I, um... Hm.

Our third book is now available on the store, if you haven't purchased it elsewhere.  Entitled The Warsun Prophecies, it incorporates all the strips from 2002.  I'm usually scared to read something I've written once I've written it, which may help you to understand the state these posts sometimes arrive in - but I think the book turned out really well.

I've just now finished the final edits on the fourth book, which will be released...  in the future. 

Also, on the very same store, our Fire Sale continues to rage - with the heat of a thousand bargains!  Huge savings in every department, etc.

(CW)TB
 

Gabriel's ill-conceived Pong Pong challenge has brought out the wolves, and now the forest rings with their baying. Amaze Entertainment is holding tryouts internally to see who will leave our merry band in ruins. Upstarts from the DigiPen Institute of Technology will arrive soon to unseat the last generation as is the charge of all young men.  "Suckerpunch" will cease to be a euphemism when one of their usually mild animators suddenly strikes my diaphragm.

I detest scheduled revelry, and I think my inability to remember these manufactured hullabaloos recommends me as a person. This perspective is not universally shared.

We put Monday's strip up early, so you might have seen it already - but you might not be familiar with the EGM interview it is based on, an excerpt of which appears here. I sometimes worry about appearing partisan in these communiques, but it is not my job to be fair. I'm not a journalist, I'm a consumer. I don't buy one product from each company in the interests of some karmic ideal, and I don't need to purge my posts of wrongthink because I haven't produced something suitable for use as a press release. Sony is grinding down their goodwill with every smug, psychotic interview, and someone needs to tell them so in clear terms.

But the way it works now, you can't really see what you're buying.  They have that Xbox Live Pipeline thing that helps a little bit, but more information is usually better - to that effect, here is all the stuff we just made available.  If you downloaded the new CTS Theme already, just delete it and download it again - it won't cost you anything.  The new one looks like the the ones below, their legibility having been much improved.  Also, the description on Picture Pack Three suggests that there are only nineteen pictures, which is incorrect.  There are twenty! 

Kotaku carried a story yesterday that is (basically) the Nintendo DS version of that Playstation Pornable scare from six months ago. You can see it here, and you should, because it's awesome. It depicts a scenario so imaginative that it juts into the realm of speculative fiction:

Humans sometimes cry out for "more Div, more Div," and since one of these humans is typically Gabriel it is difficult to escape this desire. That I manage to do it so often is a testament to my resolve, my dexterity, and my many other virtues. But even the most resilient, angelic creature is sometimes dragged to earth.

Want to know a secret? We here at Penny Arcade HQ are fucking addicted to Ping Pong. I don’t mean the game by Rock Star either. I mean the real deal table in the basement shake hand or pen grip forehand loop Table Tennis. In talking to some of our friends around here we discovered that our love of the sport is not unique. If you live in Seattle or you came to PAX you should know about Pink Godzilla. They run an import game store downtown and they also happen to have their own internal Ping Pong ladder. When they found out we had our own ladder they immediately began the shit talking. A challenge was issued and the match went down last Friday.

The first part of this strip is from an actual conversation. I'm pretty sure he was joking, though.

Not unlike your local furniture store, Penny Arcade is having a fire sale. We haven’t “lost our lease” or anything like that but it’s still true that “everything must go!” Think Geek has been really incredible to us but we’ve decided to take our store and our merchandise in house. Sometime in early March we’ll be launching our very own Penny Arcade store that will be integrated into the site.

I don't know whose fault it is exactly, mine or theirs, but I won't be installing Vista anytime soon. I would like some crazy shit to happen when I minimize, something don't get me wrong. I want my windows to go Waja-wajow(!) if possible. But if there's a great reason to "trade horses midstream" (or whatever the going metaphor is) I haven't discovered it.

So, yes, I do like it, but there's something I don't understand.

The demo they just put on Live is pretty short, and it is set in Mexico, a venue that was already questionable when they plowed it up again for Rainbow Six: Vegas. R6:V's cover implementation was a revelation, and I think we were also hoping to see GRAW graduate to something a little more fluid - but what do you do? R6 doesn't have the natural terrain, and it doesn't have the reconnaissance features and other field ordnance options.  People are already wondering what separates these two franchises nowadays, and I could provide a comprehensive analysis, but as much as it might rile the hardcore I think standardizing some elements of the interface could be great for both games.

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime cuts an imposing figure. Forum denizens are routinely shocked by the adulation this man receives, but if you have ever seen him, it isn't especially shocking. He seems to project beyond himself, exerting a kind of Reggie Field that dogs and many birds find unpleasant. Hearing a man speak with this much drive and confidence about an imaginary plumber is sort of enthralling.

I told Gabriel a Joystiq operative had played Mario Party 8 in Japan recently. Much of the entry is given over to an exhaustive description of Hotel Chan-Chan, a "love house" where the author spent his time (and, apparently, several thousand dollars). But in the slender margins of that erotic journal we do get an idea what the Wii could mean to the franchise.