Monkey Island is back! ("Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!")

I've only just heard the fantastic news that Monkey Island is about to return to our computer and console screens! Monkey Island 1 and 2 were two of my favourite games of all time, and I spent countless hours playing them on my old Amiga. If I remember correctly, I played Monkey Island using dual floppy disk drives, progressing to a hard drive in time for Monkey Island 2. Both games struck the right balance between story line and puzzles, and contained the best humour I have experienced in any game (then or now).

There are plenty of websites that detail the new Monkey Island games, but by way of a quick summary...

The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition is an updated version of the original game, which will be available soon on PC and Xbox Live Arcade. Lucasarts look to have done a great job in maintaining the feel of the original through the new version's updated graphics and speech. At any time you can toggle between the original and new version, which I think is a fantastic idea. I am definitely looking forward to playing the updated version as soon as it's released, and reviving some old memories (and no-doubt frustrations too!). Oh, and take some time to watch the video on Lucasarts site - it's very interesting.

Tales of Monkey Island by Telltale Games is due for release in early July, and is a new story told in 5 parts. I'd normally be apprehensive about any new Monkey Island game staying true to the spirit of original, but apparently Telltale has lots of former Lucasarts employees, and they have remained close to Lucasarts and Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert. In fact, Ron Gilbert has an interesting write up on his blog. It's great to see a new Monkey Island game, and fingers crossed it will live up to the original two.

I was going to close by saying "they sure don't make 'em like they used to", but I guess that's not true anymore... :)

Saints Row 2: Best Character Designer Ever

Hi all, MrPigeon here again. I've recently started playing Saints Row 2, a recent and heavily GTA-inspired game for the XBox360 and PC. It's getting a lot of good press for adding some of the much-needed "fun" that was lacking in GTA4.. things such as the rampages and wacky side missions - which were eschewed in favour of 'realism' in the latest GTA - are all present and accounted for in SR2. But one of its biggest features is its character creator.. at the start of the game, you get to design your player character with one of the most comprehensive tools out there. If you can think of a face, chances are, you can do a pretty good job of it.

I decided that I may as well take advantage of this freedom to be able to design myself, since people who look as hideous as I do generally don't feature too often in video game entertainment. Call me crazy, but I think I did a pretty good likeness - it's rather spooky seeing myself in all these cutscenes!

Now I'd caught the character creation bug, I decided to try my hand at creating certain other people I know, starting with the owner of this wonderful blog, Ferris himself.


Chuffed with my skills, I then decided to try my hand at Dave, one of Ferris's work lackeys.. but I was not quite as successful this time around..


.. and I don't think I got our other friend Crabby right at all..

Sniper teams at Barack Obama's inauguration?

Deviating from my usual themes of cars and games (with the odd recipe thrown in), I thought I'd share something interesting I came across yesterday.  Gizmodo featured an article about an amazing 1,474 megapixel panoramic image taken during Barack Obama's inauguration.  It is seriously impressive, allowing the user to zoom into the image to reveal greater detail - similar to Google Earth in a way. After firstly zooming in on Obama, the second thing I did was to - quite naturally - go looking for military snipers.  And I found some!  Zooming in on one of the buildings near the centre of the image revealed a group of interesting guys...

The most interesting thing is that the US appears to have outsourced the protection job to the British SAS.  Don't believe me?  Here is a photo of the British SAS taken during the famous Iranian embassy siege in the 80s.  Eerily similar eh?

Of course, once I 'discovered' the sniper team I went searching the internet to see if anybody else had found them.  The answer was yes, and not just this sniper team but other potential candidates too. Oh well, so much for a FerrisGTI exclusive...

Game On! report

Hi all, MrPigeon here. Ferris has kindly let me return to his blog because I wanted to point out a wonderful exhibition I recently visited at the Brisbane State Library called Game On!

Hailing originally from London and now in its first showing in Australia, the exhibit is a gloriously detailed history of videogames, from the very first games developed on machines bigger than Yo Momma, to the latest masterpieces on consoles like the XBox 360 and Playstation 3. No stone is left unturned.. even the humble game-and-watch gets its moment in the sun, and consoles which never even saw the light of day in Australia (such as the PC Engine) are on display.

Arriving at the first floor of the exhibition is a jaw-dropping sight. Legendary arcade titles (think Pacman, Donkey Kong, Gradius, Space Invaders, Centipede..) are all present, in their original cabinets, with controls and artwork intact. Even more recent arcade games, such as Virtua Fighter and the Neo Geo multi-game systems, are all present. There's an entire table full of every handheld you can think of, from the earliest game-and-watch titles to the Nintendo DS and PSP. And every console is also on display, each with one of the bigger titles loaded up. I almost fainted when I saw an Atari Jaguar running Tempest 2000, one of my favorite games ever.

The best part is.. everything's on free-play. You can wander up to any of the arcade games or consoles and have a bash. Every game featured that has a two-player mode even has two controllers set up. I became quite proud when I saw that my Ms Pacman high score remained unbeaten when I checked again laqter in the day.

Then you head upstairs, and it's time to prepare for another jaw-dropping moment. The upper floor is absolutely enormous, chock-full of free-to-play TV consoles featuring all the legendary and most influential titles throughout gaming history. There had to have been at least 70 or more wall terminals with games. An Amiga running Monkey Island, a PC running the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure (complete with old-school early-90s keyboard.. no Windows key here!).. a Dreamcast running Rez, a Playstation running the Japanese Katamari Damacy.. an Atari 2600 running Adventure, a Wii running Wii Sports. Ferris would be in heaven, because there was even a wall dedicated to the heroes of the Commodore 64 music scene, with headphones that allowed you to listen to classics by Ben Daglish and Anthony Lees, amongst others.

It wasn't all just playable games, though.. there were exhibits that described the development of some of the more influential titles. My personal favourite was the display of the actual design documents, play flow diagrams and internal emails regarding the development of the nightclub level in Max Payne. Even the clothes that were digitized to become Max's costume were on display. A similar design display for GTA3 was also very impressive.

I spent the whole day at the exhibit, and could've easily spent several more. If you are anywhere remotely near Brisbane between now and February 15.. GO VISIT. This is absolute gamer nirvana and probably the best thing I've ever spent $18 on. Wonderful!