So, LucasArts have revamped, re-animated, re-scored and voiced a new version of the classic The Secret of Monkey Island. And you can get it for Xbox 360, Windows or the iPhone.

I went with the iPhone path, because, hell, a point’n'click adventure makes more sense with a touch-screen than a gamepad, right?

Alas, whilst the game looks and sounds amazing, the controls are totally, utterly and horribly fucked. The developers have kept the mouse cursor part of the original game design, and whilst they have tarted up the UI*, the cursor doesn’t follow your finger on screen. It has a lag that increases the more you move. So you have to move finger, stop, lift finger, touch cursor (which is nowhere near where you want it to be) and drag again. Pity yourself if you need to click near the edge of the screen, because your finger will slide off the touch-sensitive area and the frustration will end with you boiling your iPhone in a Pryex jug in the office microwave oven.

So, my advice? Don’t buy it… yet. Hopefully LucasArts will fix the controls and push out a 1.1 version hat makes it work better on the iPhone. Until then, just play Flight Control.

P.S. Unrelated, kinda, but I found the coolest paint program ever. It’s called Grafx2 and it mimics the Amiga application Deluxe Paint. Why bring this up? Well, back in the dark old past of the late 1980s, LucasArts converted Deluxe Paint from the Amiga to the PC. And they used it for all of their adventure games. In fact, it is how Guybrush got his name, as Deluxe Paint would append “.brush” to the name of a file, and the LucasArts artists just happened to name one “guy”. So, “guy.brush” become Guybrush.

I was never really an outdoorsy kid, as a child growing up. I used to spend my Winters rugged up all nice and warm in front of an Amstrad or an Amiga whilst my friends and neighbours took the opportunity of a cooler clime to fall down mountains on thin sticks of wood.

But as I got older, I found myself spending less time roasting marshmallows over a red-hot CRT/PowerBook and more time with actual, real people. People who did want to go outside. People who would spend money to strap sticks of wood to their feet. Sticks of wood that, over the years, have got wider and wider until they joined together to become one piece – the snowboard.

And yesterday, I did the same. I took a trip from my base to the snowy delights of the Perisher Valley. I bought an expensive jacket, some in-expensive waterproof pants, and then hired a really cheap (yet brand-new and apparently good quality) snowboard, and threw myself down a hill.

Over and over. Again and again.

And I loved it.

So, now I am looking at going again, really soon. Whilst I will likely continue to rent boards this season, I did have a quick look at obtaining either a cheap new board and bindings, or a second-hand/ex-demo setup. In looking around multiple places I found out about Burton’s “Love” range.

Now I want one of these:

So, VNV Nation. Futurepop Industrial dance band and all round nice guys (I’ve managed to chat to them both a couple of times, well, by chat I have walked up to them post-shows and talked at them about how great they are) and a band I happen to think are pretty great.

So, VNV Nation. They have a new album out, its called Of Faith, Power and Glory and, hell, it’s pretty great.

Great. Pretty.

I was, don’t you know? So, the question is this, should I spend the money to advertise that fact? Or keep that little bit of knowledge to myself? Ja oder nein?

As I mentioned yesterday, I want to be a photorapher photographer-type. I want to know which lens and which f-stop and what ISO will give me the impact and look I want. So I bought a Canon EOS 450D/Digital Rebel XSi to help me in that.

And I am so completely happy with it. I have a nice fast little 50mm lens which means I can take some of the sorts of pictures I like quite reliably (the only thing that lets me down is me). But she is quite a big camera to lug around – even without the lenses.

So, maybe I need something like the Olympus E-P1. Not only does it have the most wonderful retro look I have seen on an affordable camera, it seems to tick all the other boxes I originally wanted in a camera.

Check out this DP Review preview if you want to make yourself lust after one as well.

It is Tuesday here, so I am declaring today Linkblog Tuesday. I will update this post with interesting* things as I find them.

The Stereo Holga is for those times when one crappy retro lens is just not enough. Now you can perfect that crappy retro 3D look you so desire. Highly lusted after here at Shallow Bay Towers.

Ye Olde Ikea Catalogues because there is nothing more hip, here and modern than old furniture right now, so why not look at how cheap much of the original stuff was?

How long is your snail? This one is 39 inches long! And you thought I was being rude, didn’t you?

I once bought a Nokia 770 tablet, and I liked it, but it was far too slow. These days I hang with an iPhone and it does everything I want it to, but does it do it for you? If not, maybe a stupidly affordable Nokia N810 tablet would fit the bill?

Speaking of stupidly affordable, how does free sound? How does a Mario Kart-like socially networked game sound? How about I show you something that combines both of those things? OK, go look at Hoverkart.

I like photography and I like pretty girls. I would like to take more pictures of pretty girls, but they don’t always want me to. I bet if I was a very talented photographer, and quite pretty at the same time, I would not have any issues. Here is one such photographer/pretty girl.

I have a previously diagnosed shoe fetish and I find myself unable to consider continuing to live without having at least two pairs of shoes for every occasion. I would like to have an occasion to own these Oakely Assault boots and these adidas GSG-9.2s.

* Things I find interesting may not be interesting to you. Consult your medical practitioner if symptoms persist.

Trick = threeze, threeze = Trick.

Why? Well, so I can add the new Twitter widget that I have or attempted to add to this blog.

Why? Because I like Twitter. That should be enough.

I like The Twitter. A lot. I enjoy the simple fact that it’s very simpleness means the uses for it are limited only by what people think to do with it.

