Maniac Mansion introduced me to Lucasfilm Games, but The Secret of Monkey Island made me a fan. This game epitomizes the LucasArts adventure game. It has a fantastic story, great humor, witty dialog, and great puzzles.

In this game, you really felt like you were a part of the adventure. There were other pirates walking on the island, which brought a bit of realism to a game that I hadn’t seen before. The characters that you could interact with were all part of a puzzle, but the beauty was that some of the characters such as the men of low moral fiber could either be used as a solution to a puzzle or skipped altogether, and either way you could still complete the game. The greatest thing that this game ushered in though was the option to choose what Guybrush had to say. Unlike Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, these options weren’t merely solutions to puzzles, they were part of a conversation much like those you would see in movies or even partake in real life. The conversations also allowed the game designers to create some really funny jokes.

That’s the beauty of Monkey Island, and the game that sets it apart from the others. This game is really funny. There are few games whose humor stuck with me so much that I would remember the jokes fondly among my favorites in any medium including television and film. But, this game definitely did just that. “How appropriate, you fight like a cow” has become one of my favorite all time quotes. The way it was used in the game was genius, especially the conversation with Captain Smirk after he taught you the second insult. His reaction made me giggle with glee when I was a little girl, and I still laugh at that to this day, even though I’ve seen the joke many times by now.

Michael Land did a tremendous job on the music here as well. The theme song to The Secret of Monkey Island is one of my all-time favorites, right up there with the themes from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future. I really wish that they did make the Monkey Island movie rather than Pirates of the Carribean, as I would have loved to have heard a fully orchestrated version of the song on the surround sound speakers in a movie theater.

I love Sam & Max. I grew up reading their comic adventures in the LucasArts Adventurer magazines that used to come with their games. I would buy each adventure game that LucasArts released, and a big part of that purchase was the chance to read a new Sam & Max comic. The humor was just so weird and off-the-wall, and really struck a chord with me. I loved reading the comics, and seeing what LucasArts game Sam & Max had gotten themselves involved with in the latest issue.

So, it was a no-brainer when Sam & Max finally got a game of their own: I purchased it immediately. Sam & Max Hit the Road was the rare game that I bought without actually being able to play it. Our family only had a 4Mhz 286 IBM-PC at the time, and we did not have a CD-ROM. I bought the CD-ROM talkie version of Sam & Max Hit the Road and waited several years until I could actually play the game.

When I finally got an audio CD player my freshman year in high school, I would listen to the bonus audio tracks on my CD player, delighting in the wonderful music, but completely oblivious to how they were used in the game. Until I had played the game, I had actually thought that Conroy Bumpus’ voice in King of the Creatures was actually the voice of Max. :)

On the subject of the music, the theme music is still my favorite score ever used in a Sam & Max game. It fits the duo perfectly, and I still hear that theme in my head whenever I experience Sam & Max, even when playing Telltale’s games.

When we did finally get a computer fast enough, the game definitely lived up to my high expectations. The humor was gleefully as weird as it was in the comics, and the voices of Sam & Max were both wonderful. Bill Farmer as Sam sounded like he had come out of the classic film noir movies, which was perfect for the straight-man personality of Sam. Nick Jameson gave Max just the right amount of insanity without going over the top.

I loved the theme of the game, which had Sam & Max traveling the USA going to the most bizarre tourist attractions the nation had to offer. It fit in so well with the characters, and led to some funny situations that gave way to some really funny one-liners. This is probably my second most quoted LucasArts game after The Secret of Monkey Island. There are so many fabulous jokes in this game.

A&W is so great. Their burgers are delicious. From all of the burgers I have eaten so far, I would say these are second only to In & Out. The bonus here is that I don’t have to travel over a thousand miles to eat them. :)

There is one caveat here though. There is an A&W and KFC combo restaurant that is only about an hour away, and the food there varies from average to not too good. We travel an extra half hour to go to an old fashioned Drive-In style restaurant, where the food is delivered straight to your car. There is just something so cool about that. I don’t know why I love it so much, but I’d much rather eat in the car than go in the restaurant. It’s like a blast from the past that I was not alive to experience when things like this were common.

Beyond the cool factor of that restaurant though, is the fact that the food is so great. I always get a root beer float, but sometimes we forget that if you order a large you don’t get a frosted mug, which is one of the coolest parts of getting a root beer there. As I mentioned above, the burgers are delicious, but I also enjoy other goodies such as their foot long chili cheese dogs. That’s a novelty for me as well, as I can’t get a foot long hot dog anywhere else around here, but they are also so very delicious. Their cheese curds are very good too. I don’t know what they do different than the combo restaurant that I mentioned, but the food is night and day. Making the occasional hour and a half trip to get to the Drive-In A&W restaurant is well worth it to me, even with today’s gas prices being as high as they are.

