I'm really excited to tell everyone that I'm bringing back Voodoo Vince in a newly remastered version for Xbox One and PC! This has been brewing for a while. It took some time to sort out the logistics of doing this independently. The folks at Microsoft (who still owns Vince) and I hit on the idea of launching Vince through the ID@Xbox program. The publishing entity is my old company, Beep Games. Production work started in earnest around May. It's coming along really well and we'll be out early next year!
Here are some screenshots of the work in progress:
Here's some concept art of Vince's nemesis, culinary miscreant Crawdad Jimmy. Come to think of it, Jimmy's chef credentials were never verified. I really can't vouch for the quality of his gumbo. Artwork by the as-always awesome Doug Williams!
I've been fortunate to hear from better informed experts on Seattle's past topology as I've posted these photo mash-ups over the last few years. That first batch especially had a few mistakes. Sometimes the image alignments were a little off -- Sometimes a lot. David B. Williams was nice enough to point out that the 1914 photo of the McNaught house was actually situated on the southeast corner of 6th and Marion, not the northeast as shown in my original composite. So, here's a do-over with the house where it should be. If anything, the elevation difference looks even more dramatic now. Thanks, David!
This image from around 7th and Jefferson gives a sense of what it might look to drive through Seattle on I-5 in 1887 or 1888, a year or two before Washington attained statehood. The dramatic growth of the city is remarkable when you compare wider shots that contrast a town of wood and brick with the glass, steel and cement of today. Of course the stage will be set for Seattle's next growth phase by Great Seattle Fire which cut a huge swath through many of the buildings to the left in 1889.
Here we see the majestic USS Macon gliding above Seattle's Green Lake on August 22, 1934. The airship was traveling to its new station near San Francisco but took a leisurely route with time for a number of photo ops along the way. The Macon was a marvel of engineering and was designed to be a "flying aircraft carrier" with five small fighter planes. But even before the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 airships didn't have an encouraging safety record. The Macon's sister ship, the USS Akron, crashed off the coast of New Jersey the previous year with a loss of nearly all hands. The Macon too would be gone in February of 1935 when it crashed into the Pacific off the California coast near Monterey. Unlike the Akron disaster, all but two of its 76 crew members survived. The Macon's wreckage wasn't discovered until 1991 and the site is now a designated marine sanctuary.
Many of the residential houses from the era still stand today, though the area was clearly much more rural with some pastures and farms still evident. Both the baseball field and the Green Lake boathouse are present in the 1934 photo as well. The biggest change was certainly the addition of I-5 which eventually snaked through the fields in the central foreground.