Unfortunately, some people have thought to spam with it, and whilst the way Twitter works means that the spam is not as obvious as it is in e-mail, it’s still something I don’t want nothing anything to do with.

So, when one of the (really smart guys) I follow on Twitter mentioned that he had come up with Blocky I jumped on his site to have a look. It’s a crowd-sourcing spam black-list that, when you log into it, uses that black-list to search through your list of followers and blocks any suspected spammers for you.  Which is neat.

At the moment, the black-list is quite short, but as soon as more and more people log in and start nominating and then voting on spammers (just nominating a suspected spammer is not enough to add them to the list) the list will likely grow.

Back in the mists of time, there was a man. A man of morals, of wit and humour. A man with a VideoEzy account and a desire to watch terrible, terrible b-movies. And this man, he had a friend.

This is their story of how they once hired Robot Jox and how it changed their lives forever. Crash and burn, everyone, crash and burn.

*cough*

Right, back in the 1990s I was a bit of a film geek. People who know me now might ask “What’s changed?”. Well, a lot. For one, I hate going to the cinema these days. Really hate it. It’s not just that the small indie places closed down and the only places to see moves are multiplexes and how that means more people watching more shitty films, all there just because they have no reason to be anywhere else – it’s that I no longer enjoy the process, the ceremony of attending the movies. It used to be an event, where friends and I would plan a night out around going to the “flicks”. The thing is, I get more enjoyment at home watching a DVD on a nice big telly now than I do going to the “pictures” (although I don’t mind going to Dendy as I can have a beer or three to dull my anxiety).

Oh, and I hate ordering a small drink and being told they only have Large, Extra-large and American sizes. I might be a bit slow, but to me, if you only offer three sizes, then then one that holds the least amount of fluid is the small one. And paying $7 for badly popped corn. And the seats. And the people. And the lack of interesting films.

*cough*

Ignoring the above, continuing with my story of hiring of a VHS tape and watching it at home (or, as it turned out, my friend’s home).

Back in the 1990s I was a bit of a film geek I used to hire a lot of movies and films (movies are pure entertainment, films are entertainment to be discussed afterwards over a coffee and a black cigarette). Lots. I had accounts at half a dozen video stores so that no matter where I was in my pre-car owning days I was only a short walk from a video tape repository. I used to hire classics like:

• D.A.R.Y.L.
• Back to the Future 1 & 2
• Taxi Driver
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Escape from New York
• The Ice Pirates
• RoboCop
• They Call Me Bruce?
• Army of Darkness
• Flight of the Navigator
• Blade Runner
• The Goonies
• Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back
• AKIRA
• Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
• Brazil
• The Stunt Man
• The Man With Two Brains

(can you tell I was one of the popular kids at school?)

And I would also hire the films with the worst looking cases. The ones that you just knew were going to suck. Like:

• Brain Dead/DeadAlive (actually one of the best movies I have ever seen, better than the swords & sorcery muck that Peter Jackson has made since)
• Troll
• Up the Creek (doesn’t suck so much as it doesn’t deliver what a horny early teen/mid teen/late teen/old man needs)
• Cherry 2000 (looked like crap on the box, turns out to be pretty sensational)
• Puppet Master
• The Class of Nuke ‘Em High
• Eliminators
• Re-Animator

and Robot Jox.

The weird thing is, back then I wouldn’t have been able to look at that second list and tell you any of the films had anything in common – apart from the fact I had really low expectations for them. But today I can tell you that there is a link between Troll, Puppet Master, Eliminators, Re-Animator and Robot Jox.

That link? Charles Band.

You go read that Wikipedia page as it will tell you more about the man than I can/want to. And it will likely tell you with less swears and poorly thought out puns and metaphors and similes and smilies and shit I can’t think of a way to tie them all up like a Girl Guide on rope-tying day

Back to the main gist of my point of my story. My friend and I hired Robot Jox. A film where war has been replaced with a spectator sport consisting of poorly developed giant robots piloted by barely protected and illiterate “jox” beating the ever living snot/shit/wind out of each other.

It was horrible.

We loved it. We laughed at it. We greeted each other with “crash and burn” (a phrase that gets overused in the film) for at least, well, a day. We even tracked down the semi-sequel Crash and Burn. We didn’t do it intentionally and until recently I didn’t know the two films were actually related. I had just assumed one ripped off the other but we saw it in the video store, thought, hmm that looks like Robot Jox and off we went. We watched maybe 15 minutes of it.

So, whilst I can’t remember anything of substance of Crash and Burn I can remember details about Robot Jox as if I only watched it again yesterday. Because I just watched it again yesterday. And you know what, it doesn’t suck as much as it did. The giant robots look silly, the stop motion is painful at times and I can’t get over the lack of thought that went into the design of the pilot’s cockpit area, but overall it was a considerably better film than I remembered it being.

That being said, I cannot recommend that anyone ever watch any of it.

Here are some highlights:

And, here is the trailer:

P.S. Doesn’t the main character just seen like Billy Bob Thornton’s younger, handsomer and more talented older brother?

Ever wanted to pretend you are Robert De Niro but can’t stand the smell of semen on taxi seat vinyl?

Well, now you have an alternative.

Via the magic of the Internet (and a Korean translator) you can play-act as a returned Vietnam vet who aches to return to the days where the power of life (and death) was in your own hands. Of course, there is no real death, just the possible loss of your hearing.

I give (well, not give, more like show) you, Balloon Russian Roulette:

Apparently, there is a pin in only one of the revolting revolving chambers, so grab a friend, take a deep breath, and see which one of you is blown away.

via Geeky Gadgets.