Proper Theme Park Management Requires Experience

"Where do you come up with this stuff, Ollie?" Marshall Duclercq, the galaxy's only thousandaire, a man so rich the government executed a currency squash to cut down on all the zeroes, could not help but marvel at the detail of his new park, months away from opening though it was. Under the dome, every synthetic plant and animal resembled nothing Earth had exported to the stars, the air smelled like copper, and the water tasted fruity. "The basic idea is simple enough. Everyone's disappointed by by finding no alien life out there so far, and some'll be willing to pay up for a day or two immersed in a fake version. The only thing different about this project is that I can make it happen. But it's the specifics I wonder about. It all seems so real."
"It is real," Oliver Scordato, the project manager, told his boss. "It's all from my planet. I'm an alien. Everybody refuses to believe aliens are all humans, that's all."
Duclercq looked the man up and down. "You never could tell a joke, Ollie."
Oliver shrugged. He had learned to do that soon after reaching Earth-colonized space, long enough ago that he no longer had to remind himself not to clap instead.
Finis

The Future of Maps

Map design is stagnant, and nature abhors a mummy. Here are the maps soon to come.

Scratch and sniff (each country smells different)
Dual-screen ebooks that keep a map up at all times
VR map so you can pretend to be Godzilla
Audiobook where a smooth-voiced guy describes the map to you
AI that draws a map for you
A map printed in exactly one copy, and the buyer who gets that one can charge everybody else to look at it

Marketing Corner

Bad title: Triangle Strategy
Better title: Final Fantasy Tactics: Scales of Conviction
Best title: Final Fantasy: My Life as a Feudal Lord

Great Failures in History

They didn't even make a Star Wars: Rogue One roguelike. What's wrong with these people?

Adaptation Quiz

If you're so smart, what sort of videogame would be best to adapt the new Lord of the Rings show? Look down for the answer.






Digital board game.

Adaptation Stagnation

If you don't want to adapt the actual thing, fine. Well, it isn't fine, but let's take that it for granted that you don't wanna. In that case, if you don't feel bound by anything, go nuts. Change everything. Put in a dragon that's, like, three dragons, man. Have Numenor and Lemuria launching ICBMs at each other. Elf pirate with a sophisticated parrot. Daleks show up. Anything. Who are these people who just want the source material except much worse? Make your creative liberties creative.

Lord of the Rings: Triumph of the Evil Power Master's Sinister Rings Trailer Review

Didn't watch it/10. I'll just agree with your opinion, if you don't mind.

The Lich Society

In a club kept exclusive not by bouncers or reputation but by the need to possess certain arts unavailable to the masses, three liches gathered to discuss, as they sometimes liked to do, matters only a self-selected few would understand.
"I buried my soul at the end of a rainbow. No one can find it, not even I, though now I regret my act when an urge to check on it comes, the only urges left to me," Lich A said.
B's dry cackle acknowledged the humor of the situation. "I ensured mine might always be available by enshrining it in this country's founding document. Guards watch over it day and night, though I pay them not a penny!" It picked a rat out of its crumbling tricorne and tossed the pest aside.
"As for my soul," C said, "I would never speak of it aloud. I am surprised you both do."
The light dimmed when A chuckled, but he continued regardless. "So then. I will speak no more of that. Instead, try this. PIck a card and place it in your wallet."
Red lights rolled in C's eye sockets, but it did as asked.
"Excellent. Most excellent." A shuffled the deck and showed C the three of clubs. "This is your card."
"Nay."
"Ah. I was mistaken. This is it." The jack of diamonds.
"Nay."
"I feared to grow old, yet now I am older than old. I recall the trick now. The card is in my wallet." He reached in, and twin yellow lights flared in what remained of his face. "I am mistaken again, as this cannot be your card, being no card at all." He drew forth a diamond, large but uncut.
"My soul!"
A and B laughed, the laughter unnaturally denied the grave though surely of it.
Finis

Lance Reminiscences

The first time I played the SNES Mechwarrior, I didn't know what a lance was. I thought the Dark Wing Lance was a vast criminal organization, not four unpleasant fellas.

A Missed Opportunity

Where's Dungeonlance? Your game has three things in the title. Give each of them a lance. It's only four mechs, after all.