Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier (PS3) scheduled for release sometime in 2009!

Actual page here - you’ll just have to scroll down to the Js, or use your browser’s handy “find” function ;).

Dark_Dax brought this to my attention, so you can thank him for it… Yep. That’s all I’ve got right now. Goddamn, this joint needs a new layout…

JakPSP teasers. (Removed due to the animator’s job being at risk. They’ve been re-uploaded by others, but I won’t be uploading them until I can be sure I’m not going to get this poor bastard Van Phan fired, ya dig?)

About 5 people emailed me about these at once, so I’m not entirely positive who I should credit. Anyway, these two videos were made by Van Phan (aliasfront) as part of his training as a ND employee. They are from the Jak PSP game, which was -postponed- approximately three months ago.

Also, we’ve got a new affiliate, The Lost Frontier! Started by chibi-jak, this site is a small but growing community of Jak art enthusiasts that you should definitely check in on :].

More Jak-related news today! (I’m a little late with this one, and I apologize). NanoElite666 emailed me with the news that “Naughty Dog veterens Bob Rafei and E. Daniel Arey have gone off to form their own game development studio known as Big Red Button Entertainment. According to the studio’s web site, it currently has six original intellectual properties in conceptual development for cross-platform purposes.”

I, for one, am really sorry to see these two leave Naughty Dog, especially Bob Rafei, who quite literally created the iconic look of Jak and Daxter that we hold so dear. I wish them the best of luck, and I can’t wait to find out more about the six games Big Red Button has in the works!

The gallery has been updated with all new (to me) concept art from Mark Koerner. Head on over to the TPL, JakII, and Jak3 albums to see it!

Next, heavily demanded and finally here, are the mp3s for The Precursor Legacy! Unfortunately, some of the files I found were corrupted and couldn’t be salvaged (most notably is the Dark Eco Plant battle theme), so you will notice missing files when you download the tracks. I apologize for this, and I hope to find working versions of the songs sometime soon.

I’ve also added a new fanfiction to the site - From the Top - by Teh Brainclones (aka Nashidesei and Blu). I haven’t read all of it yet, but its a very fun fanfiction and a great way to spend a few hours, so check it out!

Also: to those of you who have emailed me recently (and not so recently), a lot of the messages sent to me via my mailform never made it to my inbox. In the process of making a new layout for the mailform, I glanced at the log of all the messages sent through it and I realized that there’s a whole fucking ton of messages in it that I hadn’t seen before. This was problem a while ago and I thought I fixed it, but apparently I didn’t. So I’m so very sorry if you’ve sent me a message and haven’t gotten a reply yet. I’m working my way through them currently, but if you want to send me your message again, please do!

Happy New Year everyone! Have I got some great dirt to start 2008 off with! Luis Paredes sent me a new article concerning the next Jak game from the PSU.com. In it, Evan Wells talks about using the Uncharted engine in Naughty Dog’s future projects. Even though Wells stresses the high probability of one or more sequels to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, he mentions a new Jak and Daxter game being a “definite possibility.”
In his own words:

“We will most definitely continue to build on the Uncharted code base with all of our future titles for the PlayStation3. We have a lot of very sophisticated systems that are general purpose and could be used for a wide variety of genres. It’s very exciting to think what we can do with this tech now that it’s in place and we can focus on accomplishing something even more ambitious. And Jak and Daxter is a definite possibility some time in the future. There is a lot of interest around the office in going back to that franchise and seeing what we could do with it using the Uncharted engine.

“We developed Uncharted as a franchise. The pulp action/adventure genre lends itself perfectly to serialization and continued episodes which is one of the reasons we were attracted to it. Right now we are brainstorming on what Naughty Dog’s next project will be, but even if we don’t do an Uncharted sequel right away, you can pretty much count on us doing one in the near future.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

Big change to the gallery. Well, big for me anyway. Its one of them fancy-pants behind the scenes changes, that you never really notice unless you’re the one who actually made the change? Yeah, one of those. Anyway! Since the gallery was recently invaded by a slew of spam bots (many many thanks to NanoElite666 for bringing this to my attention), and Coppermine has yet to develop a security fix (despite practically every Coppermine gallery in existence having this spam problem), I’ve set it up so that new members will have to be manually set to be allowed to post comments. Unfortunately, this means you guys are stuck waiting for me to actually do something, and Lord knows I’m incapable of doing anything in a timely manner. I wish to apologize profusely in advance for the frustration I know I’ll cause. Please bear with me.

