obagelista

I got a few the other day, very professionally done... double whammy because I already couldn't access my Battle.net account. It wouldn't accept my password. I just changed it a month ago after my account was hacked; someone stole my info, initiated a paid character transfer, and took my wife's WoW stuff. When I couldn't get in to activate StarCraft 2, I started to worry. I checked for Blizzard correspondence and didn't have any, so I looked in my spam filter. It had emails from "Blizzard Entertainment" saying my email was successfully changed to "k****@hotmail.com," and that another paid transfer was being processed. One actually came from wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com. Both contained URLs to "report any suspicious activity" that led straight to a phishing site.

I called Blizzard and (after an hour on hold) was relieved to find that they could reset my password, and that no records existed of another character transfer or an email change. The lady I spoke with was very polite and helpful, too -- something I wasn't sure to expect with the volume of calls they're undoubtedly getting. Needless to say my authenticator is in the mail... I've had enough account scares with b.net.

The scariest thing I've ever seen in the dark? Well, it was this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of interwebs, in a dense fog just like this... I saw the worst accident I ever seen. There was this sound, like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building... And when they pulled the driver's body from the twisted, burning wreck... it looked... like Peter Molyneux.

Yes, sir... the worst accident I ever seen...

I would totally buy GK2 again on DVD. Hell, I would buy all of them again. I'm even tempted to waste my money on the KQ and SQ collections even though I already own two copies of each, just to support the movement.

Actually, I think the Gabriel Knight series would be a gold mine for them. The first two games have aged extremely well; there's star power in Tim Curry and Mark Hamill; the storylines are all well-thought out. Plus the subject matter is still pretty relevant. I think there'd be a lot of interest in a womanizing paranormal investigator.

Aw hell. Where are my GK2 CDs again?

Actually, if this is a digital download version of the collections that were released a couple years ago (which they are, judging by the box art), the VGA remakes are the ONLY versions you'll be getting. All of the re-released collections dropped the original AGI games and kept the remakes in. I could never understand for the life of me why; they aren't more than a few hundred kilobytes each, if that, and anybody interested in an entire collection of a series would want those originals.

The Leisure Suit Larry collection got nerfed the worst. Not only did they drop Larry 7, they also relegated you to the VGA non-talkie version of 6. It'll be interesting to see, if they decide to release that on Steam, whether or not they beef it back up.

I first started reading when Tim Schafer linked to Joystiq after having a live text adventure (!!!) with Ludwig. And I visit every day now. Because Tim and Ludwig are awesome.

Tabicat, SOMI:SE isn't going to be split. It's one game. Tales of Monkey Island is the five-part episodic series. The PC is getting both of them; Wii is getting Tales of Monkey Island; and Xbox is getting Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition.

But yeah, I expect SOMI to hit $15-$20. Doesn't matter. I'll buy both.

I remember reading about this several years ago. First there were rumors of a new Space Quest by Escape Factory, but no details ever really emerged. Then, the game was cancelled before it was ever announced. The only information leaked was that it was nothing like the originals and fans should be relieved that it was dead.

Now I see why. Very interesting that so much was complete; there's a wide variety of locales to be seen in the video, with a few different enemies and even a boss thrown in for good measure. One wonders how much more was finished, and why they decided to cancel it after so much work had been done. Strange to see Roger lopped in half by the spinning blade, torso still running around while blood fountains into the air and on the ground; the game looked like it was geared toward kids. Roger still retains some semblance of himself, what with the hair and plungers, but no mechanics seem to point toward his occupation as a janitor.

Thankfully, the game was never released, but it would have been nice to at least drum up some interest in the series. I would love to see what kind of Space Quest or even Police Quest we could get if a design team really focused on bringing the old mechanics into the modern era. I had high hopes when Vivendi re-released the collections a few years ago that maybe something was in the works, but nothing came of it. Well, whatever. I still have the classics to fall back on.

Good to see that developers are starting to go back to the side-scrolling platformer. Between this throwback to Duke's old shareware days, the new Castlevania coming out on the GBA (so happy Konami's using the classic SOTN style again!), and Metroid Fusion (eight long years since Super Metroid... finally, Nintendo's giving my favorite series some love!) it looks like the genre might just be having a resurgence. You just can't beat the classic mechanics of a 2D sidescroller... look at Metroid Prime: they're trying to put Samus in 3D but I don't see it working. I guess we'll see which is the better game when they're released.