Terror Train and The Funhouse to scare BD, DVD

A few months back Shout! Factory unveiled their latest brand, Scream Factory. The new label is dedicated to vintage cult horror from the '70s, '80s and '90s. Their first two releases will be Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which make their premiere on Blu-ray and DVD September 18, 2012.

Now, Scream Factory sets its sights on another Jamie Lee Curtis thriller, Terror Train, as well as The Funhouse, from director Tobe Hooper. Like Halloween II and III, both discs will receive Collector's Editions, featuring loads of bonus material as well as remastered audio and video.

"Take an excursion into terror with Jamie Lee Curtis in this classic shocker from director Roger Spottiswoode (Tomorrow Never Dies). It's New Year's Eve and group of college co-eds have planned a masquerade bash aboard a chartered train. What they didn't plan on was that a knife-wielding psycho would crash the party and begin slaughtering the guests one by one!  Who is this brutal costumed killer? Climb aboard the Terror Train for a frightening combination of blood-curdling horror and intriguing mystery. Also starring Academy Award-winner Ben Johnson (1971, Supporting Actor, The Last Picture Show), Hart Bochner (Die Hard) and D.D. Winters (aka Vanity, 52 Pick-Up) and David Copperfield as The Magician."

Terror Train will feature a 1080p high definition transfer (1.85:1 aspect ratio) with 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. Please note that this release is a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. No separate DVD will be released for this film. Fans can expect the following bonus features (preliminary confirmed lineup):

• Audio Commentary by Director Roger Spottiswoode


• Still Gallery


• Theatrical Trailer And TV Spots


• and more to be announced

Suggested retail is $29.93. Just like the Halloween Collector's Editions, if you pre-order your copy direct from Shout! Factory's website, you'll receive an exclusive 18”x24” poster featuring the newly commissioned artwork!  Less than 500 have been made, so these are only available while supplies last.

"Director Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist) pays affectionate tribute to various classic horror movies in this tale of two teenage couples who spend the night in a sleazy carnival funhouse. On her first date with Buzz (Cooper Huckabee, True Blood), Amy (Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus) disobeys her father and goes to the carnival with Richie (Miles Chapin, Hair) and Liz (Largo Woodruff), but their first date may end up as their last. After witnessing a murder, the four terrified teens are trapped in the maze of the funhouse and stalked by a real monster, a horribly deformed killer who lurks among the freakish exhibits to butcher them one by one. Also stars Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy) and Kevin Conway (in three roles). Featuring special makeup designs by Academy Award-winner Rick Baker (An American Werewolf In London, Ed Wood)."

The Funhouse will feature a 1080p high definition transfer (2.35:1 aspect ratio) with 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio on Blu-ray. The DVD (a separate release) will boast an anamorphic transfer with 5.1 audio. Extras will include the following (preliminary confirmed lineup):

• Audio Commentary by Director Tobe Hooper, Hosted By Director Tim Sullivan


• Theatrical Trailer


• TV and Radio spots


• and more to be announced

Suggested retail for the Blu-ray is $29.93 and $16.50 for the DVD. Fans who pre-order the Blu-ray or DVD directly from ShoutFactory.com will receive an exclusive 18”x24” poster featuring the newly commissioned artwork! Less than 500 have been made, so these are only available while supplies last.

Be on the lookout for more updates, news and reviews regarding all Scream Factory titles. We hear word from Shout! that John Carpenter's They Live will be hitting Blu-ray and DVD next, on November 6, 2012. Stay tuned for more!

"Who will dare to face the challenge of the Funhouse? Who is mad enough to enter that world of darkness? How about you, sir...?" Follow R.L. Shaffer on Twitter, Facebook and MyIGN for quotes, rants, reviews, news and more!

Source : ign[dot]com

Zynga Gets Original in Matching With Friends

Zynga’s reputation as a clone factory isn’t entirely undeserved. Today’s announcement that a Sims competitor The Ville and Farmville 2 are both in the works certainly doesn’t help. But not everything the company does is a spin on what someone else did first. Today’s launch of Matching with Friends shows that the social gaming powerhouse is capable of fun and original social gaming experiences as well.

