Garbage.net – My Blog, My Life

Are you a fan of old-school point and click games like Maniac Mansion? If so, check out ScummVM. ScummVM is a Lucas Arts engine emulator that runs a bunch of classic point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have the game files. The emulator runs in almost any operating system you can think of: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, PocketPC, PalmOS, AmigaOS, BeOS, OS/2, PSP, PS2, SymbianOS/EPOC, etc. Here’s a list of fully supported games: Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max Hit the Road, and The Curse of Monkey Island.

Are you a Martin Sargent fan? Some of you might remember the “Unscrewed with Martin Sargent” show which aired on TechTV from 2003 to 2004. The show had a Letterman style setup. It featured offbeat guests from Internet culture, comedy, Martin’s binge drinking adventures and interviews with “adult” female stars. It was very funny and constantly crossed the line. Like all good things, it got cancelled during the TechTV + G4 merge that created the G4TV monster.

But… he’s back! (and so is Laura Swisher) They both have their own free podcasts. You can find the the podcasts of Infected (Martin’s show) at REV3. For Laura’s show you can go to Weezy and The Swish. They also have 2 very funny blog sites: Sargeworld and Swisher’s Untitled Blog Project.

Comic books are dying. 42 year old men living in the basement of their parent’s house isn’t enough to keep them going. I remember years ago it was easy to find a comic book store right around the corner. Now they have either closed or diversified, selling other geek related things.

The obsolete format is to blame for this impending death. Most people prefer a digital format rather than paper. This is the same reason why newspaper sales are slowly going down. People don’t want to have “stuff” laying around anymore, taking up space. You now go online, check the news, go do something else. No need to recycle or throw out a newspaper with 800 flyers. I know quite a few people would like to have a large collection of comics to remember “the good old days” but no one likes having their house look like a comic book store.

The solution for this? Digital comics. All comic book companies should start offering all their comics in a digital format. In fact, they should convert all the old comics into digital format for their preservation in the future. Marvel Comics started experimenting with this recently. This is a step in the right direction but more needs to be done if they expect the comic book business to keep making any money. Some fans have taken on this task on their own, scanning all the comics they have and offering them to the comic community. This is, of course, illegal but it’s the direction where all comic book companies should go.

My friend, Matt, recommended I play this game and damn is it good. It’s a very fancy looking point-and-click adventure done in Flash. If you remember playing those old King’s Quest / Space Quest / Police Quest / Leisure Suit Larry games, you’ll get a kick out of this.

Right now they have two free adventures: Samorost and Samorost 2. You can buy an additional chapter to Samorost 2. So don’t be a cheap bastard and contribute to original independent video game development.

Check it out: Samorost and Samorost 2.