The remake of LucasArts’ classic adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island has been bumped down to just £3.49/$5 on Steam today, in honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on the Nineteenth. That’s what I like to call a good deal which you should probably take advantage of.

I bought the game on release (hindsight is 20/20), and I can confirm that this is a quality remake, and the art, while perhaps not perfect for everyone, is very high quality and the voice acting is absolutely fine. You can switch at any time to the classic style, too. I heartily recommend this, ye land lubbers and all that.

Destructoid have posted a set of comparison shots between the upcoming Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition and the original game. The best part about the update is that whichever set you prefer, at the touch of a button in-game, you can switch between them. Personally, I’m leaning more toward the old style: I prefer the art style, and the tinge of nostalgia is probably helping too.

The art style is less important, however, than the new voice acting. It had better not be bad, as that game is awash with brilliantly written dialogue- there’s every chance it has been pissed all over by voice acting. That remains to be seen (well, heard), I suppose. I’ve lined up the comparison shots after the jump.

My love affair with Klonoa is absolutely no secret- I played Lunatea’s Veil back in 2002, and have been looking forward to the series’s revival ever since. Of course, when Namco-Bandai announced the new Klonoa last October, I was at a crossroads. Sure, the game is a remake of  the Playstation’s Door to Phantomile, but remakes don’t always work out well. On one hand, Klonoa’s new design is kind of stupid. His new ears make his species even more questionable, and those of you that are fans of the old Klonoa will probably be distraught at his new, shiny look. On the other hand, the cel-shading is still great, and it’s still Klonoa!

Namco-Bandai recently announced that the game had gone gold, and with it, they released a new trailer for the game. Sure, it plays out more like a commercial, with an annoying voiceover and over-excited kids, but the best part is that Klonoa looks exactly the same. With any luck, this game will be absolutely fantastic, and my inevitable review will be positive, but I guess we won’t know until the game comes out. By the way, that happens May 5th, and the game’s a Wii exclusive. Hit the jump for the gallery of screenshots!

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Warning: The Watercooler is the best thing you will see on the Internet today, mainly because it is the best thing I saw on the Internet yesterday. Be advised that these Watercooler stories are not necessarily videogame related (they usually won’t be), and are often silly, controversial, and/or not safe for work (NSFW). If this type of content frequently offends you, please be aware that I just warned you — if you still click through and get offended, it will be your own stupid fault. Otherwise, please continue…

Today’s Watercooler features classic Captain James Tiberius Kirk watching the new trailer for the Star Trek remake that we had featured on a previous Watercooler (which you could watch if blip.tv ever starts working again). Seems like Kirk Classic dislikes New Kirk as much as I do, and I’m sure there’s a funny picture to be made about this sentence.

No, I’m Captain Kirk.

You’re welcome.

Think you have something that could be Watercooler material? Send it to dlandis@ripten.com. If your submission gets featured, you will win a prize package full of pride and accomplishment.

Warning: The Watercooler is the best thing you will see on the Internet today, mainly because it is the best thing I saw on the Internet yesterday. Be advised that these Watercooler stories are not necessarily videogame related (they usually won’t be), and are often silly, controversial, and/or not safe for work (NSFW). If this type of content frequently offends you, please be aware that I just warned you — if you still click through and get offended, it will be your own stupid fault. Otherwise, please continue…

Today’s Watercooler features a shaky-cam, bootleg, cell phone video of the trailer for the Star Trek remake, and it is surprisingly pretty good quality. The trailer itself, though, actually looks… kinda lame. I mean, there is a certain amount of geeky lameness inherent in Star Trek to start with, but this specific Star Trek seems like an Aaron Spelling kind of corny. Kirk looks like a douche and Spock is fucking Sylar from Heroes… which actually ain’t that bad, really.

Oh, and there’s also about a second’s worth of half-naked hotness that almost made me forget how awful the rest of it was. Almost.

Okay, now I know your first question was either “what the fuck was that?” or “Dan, are you crazy?” I admit that it looks like it could be alright, but that Kirk-douche is like when George Clooney was Batman, and I just can’t get past his scroteface. Sorry, but I just can’t.

Think you have something that could be Watercooler material? Send it to dlandis@ripten.com. If your submission gets featured, you will win a prize package full of pride and accomplishment.

Thirty years after the original Space Invaders, Taito has resurrected the popular game and made it better than ever. Of course, after thirty years and with the technology we have these days, the game should easily be better than ever.

Although I wasn’t even born when the original Space Invaders was released, I can still say that it must have been one hell of a game to still be recognized by gamers today. Space Invaders Extreme doesn’t stray from its older brother’s roots, but instead makes the game feasible to this generation of gamers.

Space Invaders Extreme is, simply put, a fun and fast-paced old-school arcade shooter with tons of action. But when I say tons of action, I mean repetitive action. The gameplay itself is much like the original. You’re a spacecraft that has to take down the space aliens and UFO’s, ultimately trying to get the highest score you possibly can.