Loom is a real departure from the average LucasArts adventure game, and I think that it is brilliant. It has one of the most engrossing storylines that I have ever had the pleasure of playing in any adventure game. The game takes place in a fantasy setting, so the classical music by Tchaikovsky fits in perfectly. My favorite version of the game is the PC CD-ROM version, as it contains full speech for the game, and as usual for LucasArts productions, the actors perform their job admirably.

The interface is completely different from any LucasArts game that came before or after it. It consists of a staff with musical bars that can be used to play “drafts”, which are the spells that the main character, Bobbin Threadbare, can use to manipulate his world. This leads to some freedom in the game, as you can use the spells on certain objects that are not required to complete the game. The interface is a little cumbersome, as it’s not as fluid as the other SCUMM games since the spells rely on memory (or more specifically, musical notes that you wrote down in the spells section of the game’s manual).

This is the only game in the LucasArts catalog that I feel absolutely needs a sequel. The story is left on a cliffhanger, and it really leaves you wanting more. It would be a shame if we never find out what ultimately happens to the world of the great guilds.

When I heard that this was coming out to DVD, I didn’t give it a second thought that I was going to get it. I had Weird Al Yankovic: The Videos and Weird Al Yankovic Live, so between the two I could watch every video that Weird Al ever made up to that point other than the video he did for “Bob” on AlTV.

But it’s much nicer to be able to watch all of them at once from one DVD, plus The Ultimate Video Collection also has the afforementioned Bob video. The greatest thing about this DVD though is that it has some really great videos in the extras section. There is Weird Al’s first national television appearance where he performed Another One Rides the Bus with just his drummer Bermuda as backup, except Bermuda played accompianment by beating on Weird Al’s accordian case. It’s really great to see how far Weird Al has come since his beginnings. There is also a great Easter egg that has shows a young Weird Al playing My Bologna on his accordian. My favorite extra though is the Weird Al show clips. I had never seen these before, as I was always missing the Weird Al show when it was on. I saw it previewed by Al in an interview on Regis and Kathy Lee but I could never remember to watch it when it came on. These videos are really funny. “Haircut” in particular is great. It has me laughing every time I see it. :)

This was a fun movie. It started out great, as it was really exciting as more and more story pieces were revealed. I am a sucker for time travel stories anyway, so I was very engrossed by the plotline.

However, once the story moved into the future, things started becoming a little weird. The characters in the future acted really strangely, and the action and jokes were flying by at a jerkingly fast speed. I had feared that the movie was starting to unravel, and I was slowly becoming uninterested in the movie.

However, I’m glad I stuck it out through to the end, as the ending was wonderfully done. Even the bumpy middle part of the movie made sense as the complete plot was revealed. I had once felt that Walt Disney films should always be mainly traditional animation, and that full computer animated films should be handled by Pixar, but now I see the beauty of using three dimensional artwork in Walt Disney Animation films thanks to the breathtakingly scary final moments of the film.

The last moments were a real wow moment for me as I saw how they combined the story of the movie with Walt Disney’s mission. The movie was executive produced by John Lasseter, making this movie the first movie overseen by the Pixar crew who are now in charge of the Walt Disney Animation Studios. I can’t wait to see what they have in store for us in the future, as this movie is a great start in bringing Walt Disney back to the forefront of animation.

I love adventure games, but I avoided Leisure Suit Larry for many years since I am female and the games seem very sexist towards women. I decided to play the game, and I was surprised that it was both fun and funny to me.

Larry is a man who never outgrew the urge of the typical high school boy to have sex with any woman anywhere. Luckily, most of the men that I know have outgrown their high school attitudes, and have very little in common with Larry. Though I must admit the thought that there are grown men out there like Larry Laffer is a little scary.

The thing that fascinated me about this game is that it is a chance to look at the dating scene from the other side of the fence. Larry gets rejected repeatedly, and he does not finally find a woman who will even give him a second glance until you wine and dine her, so to speak. It is incredibly shallow, and the whole experience is not one that I would ever want from a man, but the game on the whole is an entertaining experience. Al Lowe’s humor is what makes it worth playing to me. As with many of Sierra’s games, the death sequences contain quite a few funny situations, and there are quite a few funny ones here.

