As you wish.

Along with the release of The Princess Bride 20th Anniversary Edition DVD (which came out November 18th, 2007), The Princess Bride the game will be available for the Mac and PC in spring.

So far it seems that it will be a download only, five episode game. It'll run $20.00, with a discount for people who bought the 20th Annivesary DVD.

Princess Bride game official site

The trailer:

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Lawsuit

Out of Korea:

On December 7th, a Seoul court found Fantom Entertainment Group, a talent management and media production company, guilty of plagiarizing Square Enix's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

Square Enix filed a criminal complaint March 20th after seeing Ivy's "Temptation Sonata" music video.

Judge Gu Hoe-geun, of the Seoul Central District Court, ruled that Fantom had "illegally used 80% of the storyline, setting, characters and their styles of dress and their demeanors from the Japanese video game 'Final Fantasy 7' " in the music video.

The court then fined 10 million won ($10,900 US), with an additional 6 million won ($6,500) in penalties each on Lee Han-woo, Fantom's director, and the music video's director, Hong Jeong-ho.

General Counsel for Square Enix, Yasuhiko Hasegawa said, "This judgment by the Seoul Central District Court is stringent in comparison to other copyright infringement cases in South Korea, and we appreciate that the maliciousness of this infringement has been recognized in a public forum. Square Enix will continue to take decisive action against any infringements upon the company's intellectual property, recognizing that this property is one of our most crucial resources."

A civil suit is still under consideration.

For anyone who's curious the exact scene the music video plagiarizes is the Tifa/Loz fight. I've seen it and, wow, it's almost as shot for shot as the Psycho remake.

But the real Loz is still prettier.

You can see a video comparison here.

Iron Man game trailer

Video Game MADNESS!

• A Norwegian news site is reporting that a young boy and his sister were attacked by a moose, and the boy reportedly "taunted' the moose away from his sister, and then feigned death, causing the moose to lose aggro and leave. "Just like you learn in level 30 in World of Warcraft," the boy is reportedly quoted as saying.
• Activision and Vivindi have reached a deal to merge their two game studios to form Activision Blizzard, which eclipses EA as the largest video game company in the world. The company will cover franchises such as Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft.
• The gaming community is up in arms over last week's firing of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot. Depending on who you listen to, the 10-year-vet was fired for his tone, because of the new "corporate" management in the company, or -- and this is what caused the scandel -- that he gave a less-than-favorable review to the game Kane & Lynch, which publisher Eidos was pumping in hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising on Gamespot at the time. Eidos and Gamespot deny any wrongdoing or advertising pressure on the writing process, and Gerstmann cannot comment due to legal reasons. However, there is convincing insider info to believe this may be the case.
  

Who you gonna call... with a vengence!

Harold Ramis and Dan Akroyd are writing the script for the Ghostbusters video game on Xbox 360, and five principle actors (all four GBs and Annie Potts as Janine) will be voicing their parts. The creators are saying that the game will effectively be a third sequel. In fact they're talking about whether they want to call it Ghostbusters 3. (Thanks Mike)

2006 Independent Games Awards

Getting away from the AAA video game titles, I thought that GameTunnel's Top 10 (Independent Developers) Games of the Year might be a great source of gaming fun. Virtual Villagers looks particularly interesting... hmm... will have to check that out!

Deck the halls with sharpened scalpels, bwa ha ha ha haaa... Ha HA ha HA.

Ya think that washes off, Drew?

Per your question, I was the person with her nose three inches from a plasticized preserved left pectoral at the Body Exhibit in Seattle. And other things besides pectorals. I feel the best way to visually process something in which I am truly interested is from a maximum of five inches away. At my last med school interview I was the only female candidate with her interview suit sleeves rolled up so I could poke at the cadaver they showed us. I am not at all uncomfortable expressing enthusiastic interest in dead folks.

....In a purely science-oriented way, of course. The corpses and I are just friends.

Watched most of MST3K: Jungle Goddess last night while lifting weights. There's not much point in reviewing an MST3K movie, but I do love them dearly.
Character on screen: "What's the matter, white goddess getting tired?"
Servo's retort: "What's the matter, white racist getting SMART?"

The Phantom Creeps shorts deserve their place in MST3K history, if only for supplying the often-used line in Bela Lugosi's accent, "This will simplify EVERYTHING!"

And on the mocap front, I got my first anim to play in Blender. It's pretty lousy. Friend Enigmatic and I are working to improve our grasp of keyframes.

Motion Capture and You

Self, Sib1 and friend Enigmatic are trying to learn to mocap for Blender and 3ds Max. My plan is to get the new animations into Oblivion for the PC as part of my current mod project, Arachnalia. It's an ugly workaround, since Bethesda is highly resistant to modders for Oblivion and this is ESPECIALLY true regarding animations, but I think we can do it. I'd like to see some new combat anims and idles. Sib1 is a martial artist with knowledge of moves in a few different styles and is proving besides to be a fluid and convincing physical actor.

On the movie front, Sib2 and I have been trying to watch a copy of In the Mouth of Madness that I got from Netflix, but it freaks out on the hallucinatory scenes and crashes the dvd player. Eerie yet funny. I'm asking them for another copy today, since I would like to actually watch the film without going maaaaad.

The Sibs have also introduced me to Hellsing, which I'm finding far less obnoxious than I find most anime. (Hated Ghost in the Shell and Metropolis, refuse adamantly to watch Princess Mononoke.) Alucard is awesome, with his whole "I'm eight feet tall and wearing a ladies' hat and ribbon tie, yet I'm still cool" vibe. Unfortunately he is on screen far less than the little twit he keeps calling "Police Girl," who looks like a twelve-year-old with breast implants. Disturbing. I do like that the show skews more toward gore than rampant female-only nudity, however. When we get all the way through it I may just produce my first ever Spawn of the Screen review.

Sib2 says she won't watch let me watch Bones with her any more, though. I think she was annoyed by my raucous laughter.

World of Warcraft: New Opening Cinematic

Blizzard once again pulls out all the CGI stops on an incredible opening cinematic for The Burning Crusade expansion. Check it out!


The expansion pack comes out January 16.