Richard's Online Journal
[02/06/09] E3 Diary, Day Zero
7:15: Wake up. Remember that I’m not actually at E3. Diary already failing.
7:27: Pondering what kind of monster can get up at 7:27 when they can get away with waiting for a nice round number. Relax with pleasant thoughts about not having jetlag and crushed legs from endless 10 hour plane flight. Aaah.
9:30: First closed-door meeting of the day, focused on the release schedule of yesterday’s dinner. Still better than anything Sony’s likely to show.
10:34: Pay tramp £5 to pretend to be Tim Schafer. Spend half hour babbling incoherently about the amazingnessitudinity of Psychonauts until he gives the money back and stamps off to annoy some tourists.
11:32: On eBay, selling Tim Schafer’s autograph. Potential buyer wants to know how he can be sure it’s legitimate. I promise signed certificate of authenticity. He accepts.
13:30: Much needed lunchbreak. Feast on the irony of spending the day reading roughly a hundred million articles on new releases, then shrugging and muttering “There’s nothing coming out.” Gamer-entitlement is awesome.
14:34: Snatching pictures of sexy booth babes. Or anyone who uses the photo booth outside Sainsbury’s, really. Note to self: some old people run fast.
15:43: Trying to get into the E3 floor-walking spirit by repeatedly smashing both feet with ball peen hammer. Walking now agony. Seemed like good idea at the time.
16:23: Desperate to see some new games actually moving, grab myself some print outs from the press releases, squint a bit, and shake them around in front of eyes. Frame rate obviously terrible, but no worse than Crysis on my old PC.
17:30: Can’t help but feel the people at the actual show have it better.
[01/06/09] Tales of Monkey Island
Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes…
If you need to know why you should be excited, a quick look at the Team page sums it up. I don’t know every name on the list, but seeing Dave Grossman, Mike Stemmle and Mark Darin listed at the top of it is more than enough for now. Really looking forward to this one. It’s a franchise perfectly suited to Telltale’s style, even if going up against peoples’ rose-tinted memories of the original games is one hell of a challenge.
(That said, I hope the majority is spent as far away from the titular island as possible. I always felt the games took a major downturn when that damn place entered the story, even taking the cannibals and ‘rubber tree’ joke into account.)
As for the Monkey Island Special Edition, it’s one I’m almost certainly going to download, but… egads, what happened to Guybrush’s hair? If they do a similar remake of Monkey Island 2, they’d better not mess with that awesome blue coat, that’s all I’m saying…
(Note to Lucasarts: Please do a remake of Monkey Island 2. At least, the first and second chapters. You know you want to, even if you don’t...)
[30/05/09] Decor By Lucasarts
I like the classic adventure games. A lot. Does it show?
The back of my study wall is boring and dull - a plain white wall, long desperately in need of something to fill it. I’ve looked at posters before, but most posters are terrible. I don’t want logos, I don’t want words, just pretty pictures. That’s why it was so cool, quite some time ago, to see a true internet hero called Laserschwert take the old Lucasarts games, scan them in at insane resolutions, touch them up, strip out most of the logos and other cruft, and release the files for anyone to get printed up.
See and download the complete set here.
I’ve been meaning to get some of them printed for ages now, and now that I’ve finally received some, let me say this: they are awesome. The Sam and Max one came out particularly well - glorious colours, amazing detail. Still, my favourite is still probably Monkey Island 2, with that phenomenal colour work and attention to detail. I loved this box art back in the day, to the extent that I’m seriously considering sending the image back in and getting it on canvas. I don’t want to admit how long it took me to notice that the plumes in LeChuck’s hat are actually a dead bird, but it’s so much more obvious in this form. The others: The Sam and Max box, some Grim Fandango concept art (not a Laserschwert one, and nowhere near as good quality, but not bad) and a Star Wars parody of Day of the Tentacle. Together, they’re not even on the Top 10 list of the geekiest things I own, but I think they get an honourable mention.
(I’d have picked up Zak McKracken too, except for my borderline OCD dislike of words on clothes and posters. That goes quadruple for web links, Cafe Press people.)
As ever, I used Photobox to print them. I thought I ordered them on matt, but they arrived glossy. If you get some for your own, I’d recommend avoiding this - the gloss is very, very shiny. Not bad enough to reorder them, but still, word to the wise. The only other mild issue is that the images aren’t quite flush with the edges - each poster has a notable white line running down the left-hand side. Still, good enough.
If you want a set for yourself, the source images should be good for more or less any poster size. Mine are A2. Stuck on the wall with Blu-Tack. Not love. Love is the wrong kind of sticky. And I’m just not that into my games. Except System Shock.
Semi-related: If you don’t want to risk the wrath of the karma police, you can get some official Sam and Max poster prints from the Telltale Games Store. They look nice, even if they don’t have the same geeky nostalgia factor that make these ones so cool.
(Also: Yes, my god, a new post! Sorry about that. Been a busy couple of months without much of interest to say. More on their way, I promise.)
[15/03/09] The Nameless Mod
“Is there anything in this city which does NOT have some secret complex in the basement?”
“I doubt it. Everyone here is a Deus Ex fan, remember.”
Before we go any further, let me say this: The Nameless Mod is one of the best mods I’ve ever played. No question. I can’t think of many that have impressed me more, and very few that I’d actually put on the same pedestal. I have some quibbles, but it’s a phenomenal achievement. Download it now if you own Deus Ex.
If you take only one thing from this rambling screed, take this: I enjoyed it about ten times more than Invisible War, and that’s not me damning it with faint praise. It took seven years for the team to make it, and believe me, it shows.
“My city. My forum. My god, this mod’s actually out?”
[09/03/09] Tchotchke-ho! Peggle Edition
More wonderful tat (I mean this in the best possible way - I love getting this kind of stuff) from the mailbox, this time promoting PopCap Games’ wonderful Peggle. If you haven’t played Peggle, you are a very bad person. If you simply don’t like Peggle, you are hereby banned, from this website and from your primary oxygen supply.
Let’s see what’s in the PopCap box today…
My very own cuddly Splork! I’m a little nervous though. That red suit covers him from head to little green toes… so what’s with the big red bulge? Didn’t know he was that kind of tentacle alien…
Badges! And of the mighty Hu too. Just by wearing one, I’m reliably informed that your Peggle skills improve by at least 0*232,543 percent. That’s impressive, especially if you don’t know much about maths.
As ever, I wish to make it absolutely clear that receiving this kind of thing in no way affects the impartial nature of any content we produce, even when a game is as transcendent an experience as a blessed round of Peggle, with its beautiful noises that ring orgasms in your ear and boundless reaches of sheer wonder the likes of which puzzle games have never known. So there. But it is fun. (Peggle!)