Monday may be Valentine's, a day for last-minute gift cards and discount chocolate, but today it's Friday and the Link Dump reigns supreme! This week we bring you monkeys, mechs, milk, and mm... uh... mmmmmm... two other games that don't have any immediately applicable M words in them. Play them, and remember us fondly when Monday rolls around and you're trying to figure out who to give all those extra chocolates to. (Remember, we'd choo-choo-choose you!)
Journey to the West - Although I very nearly picked up the recent videogame adaptation of the classic tale if only to do something more with my PS3 beyond cruising around with Nico and Brucie (which will never stop being entertaining), I'm forced to admit that I doubt there's anything anyone could possible do to top Minoto's point-and-click surreal retelling. Look at that monkey. That is a monkey wearing shades. You don't get any radder than that. You should probably just play this, and know your life will be richer for it.
Mooo! - Turbonuke knows what your physics puzzles have been missing; cows. Adorable rolly-poly cows. And explosives. And conveyor belts. And sweet, sweet milk. (Can't solve the puzzle without a whole lotta milk-a.) Your goal here is to usher your awesome little cow towards the empty bottle in each stage to fill it up with milk. Short, but definitely sweet.
Mecharon - Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. And now, a performance from the Can't Sing Worth A Darn, Don't Quit Your Day Job Lady Choir. Oh Mecharon, oh Mecharon, how well you blast those baddies... you stomp around, defend your base, and shoot those mechs, right in their stupid face. Oh Mecharon, oh Mecharon, your remake is so aweeeeee... sooooome...
Type is Art - Words are beautiful. Especially words like "obsequious" and "eschew" and "Batman". Now you can create your own masterpieces out of the bits and pieces that actually make up words, and learn stuff in the process with this simple yet lovely little webtoy. There's not a whole lot of depth to it, but you can create some surprisingly lovely pieces of work with just a little experimentation.
Tarzan Ball - If you loved IQ Ball, there's a chance you may also love this swingin' sequel to the original physics puzzle. Shoot your curiously long sticky appendage at various inconveniently placed targets to help your beloved Tarzan Ball get to each one. It's like George of the Jungle, but with way less Brendan Fraser (boo!) and way more super cute level designs (yaaay!).
Minoto is so educational. Who knew they had Brawndo vending machines in 16th-Century China?
It's got what plants crave!
Tarzan Ball has the worst music of all time. (But still a fun game so far.)
The peeing on the phone pole becoming buddha thing is a pretty hilarious reference to the fact that the monkey in the Chinese tale, Journey to the West, challenges Buddha to see who can leap the furtherest in a single bound, and he thinks he's lept to the ends of the earth, where the pillars are holding up the sky, so he decides to take a leak and leave a mark to prove his victory. Turns out, he was in buddha's palm the whole time, and buddha casts him under a mountain as punishment for his arrogance.
For those of you who are confused about the ending of Journey to the West -- probably most of you -- read chapter 7 of the great Chinese epic "Monkey or the Journey to the West."
There also seems to be a badly dubbed Japanese TV Show called "Monkey Magic" covering the same events. The events of this game are covered in part 4 of "Monkey Goes Wild about Heaven."
It's a lovely day for a race here, folks. I'm Littleghost, your first on the scene reporter on his very first report. So hopefully I'll make this event as enjoyable for you as it is for me. And a big thanks to Ronald McDonald to making it out here for the race. Here we go!
At the starting line, Monkey's all ready and raring to go, along with balloon cop and the flower with a martini glass to see him off.
Excuse me folks, there appears to be a key on the track, I'll just take that.
Whoops! I'm getting word of a robbery about two stations on down the track past Rabbit and Turtle, the Little Match girl just can't seem to keep herself out of trouble!
I can at least take the valuables out of the trunk with this key, but oh, what's that, it seems to only be an unloaded gun.
Back to the starting line, we need to get this event under way!
Oh, but it seems in his hurry to get here, Ronald forgot his starting gun, so I'll just lend the one I got.
And Monkey's off like a shot!
Speaking of shot, Balloon Cop's balloon is down due to Ronald's poor aim. Such a shame, it was a lovely one. Luckily no one was hurt. I'll just take balloon cop off to the sidelines.
Monkey's made it to the second station and looks a bit overheated. But I'm getting some word now about developments over at the 3rd station with the robbery.
