Good news! Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is available today, 19th June! Now that the wait is over, we’d like to share with you the history behind The Sisters.

Armin Gessert (code), Manfred Trenz (graphics) and Chris Hülsbeck (music) were the masterminds behind the original The Great Giana Sisters back in 1987. Their company back then was called Time Warp Productions and the final game was published for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, MSX2, and Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts.

The Great Giana Sisters is a 2D side-scrolling arcade game in which the player controled either Giana or her sister Maria. Each level contained a number of dream crystals which awarded points to the player. Enemies could be defeated either by jumping on them or shooting them after obtaining power-ups. The “Fire Wheel” transformed Giana into a punk with the ability to crush rocks by jumping beneath them.

As you can see, these old concepts of the game are still in place in 2013, especially the change to the punk version of Giana, but let’s get back to the old days …

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Hello all, I hope you’re well. So we’ve looked at the story, the characters and the art of Diggs Nightcrawler and today it’s the turn of the music. My name is Jim Fowler and I wrote and arranged the score for Diggs – and a lot of fun it was too.

The idea with the music was that it should add to the atmosphere of Library City as well helping tell the story and enhancing gameplay. Working with Moonbot, the idea came up pretty early on that the best way to go would be a jazz-based score, which then led to the idea of doing the whole thing with a live big band. We also wanted to make the music seamless, so although it’s pretty interactive (changing to match your progress and actions through Diggs’ case) – it should sound like complete cues. As if the score was written to your specific playthrough.

Because the music is the soundtrack of the story, the city, its jazz haunts and alleyways, I wanted the score to not just reference classic Film Noir but big band and jazz bands of the ’50s as well. As part of that we put together an incredible band of some of the best players in the UK – and we were even able to include some improvised solos for extra authenticity (and awesomeness!).

And in keeping with the ’50s sound, the only digital element of the live session was the computer we recorded to. All the audio processing was done through hardware (valves and all) and we even mixed through ½” tape.

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While we shake the jetlag out of our heads following last week’s salvo of PlayStation news and announcements (£349!), today we’re bubbling up some of our favourite new game trailers from E3 2013. My favourite? A toss-up between The Order: 1886, Transistor and that Octodad madness. Grab some popcorn, check out the clips below and let us know your pick.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (PS3)

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This bumper edition of the LittleBigPlanet Update is jam-packed full of new release announcements and some great news for PlayStation Plus subscribers with just enough room to squeeze in another dose of our community’s boundless creativity in the latest Team Picks!

So let’s not delay and move straight onto the news!

LittleBigPlanet Karting is FREE for PlayStation Plus subscribers!

Take a look at just one of the tracks published by a community creator looking to lay down a challenge for the rest of the community.

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Since we announced Dragon Fantasy Book II on the US PlayStation Blog in August we’ve had a very, very busy year. Our little 16-bit RPG that could has grown into quite a beefy project!

Most of the game is now complete, with big chunks of the game tuned and fully playable. We’ve got some big ol’ bosses in there ready to stomp on people. We’ve beefed the engine up quite a bit from the SNES-like roots we were originally targeting, using way more layers, sprites, and rotation and scaling effects than that console was ever capable of. We’ve travelled to two PAXes and a GDC, showing the game to everyone we could – and losing our voices several times in the process.
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