[I've got a bunch of oddities/outtakes that didn't make the final cut of our two-part chat with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed's lead producer Haden Blackman. So I'll be posting them here as the week goes along. Stay tuned. -jones]

Narcisse: I had some trouble with the Death Star area at the end. I finally got through it, but man, was it a tough go.

Here's another outtake from our epic Dining With Developers with Haden Blackman. Today's topic: Jimmy Smits who plays Bail Organa in the game.

...

Evan, Vic and I learned a lot during our dinner with Haden Blackman last month, not the least of which is that there's actually a Starbucks *inside* the Lucas Arts building where they work.

Here's one. Take old Sierra adventure games -- the first Space Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry games -- and make them playable on the Web. Then allow you to see everyone else who's playing the game along with you, and to overhear what they are saying to the game.

"Look body," one player says. "Take rose," says another.

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I just had the following, unsolicited instant messenger conversation with my 15-year-old sister (pictured, right). Typos and misspellings have been left as is intentionally. Instant Messenger handles have been changed to protect the innocent (and my sister).

Listen along to the podcast

If you are unfamiliar with what's going on here, then you might want to read my introduction to the concept first. While I was thinking about this experiment, I realized that I had a few goals I wanted to accomplish:

1) kill everyone

 2) beat the game.

 I have been writing an article about a rather dark replay of Ultima VII: The Black Gate. I won't go into too many details here in this blog post, but I thought it would be interesting to share some murder stats with you for each town in the game (look for those sporadically when I feel like it). First a little background on why I would be demented enough to play one of my favorite games this way.