BlogAllAlong » Adventure

Monkey Island II Tie

Bashar — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:23:20 +0000

Remember those Monkey Island sneakers? You do? Wow.. your life must be so empty! But anyways, I got an email that seems from the same shoes designer and you can now wear ties that match your shoes while going to work.

You can read her Spanish page if you like (or use Google Translate). And to bid for the Monkey Island tie (currently standing at 99 EUR!), you can do that here.

Don’t you wish now you wear formal?

Monkey Island 2 Special-Uber Edition

Bashar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:20:09 +0000

I can’t believe I call my self Monkey Island fan and I haven’t heard about this proof of concept for Monkey Island 2 Special Edition with 3D environment. And I haven’t even played the Tales of Monkey Island yet. I shouldn’t blog about this or else… Err, what do you mean I just did? Umm… back to topic.

Enjoy the videos.

A pirate fanboy I was meant to be…

Bashar — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:51:09 +0000

Being in the middle of pirate themes nowadays, and being an old Monkey Island fan makes me go and search for the old stuff. Remember the funny “A Pirate I was Meant To Be” Song in Monkey Island 3?

Lovely isn’t it :). Well here is a new remake modern version of it: “A fanboy I was meant to be!”

Google Experimental Search

Bashar — Sat, 19 May 2007 12:24:52 +0000

A nice and neat new feature from Google. Google Experimental lets you search for terms and see their results and events over the course of Timeline. The service is still new and you can see lots of empty gaps even when you search for Google. You can enjoy searching for your favorite topics like Monkey Island or Sam & Max. See how the Sam & Max comics started in 80′s, was turned into a game in 93, strange announcement from The Adventure Company and Telltale to bring Sam & Max season 1 to stores in 1996! (That’s one flaw) The real link points to PDF document dated 2007. How in 2002 there was a hope for Sam & Max 2, 2004 marked the death of adventure games at Lucasarts. It’s still in testing phase, but quite fun and useful too.

It’s Raining Publishers on AME Games

Bashar — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:26:35 +0000

The long awaited and anticipated A Vampyre Story adventure game, which has been delayed for months and months in failing attempts to sign a publisher, is now getting publishers fighting over after seeing the potential it has. It reminds me of the chicken that was planting seeds, only after it was fresh to eat people started gathering. For few days now, I have been getting alerts to the Google Alert I have “(vampyre story) OR amegames”. You can tell how much I am waitig for the game, and if you are too, I suggest you subscribe to the same news. Here is what I got today:

Google News Alert for: (vampyre story) OR amegames

Ascaron Brings ‘A Vampyre Story‘ to the UK
WorthPlaying.com – Oakland,CA,USA
“A Vampyre Story” is the creation of Bill Tiller and his new studio Autumn Moon Entertainment. A former employee of Lucas Arts, Tiller won himself a place …
See all stories on this topic

Google Blogs Alert for: (vampyre story) OR amegames

93 Games Publishing Vampyre Story
93 Games have announced they have secured the rights to publish A Vampyre Story in the UK.”A Vampyre Story” is the creation of Bill Tiller and his new…
news0r – http://www.news0r.com/index.php

Ascaron Signs A Vampyre Story
To be published by Ascaron.
GamersHell.com – PC News (Most Recent) – http://www.gamershell.com

Gallery: A Vampyre Story
By play.tm@ferrago.com (play.tm team)
Latest screens.
play™ – http://play.tm

Google Web Alert for: (vampyre story) OR amegames

IGN: A Vampyre Story Screenshots, Wallpapers and Pics
IGN is the ultimate resource for A Vampyre Story screenshots, wallpapers, pictures, photos, images and pics.

Happy Birthday SCUMM

Bashar — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:34:46 +0000

Or should I say Happy Birthday Ron? This years marks the 20th anniversary of SCUMM, the scripting utility Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert created to aid in the development of adventure game Maniac Mansion. The utility became the foundation of many other adventure games, like the legendary Monkey Island. A virtual machine is in place now and is adapted to different platforms to keep the old franchise playable. Nintendo DS now is able to play the old games while you are on the move. Read a short interview with Ron Gilbert on IGN.

