Nothing too fancy today, just informing you that you can now access the Costume Closet from the modern islands now! Go to the costumizer and there will be two new buttons on the right; the green one will add your current look to the closet, and the other button will let you browse your closet, including delete costumes. Maybe this is related to PoptropiCon? It's heavy on the costumizing, we hear.

Pretty cool! The new costumizer is almost complete; only thing left is "send to T-shirt". Anyway, the Creators recently recommended playing Shark Tooth Island. Check out the exact wording:

WHOSE NAME YOU NO LONGER REMEMBER?! They're referring to our beloved Shark Boy, of course. Ironically, this post was made by Captain Crawfish, who was the one who took over Shark Boy's Creators' Blog posts and is widely responsible for his downfall. We can't even say his name anymore? Click here if you missed the Shark Boy story from a few months back. To keep alive his memory, I'll be wearing the Shark Boy costume in my next YouTube video.

Anyway, done raging. How many times have you beat this classic island? Tell us in the comments, or if you haven't beat it, you can use our guide. Strangely, the TT guard is still there. See ya on Shark Tooth!

To celebrate Germany's championship win in the FIFA World Cup, the Creators have released a new free costume to all Poptropicans. (Members, don't forget to get the other 8 costumes). It's only available for a week, so get it fast!

Can you believe it -- a new Store item available to all Poptropicans? The last time this happened was the Shrink Ray Gun back in 2011. That was purchasable with Credits. Since then, all new Store items have been free -- but only for Members. And Members could borrow non-free items for an unlimited time anyway. Credits lost their meaning, too, especially when the Creators stopped selling credits for money like they do for Membership, stopped selling Early Access passes for 500 credits, and made each island worth 50 credits instead of 100. Could they be making a comeback?

Quite a refreshing change, isn't it? After seeing the new look's much more obvious POP-iness, like chunky islands springing out of the sea, the old one looks like a paper cutout! We'll never forget Poptropica's first banner, but let's face it, a change was due, and a change was done. It's made its way into other places too, as well as the iPad app, and it looks like the future logo. What do you think, which Poptropica logo do you prefer?

Just letting you know that Survival Island episode 3 is going to release on Friday instead of today. The Creators just announced this, with promises that they're going to "nip and tuck" a few things prior to that. Aargh, I could have saved my sleep yesterday! If anyone knows the exact time that new islands arrive, please write that and your timezone in the comments. It'll really help me get walkthroughs in faster.

Anyway, I have an announcement to make: From now on, Poptrickia will provide video walkthroughs for EVERY new island. Now that the islands come in short episodes instead of jumbo hour-long ordeals (which I enjoyed, for the record), making a video guide is easier, and in my opinion, more fun for you to follow. Don't worry, I'll still be writing written walkthroughs as I have for the past 3 years; those are still Poptrickia's focus. Old islands may or may not get new video guides (Mocktropica and Mythology will, though).

Turns out I was wrong about my prediction. Survival Island is the upcoming island, not Deep Dive (although Deep Dive is still coming soon). Both, and all future islands, are going to be released in episodes rather than all at once. That means that we'll get less islands in the entire year, but they'll be spread out. I protest this change because of a few reasons:

Anyway, the first episode comes out on the 20th. In it, you crash-land in the Yukon and have to make a fire as it gets colder and colder at night. Next episode, you have to fish for food under ice. Also, you have a guidebook that you (my guess) have to rip pages out of to light the fire. As you can guess, that will complicate things...

First of all, the ads on the sides of the screen that have always been there are different. They're animated now! A small step, but still disturbing.

Even worse! Go to any Old Pop island (like Night Watch) and go left of Main Street. There's a new ad space! This one is much wider, and you have to walk through it rather than click the sign to continue. Soon it'll have more ads on it... oh, no.

Does anybody realize what's happening? Mocktropica is coming true!

The long-awaited bonus quest for Mocktropica Island is here. It's the first bonus quest to be released after the start of Early Access. Members, go to your Home Screen, click on the Mocktropica tile, and enter the basement of Poptropica HQ. Then check out my guide by clicking here: Mocktropica Island Guide. But there's more news...

Take a look at this screenshot. Look at it. It's an inter-room advertisement on Poptropica. Well, we've seen those often enough, you might be saying. Well, this one is different in a dreadful way. No friendly island theme in the background, no relation at all to the rest of the game, like the normal interstitial ad spaces had. This one has video that plays by itself. And sound that you never asked for. Not only that, but it shows up between every room, even in places where it doesn't make sense for there to be an in-between. In short, the end of the world. Looks like the dire predictions I made in this post (click to read) are coming true, slowly but scarily.

Further, the game itself is getting harder and harder to play. Sure, the different-but-not-bad new physics engine is bothering some, but this problem is different. (side note: anyone noticed the really erratic cursor behavior? They might as well have kept the crosshair, the classic, fun mode isn't working right at all). Have you noticed that Poptropica is chomping on much more of your computer's power these days? The advertisement loading alone forced me to close a few tabs on my browser--and I'm not using any old dinosaur either, but a laptop I got last year. Sound effects are loading way too late, music tracks are overlapping... I could go on and on. And the worst part is, this isn't even considered beta anymore. The Creators are even turning our classics, like Time Tangled (done), 24 Carrot (done), Mythology (confirmed), and Spy (rumored) into this mess. What can I say? Poptropica is the most awesome game in the world, and the only thing that can destroy it is itself. I hope that's not happening...

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Mystery Train. It is my most favorite game in the world.

    Look at the image to the right, taken in Early Poptropica's Soda Pop Shop. Look at it. That's no Poptropican. If you friend him, you'll see he's just an advertisement for Galactic Hot Dogs (which is published by Pearson Education, the same publisher as Poptropica, by the way). Also, he has a green star rather than a normal one--to further the notion that he's special. Actually, this is terrible. (okay, not so terrible since he's Costumizable, but...) NEW: His username is "npc:cosmoe". Now you can keep him as a friend even after the ad's gone and costumize him!

    How long until the rest of the ads start entering the multiplayer rooms? How long until the rampant advertising mocked in Mocktropica comes true? What if Mocktropica wasn't mocking Poptropica, but showing its future? What if nothing is real? What if hot dogs really are from space? What about rights? Mr. President, what's your stance on... okay, rant over.