Monthly Archives: April 2006

Tales From Earthsea by Ghibli

I just found out that there’s another great animation due out from Studio Ghibli this July. Unfortunately, that date’s the Japanese release; I’ve got no idea when Disney will release this in the States. Anyway, the movie’s Tales From Earthsea, based on the books by Ursula K. Le Guin. The SciFi Channel recently made a miniseries based on these books, but it was very poorly done. I have every confidence that Miyazaki‘s version will be a significant improvement.

BTW, I myself have never read the books. Just seen the miniseries (and seen about everything from Miyazaki that I can get my hands on).

Woohoo! “Another World” Remake!

I used to love Out of this World (aka Another World) when I was a young teen. It’s probably the first vector-graphics action-adventure game ever made. Smooth animations, for its time.

Turns out, they’re releasing a high-res remake this weekend. Woohoo! While the background graphics have been significantly enhanced, it doesn’t look like they’ve changed the character graphics one iota.

Great gameplay doesn’t age: I’m looking forward to this game.

This month looks to be a great month for adventure gamers in general, what with Dreamfall (sequel to The Longest Journey) and Ubisoft’s Paradise coming out.

Update 4/16/2006: I’ve downloaded the game, which is available directly from their website, in the form of an unlockable demo. The background graphics are indeed greatly improved; however, many of the characters and animations are essentially untouched. To me, the juxtaposition of simple, basic sprites/animations on more realistic, detailed backgrounds is a tad unsettling. Nonetheless, it’s fun to play, and it does look better than the original.

You get to play through that first beast-chase scene, at which point the game ends and you have to buy the codes to unlock the full version. In my opinion, that’s way too short; although it actually probably provides a good idea of what the game is like for people who’ve never played it before (those fanged worms might be easy to me now, and the beast easy to avoid; but that was hardly the case the first few times I played it).

At any rate, unlocking it is only €7 (it’s a french company, so price is in euros; works out to be $8.62, for me). Well worth the price, IMO.

The Optimus Keyboard

I totally freakin’ want one of these. It’s a keyboard, where every key is also a miniature, programmable screen. You can instantaneously alter the keys to show Latin or Cyrillic characters, or whatever else you want—even animations!