How much does Psychonauts cost?

Bashar — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:11:49 +0000

Following the high reviews it received, and my friend Kroms’s nagging and pushing, I decided to ignore my demo perception and still buy Psychonauts. After all, how much would it cost? $9 only on Amazon. I didn’t want however to pay for the shipping, so I thought of looking for a downloadable soft version of the game when I landed on Double Fine (developing company of the game) and guess what? The game costs $40, and it even goes up to $50 for the signed version of it! How on earth does that happen? The game costs 4 times the price of Amazon, who are offering it through a reseller, where everyone is taking small part of the share. I’m not sure their shop is working for real, but obviously no one is updating it. Best top anticipated game launches at $49.99 at most (same applies for PS3 games here), one year later, even the best game’s price goes to as low as $12. New games are coming, no one is gonna look at the old games any more. Anyways, I had to go with the shipping cost option from Amazon, and on the way dropped a few more nice games in the basket ;).

If more games were just half as good as this one

Bashar — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:09:28 +0000

This is beyond the shadow of a doubt one of the best video game trailers ever made. The game it self is among the best as well. Somehow it didn’t get the attention it deserves. (Embedding YouTube videos stopped working on my blog for some reason, while Google Video still works, I had to hyperlink it)

Grimfandango was the last worthy adventure game from Lucasarts. After which, it was all gone and missed. If you still like to get your hands on it, or any other classic adventure game, GamePlanet New Zealand is having it with international shipping. Each game is worth $15. When they first promoted the classic games for sale, it was $7 only! Now it’s out of stock and rising in price. Can you believe the late 90′s game is now sold for the price of Prince of Persia!

Search Google Video Only

Bashar — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:46:41 +0000

After the Youtube acquisition by Google, Google Video started returning search results from YouTube along the Google Video results. With the massive community of YouTube, finding Google Videos has become a difficult task using ordinary search. If you are a Google Video fan, or for any reason want to filter out YouTube results, you can do so simply by searching Google Video like this:

your keywords -site:youtube.com

Example: monkey island -site:youtube.com

While searching, I came across this Monkey Island 5 movie, from the WoW world :). It’s not awesome really, but the intro was a bit promising.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-2137229125577360715&hl=en" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Piracy Kills Adventure Games

Bashar — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:18:20 +0000

The Longest Journey and Dreamfall are two successful adventure games that were developed by Funcom. Even though I could not bare to finish The Longest Journey, being on of the most buggiest and boring adventure games I’ve ever played, others have still loved it crazy and it got quite high reviews from the fans. It was followed by the anticipated part 2 Dreamfall game, and the company seemed to be doing quite well. Today however I read in the news that Funcom, the developer of the adventure game series have decided to abandon all “offline” games development, and will go for the MMO games instead. The main reason behind that decision they say is the high ratio of games piracy. They estimate that over 200,000 illegal downloads of Dreamfall were made before it was even released! They estimate also that for every copy they sell, 3 to 10 illegal copies are made.

The numbers they have are really scary, however not very far from truth I can tell. I can hardly find someone who buys original software in Kuwait. They are more embarrassing and difficult to get, not to mention ridiculously expensive as well. The game which is available online for $18 is in our market for 16 KD!, that’s more than 3 times the price. Nevertheless, the decision is a clear message to gaming fans, and especially adventure gaming fans, piracy is hurting business seriously, and it’s affecting the strategy and trend of games being developed. I remember someone who said once, don’t worry, there are xxxxx stupid people buying original copies we won’t be harmed. Well, it seems now we are. If it wasn’t for those piracy, Lucasarts might have never unplugged the host on adventure games, and we wouldn’t have to go through this complex license activation procedure for each and every Sam & Max episode release. Not to mention Telltale will not have to share extra money with the online licensing company. So by paying a little for the games we love, we are supporting even greater games to come. More of a Win-Win situation here.

The Ugly Prince is for SALE!

