Amanda was out of town this weekend for a conference, so I had the house to myself. And what did I do all weekend long? Why, the same thing every other self-respecting game programmer does: I played video games and ate Cheetos. A lot of Cheetos. I finally decided to give Grim Fandango another try, as last time it crashed so often that I got frustrated and gave up. This time, it still crashed a lot, but I stuck with it. I think I’m pretty near the end now, and I’ve really been enjoying it. I’ve also been cheating the hell out of it, which makes me feel a little bad, but honestly, I don’t have as much gaming time as I used to, so I just want to get through the game, and spend less time figuring out obtuse puzzles.

However, playing Grim Fandango has rekindled my excitement for adventure games (they are pretty much the reason I’m in the games industry), and while going through my games, I realized that I have several adventure games that I never played, such as Quest For Glory 3 and 5, and Escape from Monkey Island. So maybe once I finish Grim Fandango and clean the Cheeto dust from the couch, I’ll give those a go.

Besides Fandango-ing, we took Walter out Friday for his early birthday to Jump Sky High in Santa Clara, which was quite fun. I only played one game of trampoline dodge ball, but I spent the rest of the time bouncing around the big arena. Saturday night I peeled myself off the couch and made it over to Jan and Yar’s to play some Zack and Wiki, which is being billed as an adventure game, but I would call more of a puzzle game. It was fun, nonetheless, but has the most half-assed multiplayer mode ever made: basically the other players can point to the screen with their Wii-motes and click to make a noise and an effect, but can’t actually do anything. It probably took them about 10 minutes to implement.