Get Tales of Monkey Island EP1 for free!

 

Leading the resurgence of point and click adventures, Telltale Games have decided to celebrate September 19th, International Talk Like a Pirate Day (what, you hadn’t heard of it?) by giving away the first episode of their new Monkey Island series for free. It’s a one day only offer, and you have to sign up with your email address on their site. They will email you a reminder when the download is available. I really enjoyed the demo, released a couple of months ago, and this is an offer you don’t want to miss! Sign up here!

[Via: Eurogamer]

Rumors about Monkey Island 5

Monkey Island 5Videogame creators –and sometimes gamers themselves too- love to spread rumors about new releases. The more popular a game is the higher chance it has to produce all kinds of gossiping around it. The last news we’ve heard about is the hypothetical future release of Monkey Island 5. After a successful series of four titles, the last of which was released in 2000, the first rumors about another chapter in the saga have begun.

According to RumorReporter, “the fifth Monkey Island is coming” but we shouldn’t expect it before 2008. Tom Sarris, LucasArts PR Manager, confirmed this theory back in 2002 when asked about the next Monkey Island:

They are definitely going to make Monkey Island 5 since it is their most popular franchise. However, we shouldn’t expect it in the near future.

Five years have passed since then and what we can state for sure is that Monkey Island 5 is currently not in production. I personally enjoy adventure games a lot and would love to see good ol’ Guybrush again, but I guess this is not LucasArts’ priority right now. Anyway, I think they should take advantage of the pirate revival (thanks to movies like Pirates of the Caribbean) or maybe turn the tables and create a radically different game, more in agreement with the most popular game trends nowadays. What about a Monkey Island MMORPG?

Mozilla’s monkey business

seamonkey.pngMozilla have built their reputation mainly on the back of the excellent Firefox browser which has finally challenged the dominance of Internet Explorer. However, they also offer a whole host of other products, one of the most ambitious being SeaMonkey.

SeaMonkey is Mozilla’s successor to Mozilla Suite – an all-in-one suite comprising browser, e-mail client, chat, calendar and much more. SeaMonkey has been the codename for the Mozilla Suite for some time although it was originally invented by Netscape as a codename for Netscape 6 (which was, incidentally, originally known by the less politically correct name of ‘ButtMonkey’).

Since security is a major issue with a suite where you invest so much personal information, the latest release has plugged various holes that left it vulnerable to attack. This means more visible security indicators in the browser and enhanced phishing detection for e-mail. Other changes include inline spell checking in the browser, an updated version of ChatZilla, and a significantly improved startup script on Linux.

One of the things most users praise in SeaMonkey is the e-mail client. The blind copy tool, as well as its intelligent organisation functions and address access, are much better implemented than equivalents in Outlook or Thunderbird. Those who like Firefox will also love the SeaMonkey browser, which features more advanced tabbing functions and customisable security functions. Many users also report that it performs quicker than Firefox even when the latter has been optimised for speed. Not only this but the whole suite takes up half the amount of disk space compared to running Firefox and Thunderbird simultaneously. However, with no automatic update manager, upgrading the suite is a pain in the neck, meaning you have to uninstall the whole thing, including any special profiles you’ve set up.

Its arguable too that the days of all-in-one suites such as SeaMonkey have had their day. With e-mail clients such as Gmail offering tons of storage space, organisers such as Google Calendar and hundreds of chat clients to choose from, who needs a suite?
However, if Mozilla were to join forces with Google on a project like this, you never know – the monkey might finally have its banana and eat it.