Oh, and happy Christmas! Nex time I post something it will probably be 2008, so this page will be archived. Good grief, there are now three years of news archives here! And every year we say "this is the year that the Zak sequel will be ready!"

• I just got an email from 'Cydone,' the old joint team leader on 'Zak McKracken : Between Time and Space.' He filled me in on the game's history and generously sent some early game art. All the details are on the Zak2:ZMAR page!
• There's still no news about the release date for BTAS or the Lonely Sea Monster game. As soon as I hear anything I'll post it here. We Zak fans are good at waiting!

Leslie (the real Leslie) has a blog, about her new screenplay! Check it out!
And (unrelated and much less important) I updated the page on this site called "my other sites"

Just got an email from Leslie Edwards - star of Zak McKracken! I knew that three of the characters were based on real people, but I didn't know how closely they were based... until now. Check out the fun section for the details!

Added the mindbent archive - a reminder of the great Zak McKracken site that disappeared. And a giant scan of the Amiga box. And did anyone notice Tim Shafer's reference to Zak in a recent interview?

"This is not the first time rumors of Double Fine's next game have sprung up. ... The official story: "The whole thing was a lie. What I'm really working on is Zak McKracken 2 for the PSP."--Tim Schafer, speaking to International House of Mojo. "

He was joking. I wish he was true, but it was a joke. But it's good to see that Zak is still at the front of Shafer's mind after all these years! (Tim Shafer is the genius behind Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and other classics.)

Added some YouTube Videos (most here, a good one here), and some better box images in various pages, kindly provided by 'susiboy' of South Korea, a regular from the LucasArts museum. Thanks, Susiboy!

The Zak McKracken Archive has moved to

zak-site.com

Why? It's a long story.

On 24th Sepember the zaksite.co.uk registration runs out. I knew about it months ago, but I planned to move the site to a different ISP anyway (with the same URL of course), so didn't get round to moving it until yesterday. But disaster! I now discover that this is not as simple as I thought, mainly because I chose ".co.uk" instead of ".com" in order to save a few pennies. Big mistake.

Why not just stay with the old ISP? Because it's expensive, the control panel is awkward, and everything else I do is on another ISP that I use all the time. Zaksite was out on its own, an anomaly. More important, I'm extremely busy on other projects and if Zak is out on its own it could easily be forgotten. Ir I could forget the login details, or forget to pay the bills, or be unable to pay since they want a payment method that I don't have, or I coud forget how to use the control panel, or just not notice if something went wrong. If Zak stayed with the old ISP then sooner or later it would die of natural causes. I don't want Zak to die, but I can't afford to make it a high priority forever. Some months I can spend time on it, some months I can't. So Zaksite must move.

Why not move it all to my main ISP? Because my main ISP cannot resister .uk domains. most ISPs won't act as registrant for country-specific domains. Zaksite.co.uk has to be registered somewhere else.

Why not just move the hosting and keep the registration at the old ISP? Because the old ISP would still want me to pay for expensive hosting even if I didn't use it. They are set up for new users, and don't offer the full range of services that experienced users expect.

Why not move the registration to a third ISP and host the site on my main ISP? This isn't as simple as it sounds. Most of the cheap and efficient ISPs are based in America or other countries, and don't register ".uk" domains. The ones that do register them try to make you buy hosting from them (or at least choose a new domain with them) because that's where the money is. They don't make enough money from just moving a registration and nothing else. Even if I found one that would do it I don't have confidence that they would treat me as a valued customer. Something could go wrong and become complicated to change. Also, I like to keep my life very simple and so I don't have a credit card, so payment is a problem. I don't want to have to use friends' credit cards for long term stuff like this. Basically this creates as many problems as it solves.

Why not let someone else take over Zaksite? Because I still care! And I have had experiences in the past where other people have taken over projects then their lives have moved on and the projest has died. I want Zaksite to be an archive (hence the name), and that means it must be preserved forever. It's not a high profile busy daily site. It's a safe place to find stuff that would otherwise be lost.

Why not just change it to zaksite.com? It's easy to move ".com" domain about, since that's where there is most competition among global ISPs. But I just discovered that yesterday (Thursday) a cybersquatter registered zaksite.com I am amazed! And flattered. Obviously some robot has nopticed that zaksite.co.uk gets visits, so they reckon it's worth the money to buy zaksite.com just in case someone visits there. well good news, robots, after September 24th you can buy the original Zaksite.co.uk and get even more accidental visitors.

