Wednesday, July 22, 2009

"We need more monkeys"

Just a quick update. Last week LucasArts released The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition, which is a remake of the original game, complete with full voice acting and updated graphics. It is a scene for scene remake. One of the cool things about it is that at any point you can press F10 and switch to classic view instantly.
I picked it up last night and played for about 1/2 hour. It's on Steam for $9.99.
I hope they redo Monkey Island 2 also, but I'm not holding my breath.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Of Monkeys and Islands

Back in the days of Point and Click Adventure Games, LucasArts was king. Maniac Mansion, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, The Dig. All of these games were awesome. They were fun, funny, and just the right amount of challenge.
I preferred the LucasArts games to the Sierra Games (Kings Quest, Space Quest, etc...) because there was no way to lose in a LucasArts game. In the Sierra games, if you failed to pick up a certain item somewhere, or talk to the right person, it was possible (and common) to find yourself in an unwinnable situation, and you would have to reload a previous save and try again. In the LucasArts game, that never happened.
The king of LucasArts games was the Monkey Island Series. I actually played the third game first and then went back and bought a collection that included 1 and 2.
Point and Click adventure games are sort of experiencing a renaissance right now. Telltale Games has been creating episodic point and click games for the past few years including a Strong Bad game, and new Sam and Max adventures. They just released episode one of a new Monkey Island adventure, which I played through this weekend. I have to say it's pretty good, but short (I finished it in about 3 or 4 hours), although, since it's only 1/5 of an entire game, that's not too bad.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Playing with my new spheroid objects

When I was in 6th grade or so, I took a magic class over the summer. I was actually pretty good at it, and was obsessed with magic tricks. I think at some point, most boys are into magic.
But I'm not here to talk to you about magic. The point is, that the teacher also could juggle, and took the time one day to teach us how to juggle 3 balls. I also was pretty good at that.
I was pretty good with 3 balls, and could also juggle 2 in one hand (right hand only), but could never figure out how to do 4 or more balls.
Until about 2 years ago.
My wife and I went on a cruise, and one of the shows was a juggling act. The guys who did the act had a juggling workshop the next day, and I went to it. There I learned the secret of 4 ball juggling, which I will now expose to the world: 4 ball juggling is just 2 balls in each hand. The balls never switch hands. In fact, that's how all even number juggling works.
Actually, it's not really a secret. Sorry.
The guys on the cruise had these silicone balls that were really cool. My wife wanted to get me a set, so she started looking around. She found this cool website JugglingStore.com that had silicone balls, but they were $35 each. Each!
Instead she got me a set of 4 juggling beanbags, which I used to start learning to juggle 4 balls. Even though she didn't buy anything from JugglingStore.com, she subscribed to their newsletter, and occasionally would forward me their emails if they were having a sale or something.
Last week, I finally decided to get some good balls from them. I found out that the silicone balls weren't really what I wanted anyway, since they bounce (in fact, they are awesome at bouncing, that's what they are for), and if you are not doing bounce juggling, it's better that your balls don't bounce.
I ordered some MB Stage Balls which are hard rubber balls that don't bounce so much and cost way less than the silicone balls. They've also got a lot of other cool stuff like beanbags, hybrid balls, clubs, and a sister site (actually the original site), MagicGeek.com which sells magic tricks, but I didn't order anything else (yet), except for a DVD.
The order came in on Tuesday, and I have been playing with them since then. I like them better than the beanbags. They are larger and heavier, which I think leads to a more consistent throw.
My goal right now is to be able to do some cool 3 ball tricks, improve my 4 ball (I can go about 10 seconds or so before losing it), and to learn how to do 5 ball.
Then I'm going to move on to clubs...
* Post title edited 8/13/09 to keep the perverts from finding my site

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Linkaroo

To continue my pattern of real articles surrounded by links, today's link is Sluggy Freelance, a truly awesome webcomic. It successfully mixes humor, adventure, sci-fi and just plain wackiness.
Rather than a joke-a-day, this comic is more of a serial, so just jumping right in to today's episode might be confusing, so I suggest you check out the New Viewer Guide to get caught up.
Many people cite That Which Redeems as their favorite chapter, but my personal favorite is Oceans Unmoving. I really like the time-travel elements, the plot twists, and I think that this story shows Bun-Bun at his very best.