This really ought to have music with it. Just imagine either “Pour Some Sugar On Me” or “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”, to taste.

UPDATE: Hey everyone! Widgey Q. Butterfluff is here at last! You can order direct from SLG, or from SLG’s Amazon store, via the link to the right. Apparently Amazon cancelled some long-standing preorders just as the book was finally arriving from the printer (thanks a heap Amazon) - if you got an e-mail from them about this you’ll have to re-order (you won’t have been charged for the first one). Sorry for the inconvenience! The book should be out in stores in a couple of weeks.

And that’s that! I wish I could say there would be a new story starting next week, but unfortunately with Pepper Penwell only about halfway completed, there probably won’t be any more Intragalactic for a little while, at least not steady-like. I’ll have some standalone drawings now and again, though, and maybe some single-page bits to keep things going.

And that dinner looked so good, too!

Why, I ask you, can I not play Legend of Kyrandia and Day of the Tentacle on my Windows 7-style computer? I may know absolutely nothing about how computer programming works but the least those lazy game makers could have included how to play it on a system from fifteen years in the future in the instructions, you know?

(Update: A thank you to the people who wrote me about ScummVM! It works like magic! Once again, I’ve managed to solve a problem by bitching about it into the howling Intervoid. Hooray!)

Yay, the other day I actually figured out who the killer was in a Kindaichi Case Files before it was revealed. Usually I have no idea beyond ‘one of the people who hasn’t been murdered yet’. In this case part of the solution was actually hidden in the obligatory wacky high-school sexual tension shenanigans that appear in every volume. Slick!

I found a typo in Widgey the other day… it’s not like it’s that serious, but it annoyed me that I never noticed it during all the other times I’d looked at the page, back when it would have done some good. It bothered me enough that I had a dream where I got to go to the publisher and make some last-minute corrections. Then I woke up and it was too late again! Disappointing! Also I bet the SLG offices aren’t really inside a multicolored planetoid filled with stalactite chambers and ridable platforms drifting down lava rivers. Also disappointing! But I’ve never been there so I choose to believe that really is what it looks like.

The Enstant models would probably survive better if they were more observant. Sure, the Enstant Corporation may boast “The Light That Burns Half As Bright AND Half As Long!”, but even they may be rethinking that slogan after last year’s dismal performance record. Thirteen product recalls by companies relying heavily on Enstant Enspectors. Three major studio productions shut down due to the complete inability of Enstant Engenues to learn lines longs than half a sentence. A rare species of ant wipes out by Enstant Ensectivores. The ridiculousness of trying to market Enstant Ensectivores in the first place, a decision the Enstant Corporation blamed on its in-house Enstant Ennovators. And then there was a whole “selling unprogrammed clone matter as ‘Enstant Mashed Potatos’” scandal. It’s no wonder consumers are flocking in droves to Sunny Select Soldiers and other superior and less expensive store brands.

I got the first actual printed, physical volume of Widgey in the mail today! It was super exciting! It’s still not officially out yet for a bit, but getting closer!

I wonder if I’m the only person who likes Startropics II? Yeah, it’s frustrating when Mikey jumps diagonally into space or falls off a platform or loses two-thirds of his health to multiple hits from a low-level rat, but there’s something charming about the way it blends sort-of-like-Zeldaness with kind-of-like-an-RPGness-but-not-really with humor-except-not-that-funny. I think I just talked myself out of liking it. You know what was a good game? River City Ransom.

I do enjoy Startropics II for all the little touches, all the little things that say ‘this could have been a really enduring franchise if the gameplay didn’t suck’. Traveling to different times, fighting cactus golems, baby mummies, and Yum Yum, drinking the Red Eye sarsparilla…

Plus there’s Cleopatra. She can horf down an entire large pizza in twenty seconds. And she is a knockout!

Yeah, her back is a little fragiler than it used to be, but Benjamin can still jump and flip and avoid things and all the usual space-hero business when she needs to.