The Emerald City Comic Con was - I feel secure in this point - a convention.

You might have remembered me freaking out about this adventure game from Frogwares, as it is basically a mashup of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft.  Really kind of unfair, I think, to bait the trap so richly.  Unsporting, in a way. 

It was brought to the front of my mind by the review over at Gamespot, where it picked up decent marks.  I hit up the websites for Gamestop and EB to track down the exact release date, and (apropos to today's discussion) there is no entry for it in either database.  The game is completely incorporeal.  It is available digitally, however, should you find yourself inexorably drawn.

(CW)TB
 

One last reminder that Saturday the 31st is your last chance to get the early bird discount for PAX 2007. You can get a three day pass for $40 if you sign up right now. We're selling tickets about twice as fast as we were last year at this time which is amazing. We're actually expecting about 30,000 attendees this year and thanks to the massive new venue we can actually accommodate that kind of crowd.

The origin of Gamestop's fabulous profits is pretty straightforward. After relating Wednesday's strange and sordid tale of "stock shortage," I've been deluged by mail industry-wide about life with their "partners" in the retail space.

I just wanted to remind everyone that Tycho and I will be at the Emerald City Comic Con this weekend here in Seattle. I think we’ve got a panel or two lined up but other than that we’ll just be at our booth as usual. You can come down and get a sketch of your favorite PA character or buy some of our stuff. You could even just come down with your DS and a copy of Puzzle Quest and we’ll get some games going.

Puzzle Quest fever has apparently seized the fucking reins here at headquarters  This is probably the last you'll hear of it, purely out of politeness - but the game is a feast for the spirit.

No copies at my EB, no copies at the Gamestop, none at the Best Buy across the street, none at the EBX on the other side of the lake, but as luck would have it the Target above the Best buy here at Northgate had ten (!) copies.  I tried to pick up three extra to spread around here at the office, but they would only let me buy two.  I was annoyed by this until I remembered what a difficult time I'd had finding it myself.  No doubt some weary gaming enthusiast - kin to me, in a way - will shortly find their wish fulfilled.

Screenshots for games on the DS always look so nasty online, this is often true of the PSP as well, and I'm happy to say that the product itself is perfectly workable on these two small screens.  I doubt that you'll be disappointed.

(CW)TB
 

I've been having a hell of a time finding a copy of Puzzle Quest anywhere, which only adds to my garment-rending grief about the lack of a true PC version. I'll find it eventually, but I think I might avoid the PSP version, at least for now. I had intended to do so for purely ergonomic reasons, believing a stylus was probably the ordained interface methodology, but there is a bug that negates companion bonuses on the Playstation portable that I am keen to avoid.  I was worried about crowded screens full of text wrestling for space on the DS, but Gabriel says that they've experienced no ill-effects. I understand that he brought it home to Kara, suggesting that it was essentially a Bejeweled RPG, and now the two of them have hunched over those two screens every night since he bought it.

So the latest update for the PS3 came out yesterday and it allows you to run the Folding@Home application. I actually was not familiar with this program before I read about it yesterday. I was aware of the concept of distributed computing but I wasn’t specifically familiar with this one. Basically you can use the processing power of your PS3 to help in the study of “protein folding”. You can hit their site for more information about what exactly that means but apparently it could lead to cures for diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s.

Like former ESA head Doug Lowenstein, I think that even referring to Jack Thompson empowers him, potentially even summoning him, not unlike Candyman. But he's appended us to his latest hijinx for some reason - that is to say he started it. This is (as our foes will tell you!) "fabulously unwise."

We got a huge delivery last week from Nintendo for Child’s Play. Kiko snapped some pictures once we had everything unboxed.

I had a number of topics to write about, this having been a crazy week for news. For some reason, an extended discussion of the 360's "Zephyr" variant took root in my mind. Together with a mysterious "Spring Update," the features of which have been only dimly illuminated, these items represent Microsoft's newest campaign in the Console War.

300 is a movie about guys who look cool doing things that are awesome, and as such it's hard not to like it. It leverages swank technology in the service of its cinematic mission. Also, there is a portion of the film given over to a creature, equal parts goat and man, who plays a flute inside of a golden tent. So it's the sort of movie that really has something for everyone.

Our ping pong match against Microsoft Casual Games did not go so well. We won two of our seven rounds but in the end it wasn’t enough. So our trail of tears through the video game industry continues. Our next match is against Amaze I believe. I had a line about how they will be amazed at the beating they receive but it seems premature now.

So we released the very first trailer for our game last week. Everyone seems to dig the 2D intro and I think most of us can agree that the 3D stuff still has a ways to go. Originally we were just going to drop the 2D flash trailer. It’s a nice intro to the world. We see the “Startling Developments Detective Agency” and we get a feel for how Gabe and Tycho fit into the story. Tycho the learned world traveler reading at his desk with his Tommy gun resting in his lap. Gabe… punching something. We were worried though that people might think this was going to be a 2D game if that’s all they saw. So we decided at the last minute to attach some of the 3D work we’ve got. It’s extremely early and it’s missing some effects like cell shading and a few others.In retrospect we probably should have held of showing it but we were excited and we jumped the gun a bit. We still have a lot of work to do in order to really define the look of the game. If nothing else, the clockwork fruit fucker at the end seems to have struck the right note with most of you so I’m glad we included him in the trailer. Since he seems to be such a hit I thought I’d share the original concept art I did for him. This is an example of what I send over to Hot Head.