Happy New Year! Plus a new Newsletter Preview (featuring the return of "Terminological Inexactitudes”).

I just wanted to wish everyone in the Eamon community a safe and happy new year. You are all fantastic, interesting people and I think it's amazing how many cool new friends I have made through our common interest that strange, unforgettable creation. I find it quite impressive that, not only is Eamon the oldest gaming system in history that is still in use today, but, in over 30 years, very little has changed regarding the look, design and game play between the current version (Eamon Deluxe 5.0) and Donald Brown's original incarnation (which, to this day, I still feel was nothing short of the work of a genius game designer and programmer.)

In the spirit of celebrating New Years Eve and whatever interesting new things 2013 has in store for us, I have decided to post here a preview of an article I recently wrote for the upcoming January, 2013 Eamon Deluxe Newsletter. Thomas suggested that we include more variety than simply his editorial and a string of adventure reviews and I agreed. After much pondering of what exactly to to write about for my contribution, I decided it would be a lot of fun to bring back a popular section which used to infrequently appear in the old NEUC and, later on, EAG newsletters.

So, Happy New Year, everyone! And, without further ado, here's a preview from next month's newsletter...

TERMINOLOGICAL INEXACTITUDES

Things appearing in this column must not be confused with actual facts.

Are Don Brown and Jon Walker really the same person?

According to longtime Eamon fan and Wikipedia enthusiast, Huw Williams, the Father of Eamon donned the Johnny Walker moniker and created an intentionally poor quality Eamon system for the PC to weaken the competition when sales of his SwordThrust series were not lucrative. "I actually now use Gmail for everything;" Williams stated on a recent Guild blog post "[and, while corresponding with Don Brown, I] may have been talking to the [person known as ‘Jon Walker’ all along.]"

"It makes sense," said Nathan Segerlind (recipient of the 2005 Ackermann Award and the Association for Symbolic Logic's 2004 Sacks Prize). Any logical programmer understands numbering in the abstract and therefore will always start counting at zero rather than one. If you exclude "The Beginner's Cave" and "Search for the Key", Don Brown wrote exactly 9 Eamons. 9+0=9 and there are 9 characters in the string "Don Brown," while the string "Jon Walker" has 10 characters. 9+1=10, therefore "Jon Walker" comes next in the sequence." Segerlind then laughed and said, "It's so easy, even Mr. Roessler could have figured it out!"

Several messages were left for Mr. Brown to verify or deny these rumors, but so far he has not replied back...

Adventure in Interzone in IMAX 3D?

Why did the public release of Eamon Deluxe 5.0 take so long? Some say it is because of the high amount of quality attached to the work as well as Thomas Ferguson constantly flooding the author with new material, dug from the bowels of the "interwebs"; others believe it is because Eamon Deluxe creator, Frank Black, was also busy writing and pitching his screen play for a full length movie based upon his popular 1994 Eamon adventure.

According to sources close to the Black household "a really major" movie studio has picked Interzone 3D up and hired "Señor Spielberg" to direct. "John Depp" has agreed to play the leading role of your old friend A.J., with a back up cast that includes "Billy Crystals", "George Crooney" and "Sarah M. Gellar".

When asked about it, Frank replied, "Have you seen my glasses? I just set them down..." and, when pressed for details as to the film’s impending release date for local theaters he added, "They should be around here somewhere. They have tape on them, but the tape is the same color as the frames so you can't really tell it is on there... Maybe I left them upstairs?"

We are predicting a release date March, 2013.

Eamon fans continue to torment confused rapper in a case of mistaken identity!

Sources report that a 5'8" Irish/Italian "Ho-Rap" artist named Eamon Jonathan Doyle, who has only once had a hit song in his 23 year career, continued to be flooded with emails, blog posts and guest book signings intended for the Eamon Adventurer's Guild last night.

The 30 year old entertainer who saw some brief record sales from 2003 to 2004 reported that he was "frustrated" and "upset" because every time he sees that his inbox has new messages he gets excited with hope of his career being revived, only to have that dream quickly shattered by a barrage of messages and posts which were actually meant for users and fans of the various Eamon gaming systems.

"I don't know what these people want from me!" an anxious Doyle stated, going on to say, "I can't even understand what they are saying! It's like they are speaking in some sort of codes half the time.

“I was supposed to open for Brittany Spears from June to August 2004," Doyle later informed us without provocation, "but ended up staying home after she [Spears] hurt herself making a video and cancelled the tour. I've pretty much just been living with my folks since then, trying to get another record deal or go on a tour with someone.

Scrunching up his eyebrows in thought as he tried to read yet another message meant for the Guild, Doyle mumbled, “I bought this computer back when I had a Top Ten hit on the charts...but I really only use it to find adult material and look for rap jobs on Craigslist now." Adding, "It still uses Windows 95, so it can be kind of slow on the internet. That gives me time to write more rap songs though, so I don’t mind it most of the time..."

Doyle then appeared to express a sense of hope and relief as he showed us the message inbox at his hotmail account which glowed with the mark of over 100 new messages across his beaming face. The glow quickly faded, however, and Doyle returned to a confused state of dismay as he started another attempt to read the series of messages intended for members of the Eamon Adventurer's Guild. "This may take a while," he warned us, “you can go watch TV if you want or see what’s in the fridge...”

Requests to forward the misdirected mail over to the Adventurer's Guild were met with only more confusion as an exasperated Doyle offered, "Maybe I should just change my name... Or upgrade to Windows 98 and get a mouse with one of those little wheels in between the buttons? I don't know, it's a lot to think about right now."