Bashar — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 07:46:43 +0000

Danish adventure game Hans Christian Andersen: The Ugly Prince Duckling which hit europe stores last year will be available for shipping from The Adventure Company for a $19.99 price according to Adventure Gamers. The game, though still does not have rating for it on GameSpot and Amazon, seems like a very good choice for adventure fans. For the first time in over 10 years, I don’t have the time to play all the adventure games there are, from Sam & Max episodes, Ankh Reverse the Curse, Broken Sword IV, and now this, in addition to some other games as well. If I had the time ofcourse, this won’t be true no matter how many games there are. The strange thing is, the game is still not available for shipping from The Adventures Company while you can order it from Amazon!

Give Telltale Your Comments

Bashar — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:26:19 +0000

Hey classic adventure gaming fans, Telltale is asking for your help and feedback. Help them improve and deliver better games here.

Gaming hints, Spoiler FREE

Bashar — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:44:40 +0000

Universal Hint System is the site for gamers looking for clues when they are stuck in the game. Why do I recommend this site among many others is because, all other walkthrough guides could spoil the game for you. You are looking for a small hint, but you have to keep reading down the solution manual until you read by mistakes about uncovered scenes and part of the story. That’s really bad! It’s like having someone telling you the next scene in the movie. Wouldn’t you like to put a bullet in his head? Well, maybe I am getting a bit extreme here. Anyways, the site is mostly suitable for Adventure games, but has also a great collection of action and shooter games as well.

For every game, the site splits the hints into sections, puzzles, and for each puzzle, it gives you slight hint by hint, until you have enough information to overcome the puzzle. While in general the idea is to solve puzzles by your self, but why should you lock your self bored to death in one place for days, or quite the game, when a small hint can do.

&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Good News Sam & Max Fans

Bashar — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 10:04:29 +0000

First of all, for Sam & Max Season 1 customers, check your email and start downloading Sam & MAX: Abe Lincoln Must Die. Telltale announced that customer who bought the full Season 1 ahead of time will get that advantage of getting the game 7 days earlier than launch date. I am already downloading it. That’s part 1 of the news. What’s the second part?

Just Adventure writes that The Adventure Company have announced that they will be publishing Sam & Max episodic adventure game to stores. The company have reached an agreement with Telltale, and there is an expected major marketing campaign for the game. This means quite few good things. First, Sam & Max, and adventure games as a whole have proved once again they have a market for them. Telltale are doing quite good and keep expanding. Lucasarts keep getting more heat in the field and better get back soon if they ever will. The Sam & Max characters will spread and have chance of expanding further beyond it’s current base customer fans, and The Adventure Company is the true big heart of adventure games nowadays.

Lucasarts revisiting The Dig?

Bashar — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:51:48 +0000

That’s right. The great old classic game, The Dig is not forgotten at all by Lucasarts as many people might think, not even after 12 years. You can tell so from the lawsuit Lucasarts are filing against Digg.com, saying that the name is confusing with their 12 years old point and click adventure game, which was not a big success even. Lucas have also turned down the offer by Digg to trademark it’s name. The funny thing is, Dig.com is a registered domain for Walt Disney Interactive Group, and they had nothing to say about it! I find it awkward Lucas are revisiting the name after 12 years just for the sake of a lawsuit. This is either a UTube inspired similar lawsuit case, and if so, it’s a real shame on Lucas to follow that way just to make few bucks. Who the hell would remember The Dig game today, and instead of searching for it would think there is a domain for it, and that domain is misspelled as Digg.com. The other possibility is that Lucasarts are planning to revisit The Dig again! Since Lucasarts have republished the classic adventure games for sale, said they are getting back to adventure games, even if in 2015, they are probably either considering a second episode, or a movie based on the game. After all, there have been some thoughts about making movie of the game. All in all, it is still very funny how Lucas ignores the customer cries for years, promise only to come back in 2015, when they know many people are going to Digg.com to read about the dozen years old game, yet they still do nothing but file lawsuits about it. More on the news also from International House of Mojo.