As its name implies, Matching with Friends follows Words, Chess, Hanging and Scramble as the latest title in the “…With Friends” line-up. Like its predecessors the game is built on turn-by-turn multiplayer, allowing you to catch up on all your running games at your own leisure.

The big difference here is that Matching takes the player-friendly asynchronous multiplayer set-up the series is known for and applies it to a wholly original puzzle concept, instead of riffing on already-popular concepts like all the other With Friends titles.

Each round gamers are given a set of multicolored blocks that must be assembled onto the game board. Making sets of like-colored blocks scores points and clears them from the board. 2X and 3X multipliers litter the play field in key spots adding an extra layer of strategy. The player that manages to score the most points over 12 rounds wins.

The concept is very simple – anyone can match colors. But after just one afternoon of play it’s already obvious that Matching contains plenty of hidden depth. For example, if you have no good moves during your round it is a totally viable strategy to simply clutter the play field, making things more difficult for your opponent.

Matching with Friends is free to play with ads, with an ad-free version for sale for $2.99. Players can purchase coins which can be redeemed for power-ups like board-clearing bombs, but in my early games I haven’t ever felt like I needed to take advantage of these items or that the experience was “pay to win.”

Download Matching with Friends Free to try out the multiplayer puzzler for yourself.



Source : ign[dot]com

Read This Book: Ready Player One

Ready Player One is geek crack, a novel that reads like a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Tron, with a healthy dose of Avatar, The Matrix, The Last Starfighter and The Hunger Games thrown in for good measure.

It combines sci-fi, romance, action and drama, while referencing all manner of 1980s pop culture brilliance, from Ghostbusters and The Goonies to Dungeons & Dragons and Dungeons of Daggorath. The Ladyhawke soundtrack plays a big part in the narrative and Pac-Man makes his presence felt throughout, while Wil Wheaton reads the real-world audio book, and it doesn’t get any geekier than that.

Story-wise, it’s a futuristic spin on the kind of quest adventure that authors have been chronicling for centuries. Proceedings are set in 2044, when The Great Recession has brought the planet to its knees. To escape the misery, the majority of humans spend their every waking hour in the OASIS, a massive multiplayer online simulation where the sky, and pretty much anything beyond, is the limit.

The OASIS was created by Gregarious Simulation Systems chiefs James Halliday and Ogden Morrow, but when Halliday mysteriously dies, he throws the OASIS into chaos with the video and book he leaves behind.

They explain - Willy Wonka-style - that whoever manages to collect three keys and pass through three gates hidden within the OASIS will receive his fortune and a controlling stake in GSS.

The bulk of the novel takes place five years after this announcement, and follows the efforts of Wade Watts to hunt down the keys and win the contest. A lonely Oklahoman teen, Wade goes by the name of Parzival in the OASIS, and he’s a likeable central character with a quick wit and a passion for all things ‘80s, from Galaga to Rush to The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

His journey spans the length and breadth of the OASIS, taking the reader on a magical mystery tour to distant planets that are influenced by everything from Blade Runner to Back to the Future. Along the way he finds friendship, love, and the ultimate enemy in the shape of Innovative Online Industries, a powerful corporation who will stop at nothing to win the contest and turn the OASIS into a purely commercial destination.

It’s hugely derivative stuff - a grab bag of pop culture citations and allusions - but there’s a charm to the way in which Ready Player One wears its influences on its sleeve, and part of the fun is trying to pick out the multitude of references peppered throughout.

Indeed, so detailed is the 1980s knowledge that one wonders if author Ernest Cline has a time machine (housed in a DeLorean) facilitating his fact collecting and checking.

Yet as well as being geek central for overgrown children of a certain age, the book is also quite simply a gripping adventure that unfolds at a breathless pace and builds to a grandstanding conclusion.

So whether you know your Voight-Kampff from your Kobayashi Maru or not, Ready Player One is quite simply a must-read, an epic adventure crafted from the ground up for nostalgia junkies who love the movies, games and music of the 1980s, and those who simply like a rip-roaring story.

Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and although he was born in the 1970s, he considers himself a child of the '80s. Chris can be found going on and on about Back to the Future on both Twitter and MyIGN.

Source : http://www.ign.com