The Secret of Monkey Island, one of the best PC games of all time and the inspiration for Phoenix contributor Mitch Krpata's blog, is getting a modern makeover for the XBox Live Arcade this summer, according to news out of E3. The timing is off a bit to capitalize on the popularity of wacky pirates, but anyone who's played the original will still welcome this as fantastic news.

Last Saturday night at midnight, Johnny Cupcakes brought late-80s gamer geek classic The Wizard to the Coolidge. People who crave their fix of both Nintendo nostalgia and exclusively designed Powerglove posters flocked to the theatre early that night. I arrived at 11:15 to find the line stretched down the alley.

Where's Bulma?

I was up pretty late last night. How could I have been so irresponsible on a Wednesday? Well, I have an awful lot of work to do before Friday morning, and the list taped to my apartment wall still has a few items that aren’t crossed off: “finish armor,” “paint gloves,” “make arm bracelets,” and a couple other bits and pieces that I’ll have to wrap up tonight.

Generally I'm not crazy about viral video marketing campaigns, and to say I'm disappointed with the Nintendo Wii would be a gross understatement. But this - a couple of days old though it may be - is pretty great:

(via Joystick Division and Krpata, who didn't post it on his blog.)

(And yes, that's the guy who played Clay Davis on The Wire.)

Ah, sweet summer. Everyone knows this is prime gaming season, since it's too hot to go outside, not to mention the tendency for responsibilities to fall by the wayside as the number of Otter Pops consumed steadily increases. It's a perfect time to catch up on last year's big releases as they begin to go on sale, or even rediscover the games of our childhoods for a hop and a skip down nostalgia lane.

18 MORE PHOTOS: BOSTON ZOMBIE MARCH

As promised, we've got full coverage of Boston's Easter Zombie Weekend mayhem. As soon as our cameraman recovers from his wounds we'll have video of Saturday night's zombie-burlesque pageant, "Feast of Flesh VIII." And there's still time to make tonight's lecture on Zombie psychology at the Coolidge (if you miss it, we'll have a podcast available in a few days). In the meantime, we've got some first-hand reportage on the Zombie infestation that threatened Davis Square and Harvard Square yesterday afternoon. Click above for the full slideshow. VIDEO AFTER THE JUMP >>>

There are too many games out right now that I don't have time to play. This is the most common lament when the average entry in your entertainment medium of choice takes 15 hours to experience. Killzone 2, GTA: Chinatown Wars, Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, Resistance: Retribution, Mad World, and more have all been released this month. Add these to the dozen or so games from the fall season that I wish I had played, plus the 50-ish from the last 15 years that I would love to pick up some day, and it becomes clear that I will never get to play all the games I would like to play. It also doesn't help that I am still engrossed in Fallout 3.

Anyway, due to everyone who would normally be writing interesting things about video games being busy actually playing video games, there is not much to write about this week, so I guess I'll just talk some more about Resident Evil 5. Sigh.

This may be old news to some, since rumors of a music game based on the career of The Beatles have been surfacing steadily since late last year, but The Beatles: Rock Band has finally been given a solid release date.This is good news because:

1. Rock Band is the tits.

2. The Beatles are the tits; and,

On the eve of E3, it's Nintendo with the first surprise. Today, they announced "Motion Plus," which they say will offer "more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation." In other words, a 1:1 connect between the WiiMote and the action on the screen. Obviously it remains to be seen how well it works, but our immediate thought was that those saber melees in The Force Unleashed may have just gotten a lot cooler.

The new issue of Game Informer Magazine has the scoop, reported by a poster on the NeoGAF forum and picked up by Kotaku: Guitar Hero IV will feature drumming and vocals. What an original idea!

To be totally fair, it does seem like a logical next step, and it's not like Harmonix invented the idea, either.