Articles
The State of Misadventure Gaming – April Fool’s Day, 2004
I Hope They Didn’t
Have Corn For Dinner
In a surprise announcement
that rocked the adventure community, Lucas Arts this morning announced
the development of three new adventure
titles: Sam n Max 2 ½: Animal Control Cops;
Grim Fandango 2: Is There Sex After Death & Monkey Island
6: Poop Ahoy. Monkey
Island 6 will feature an arcade sequence similar to Monkey Kombat
as Guybrush Threepwood must avoid deadly monkey poop hurled at him
by archrival LeChuck and his band of sinister simians.
Later that same day, in
an unprecedented move, Lucas Arts then cancelled all three titles
claiming that releasing so many adventure
games at once would flood the market and hurt sales.
What’s the Rate of Interest on $5?
In a related story, industry insiders have informed us that Lucas
Arts needs only $5 to complete the development of Sam n Max 2. Lucas
Arts has been seriously considering floating a loan to put the finishing
touches on the game and then selling the rights to a smaller publisher
with less distribution channels. The low sales generated by the reduced
market exposure would then prove Lucas Arts supposition that the
adventure market will not support a big-budget game and restore their
stellar reputation.
He’s Chewing Gum & Kicking Ass and He’s
All Out of Gum
Sierra, in a bold move, announced a return their adventure roots.
The first game to come from their new development team (whose jobs
have been outsourced to India) is the highly anticipated Gabriel
Knight 4: Twenty Bucks a Trick. The beloved Gabriel Knight series
will take on a harder, grittier edge as Gabe will go undercover as
a pimp with Grace as his ho as they attempt to uncover the identity
of a Jack the Ripper style serial killer who mysteriously seems to
just disappear at the end of the game. Gabriel will have a full arsenal
of weapons at his disposal including an AK47, an upgradeable flamethrower
and a M4 Carbine.
That Explains His Squeaky Voice
Rumors are also afloat
that the next game to be announced is King’s
Quest IX: A Queen in Search of a King as King Graham undergoes a
sex-change operation and then scours the kingdom of Daventry looking
for his perfect mate. There will reportedly be an arcade-like sequence
in which you must guide the scalpel while operating on King Graham’s
genitals.
All of Our ‘Letters to the Editor” Are
Written in Crayon
Dear Randy (King of all Adventure)
I read at one of the smaller
adventure sites where someone named Stinker claimed JA is the Evil
Empire. Why do people say these mean
things? I think they are just jealous because I saw a picture of
you and you’re one hot adventure gamer!
PS – Since I said
nice things about you, can you send me a free game, I live in Poland
and it is hard to get games here.
Pierogi Boy
Dear Pierogi Boy,
What you read is true,
in fact my raspy breathing has caused many people to mistake me
for Darth Vader. We purposely award good reviews
to mediocre games in the hopes that we encourage developers to flood
the market with more mediocrity. Our theory may need rethinking though
as our reviews praising Syberia & The
Longest Journey did not
seem to stimulate like quality products – Randy.
Somebody
Call Ripley’s!
Rumors are surfacing that
a recent release from The Adventure Company was actually played
through to completion without one bug surfacing.
When contacted about this situation, a TAC representative (who asked
to remain anonymous) responded, “Hey, how did that happen?” and
promised to recall the bug-free game.
Just Be Glad There’s No Code To See
Me Nude!
In response to decreasing pc sales, adventure game publishers have
decided to follow the lead of many console games and insert nude
codes into their most popular games. These codes, when entered correctly,
allow the player to see their favorite character nude:
Kate
Walker – On your keyboard type, ‘No
Need To
Go Down There,’ and then press Insert and Enter.- Nancy
Drew – Type “Jailbait” and then press Escape. - Gabriel
Knight – Type “Van
Glower’s Toy Boy” and
press Shift.
The Passion of the Money Grubbers
Considering the recent
success of the box-office smash, ‘The
Passion of the Christ’, we thought we would reprint our scoop
from last year’s April Fool’s edition:
Hot on the heels of the
announcement that he is bastardizing reinterpreting another children’s classic – The 
Wizard of Oz – into
an action game, we have discovered that American McGee is now secretly
at work on a first-person-shooter based on the events in The New
Testament. In the aptly named JC & His 12 Disciplez, Jesus will
be able to pray at certain locations to obtain special spells such
as ‘Walk on Water’ which will allow the player to plan
unorthodox attacks, ‘Water Into Wine’ to help restore
health points and the aptly named ‘Raise the Dead’.
Each disciple will have
an assortment of weapons that will be hidden throughout Jerusalem.
Some to look forward to: The Judas
Gun, a
machine gun-like weapon that pellets your enemies with pieces
of silver and
The Shepard’s Crook, a seemingly harmless instrument that can
quickly castrate the meanest Roman soldier. The castration scenes
can be viewed in slow-motion thanks to the cutting edge technology
of Penis Time.
Asked why he would distort
the New Testament into a first-person-shooter, American nervously
twisted his knit cap in his hands and mumbled, “Hey
dude, the bible is already one of the most violent books ever written,
I’m just giving my peeps what they want.”
Right on brother, right
on. This industry needs more visionaries like you.
