I just received this excellent mail from a developer.

A few readers wrote in to ask me if I had a chance to see Myst IV, and I did - they've moved away from the real-time rendered worlds, which is bad, but that also removes the third person bullshit from Uru that never belonged there, which is good. Gamespot learned things I didn't know, like the fact that you can interact with the environment in ways that do not involve swtiches and byzantine devices - check it out, if you're interested.

Available free over at Garage Games, Produce Panic is a multiplayer, Penny Arcade themed shooter that pits the players against each other as randy, rival Fruit Fuckers. The levels are all drawn from the strip, and are packed with things that readers will recognize. There is even a movie theater in hell which, in addition to Tomb Raider and the Tetris Movie, also shows the latest strip up on the screen. It is free, as I mentioned, but the guys at Plan B Games are accepting donations for their work - if you enjoyed it, please let them know.

God, it's like I can't shut up today.

The owners and operators of Best Game Ever wanted tme to apprise you of their unique mission, which is to present a new, free game to you every Friday. These are essentially prototypes of a sort, and the site operates as a sort of collaborative gaming experiment. Obviously, I approve.

The tournaments and rules have been posted for the tabletop room. There was so much interest in this room that we doubled the size of it, and were lucky enough to have secured Rachel Cirricione to handle the room - she's got experience at cons around here and works in a game store, and she brings with her a strike force of connected locals to hold that shit down. There'll also be open tables and plenty of terrain, not to mention somebody from the Cheapass crew with a big stack of other board games. I have confidence that this room is well in order.

I did a new Twisp and Catsby drawing yesterday that I wanted to share with you guys. Just click on the image below to see the full version.

We saw an article posted on Blue's News yesterday regarding a new sort of royalty calculation for games that use Warner Brothers licenses - you can read comments from the CEO of Atari and others responding to the concept. Essentially, and the basic idea is not offensive to me, developers start to lose money if their games review less than an average of 70%. People might understandably be worried about attempts to "game" that system, or that it might introduce a sort of mercenary review structure where cash money is dispensed in exchange for higher scores. The thing is, top tier review sites are almost allergic to scores below seven - except in cases where they rate from one to five, of course - so I don't know how much money really needs to change hands to get the results they crave. What's more, I don't know why the addition of "money" is fundamentally worse than the current staples of the reviewing industry, "sloth" and "ineptitude."

Craig Morris politely informed me that I had a bad link in an earlier newspost, specifically, a link which was supposed to direct you to the abhorrent Advance Wars they were planning to perpetrate upon the Cube. Imagine opening the top of your system and having Nintendo President Satoru Iwata shit inside your Gamecube, his eyes wide with strain. We're talking roughly that level of desecration.

The mighty Rob writes:

There's probably another day worth of Nintendo stuff, believe it or not - but I wanted to throw in a plug for Gish.

Just a quick note to let you know that the latest Hookup article is now available. Stormy gives you his post E3 wrap up. Enjoy.

Skins are back for the GBA SP, with a couple new designs. We're going through a new place now called GC Skins, which does covers for your other consoles as well.

Troy ain't that hot. That's not what we're here to talk about today, though.

People kept saying "why don't you talk about the new Zelda, why don't you talk about the new Zelda" and we have done so. There's also a lesson here, about being careful what you wish for, because we may append space dogs or the apocalypse to your initial request. I hope that everyone has learned their lesson.

Page 14 of our Splinter Cell comic book is online now (click on downloads). Only two pages left.