Peggle Fever

So I suppose many of you are wondering, “Is there any cool new stuff in Peggle Dual Shot for the Nintendo DS?” Allow me to answer with a throaty and enthusiastic, “Most assuredly!”

Overall I’ve been quite happy with PopCap’s versions of Peggle. They’ve really captured the ineffable sproingitude and jiggleness of Peggle to a degree I would have thought impossible in your world. But, good as they are, until now no version of Peggle has disclosed or even hinted at the boundless pointery of the Bonus Underground.

The Underground is a metaphorical realm, more a thought-dream or smell than an actual place, a dimension of pure points. The way it works is, each time you hit a purple peg, you earn a star. Earn five stars and the purple peg becomes a gold peg. Hit that gold peg and your ball drops into a mystic region so filled with diamonds you’ll think you’re playing Bejeweled.

But you’re not. Oh no my friends, you are still playing Peggle. Your ball leaps and frolics in this space like a newborn fawn made of pure innocence sauce, collecting point-stuffed diamonds all the while. And when your ball finally departs this ur-world, this blessed land, you go back to your previous Peggle level already in progress.

The trick is, in order to collect all those Underground points, you still must achieve Extreme Fever. You still have to hit those orange pegs. And if you don’t? Diddly.

So you have to ask yourself: “Am I a skillful and dynamic enough Peggle player to go after the purple pegs and risk everything for the untold riches of the Underground? Do I have that level of unbridled cool and good-looking suavity?” Be honest, now. Do you?

Sure you do!

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Oh, and don’t forget to check out the Peggle Art Contestfor fun, prizes and power satisfaction!

Hi, folks! I’m… I’m really sick today. Look at the picture. That’s me out of my mind on ham-pressed oysters. I never should have taken Warren up on that bet.

Now I’m shivering uncontrollably as absurd images spiral through my mind. Claude? Claude, is that you? Those look like your pants but the rest seems like the dream of a fevered unicorn! What a wonderful pattern behind you, though! Ha ha ha!

Ahhh! Renfield! Stay away! Terrify me not with your transformed Tronscape! Your fearsome cloaked visage hovers over shapes my tortured mind cannot comprehend! Why are you bringing me soup? Away with your nightmares, away!

Uhhhhh… so… so cold. Keep it together, Bjorn. It’s all in your mind. It’s the oysters talking. It’s the fever. Try to relax. It’s okay. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and count to ten. What’s that sound?  It’s not a phalanx of monochronal Splorks charging towards me, is it?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Help me, Master Hu! Calm me with your wisdom and serenity! Appear before me as a vision of black and white to soothe my mind before I go mad! Hurry, Hu, hurry!

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Be at ease, Headmaster Bjorn. I am Hu. I am here. Know that your mind is safe. You are simply catching visions of Q Entertainment’s Peggle Dual Shot level backgrounds. Here, drink this restorative and be well.
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Whew! Thanks, Hu! That did the trick. Plus I’ve learned a valuable lesson about not posting blogs while hallucinating from food poisoning!

Hey, folks. Bit frazzled here today. I’ve got computer problems.

Now, our computers are a bit different from yours. Whereas your computers move “electrons” around in “logical patterns,” ours operate on much more awesome magical principles. So while you guys keep making your computers smaller and smaller, so small you can carry ‘em around with you and slop alfredo sauce on them without thinking, we go the other way; our computers just keep getting bigger!

Why, just last month I had to knock a wall down to add enough RAM for a Doors Vista upgrade. Now THAT’S a computer! And let me tell you, I’m in no danger of misplacing it or dropping it down the stairs!

Anyway, such remarkable efficiency sometimes comes with a cost. It seems a family of spider monkeys has taken up residence somewhere in my registry. Normally I wouldn’t mind, I’d just work around it, but today my browser is clogged with monkey waste and I can’t get anything done.

Nope, I had to bite the bit and call in a team of computer gremlins. They charge 50 coins an hour and they’ve been at it all morning. No use watching them work, either (they say it makes them “fungly”), so I trotted on over to Hu’s office, sent him for coffee and logged on under my account so I could tap up this blog post.

Now that’s done, I still have to head down to the workshop and take a look at the new Peggle boards we’re putting together. A headmaster’s work is never done, only postponed!

Busy day here at the Institute, folks. We’re adding a whole new wing to expand our remote teaching facilities and ball storage. Just in time, too; I’ve been tripping over extra balls all week (what with the whole Gamestop “Free Peggle Ball with Dual Shot pre-order” deal going now).

But it’s the remote teaching I’m really excited about. We’ve seen a huge influx of human students here at the Institute over the last year and it’s been a struggle to accommodate everyone. Transmitting Peggle lessons across the Einstein-Pooper magical sub-quantum bridge to the human universe may seem like a simple operation to you, but it requires a lot of heavy equipment on our end. We’ve been keeping all the gear in my office up to this point, so it’ll be nice to be able to get a cup of coffee without having to climb out the window.

I’m blogging from my uPhone as the contractors install the new transmitter, and let me tell you, it’s a sight! Or rather, it would be if it wasn’t invisible. According to Splork it’s a huge glob of eighty-foot purple candy-canes rotating in six and a half different directions backwards in time. I’ll take his word for it. Hey, I just pay the bills around here.

Anyway, this new setup will allow us to deliver four septillion simultaneous lessons to your Earth every month, which is up three septillion from before and should easily last us until the end of the semester. If you like, grab a copy of Peggle and help us test it out!

Yeesh! What a day!

It started off as usual – got out of magic bed, had a bowl of magic oats, took a quick magic shower and headed over to the magic gym for some quick 3-point shots (not magic, just skill).

Everything’s cool until I trot down to the loading dock to take delivery of this month’s shipment of rainbows only to discover, hey, all the colors are backwards!

I ask the delivery porcupine what’s the deal and he just shrugs and tells me to call head office. Of course head office weaves me this magical web of fairy crap about how they followed our specifications and I’m like, hey, this is the same order we’ve been making for the last three years and unless I’m calling you guys up in the middle of the night to adjust our rainbow specs while I’m asleep, nothing’s changed!

Bottom line, they can’t fill the replacement order until next Friday at the earliest. Fantastic. We’re already down to our last half-pallet of rainbows and I’m staring a full week of rainbowless Extreme Fevers dead in the face.

Well, you know what they say: when the going gets tough, the quick-thinking and resourceful unicorns get going. I cancelled all the classes, assembled the Masters in the warehouse, handed them slide rules and prisms and told them to get to work.

Believe me, they weren’t happy. Warren started whining hardcore, Jimmy actually cried and Cinderbottom flatly refused, saying it was beneath his station as an accredited Peggle Master and Lord of the Order of the Flame blah blah blah. Finally I had to pull out a Peggle board and show everybody just what Extreme Fever without a rainbow looks like.

Nobody said anything. They just picked up their gear (well, the ones with hands did, anyway) and got to work. That’s why they’re the best team in the business. Together we inverted eight hundred pounds of rainbows in just seven hours. I don’t know if you know how much a rainbow weighs, but trust me, eight hundred pounds is a LOT of rainbows.

It was a lot of work we were forced to do by the failure of our incompetent suppliers, but when it was finally over and we threw the last corrected rainbow down the transduction chute, I’ll tell you, it felt great. I made a keg of magic elixir appear in a puff of smoke and we all toasted our efforts except for Jimmy, who’s still two gopher-months shy of gopher-legal. I suppose it all turned out okay but Moon, we sure don’t need too many days like that again!