When I saw LucasArts Classic Adventures, I just had to get it. I bought it for Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, but Indy sealed the deal. I wish I still had that collection, I loved reading the manual. It had a reprint of Henry Jones’ Grail Diary in it, which was a great read for a girl like me who adored the Indiana Jones series. As for the game itself, it has a lot of great merits on it’s own. This game introduces the ability to pick what you want Indy to say. It adds a lot to the game play, as finally you feel immersed in the game, rather than feeling like a simple spectator. It sticks to the plot line of The Last Crusade very well, but it diverges just enough to make you feel interested.

The reason that I never completed the game until yesterday is the same reason I never completed Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders until years later: mazes. The underground caverns were simple enough, it was like The Secret of Monkey Island, where you had a map you could use, but you could just as easily blindly navigate the maze and find what you needed. I don’t mind that type of maze at all. However, the castle maze was irritating. Not only did you have to navigate blindly through corridors, you also had to keep switching between uniforms, as the guards would fight you if you walked by in different clothes than you wore when you first met them. The fighting was also a big turn off for me. I never could beat anyone with much more than a nudge of life left, and when you came up to your next fight, you still had the same amount of life as your last fight. This meant that I had to save and load often in order to be able to select the right conversations with the guards that would let me pass them without a fight. This “save early, save often” mentality was more like a Sierra game than a LucasArts game.

But, now that I finally did complete it, I’m glad I did. The story is solid, and follows the movie remarkably well. But, even more than that, the game is funny. It is loaded with a lot of injokes. I find the injokes in LucasArts games adorable. They keep me going back to see what I might have missed. There are a ton of references to other LucasArts games in Indy’s office and in the art room in the castle. I laughed out loud at the Zak McKracken reference in the library where Indy reads about a book that is “all about Caponian and Skolarian culture”, and then looks at the camera and says “huh?”. This game also introduces two injokes that will be spread throughout the other LucasArts games: the “I’m selling these fine leather jackets” line, and the cameos by Sam and Max. How can you not love that? :)

This year, one of my resolutions is to broaden my horizons. I’m trying to celebrate some holidays from other countries and cultures, and I’m also trying foods from other cultures as well.

I have never had Indian cuisine before, but I have heard good things about it. I decided to try Dal Bukhara, a thick creamy soup with black lentils and curry. It was similar to a meatless chili, but with a creamy taste due to the addition of butter and cream.

My mom and I both agreed it was very delicious. We’ll definitely eat this again. I think I might actually like this better than chili, and I really enjoy chili. :)

After watching the season six finale of Monk, I am now eagerly awaiting season seven! A Monk finale hasn’t left me wanting to watch more this eagerly since the second season finale “Mr. Monk Goes to Jail”.

Every episode this season has been memorable. The guest stars this season were great. From Sarah Silverman’s return as Monk’s biggest fan, to Snoop Dogg in Mr. Monk and the Rapper” (complete with a rap-styled rendition of Monk’s theme song :)), to Deidrich Bader of The Drew Carey show fame as a nudist, to Howie Mandel as a cult leader, each big name guest star really shines this season.

There were also some really great moments, such as Monk trying to figure out why he recognizes a woman he never met before, Monk becoming a bank security guard to get his wife Trudy’s bracelet back, Monk coming to terms with putting an innocent man behind bars, Julie bonding with Mr. Monk after she gets him to relate to her teenage love by asking him about Trudy, Dr. Kroger’s rebellious son realizing the difficulty of his father’s job, the Captain feeling his relationship with Monk strained after Monk suspects the Captain’s girlfriend is guilty of murder, and Natalie worrying about her daughter when it seems that someone is murdering everyone named Julie Teeger.

Even the average episodes this season still have their moments. We get to see Mr. Monk enjoy truly himself for a moment in “Mr. Monk and the Man who shot Santa” and we get to see an artistic representation of Mr. Monk’s view of the world in “Mr. Monk Paints his Masterpiece”.

The best episode this season though definitely has to be the two episode finale, “Mr. Monk is On the Run”. Mr. Monk finally catches up with the six fingered man who built the bomb that killed his wife Trudy. Unfortunately, Monk is soon afterwards accused for murder himself. He escapes from police custody, and works to find a way to clear his name, and to try to piece together the puzzle of how Trudy was killed once and for all. I love this episode so much, as it shows that most of Monk’s debilitations are due to his loss of Trudy. When Monk feels that he can finally close his most important case, he is capable of so much. He still has his neuroses, but they aren’t crippling to him. I hope they continue the series even after Trudy’s murder is solved as I really love to see Monk functioning as part of the world rather than feeling completely crushed by it.