Lucasarts Classics for $7 Each

Bashar — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 09:15:47 +0000

International House of Mojo writes that classic adventure point and click games from Lucasarts are now available in Australia and New Zealand for sale at $7 each. The games, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Full Throttle, The Dig, Curse of Monkey Island and Grimfandango, are now runnable from CD, no installation required. The games run on Win98SE, ME, 2000 and XP. The games are available from Game Planet New Zealand with international shipping as well. As much as I would like to get my hands on Grimfandango, I am still hesitating to pay a single dime for Lucasarts. Not only because they abandoned the adventure games, not because they don’t even want to give away the license for them, but because I have tried to buy the Mega Monkey Bundle previously,which includes all four parts of Monkey Island. Putting the order was a not easy at all by it self, and when I got it, Monkey Island 1 & 2 ran on my PC without music. After all the ScummVM and others I’ve tried, I only managed to run MI 2 with music. When I contacted the Lucas support team, which was at the time under Yoda theme, I explained the problem I am facing and that you sold the game when Window XP is the dominant platform, there was no warning message it may not run properly on new platforms. I received a silly reply from them saying:

“Thank you for your message,

Unfortunately, this DOS program is not officially supported for use with Windows XP, due to changes made to the Windows operating system with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, in addition to the release of new audio technology and faster processors which can also adversely affect this and other old DOS games. Windows XP does not provide a TRUE DOS environment. DOS titles were designed specifically for this type of environment.

At this time, there are no plans to provide any updates or support for these older DOS based titles in Windows XP.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

May the Force be with you,

Jason
LucasArts Technical Support”

Very interesting isn’t it? Why didn’t they say that when they offered the mega package you wonder, and more, what’s the point of offering the package anyways? It’s like offering all Amiga games in one package for $10, but you have to have a running old Amiga! And what makes it even worse, is the stupid “May The Force Be With You” quote at the end! They are like making fools of their customers. I fired them back an angry email with no reply ofcourse, they got their money, let go the customer! Anyways, this game now is Windows XP supported (as they claim), and for people who didn’t play the old games, like my friend who will reply to this post before I even publish it!, $7 is really worth it.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – Another Copy From Monkey Island

Bashar — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:11:56 +0000

While the release date of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the last episode of the trilogy, approaches, concept arts are starting to reveal some secrets about the film. One great discovery was the copy of the Monkey Island 2 Scabb Island, which is made of ship parts.

See the similarity. The copy story started from Ron Gilbert days when he was inspired by a book novel and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, more credit for the novel as he said. The similarity was reported first on International House of Mojo. Kroms Blog has a sharp eye on those news and quickly grabbed it. Still, this is the last worthy pirate movie to watch. If Lucas sold us for FREE, we can still enjoy Monkey Island movie with Pirates of the Caribbean name on it. After all we all did play Monkey Island 4 didn’t we? This movie is more worthy of the name I believe.

Sam & Max – Abe Lincoln Must Die

Bashar — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:10:22 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about Sam & Max: The Offer You Can’t Refuse. I was concerned about how short it was. Well, now I can say all forgiven telltale. Looking at the latest snapshots of the next episode, Sam & Max – Abe Lincoln Must Die, I can see they’ve been busy preparing for that episode. You can see the snapshots at AdventureGamers. Sam & Max are now taking a new twist and getting into politics. They are after the president’s tail this time, after the country became solely gun controlled. And the president is no one else than Abe who was the bad guy in Sam & Max Hit The Road. The snapshots remind me of his house in the original game. He was one funny character, and the theme of this episode really got me waiting.

You can also see a video trailer for it at Telltale. Click on # 4 to go for the fourth episode and you will see the Video option there. It’s really great one, and for the first time, looks serious rather than funny! Ofcourse it will turn funny at the end, but the trailer gets you into the theme. I was not able to find a downloadable version of it though, if you happen to come across one, please do let me know.