Why not change it to zakmckracken.com? Because that site is already registered to another fan. And besides, a lot of people spell McKracken differently. And also there are long term issues with legality - if the sequels make Zak more popular again then Lucasarts could take notice and ask to have their intellectual property back.

Why not just attach the archive to one of my other web sites, like enterthestory.com/zak? I was very tempted since this would be the cheapest and easiest option for me. But I think it sends the wrong message, it makes it lok like I don't care any more. Also, it's harder to find.

So eventually I decided to just register zak-site.com (with the "-" hyphen). I think this is a slight advantage over zaksite.co.uk because it's shorter, a more familiar suffix, and separating the words makes them easier to read.

I feel bad about changing the address again. It's taken years to get to number 1 on the search engines (or number 2 at times when the Wikipedia or zak2 entries are popular), and now we have to start again at the bottom. More important, people will be clicking on dead links. But like I said, my number one priority is to make a permanent archive, not to make a busy daily site. Sometimes archives must be moved to keep them safe for future generations.

The new server isn't quite as fast as the old one - hopefully you won't notice any difference but if you think you have more trouble connecting than before, please let me know. Long term this move is a good thing. I promise. The old server wasn't perfect either - a few months ago it crashed and permanently lost its data, which was alittle embarassing for the ISP. But it just shows that problems can happen anywhere, unless you have a lot of money.

What will the future bring? By 2009 I hope to be making actual money on the net, from my new game (lesmisgame.com). At that time I will need to spend money on a more reliable service. All my sites are hosted at the same place, os if one site is upgraded they will all be upgraded. The address on't ecver need to change again, since ".com" addresses are easy to move bwteen ISPs. The future is bright!

Hopefully this will be the last ever change of address. I changed it twice before, but always for good reasons. I can't see any reason why it would ever need to change again, at least as long as I am alive. Here is...

A Short History of the Zak McKracken Archive.

Early dates are only approximate.

It all started circa 2001: I went to visit the web's best Zak web site, mindbent, and it had disappeared! I went to visit some other sites (like the Zak2 sequels) and noticed that they had changed as well, in the normal process of updates. Some of the best pages (like the history of Zak) had disappeared. I decided to find backups of these, and could only find some, not others. Some of the best material - like the big picture of George Lucas wearing his Zak McKracken T-Shirt, had disappeared for good, and all I had was an old Google thumbnail. I realised that valuable Zak McKracken goodness was being lost forever! And I also noted that nobody had ever made another game like Zak, and perhaps nobody ever would. So I decided to make an archive, to preserve these gems for future generations.

The first version was hosted on Geocities free web space. But that's full of ads, and the address was long. More people started finding the site, so I figured I need to give it an easier address, with no ads. Some time around 2003 I think, I moved it to my personal webspace on my ISP at the time, ntl.com

September 24th 2005: I get broadband, but my old ISP is cable based and doesn't do broadband in my area. So my ISP (and web space) was history. Zak had to move again. I don't like messing people around, so decided to pay money for a real, permanent domain name. ".co.uk" domains are dirt cheap so it was an easy choice. In hindsight I should have gone for a ".com" name and paid a tiny bit more, but oh well. We live and learn.

2007: the site moves to zak-site.com

2068 it is my 100th birthday, zak-site.com has been unchanged (except for a gradual increase in visitors) for over 60 years and there are now over 100 top class Zak sequels and a permanent bricks and mortar museum devoted to Sir David Fox. Hey, it might happen!

 

The Zak McKracken Archive has moved to

zak-site.com

A NEW ZAK MCKRACKEN FAN GAME! That's right! And this one is almost finished! That sounded so good I'll say it again: A NEW ZAK MCKRACKEN FAN GAME!

Zak McKracken and the Lonely Sea Monster

Zak McKracken Between Time and Space should be released early in 2007!

It was scheduled for release at the end of 2006, but was delayed because the lead developer took a pilgrimage to California to meet David Fox and get his blessing. Kind of like climbing the sacred mountain to commune with the gods before descending with a new dispensation for mankind. Or something like that. :)

Oh, and I've archived the 2006 news (see below).