In September last year, I was happy to report that LucasArts had finally decided to revisit its legacy of highly original graphic adventure games and released a Special Edition of The Secret of Monkey Island, updated with high-resolution graphics, voice acting and a re-recorded orchestral score.

Now there is more good news. They’ve just released a remake of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge! Having earned his pirate stripes in the first game, our hero Guybrush Threepwood is now a confident young buccaneer with a stylish beard, new clothes and a small fortune. Wanting to prove himself once again, he has come to Scabb Island in search of a legendary treasure called Big Whoop.

Alongside Monkey 1, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango, Monkey 2 was a game which gave me my most memorable gaming experiences in my teen years. There was a time when I would spend most of my free time thinking about how to solve another puzzle in the game. Those of you who have played Monkey 1, be advised: this is a much longer and harder game than its predecessor.

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge is available for €10 on PC (on Steam), Xbox, PS3, and iPhone/iPad. You can turn on subtitles in English, German, Italian, Spanish and French. Check out the official site.

If you’re a fan of computer games or geeky topics in general, check out these two videos from the newly launched tech site Motherboard.tv:

• Richard Garriott: King Of All Nerds: A 20-minute documentary on Richard Garriott, better known as Lord British, author of the classic RPG game Ultima.
• Game Godfather Sid Meier and the 48-Hour Game: Sid Meier, the legendary game designer (Civilization, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, Colonization, Alpha Centauri), takes part in a college competition to design and code a game in 48 hours. In the documentary, Sid Meier talks about the early days of the video game industry.

Both videos in fairly advanced American English.

Antimoon is a site for English learners, but the Antimoon Method can be used to learn any language. Of course, you will need to make some tweaks — for example, not every language will require as much focus on pronunciation as English.

If you are interested in specific advice for learning Spanish using the Antimoon Method, you should check out Spanish Only, a relatively new blog written by Ramses, a smart young guy from the Netherlands. Ramses has spent the past few years learning Spanish on his own by immersing himself in Spanish content. The man is full of interesting thoughts and tips, some of which will be relevant to serious learners of all languages.

This is a typical item from the free Basic English collection at SuperMemo.net, which is supposed to teach elementary English vocabulary to beginners. Unfortunately, I lack the wordpower to describe the stupidity of expecting someone who doesn’t know the word door to understand that definition.

To be fair, SuperMemo does offer the same collection in several language versions (for a monthly subscription fee), in which the complicated English definitions are replaced with Polish, German, etc. translations. Still, the purpose of providing a free version that is clearly unusable is something I can’t figure out.

My new article explains the difference between formal and informal English and shows where you can get formal and informal input.

The most important piece of advice for an English learner is to get lots of input. But not all input is the same. There are, roughly speaking, two basic types of English input: formal and informal.

Formal English is used in “serious” texts and situations — for example, in official documents, books, news reports, articles, business letters or official speeches. Informal English is used in everyday conversations and in personal letters.

Read more…

I have also updated my article “Reading is easier than listening”, refining my discussion of why it is easier to understand written English than spoken English.