christmas and Corpse Bride. It's about a surreal land of the dead, some sort of purgatory where everyone goes when they die. In that place, dead people have to make a four-year transition before they can rest in peace for all the eternity. I still don't know when we're going to start filming this, though.

To stave off my rising and inexplicable craving for potstickers, I'll throw some key phrases into Google and see what I get. Ah ha, Gamespot reported on this around the same time the Denzel Halo rumors were getting started. They're just as confused as I am, and complain:

The problem is, the "interview" was actually a collection of quotes lifted from other press outlets. While several of the early quotes could be traced to this About.com interview with Burton, several of the others—including the Grim Fandango quote—remain of indeterminate origin and are therefore unverifiable.

That's a fat, sweaty maybe, leaning towards "nope", but I'll go ahead and be pleased anyway. A Tim Fandango would suit me fine. Eliza Gauger