This is Balloon Cop on the scene, as soon as I showed up to deal with the robber, he showed his true colors and ran off, leaving his helmet behind. Perhaps we'd better take it into custody, Littleghost.
Well, now that that's all settled, perhaps we ought to take a look on down the line at the 4th station and see what else is going on.
Oh my! Seems like a lot of trouble today, Fox is without his helmet! How will he get to his race? I'm sure we can loan him the one we took for just a little while.
And Fox is off!
...to a very bad start, hitting the vending machine won't bode well for his chances. No need to send a clean up crew though, I'll just grab that water bottle.
Haha! Sorry folks, it seems this reporter is a little clumsy!
Bumping the vending machine only left a bigger mess, but we've got to get back to the real story for now.
Checking in back at the second station, Monkey's still not gone anywhere! Surely he's not given up??
In the interest of keeping this race alive for you folks, I've decided to intervene and give him a drink of water. Hopefully no one in the audience will blame me of favoritism.
And that seemed to do the trick! Monkey is back to the track and speeds past the 3rd station and makes it all the way to the 4th before hitting a roadblock! Oh this is a catastrophe!
Well the least I can to is clean up that earlier spill with the now empty bottle.
Let's get some input from the starting crew at the 1st station.
Well, unfortunately the flower with a martini glass refuses to give a statement until I top it off with that orange juice I collected.
But the flower finally shows his true colors and relays that he's quite confident that Monkey can persevere.
No comment by Ronald or the Bee, and of course I have to clean up the match. Where's the janitorial staff on site??
A quick stop over to the 3rd station to get some comments and reaction from the Little Match Girl about all this. Sorry folks, I really am doing my best to sort this all out for you.
Well, apparently she only knows about matches and says that I can light mine with that box over by the sale sign. Odd, but so I can.
Bear with me folks, I'm really trying. I had no idea this first assignment would be so unusual. Perhaps Rabbit and Turtle at 2nd station have some insight that could help out?
Turtle is a bit slow to get a sound bite, but Rabbit is too fast to understand. So I burnt his block of wood to get them to focus; unprofessional behavior, I know, but I'm just so frustrated. I really wanted this to all go well. Again I have to clean up the chisel left there.
I'm back at the starting line here at the first station, and I can tell you that I've just about given up.
I've resigned myself to splitting rocks here with the chisel.
What's that? A newcomer to the scene!
Mole seems very eager to help me out with this race, so I've decided to take him along to the scene of action.
Back here again with Monkey at the 4th station, I'm very confident now we can get this race underway again!
Enlisting the help of mole, we're going to use the crane on the telephone pole!
Oh my! And it looks like this is it folks!
With the blockade uprighted, Monkey quickly relieves himself and -- What's that?? In a surprise move, Buddha comes out of nowhere and picks up Monkey! Apparently that was his favorite telephone pole because he looks very angry and has just blown away Monkey! It looks like the race won't be finished after all. I'm so sorry.
Well, but you can't say it wasn't all interesting, and no one could have predicted this outcome. I hope to see you again, and this is Littleghost, signing out.
I made a font dragon! Yay words!
I made a pair of aliens doing some sort of extraterrestrial jitterbug.
Must say, TiA is definitely a creative project. :D
Oh gosh, Minoto never disappoints with the Crazy.
Who knew that... peeing on fallen telegraph poles would get you man-handled by some sort of spirit genie?
...Oh. Comments are telling me that this references some sort of folk tale. Ah well, I still tip my hat in the direction of Kangra for the Idiocracy reference :)
Mooo! So cute! You get more points for getting a bit heavy handed, making the cow go a bit ballistic round the screen yes? What, there's no points...?
Oh good grief! That was by far one of the most silly Minoto endings to date. Gotta love Minoto :)
Mecharon 2 is pretty good. I like the Gauss gun with Weapon Focus. That's what I call...
(sunglasses)
Gaussian elimination.
YEEEEAAAAAHHHH
Also,
the last wave of hard mode was...interesting.
Nicely done, Littleghost. And thanks to others who explained the reference at the end. Even knowing the reason behind it, it's still one of the best Minoto endings ever.
Journey to the West:
Oh yes, sure I had to give the orange juice to the flower, so the match drops down from the tree! Oh dear... *thats* the "puzzles" why adventure games have demised...
Thanks, barbara!
The mute button in Tarzan Ball reminds me of Portal. :D God, I have no life...
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