This week's episode looks at one of my favorite science fiction adventure games, LucasArts' 1995 masterpiece The Dig. Widely poo-poohed by critics and dismissed even by some fans of Lucasfilm/Lucasarts adventures, The Dig is nevertheless a must-play game with a brilliant story and very memorable characters. I love it! I tried not to include any spoilers, but as always with an adventure game review, you should consider playing it before watching the video.

P.S. Special thanks to Bill Loguidice for the t-shirt! What a great way to celebrate turning 33!

Edge Magazine has just posted The Making Of: Maniac Mansion. The three-page article features comments from Ron Gilbert, David Fox (author of Rescue on Fractalus) and Gary Winnick.

The Secret of Monkey Island is my favorite game of all time for any platform. It is a bold statement, but it is true. We've seen a lot of news and product in the world of Monkey Island over this past year, and this latest bit of news concerning MI2:SI is exciting.

When SOMI was remade and released last year, the artwork and music were updated. In addition to this, the voice actors from the later games in the series were brought in to dub the original game. What put the word "special" in "Special Edition" was the fact that you could toggle between the old graphics and the new graphics to balance a need for updated art with that of nostalgia. That said, I believe that the original artwork to SOMI and MI2 still looks great.

The second entry in the franchise is getting a remake, and this time it has in-game audio commentary from the creators. Yes. That's right. In. Game. Commentary. Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman have provided commentary for an update to a classic adventure game, and it will be included in this summer's MI2 release on PC, X-box 360, Playstation 3, Mac, iPhone, and iPod Touch.

Commentary? For an adventure game? What took so long? Why hasn't this been done before?

Good news for adventure game fans--LucasArts is releasing several of its best graphical adventure games on Steam. Of particular note here is The Dig, which is one of my very favorite adventures and a seriously underrated title in my opinion.

Ahoy there, fancy pants!: Go check out Ron Gilbert's blog today and see his great post on his classic game. It's lavishly illustrated with screenshots and gives you great insights into the original game. It's really, really great stuff!

Oh, and thanks to Bill and Catatonic for telling me about the new Monkey Island game by TellTale Games. The plan is to make it an episodic game like they did with the Sam & Max series. Check out the official website. I can't wait!

It took literally all day and all night to get it done, but here it is: Matt Chat 8: The Secret of Monkey Island. This one should be available in HD soon, but it's my understanding that it can take awhile for YouTube to post the option. This is the first time I've attempted to do a HD video, so bear with me. Hopefully, the options will appear after the video has finished processing.

Enjoy the video and please let me know what you think!

This is not the copyright infringement you're looking for...That new Trek movie in December 1979 is sure to give us a sales boost!I received a delightful original copy of the October 1979 edition of SoftSide, "your BASIC software magazine" (featuring Westward 1847 on the cover - their first anniversary issue). I'm a big fan of SoftSide in all of its incarnations, though I was unaware it was printed originally on this type of low-grade stock, as I previously only had the slicker glossy versions. In any case, in an issue packed full of wonders, this particular scan on the left struck me as one of the more interesting ads (and it's a SEQUEL!). Of course, perhaps just as blatant is this one on the right.