Monty Speaks: I Should Have Been a Viking
Dear Readers,
I have found my true calling in life.
I was supposed to be a Viking, not a monkey.
I've been playing Northland for about a week now, while the Freeverse team has been moving the office. (Same bulding, but different floor, in case you were wondering.) They were moving each piece of furniture, including the desk that my G5 was sitting on.
But I was playing Northland.
They moved my desk anyway, and I was still telling the Vikings what to do. They took my chair, and I sat on the floor and kept sticking it to Loki's minions. Eventually, I was the only one in the room, and the office had been moved downstairs.
They ended up having to buy 10 chocobagels to pull me away from Northland. While I was eating the bagels, they moved the G5 downstairs to the new office. As soon as I had downed the bagels, you can probably guess what I was doing next.
I was playing Northland.
See you next time,
Monty Zuma
Official Spokesmonkey
Freeverse Software
Northland Shipping
Newly arrived from Europe, and now available for the first time in North America for the Macintosh, Freeverse is proud to present Northland, an exciting, visually rich real-time strategy game by Funatics Software.
Northland challenges you to take control of a group of Vikings, and develop your town while meeting the needs of your denizens. Unlike other real-time strategy games, each character in the village has a name. You can leave the Vikings to fulfill their own desires, or micromanage them into jobs and marriages. By developing a village, the Vikings can mount an offensive against the minions of Loki.
Northland received the PC Action Gold Award and the PC Extreme Silver rating in Europe, and was called "the cutest buildup game to ever grace the Macintosh" in the November 2003 issue of the German magazine, Mac Life. Find out what they're raving about by picking it up at your favorite Apple reseller, or directly from the Freeverse Store.
Official Northland Page:
http://www.northland-game.com/
ToySight Reviewed in Washington Post
ToySight, our collection of games and toys you play by moving in front of your Mac, was reviewed by The Washington Post on January 16!
ToySight features a dozen interactive games and toys for one or two players. Instead of using a joystick, mouse, or keyboard, you maneuver in front of an iSight or other FireWire camera (such as a DV camcorder) to control the action. See yourself on the game screen, and use your arms to play.
Unfortunately, the Washington Post only keeps 2 weeks' worth of content on its website, so we can't link to the story. We can tell you that the reviewer, Kevin Savetz, said it "makes Apple's iSight webcam useful even when nobody you know is online." He also called it "...just right, offering fun for adults or kids."
Thousands of you have already visited Apple's Trailer Site to see the trailer, identifying how cool it is.
You can get your own copy of ToySight at Apple resellers and at the Freeverse Store at a suggested retail price of US $34.95.
Official Toysight Page:
http://www.toysight.com/
3D Card Games Updated
The Macintosh versions of our 3D Card Games, 3D Spades Deluxe, 3D Hearts Deluxe, 3D Bridge Deluxe, 3D Euchre Deluxe, and 3D Pitch/Setback Deluxe, have been revised to version x.3.
New features include:
- Bot auto-substitution during network play when a player drops
- Speech synthesis
- Support for XML-based puppets, which are up to 50% smaller at the same quality compared to the previous versions
- Numerous usability enhancements
- Reduced CPU and resource usage
- New game rules options for Spades and Hearts
There are other changes too numerous to mention; if you want to know specifically what is going on, please check out Dan's post of the entire changelist to the Freeverse News forum.
Download 3D Spades Deluxe 3.3 for Macintosh
Download 3D Hearts Deluxe 7.3 for Macintosh
Download 3D Bridge Deluxe 2.3 for Macintosh
Download 3D Euchre Deluxe 2.3 for Macintosh
Download 3D Pitch/Setback Deluxe 2.3 for Macintosh
Official 3D Card Games page:
http://www.3dcardgames.com/
More updates
X-Words Deluxe and CrossCards, our popular tile arrangement games, were both updated to version 3.0.4. The newer versions fix bugs, and offer a number of other refinements.
Toysight 1.0.1 adds NTSC (North American, Japanese, etc) television system compatibility, support for multiple input video systems, and another of other fixes.
