So... Was the game cancelled? Or was it
"cancelled"?

From the article:

"Ghostbusters" scares up "Office" writers
By Borys Kit and Leslie Simmons

TORONTO/LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Who's Sony going to call to pen its reboot
of "Ghostbusters?"

Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg.

The studio has recruited "The Office" writer-producers to work on a new installment of the
1980s franchise that starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Harold Ramis as
bumbling ghost-hunting scientists.

The original filmmakers, including director Ivan Reitman, and cast are aware of the project
and involved in its development. Some original cast members might be involved, but not in
central roles.

Stupnitsky and Eisenberg, who are nominated for an Emmy for the NBC sitcom "The
Office," already have the support of one Ghostbuster in Ramis. The duo penned with Ramis
the biblical comedy "Year One," which is produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Ramis,
and scheduled for release in 2009 by Sony.

"Ghostbusters" was Sony's top-grossing film ever until it was surpassed by "Men in Black,"
which in turn was outdone by all three "Spider-Man" films. The 1984 film grossed $292
million worldwide, and its 1989 sequel brought in another $215 million globally.

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What would be a more profitable sequel, do you think? A game or a movie?

Today I bring you something special, boys and girls. It's not a freebie, but it brings all the excitement of those crank machines at the super market checkout lane without the misery of getting another stretchy, sticky hand thing that your mom makes you throw out because you stained the wall with one once.

Stootsi is having a sale. 25 cents will nab you a new PC game. New as in "not used", not as in "potentially sold in the last six years." It's a random grab bag of "thousands" and you'll probably be disappointed in what you get, but that's the fun of it.

I bought 60.

I'm a sick man.

I've been playing MMOs for nearly as long as I have been online. The very first time I went online at my grandparent's house with a 14.4 modem and a copy of AOL that billed by the minute, I was playing games online. It started with the original Neverwinter Nights. I dabbled in Gemstone III and earned a taste for MUDs, so when we finally had our own internet access I found my way to Medievia and promptly tanked my grades for that year of high school. Various betas came and went as time passed. Everquest, Ragnarok Online, Asharon's Call... It wasn't until City of Heroes and World of Warcraft that I really got back into MMOs. It was around this time that I realized why I played them.

It's not the player interaction or teamwork. It's not the need for ever-better loot. Is it the exploration? Partly, but not quite. Why I play MMOs is to create a character.

On that note, I'll come right out and admit I play almost exclusively on role play servers. I can labor off and on for days over a new character design, cobbling together a personality like an author testing out a new lead for their 700 page opus. In a way, that's what I feel like I'm doing whenever I start a budding new Level 1. I want to drop them into a world and see what happens to them without suffering through the writer's block.

Over time I've grown attached to a number of my characters. Even when an account has been long canceled, sometimes I like to go back and revisit the little elf/robot/werewolf/whatever-shaped tamagotchi that I spent so much time with. This occasionally results in the terrible phenomenon known as fan art.



Meet Rushlight, my old troll rogue. Pockets were picked, dinosaurs were rode, raiding dungeons were ignored... Fun times. So when I got around to picking up a Munny, she seemed like a good choice of a model. It took a month or two of off and on cobbling, but here we are.

Even if I'm not playing the game any longer, I'm still coming back to it in a different way. I don't remember how much gold I had, what was in my bank or who I had on ignore, but my characters stay with me.

It's a different kind of replaying, I suppose.

(More stills of the Munny at Tomopop)

I stopped into Burger King for lunch a little bit ago (in no small part due to the Pokemon toys, I'll admit). Eating across the way from was a family where the following story was being told through highly animated arm waving and funny voices. I thought it was freakin' adorable.

Girl (in normal voice): "Hullo Pachirisu!"

Girl (in high pitch squeal): "Pachi-pachi-reeeeeesu. Pachi-pachi. PachiREEEEESSS...uuuu. Pachi."

Girl (in ominous voice): "Bwahaha, I will take your pachirisu!"

Girl (in normal voice): "Oh nooooo, it's the Team Rocket!"

Girl (in ominous voice): "Ahahaha!"

Girl (in high pitch squeal): "Paaaaachirisu!"

Girl (in normal voice): "Quick! Quick, Pachirisu! Use your power!"

Girl (in ominous voice): "Oh hoho, you cannot hurt the Team Rocket!"

(girl makes rumbly explosion noises)

Girl (in high pitch squeal): "Pachi-pachi-patchi!"

Girl (in normal voice): "You beat them, Pachirisu! You can have a fry!"

The end!

I am a collector. Let me be frank about that. When a game is being released that I have a serious interest in that happens to come with some cool swag, I have no qualms about shelling out a few extra zorkmids. Been doing it all my life. Septerra Core? I have the promo tarot cards. Might & Magic 6? I won a five foot long lithograph of the cover art in a contest included only in the special edition. It adorns my walls to this day.

Bethesda is no stranger to leeching the extra money from my pockets, as the Morrowind and Oblivion SEs attest. I would've gone in for the special CompUSA Daggerfall box if I had been aware of it. That's what makes this such a hard moment for me.

I sit at the Amazon.com checkout, staring.



$60 for a special edition is well within my limits. $70? Painful, but you can entice me into it. $80 is a realm I have yet to broach. $120? I... I just don't know...

Even though I'm more financially stable than I've been in a long while and this is jam packed full of goodies, it's so hard for me to mentally justify this much money. I don't even have a system capable of playing the damn game right now. The last generation of PC games has limped across my seven year old Dell's screen in FPS totals of ones and twos.

Eventually, I'll be able to play Fallout 3. This much I know. It seems that every PC gaming generation is spent by me amassing a horde of titles to finally play through once I've upgraded to a system that can run them at a decent clip. But for now, it mocks me.

The previews, glowing like rad scorpions in the dunes, have already sold me on the game. But even as a fan of the series, can I in good conscience spend this much? Am I doomed to being a buyer of the "Standard Edition"?

I could sure go for some of that.



It was announced tonight in the most recent Atlus Faithful newsletter, though it's technically an IGN exclusive nugget. I loved the first one, so I can guarantee I'll be preordering this one. Though that oversize box with the included OST is gonna mess me up something fantastic...