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An exciting bit of news for fans of the Monkey Island games — so exciting, in fact, that I can hardly believe I managed to fit it all into the headline. I have just received word via carrier pigeon from our main man at GDC, Brad, that Monkey Island: Special Edition is hitting PlayStation Network and Mac.

Furthermore, The Secret of Monkey Island 2: Special Edition is a thing that’s going to happen. It seems Brad could only fit so much on the little paper that was attached to the courageous bird, unfortunately.

Here’s what we got to work with: direct control of Guybrush Threepwood, never-before-seen art, developer commentary, new hair for the leading man (presumably better-looking hair), and it’s releasing on Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, PC, Mac, and iPhone this summer. Hot!

Capybara is bringing Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network later this year. This isn’t just going to be a straightforward port of the DS game as Capy is giving Clash of Heroes the HD treatment!

The game will receive all sorts of awesome updates to it, such as hand-drawn artwork replacing the 16-bit style sprites and scenes. Clash of Heroes HD will also feature four-player versus or co-operative modes. A number of complaints about the DS version, such as how you couldn’t go back to previous areas, will be addressed in the HD version as well.

We’ll be getting a look at Clash of Heroes HD this week at the Game Developers Conference. If you have any questions for Capy, be sure to leave a comment below so we can ask them at our meeting tomorrow!

GDC 10: Clash of Heroes Battling on XBLA, PSN [IGN, via GameSetWatch]

It is the dream of every game designer. You know, not only creating a game, but to create a game franchise. Like Mario, Halo, Final Fantasy, these are games that not only stand as one amazing experience, but a plurality of games that revolutionize how we are entertained. For every ten or twenty garbage title, there is one amazing experience that will be coming back with sequels and more. It is a very difficult thing to create.

So one such lecture for up and coming developers at GDC is “Building a Blockbuster Franchise”, a round table between Geoff Keighley from Spike TV, Joseph Staten, the Design Director from Bungie, and Dr. Ray Muzyka, GM and Chief Executive of Bioware. With many major titles between these two men, Halo and Mass Effect, among other things, they were more than happy to share some of their wisdom with up and coming designers. Hit the jump for more.

What was clear, however, when it comes to a franchise, is that a game franchise must have an open world to be built upon. Looking at Halo, for example, the game has been successful over numerous titles, as well as a spin off, like Halo Wars, it is clear that they have plenty to work with. With a strong, capable IP bible, which both Halo and Mass Effect live off of, strong gameplay basics, a great team that have stayed with a franchise, and capable marketing, there is a lot to balance. A new team brought into an IP, for example, can be problematic, as they do not know all the problems that previous teams had dealt with. Bad marketing, or releasing a title at a bad time, or not keeping fans integrated and listening to their feedback, well, that can kill a franchise.

Muzyka was clear, there is an idea of “constraints provide creativity,” and when you know that you can’t do in a universe, teams can be creative and expand upon ideas elsewhere. With specific rules comes specific responsibilities, and when you know where a game is going to go and not going to go, well, that’s when the best is done.

One thing a good franchise has to be aware of is over-saturation. Keighley brought up 2009 and the “jumping the shark” of the music game genre, specifically with Guitar Hero, and the current internal problems of Activision and Infinity Ward. While neither man would not offer much commentary on either issue, one thing was clear that a lack of focus on what makes a franchise originally good is paramount.

Says Staten, “As long as we get the world right, get the boundaries right, we succeed,” while Muzyka was clear that “teams have to be humble”. Feedback is a super important area for a successful franchise, and not listening to fans can be problematic.

Finally, Keighly mentioned the lengthened console cycle, and how this can impact a franchise. This bought the oddest comments from the designers. Staten was adamant, a “stable hardware is really good for creative people”, as developing for a very established hardware brings the best and most creative elements to a franchise.

They also agreed that games look pretty good right now, and while a boost in graphics would be nice, there is some good still to come from the Xbox 360 and PS3. Muzyka also pointed out to new user interface controls and 3D technology like with Sony that is hyping will really take things in a new direction. “The longer this generation lasts,” he says “the more creative people will be”.

It really seems that the basis of a successful franchise really lies with the teams, and the people that make up those teams. By allowing good games to blossom under certain constraints, the best can come, and keep coming for a long time to come.

New details have surfaced for Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. The latest Lara Croft adventure will be out this Summer for the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC. The new game offers about six hours of gameplay and will sell for $15. 

Destructoid will be checking out Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light later this week at the Game Developers Conference. In the mean time, you should jump over to the Destructoid Forums and harass Keir, the head community manager from Eidos and Square Enix. He’s bringing the gospel of Lara Croft to anyone that wants to hear about it!

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light launching this summer for $15 [Joystiq]

Flixel is a free Actionscript library that enables gamemakers to prototype and create new games quickly and easily. It’s a pretty awesome tool, and games like Canabalt, Fathom and Tuper Tario Bros. (among many others!) wouldn’t be around without it. So far, it’s only been capable of developing Flash games for the PC/Mac, but pretty soon, we’ll be able to make iPhone games with it.

During today’s Canabalt postmortem (a summary of which is coming soon!), Adam “Atomic” Saltsman made this special announcement and went into a little more detail on what Flixel for iPhone will be capable of. In addition to its normal functionality, it will feature a rudimentary Actionscript 3-to-Objective-C translator to accelerate iPhone ports of Flixel games. There’s still a lot for me to learn about programming, but I got a feeling having this tool at our disposal will make development for the platform a lot more accessible.

Flixel for iPhone is not yet finished, but a private release beta will begin very soon, with the public release to follow.