As you’re shooting down your enemies, you’ll be granted new power-ups that will allow for easier chain combos, thus allowing for a higher score. At the end of each stage there is a boss, each of which has a particular way of being defeated.

You’ll occasionally be able to access a secret challenge stage, but only by shooting the multi-colored UFO that will randomly float up at the top of the screen. Although an incredibly fun game, the action is very repetitive, but with a few different gameplay modes, you can still keep the game fresh.

There are four different gameplay modes in the Space Invaders Extreme including Arcade Mode, Ranking Mode, Stage Mode and Multiplayer Mode. Arcade Mode is the regular game mode that takes you through each stage one by one and saving your high score when you get a game over. In Arcade Mode, you’ll be able to save and retry if you lose all of your lives, but in Ranking Mode you won’t have an option to do so.

The Ranking Mode is just like the Arcade Mode, but when you hit the game over screen you’ll have to start all over again. The point of the Ranking Mode is too get the highest score you possible can with just two lives. You can then upload your score to the Global Rankings via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to see how you compare to other players around the world.

The Stage Mode gives you the option to play through all the stages you’ve unlocked individually. You just pick what stage you want to play and challenge yourself by seeing how high of a score you can get just on that one stage.

The Mulitplayer Mode is by far the most fun mode because not only can you play using the DS Wireless Connection with a friend, you can also get online via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to play against players all over the world.

The Multiplayer Mode gives Space Invaders Extreme a much needed replay value with the ability to play with anyone at anytime. Like I mentioned earlier, the Multiplayer Mode also gives you the ability to upload you’re Ranking Mode high score to the Space Invaders Extreme Global Rankings.

Space Invaders Extreme is a good looking arcade game with bright colors on a 2D plane. I mean it’s a DS remake of an old-school game, so I didn’t expect much from the graphics, but really they’re not that bad.

The top screen of the DS shows off your current score and a bunch of other random meters and numbers, all of which aren’t really necessary. However, the audio is not bad offering a pretty nice techno soundtrack, which fits really well with the look of the game. Other than that you’ll hear tons of beeps and swooshes as you’re shooting at your enemies.

For a $20 price tag and the ability to just pickup-and-play at anytime, Space Invaders Extreme is totally worth purchasing. The game is a fun and fast-paced shooter with old-school tendencies, but with a new-school attitude. Multiplayer Mode adds a much need replay value and the feature to upload your high score online is pretty neat, too. After all is said and done, this game is the most extreme Space Invaders game ever.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.

Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase, who directed the original FFVII, mused that a remake could be possible with some serious collaboration.

“My feelings are that if a remake were to work well then all the core members of the original team must be reassembled, all the artists and designers. The problem is that, although all of us have an idea of what a remake should be and how to do it, organising such a thing right now is logistically very difficult.

“All the different members are now involved in very new, very large projects like Final Fantasy XIII and those projects are going to take a while. Maybe, when all those games are finished then we can look at doing something like that.

“Of course, that said we came up with the idea for Crisis Core in just two days. It was a case of ‘this is what we want to do, so let’s do it’. So, you can definitely expect the probability of something spontaneous happening at some point, but it’s hard to predict.”

While bringing all the core team members back together could be a challenge in itself, the mere mention of a FFVII remake has induced exploding brain syndrome from JRPG lovers around the world. In fact, dang, there goes mine…

Source: Bit Tech

First he says no; then he says maybe. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII director Hajime Tabata dangles the carrot and hints at what it would take for a FFVII remake. Hit the jump for more.

In a follow-up interview in OPM, he says:

“The conditions that are necessary to remake the game have not been met at this point. The possibility for a remake may become greater if, for instance, the schedules of the original members of the Final Fantasy VII development team, such as Kitase and Nomura, open up.”

So nothing confirmed, but I am still comforted by that. Like many others I’ve feared that any remake without the original team at the helm would be little more than a cash cow. As it turns out, the only member of the original team who isn’t still at Squenix or a regular on their books is grand imaginator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who since ran off to found Mistwalker. In all fairness him, if there was any one person from the team who could be missing, it’s the guy who came up with the initial concept.

Nomura and Kitase are currently ensconced creating FFXIII, as are the rest; so it’s a fair bet to say that a remake wouldn’t enter development until after it’s released, probably in 2009. But would it really? Last year, SE executive producer Shinji Hashimoto said they wanted “everyone to be sucked in to the [Fabula Nova Crystallis] world for ten years.”

Unless the Fabula Nova Crystallis flops – and let’s face it, Final Fantasy’s brand strength alone is enough to ensure it won’t – that places a FFVII remake on its 20th anniversary, in 2018.

Some carrot.

Check the scan from OPM.