UPDATE: You can download the TellTale Episode 4 trailer here. There seems to be another one from GameTap, but I am not sure it’s spoiler free and you need a tool to download it, so I skipped it. You can read more about it in the forum here as well.

Sam & Max: The Offer You Can’t Refuse

Bashar — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 09:08:19 +0000

Busy with all the work and my first week back to work, I just now finished Sam & Max: The Mole, The Mob, and the Meatball. If you haven’t played or finished it yet (usually it’s either finished or didn’t play), then you might want to stop here as this is more of a review that might contain spoilers. Being a Sam & Max and Godfather fan, this episode looks like it was made for me. I liked the theme they made the Teddy Bears acts as Mafia, and clearly the Don was talking Marlon Brando style. They could have done it in a better way though. Another thing that was really niec and funny, and I hope to see more of him in the next episodes is the organic listening devices. They really shouldn’t take him out. Let it not be another Murray. Remember how they killed him in what they called MI 4! Playing the game was as always an awful lot of fun.
The bads of the game however are also there, and by naming theme I hope they will be looked at and tackled in the future releases. This release, if I am not mistaken is by far the easiest and shortest I played from all telltale games, including Bone series. I could not need to think in most of the puzzles. I only started the game three times because of the lack of time, and never got confused. This is a point telltale are already aware of, and is pretty normal with monthly episode limited to 5 scenes only. Telltale did mention they expect the game to get difficult in the last two episodes of the season, probably by reusing the same existing scenes. I also think new seasons will be based on many ready made work and will get the chance to become longer and harder.

The other big problem I see is the performance issues with the game. The way Telltale builds their game seems to be resource intensive, even when I have 1 GB of RAM, and 256 MB VGA Card! In the last two episodes, I had to sacrifice the resolution to lowest to get it working just OK, not even smooth yet. Game flickers at times, specially when the camera moves around. Anytime I quit the game as well, I get a pop-up error message. I am also playing Ankh: Reverse the Curse. I know Telltale took part of the game development, now sure of the details, but the game seems to be using the same Telltale tools looking at how the camera and control movements are. I also face similar issues with that game. While I am able to play heavy action/adventure games like Mafia, and sport games like FIFA 2007, which require much more live 3D rendering, I do not face any issues with them. I hope Telltale can tackle this issue before brining in heavier games that won’t run on my PC anymore.

That’s it for now. It’s another month of wait for episode 4.

New ex-Lucasart Team United = Tough New Game!

Bashar — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:45:57 +0000

Brilliant news for old Lucasarts adventure game fans, a new group of ex-Lucasarts employees (as usual) have started up a new company, Crackpot Entertainment and are coming up with a new action/adventure game this year called Insecticide. Lead designer of Curse of Monkey Island, Larry Ahern, and artist/animator of Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit The Road are among the team. You can already see some pictures, art design, and even a short trailer of the game. The 3D Graphics and animation are so amazing.

The emerge of the fourth adventure game company after Lucasarts, success of Telltale games so far, and the new coming adventure games sequels are all solid proof there is still a market for this genre, and 2015, Lucasart are going to have a tough time getting back in the game. I would assume they will try to approach the new formed up companies for development, and they simply become the publishers. I hope non of the companies agree though. How they turned down all their fans was more than bad.

For more on the news, you can read the original article on The International House of Mojo. I also have to thank Kroms for posting the news first.

Best Adventure Game Debate

Bashar — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:14:05 +0000

Adventure game fans, what was the best Point & Click Adventure game you ever played? An online debate is open at ConvinceMe for Monkey Island Series (- Part 4 ofcourse) as King of the Hills. Share your thoughts.

Pyrats and Monkey Island fans the same…

Bashar — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 07:41:27 +0000

Previously, I wrote about Monkey Island Cartoon, and it wasn’t really a Monkey Island cartoon, but rather a short film by a group of 5 French graduate students. The animation was so nice, characters were really drilled into, and you can see some real effort put into it. As a Monkey Island fan, I immediately recalled it and got a feeling there is a similarity with it. Very likely those guys could be Monkey Island fans as well who got inspired to do their work. I emailed them asking about it and never got any reply sadly.

