Sorry for the delay, but it’s not really fair that February has so few days! As I’m writing this, I finally got around to winding my watch forward three whole days, that’s how much I am protesting the lack of calendar in the second month. Anyway, time for your monthly ARC Worlds round-up!
Teh Internet
TV, movie, and gaming rights for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are up for grabs and expected to fetch at least $2 billion! I say we all pool our money and make a play for them. Who’s with me?
Interestingly, the rights were acquired back in the 1970s by movie producer Saul Zaentz, who then licensed film rights to Miramax, which then passed to New Line Cinema (now owned by AT&T via Warner Brothers) after Peter Jackson and Harvey Weinstein had a falling out.
Relatedly, if anyone reading this is interested in acquiring the film, TV, and gaming rights for the NYC Questing Guild series, I think it definitely has the potential to be a billion-dollar franchise give or take a few decades!
Look we all knew the plot for Chrono Cross was bananas when the game first came out:
I never thought of it from that angle:
Before Hot Tub Time Machine, there was the Chron—O-John
The genesis of my obsession with adventure games (particularly of the LucasArts variety) began in the early 90’s, when I spent all of my winter vacation at my cousin’s house playing LeChuck’s Revenge on her Amiga and not getting past Part I (The Largo Embargo).
Flash forward several years later and LucasArts had released its Classic Adventures collection, featuring all you see below!
After conquering each of these games, I wanted to move on to the next collection, the LucasArts Archives, but sadly my parents thought I had spent too much time playing video games, and only let me buy the Star Wars edition of the Archives (containing TIE Fighter and Rebel Assault) and not the adventure game edition you see below.1
However, I managed to negotiate myself a loophole: borrowing each of the above games from my friend! Anyway, that was a long segue into how I came to play Day of the Tentacle, the sequel to Maniac Mansion, in which three high school kids are accidentally sent forward, backward, and sideways in time.
I credit this game with my fondness for the Constitutional Convention and time travel mechanics. Relieve the glory days of the 90’s adventure game boom with these three features!
This Month on ARC Worlds
Guild of Tokens, Chapters 23-29
Guild of Magic, Chapter 8
As a reminder, weekly Guild of Magic chapters are available for paid Guild members, but I will be unlocking one free chapter each month for everyone and including the link in this section so you won’t have to go hunting through the archive. Also, going forward, you’ll receive the monthly unlocked chapter in its own email on the third Wednesday every month.
I launched two new features in February.
The first was my first-ever video, testing out the new Substack video feature. I gave a tour of my bookshelves and showed off my favorite books and comics.
The second was ARC Asks. Each month I’ll be interviewing a creator/writer/artist in a different field to learn more about their craft, their industry, or how they created something I really like! For the first installment, my good friend Brant Englestein joined us from Los Angeles.
Brant has been working as a TV screenwriter since 2006. He’s written for such shows as Agent Carter, Borgia, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, and Emergence, and is a producer on an upcoming Marvel show on Disney+ and The Boys spin-off on Prime Video.
Stop by the monthly Guild open thread to introduce yourself and let us know what you’re reading or watching! I’ll be posting a new open thread the second week of the month to give you a breakdown of what’s coming your way.
ARC Worlds Recommends
I recently completed a month-long program called Substack Go, where I got to attend weekly roundtables with other writers on Substack from around the world. Check out their newsletters and tell them Jon sent you!
Adventure Snack: an interactive story newsletter
Realms of Roush: monthly science-fiction and fantasy stories
Memie’s Universe: Essays, imagination, and monthly dinner questions!
Betje’s Comics: comics about family life
The Story Birds: Stories, folklore, and myths from around the world
The Mad Quill Mailer: weekly missives about crowdfunding a comic book
Give Them Romance: where Latinx characters and romantic fiction meet
Blind Chameleons: A literary serial about a young man who moves to Sao Paolo to pursue his dream of being a musician (written in Portuguese, I did say it was a global program!)
Looking for more stuff to read?
The Dangerous Women BookFunnel promo is now live through March 15. Over 130 fantasy and sci-fi stories for your perusal.
The Sample is a newsletter recommendation engine that will send you a sampling of newsletters customized to your interests (and some random ones to boot).
That’s a wrap for this month’s ARC Worlds! Let me know in the comments which links you enjoyed, which video game series you want to see featured in the future, and drop your own best reads of the month!
Nearly 30 years later and I’m still not seeing the logic behind that decision, sorry Mom!
I don’t even remember that decision. 😉