Burning Monkey Mah Jong Solitaire 1.1 adds a number of new features to the popular tile-matching game: a new layout browser, a 40% speed boost, and a number of other tweaks and fixes.
Download these patches today!
Download ToySight 1.0.1 for Macintosh
Download Burning Monkey Mah Jong Solitaire 1.1 for Macintosh
Download X-Words Deluxe 3.0.4 for Macintosh
What's Jen Cookin'?
Hi
again!
I like pork. It's tasty, and it comes from pigs.
That's why I have been experimenting with ways to make it. Lots of people like to coat their pork chops in hot sauce, but some people don't like hot foods. So, I found this great recipe for an almost Asian-tasting pork chop.
Culturally Confused Pork Chops
| Qty | Ingredient |
|---|---|
| 2 | pork chops |
| 1/8 cup | soy sauce |
| 1/8 cup | honey |
| 1 Tablespoon | lemon juice |
| 1/2 Tablespoon | dijon mustard |
| 1 teaspoon | corn starch or flour |
| 1/2 teaspoon | dark sesame oil |
| some | pepper |
| 1 clove | garlic, minced |
You can see why I say it's almost Asian. It's got soy sauce and sesame oil in it.
The first step is to make the sauce by combining all the non-pork ingredients in a pan and mixing them. Boil them for 2 minutes, or until you have a thick-looking brown sauce.
Now take half of this sauce, and set it aside. Spread the other half of the sauce on both sides of your pork chops, and broil them in an oven. (Broiling means to heat them from above. Use the broil setting on your oven if you're not sure.)
Do each side for eight minutes, unless it looks like the eight minutes will burn the pork, in which case, throw it out and try again with a shorter broiling time.When the pork is ready, you can spread the leftover sauce onto it. Serve it with some white rice. If you want an even more crazy cultural confusion, serve it with a fortune cookie.
Like this recipe? Forward it to a friend!
Freeverse Tip: Burning Monkey Solitaire!
Try entering these codes into Burning Monkey Solitaire 3 to reveal easter eggs:
- tomato
- joost
- carlos
To find out more game codes, visit BurningMonkey.com today!
Monkey Chuckles
Monty, wanting to earn some money, decided to hire himself out as a handyman-type and started canvassing a wealthy neighborhood. He went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any jobs for him to do. "Well, you can paint my porch. How much will you charge?"
Monty was saving for an iPod Mini, so he asked for only fifty dollars. The man agreed, and told him that the paint and ladders that he might need were in the garage.
The man's wife inside the house, heard the conversation and said to her husband, "Does that monkey realize that the porch goes all the way around the house?"
The man replied, "He should. He was standing on the porch."
A short time later, Monty came to the door to collect his money.
"You're finished already?" the homeowner asked.
"Yes," Monty answered, "and I had paint left over, so I gave it two coats.
Impressed, the man reached in his pocket for the $50.
"And by the way," the monkey added, "that's not a Porch, it's a Ferrari."
Monty and Herb the Singing Gorilla went to Alaska, where the local monkeys challenged them to an ice-fishing contest.
Monty and Herb went out to the ice with their fishing poles and caught no fish. Meanwhile, the local monkeys were reeling in bucket after bucket of fish.
Finally, Monty rushed over to the other monkeys to find out their secret for catching so many fish. When he discovered how they do it, he ran back to Herb, shouting,
"A hole! We're supposed to make a hole in the ice first!"
Monty was trying to sell his old car. He was having a lot of problems selling it, because the car had almost 230,000 miles on it.
One day, he was talking to the loan shark from the Burning Monkey Casino about his problem. The loan shark replied, "There is a possibility to make the car easier to sell, but it's not legal."
"That doesn't matter," replied Monty, "if I can only sell the car."
"Okay," said the unsavory fellow. "Here is the e-mail address of a friend of mine. He owns a car repair shop on the outside of town, just past the casinos. Tell him I sent you and he will 'fix it'. Then you shouldn't have a problem anymore trying to sell your car."
The following weekend, Monty made the trip to the mechanic. About one month after that, the loan shark asked him, "Did you sell your car?"
"No," replied Monty, "Why should I? It only has 50,000 miles on it!"
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