I noticed however, that the highest search query that resulted in hit to my sit was “pyrats monkey island“. So it was interesting to see how many people are trying to reach the same conclusion as I did, along with many others who saw it ofcourse.

Monkey Island Cover Art worth $4,550

Bashar — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 16:56:18 +0000

Original cover art of Monkey Island 2: Lechuck’s Revenge, drawn by Steve Purcell has been sold at eBay for $4,500! One could only wonder how could the cover art be sold for that price while adventure game developers are lacking support from publishers? As for Mr. Purcell, well done and I really hope a Monkey Island fan is keeping hold of it safe right now. Is it cursed or something by the way? Ron Gilbert wrote the story first on his blog. You can read fans comments over there.

The $4,500 cover

Ron Gilbert leading WoW Army

Bashar — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 07:48:01 +0000

Ron Gilbert have started his own Monkey Island themed guild in the World of Warcraft called Threepwood (can you imagine no one used that name?) and is inviting all Monkey Island fans to join the team under one condition, you have to have a Monkey Island character name. Well, too bad I am away from those games, otherwise it would have been fun to act as Murry, the most fearsome demonic skull… Muwahahahahaaa… Sorry I just got over excited a bit.

Anyways, thanks for World Of Monkey Island for sharing the news. And for more, no better than reading Ron Gilbert’s blog for more details.

Sam & Max: The Mole, The Mob, and the Meatball

Bashar — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:34:09 +0000

YES, the third episode of six forming the Sam & Max season 1 is already out for GameTap users in the US, while we still have to wait until 8th Feb to put our hands on the game. I am kind of liking it now, every installment comes with its own flavor. While Situation Comedy was about celebrities and all, now comes the third episode with Mafia theme, my favorite.

You can watch the trailer on YouTube here while you are waiting.

Finally, A Vampyre Story set for release end of 2007

Bashar — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:10:12 +0000

It was a long wait, it was a touch fight, and we are still going to wait. But in the end, I think it’s all worth it. The dream of Bill Tiller and his new Autumn Moon studio is coming to reality finally. A Vampyre Story release date in France and United Kingdom has been announced and is intended to be at the end of 2007. I can still recall when the game designer vowed to release the game, even if he had to do so on his own budget.

Well, his efforts seem to have been rewarded and the fans are eagerly waiting for the new 2D style adventure game. The French distributors are now targeting the end of year for the release. You can read the translation of the article here. The original French version is available here as well.

Telltale Vs Lucasarts

Bashar — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 14:08:06 +0000

March 2004, the famous anticipated sequel to the Sam & Max Hit the Road was cancelled by Lucasarts for good, and and all other adventure game plans have been put on hold until further notice. A late comment came from Lucas officials late last year saying they will get back to the adventure games in 2015!

Fans went mad, petitions started on the internet, and even the Lucas employees who were working on the game felt frustrated. A group of the employees heard the cries, quit Lucas and started what’s called today Telltale games back in June 2004. They have managed to acquire the license for the abandoned Sam & Max and already released two episodes which were well accepted by the fans.

Now, and after 3 years and a half, I thought of making this comparison between the small Telltale, and the Star Wars fueled Lucasarts. The first thing I tried was how often people Google for one over the other by using Google Trends.

Lucas are still in the lead, but as it is properly called Trend, you can see end of 2006 how Telltale closed up on Lucasarts. This was when Sam & Max Ep. 1 was released. A clear message from the fans to Lucas I suppose. Also, you can see below the difference from Alexa for Reach and Rank:

Daily Reach has still a huge gap between the two, though at every Sam & Max release this gap gets a lot smaller. If we look at Ranking it gets much more interesting. At Nov and Jan, when the two Sam & Max episodes were released, the 3 1/2 years old company, living on the forgotten and leftovers of Lucasarts beats Lucas in ranking! Now that Lucas are out of new Star Wars movies, and Telltale still gathering up their forces, there could be a real turn in situation here. I don’t believe Lucas will start losing, no. But their sales may get affected now without new Star Wars fresh movies coming, and may really consider appealing back to the fans they turned their back to.