 
Bear with me… Oh geez. Here we go. This is gonna be a long update, full of unnecessary words for sure. There’s a lot of stuff besides the gallery thing that I must ask you to bear with me on. Like, me never updating. And I don’t mean adding Jak article snippets or icons that other people have generously donated. I mean me updating with stuff I’ve done - like wallpapers and icons and fanart. And this layout is so godamn ancient! (I made it over a year ago, though it hasn’t been online that long). And the forums! Holy shit, just look at the forums! There aren’t any! Yes, Dark_Dax kindly made a UH section at The Dark Ottsel’s, but every topic in there (besides mine) is about something that’s gone wrong. If that’s not depressing, I don’t know what is. Truth be told, I just… I just don’t care anymore. I don’t mean about the site or the fans (I fucking love you guys - you make this all worthwhile), I’m talking about the fandom in general. I haven’t touched my PS2 in months, and earlier than that I couldn’t play Jak for five minutes before my attention span took a high-speed drive to hell. So I’m sorry for all the inactivity on my end. I’m sorry for not taking this place anywhere. And I’m especially sorry if I’ve built up your expectations and not followed through. I’d like to say that I’m going on hiatus and when I come back this place will be so jam-packed with new shit that your brain will bleed out your ears. But I can’t. I just have too much on my plate to do anything extraordinary around here. And even if I didn’t, I just don’t have any desire to design or undertake anything massive for UH anymore. As much as it pains me to admit this, all you’re going to see around here, for quite some time, are those humdrum “news” updates. Fuck! I’m not even good at them either. Yeah, that’s right - other people email me with this shit. I know I suck.

 
Also: to DAXRULZ, and anyone else who wanted to download the 1600×1200 version of the 10th wallpaper in the Official Wallpapers: Daxter section - it does not exist and I’m terribly sorry! Apparently I’m a dumbass (no surprise there) and I thought I had a 1600×1200 version when I didn’t.

Annihilation Control is officially open! I’m actually posting this here relatively on-time too, as the listing hasn’t been switched from upcoming to current at TFL.org yet (o_____O). Not gonna lie though. Annihilation Control isn’t completely finished. I still have to add some 100×30 and 100×50 codes, and put some stuff on the extras page. But anyways, if you love this über-kick-ass comic book series as much as I do, than go join the listing!

Fourteen new 100×100 icons have been added thanks to Dark_Dax and Mariciri! Go check ‘em out :)

I was just approved by TFL.org for The Umbrella Academy limited series comic fanlisting. I’ve been über-excited about this series from the beginning, and I have the series’s writer - Gerard Way - to thank for getting me back into the graphic novel genre, so (if my schedule permits) I’ll be going all out on this listing!

More news on the “new Jak game” front. Evan Wells did an interview for the Video Game Spectrum, which you can read here. The bit concerning Jak’s future goes like so:

“EW: We’re not even sure if Jak’s journey is finished or not. It is a possibility, if we feel we have enough time and money to make another one for the PS3 we probably will do what our fellow game designers at Insomniac are doing and continue both Jak and Uncharted. However all that depends on the sales of Uncharted.

SJ: So if I’m a fan of Jak I should run right out and buy both a PS3 and Uncharted?

EW: [laughs] Well you should anyway but especially if you’re a Jak and Daxter fan.”

I will spare you the rant that last little bit sparked, but it looks like we have two conflicting sources of information. Though I am inclined to put more stock into the words that came straight from the horse’s mouth, I can’t help but get the feeling Evan Wells is hiding something. Ho hum (suspense!).

Anyway, credit for finding and submitting this interview goes to Dark_Dax at The Dark Ottsel’s.

UUnity was added to TFL today! I doubt anyone reading this has any clue what Unitarian Universalism actually is, but there’s a great description [edited from Wikipedia] at the listing, so go take a look!