It’s hard to say why I keep choosing to write about Clash of the Titans. It’s as if a mysterious force is pulling me toward this game adaptation of the upcoming film. It looks to be a decidedly mediocre action game, and yet, I feel oddly compelled to continue posting all of the screenshots Namco Bandai sends our way.

This time — thank goodness! — there’s actually something worth highlighting. Namely, the bigass hammer Perseus has his hands on, and the dude with part of his brain showing. Uh, what!?

I seem to remember hearing something or other about cooperative play, which could prove useful in making Clash of the Titans possibly fun to play. Beating up on frogmen sounds like an ideal way to spend an afternoon, if you ask me.

Develop-Online is reporting that up to 20 Rebellion employee’s have been let go from the Oxford studio. Rebellion’s Derby location is reportedly no more as well. It’s been known that the Derby studio has been facing some troubles since the beginning of the year, but a source close to Develop has stated that the studio is all but closed.

Rebellion recently put out Aliens Vs Predator which has done pretty well, especially over in the UK. It’s always sad to hear about these kinds of troubles and we’ll have to wait to see what the official word is on all of this from Rebellion.

Source: Staff cuts at Rebellion’s Oxford HQ [Develop-Online, via Edge -- Thanks, Danny!]

Screw Barbarians — wizards can roll hard, too. This afternoon I played a peculiar action adventure title called Magicka. In brief, it’s a ranged-heavy twist on Diablo. You play as one of four multi-colored wizards, each with the ability to cast and combine a diverse amount elemental spells via a quick-snap radial menu. For example, you can combine a lone Water and a Lightning element to make a super nasty electrical attack or couple a Water and Fire for a steam attack.

Top-down and simple, I’m unsure if the mechanics will hold up after several hours of play. My spidey sense tells me repetition could get the best of me. But Magicka is a four-player coop-focused game, meaning there’s more to the experience than just the core game. Friends don’t let friends get bored with orcs. That’s a fact. Google it.

_{[Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware that it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]}

Sorry about the title. Apparently my creative juices don’t run so hot when it comes to silly anecdotes about sex.

Hot juices . . . in a blog about sex . . . get it?!

Ungh.

Sex fills a wide variety of needs. You can do it to relieve stress, make children, show appreciation (and likewise, withhold it to punish), you can do it just to have fun, to connect on the most intimate of levels with your partner, to show Uncle Reg that you really do love him, etc. It also fills a wide variety of needs in literature and film, most prominently it demonstrates a tangible connection between characters. That, or you’re just watching/reading porn to get off.

With all of the above examples, however, you are either directly involved in the act, or you’re completely removed from it, observing, but not participating. In all of the examples above, I don’t get that feeling of “this is f*cking weird” triggered by similar scenes and situations in videogames, and I think I know why. 

Sex in videogames seems to occupy a space somewhere in the middle of “involved and doing,” and “removed but watching.” I’m not having sex with Miranda. Shepard is. I’m watching … but I MADE him do it. It’s creepy, and it’s the sort of creepy that makes you want to keep it hidden. Unlike telling one of your friends that they have to go watch this one porn flick, I kinda-sorta don’t want anyone to know that I actually pursued a relationship with these fake people, and then manipulated the situation so they could have fake sex so I can watch (so I’m posting it on the Internet!).

Most of the “intimate” scenes in ME2 are actually tasteful, and they concern themselves more with the connection of two emotional characters who want to share themselves with each other, rather than the physical aspect. I explored them because I care about the characters and wanted to form those lasting bonds between “myself (Shepard)” and my squad-mates. But if Miranda dry-humping Shepard through clothes makes me feel weird, then any other player-controlled sex scene will, invariably, make me feel this same way, all be it to varying degrees of intensity.

Now, I’d be remiss not to mention the Uncanny Valley component, but I don’t think I really need to do much else than acknowledge it so that we don’t have an elephant in the room. However, the main thrust of this blog isn’t how real the sex seems in games, or how believable it is, but how neither fully participating, nor being completely removed from the goings-on, as a player, is a sort of limbo state that just doesn’t feel right.

The Uncanny Valley does contribute to other feelings of weirdness, but it deals exclusively with a factor of believability in relationship to how “real” any given artificial person seems, and our subsequent harsh criticism as a result. But I’m already willing to concede that these emotions, no matter how heavily criticized in our collective sub-conscious, exist, but it would be impossible to force this phenomenon completely from my mind, so there, I said it. It’s there.

Incidentally, neither Tali nor Jack made me feel this way. Tali was cute, and Jack was vulnerable, and the touching was kept to a minimum, but the intimacy was still palpable. This sort of character interaction should be applauded. It’s really very strong, without being hokey or silly or just fucking weird in any way, shape, manner or form. It establishes the intimacy without overt sexuality, though sex is still very present, albeit by way of assumption. This, the assumption of physical intimacy, is much more powerful, and a metric ass-ton less weird than any sort of physical sex I can actually influence, manipulate, or otherwise witness in a game.

Madison and Ethan are right out.

I’m not talking about tits and dicks in Dante’s Inferno, either. Likewise, I’m not talking about sexual behavior that I have no direct influence over (Satan + Beatrice). Give me character relationships with the potential for intimacy, yes; however, I don’t think I need to watch them being physically intimate. Let me assume as much. The weirdness it fosters creates a mental disconnect. I want to watch them warm up to one another, and physical signs of affection are certainly appreciated, but for the love of Pete, I can do without the dry-humping.

This promoted blog was written for our March Monthly Musing assignment, “Write something about sex.” You too could get promoted if you write something about sex in videogames over on the Community Blogs.