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volume 1, issue 35

Today in loonygames:

New!! The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments on the front page!

Livin' With The Sims: theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims, asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual life where everyone is Swedish?"

Pixel Obscura: Josh Vasquez on Omikron: The Nomad Soul.

Real Life: Check out our newest comic strip, Real Life! Updated daily!

User Friendly: Updated daily!

T-Shirts: Stylin' loonygames t-shirts from Berda Compugrafix!

Artwork: Hey, dig the artwork on loonygames? We're selling some of the original art.

Feedback:

You've got an opinion...voice it! Drop a line to our Feedback column...you could end up with a free T-Shirt!

Random Feature :

Is Duke Sexist?: An exclusive look at this question that has dogged Duke Nukem's entire career (from our third issue).

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The mmm...beefy! dept:
MailBag for Issue #35

Comments by Stephanie "Bobbi" Bergman

Sometimes I just don’t get the point.

Subject: Come on...

I've noticed that Loonygames likes to do interviews with well known, but never interviews people. But now <begin sarcasm mode> you do Marc Laidlaw, who has been interviewed about 5 times already <end sarcasm mode>. Although it was a good interview, I would just like to say, I did it first! I had the first, post Half-Life release, Marc Laidlaw interview. So next time interview someone like Tim Wiltis, or one of the Xatrix guys.

-007david

Mr. Z World

Uh...thanks? I think? (the Xatrix guys are never interviewed?? We’ve had them on AGN upwards of 5-6 times by now, and are sure to have them on more...)

Games are too easy?

Subject: Lowest Common Denominator

Once again I've played through another great game. And once again I've been disappointed. You're probably thinking, "Why is this? Why are you pissed?" (Well, probably not, more likely you couldn't care less) Continue on dear reader, so that you may bask in my knowledge. Games are too easy. Yep, you heard me right. Easy mode is a romp through a meadow, Normal is abnormally easy, Hard is just plain not. Nightmare modes are a thing of the past, to be wistfully brought to remembrance in our old age. Why has this tragedy been allowed to continue? Because of you, dear reader. You or someone you know has complained to game companies about their games being too hard. Shame on you... how could you do this to us? How could you allow the debasement of our games? Difficult games are a part of our cultural heritage. We cannot allow this travesty to continue. We must band together to combat the encroaching wave of easy games. We must make our voices heard above the din and peal of the whiny gamer. We must take back our heritage from those who wish to obliterate it to suit their own self-fulfilling need to win games. Games are meant to be won through practice to perfection. They are not meant to be ego-masturbation for the masses. Stand fast with me! Help keep our society whole! Write to your local congressman, better yet, write to your local game company and make your voice heard! If all else fails we'll put together a crack team of fanboys to cajole the industry into subjection. We will win, but it is not going to be easy.

Hmmmm. I certainly don’t agree with you on that, but then again, I’m not exactly the most coordinated of folks, Quake on easy was very difficult for me for a while. :) I wonder if this is a common thing? I KNOW I wasn’t the only one who found Half-Life to be difficult (good diffiult though, you’re right, you don’t want things to be too easy) on easy skill, some people even went so far as to tell me to forget about not cheating (for the record, I didn’t!). So for me anyway, games are peachy with the difficulty levels as they are. I do wish you’d said what game you were playing though, I’m curious.

Suprisingly original...

Subject: Thinking outside the box

I have just one thing to say which I am sure is not original . . "MORE NUDITY"

While I doubt that you’re the only person who has been thinking that, you are the only one who actually went so far as to e-mail us about it. :)

A correction...

Subject: last weeks mailbag

Regarding Iikka Keranen's comment regarding The Matrix:

"except for the "matrix code"... Even Terminator's C64 asm code was better"

Actually, it was program listing checksum code from an Apple ][ magazine called Nibble.

Jay.

And the winner of this week’s t-shirt is...

Subject: Hmmm!

Get out of my head, okay? Just. Get. Out!!

Dear god, why didn't anybody warn us that "loonyboi" was a refugee from the Psychic Friends Hotline?!? (Or should we blame the infamous "Bobbi" Bergman, well-known patriot and friend-to-the-stars?) The evidence is irrefutable; just look at the last few issues of loonygames...

Welcome to my typical week-day:

I wake up, head to work, immediately begin to ignore my duties in favor of websurfing, and then encounter something vaguely tantalizing yet all too brief about someone in "the biz" on one of the 4.72 billion gaming news sites out there. The time between my first sip of coffee and my second is naturally spent wondering where I could find more information on the individual. The same old story, eh? Information junkies can't always get the crack they need, and we have to accept that sad truth, if we're to become productive members of society....

It would quite naturally stop there, except that, in the very next issue of loonygames, guess who's interviewed? (You know where I'm going with this, and your prescience scares the bejeebers out of me!) Yup. The noteworthy individual that had caught my eye in the first place.My "fix" arrives with a flourish, wrapped in a pale yellow ribbon, (or is the loonygames background referred to as 'bleached lemon?'). It happened with Derek Smart, it happened with Mike Wilson. It happened with Pile, and now it's happened with Marc Laidlaw. The next thing I know, there will be a loonygames exposition on Bob Love and his fascination with Rob Gee, from Highlander...

Well, enough is enough!

I am sending a copy of this letter to the U.S. Supreme Court, and His Holiness in Rome, in the hopes of getting a permanent psychic restraining order placed on each and every member of the loonygames staff. (You don't -really- want to be spelunking around in my head anyway!)

Chris T.

Oh yeah... thanks for keeping things interesting. :-) And Pixel Obscura is a masterful column.

Thanks, Chris. Although, I have to say, it’s mighty creepy that there are more people out there as twisted as we are..and Pixel Obscura is a damn good column, isn’t it? :).

- Stephanie "Bobbi" Bergman is an associate editor at loonygames. She's probably the most normal person on the staff. That's really sad.

Credits: MailBag logo illustrated and is © 1999 Dan Zalkus. The MailBag is © 1999 Stephanie Bergman. All other content is © 1999 loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited and not nice.