On the other, I take off my hat and salute all the people at Telltale for their continuous and hard working efforts that really seem to be paying off. They have won the fans heart and loyalty in a way that with every release, we customers face serious issues launching the game, and can still feel the sense of humor between fans and the company. How could a company like this fall I wonder?

Sam & Max episode 2 out today

Bashar — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:34:52 +0000

Technically, it’s the 5th of Jan in many areas of the world, and fans have already started spamming telltale blog with complains and funny comments about why the game, Sam & Max episode Situation: Comedy is not out yet. The company PR and officials are sharing the laugh as well, saying it’s still not 5th in California.

The episode is the second of 6 as a whole that will end up the first season of Sam & Max Adventure game series. Sam & Max started as a comic in the 80s, and was later turned into a PC adventure game in 1993 called Sam & Max Hit the Road, and it was really a hit. You can see the intro cutscene below. Around 1998, TV Series for the dog and rabbit comic started before it was soon stopped. Fans kept looking for more of the funny two characters, but all hopes were gone when Lucasarts stopped the production of the Sam & Max Freelance Police game.

As the news came out, it was a clear message Lucas are no more into adventure games, and have set focus on purely Star Wars sequels. Mass petitions started, and lots of people cried for help. A group of Lucas employees listened to the crowd, left the company to start their own. To be able to fuel their on going expenses, they made the games into short episodes, and it seems to be turning out good.

For now, enjoy the the two clips below:

Sam & Max Hit the Road (2003)Sam & Max Freelance Police (2004) – Got cancelled

Bone Director’s Cut

Bashar — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:16:24 +0000

Following the release of the first two Bone episodes, and while the fans were busy playing and more often discussing the Sam & Max season, Jeff Smith and his team have had their hands full working on new updated versions of the two Bone episodes. Updated version is available for FREE to people who already purchased the game, and include:

1- New “Prophecy” cutscene at the begin of Out from Boneville, that will be related to the remaining of the episodes
2- Better and more clear ending of the first episode, as Mr. Jeff believes they rushed in the release and didn’t make the ending as good as it should.
3- improved Thorn look and voice.

Rarely we see people revisiting their sold work to enhance it again, which shows to what degree they are taking care of the details of their story. Read their official post, and interview with Jiff Smith here.

Monkey Island Cartoon…

Bashar — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 13:02:56 +0000

Its now almost 10 years since the last worthy Monkey Island game sequel, and 17 since the start of the monkeying era. Since 1997, and the fans are eagerly waiting for a Monkey Island sequel. The cries were heard and a frustrating Escape From Monkey Island, by all means do escape it, was released. Most fans were let down, and to me, it was a like a clear message “Don’t ask for a sequel next time!”.

Still, loyal game fans are all over the net posting, creating fan sites and themes. We have seen the Monkey Island theatric play by high school kids, which was not bad at all. Later on, we started hearing about the Monkey Island movie, except that it was released by Walt Disney based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride that initially inspired Ron Gilbert to create the Monkey Island game. Still, even Ron himself admired the movie, and the fans loved it crazy, me included ofcourse. The last part of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is coming in 2007, and Lucasarts have clearly said they will get back to the old games by 2015! Thats a long wait for the fans.

Today however, I came across a great 2D animated Pyrats movie, with some 3D aid. It was so fun and amusing to watch. Reminds you of the Curse of Monkey Island drawing, though much more advanced. But it was also TOO SHORT! when I looked for the release date I found out this is only a short movie that was made by 5 French students over 7 months for the Annecy 2006 international animation festival. It was so much frustrating, but very promising at the same time. From what I see, they have created the characters and theme of the movie, and this all can’t be done for 1.5 minute play and thats it. I think they must be trying to sell their skills to come with a full length movie later on. Check the site to see the movie. If Disney wants to get back in the 2D cartoon business, those are the people who they should be hiring.

BlogAllAlong » Adventure

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