Daily News Spin — April 12, 2001 (Thursday)

"Monsters"

We found this imaginative take on the relationship, or lack thereof, between playing computer games and commiting real acts of violence in LA Weekly.

I knew what I had to do. I rushed toward them, firing off round after round of electric-blue Charlton Heston� impersonation plasma, whittling the hecklers into bloody stumps, broken zombie glasses and half-eaten plates of nachos.

The MC for once applauded my efforts over the PA: �Excellent! You have taken the lead!� But before I could say thanks, Rush Limbaugh re-diced me into smithereensies with a single pit-bull shot.

�You have lost the lead!�

All we can say is we looked far and wide to find more news. This has been a slow day.

More news as soon as we make some up

It's a bit quiet today. We'll find some more news or invent some. Keep checking!

Join the Air Force and play games

The Sunspot has a story about the Air Force's latest recruiting ploy -- luring kids into their trailers to show them cool movies and let them play flight sims.

Hereford Middle School seventh-grader Andrew McLean, who is torn between a career in the Air Force and the Navy, couldn't wait to go on board yesterday with his father, Richard McLean, 55.

"You think you're Top Gun, fighting material?" fictional pilot John "Screech" York, the exhibit's virtual tour guide, asked the pair from a video screen. "It's a brain-draining experience, but one that could be the time of your life."

...."It was really cool. I could almost feel it in my stomach," gushed the 12-year-old, clutching his new photo ID card that came with a computer screen saver that links to the Air Force's Web site. He can't sign up for another five years, but said the Air Force won this round of recruiting.

"This is a recruiter's dream," Staff Sgt. James Rumer said of the exhibition. "Our motto is 'No one comes close' and it's true to its word."

We're not sure how the Army will compete. A KP simulator?

Our games won't smell after all

Looks like DigiScents is smelling like a loser, according to this Yahoo story.

DigiScents said Wednesday that it is shutting down its Oakland, Calif., headquarters and an R&D facility in Israel. All of its 70 employees will be laid off.

The company made a splash with its iSmell scent box in November 1999, which was featured on the cover of Wired magazine. At that time, DigiScents conjured up images of developers adding the scent of a dank and musty dungeon to their videogames, fragrance manufacturers adding perfume scents to Web sites peddling perfumes, or consumers firing off nasty e-mail messages that reeked like a filthy outhouse.

...was adding scent to digital media just a silly idea? Even during the heady days when DigiScents debuted, the idea had its skeptics. Analysts at that time called scent more of a novelty than anything else - and the least important of the five senses in the scheme of game development, which was seen as the technology's most lucrative potential application. Some recalled the demise of its 1950s movie predecessor, the Smell-O-Vision.

Was it a silly idea? Let's shake the Magic 8-Ball and see...O Magic 8-Ball, was the concept of expecting consumers to buy an add-on device just so they could smell raw sewage while playing the latest id shooter-in-the-sewers a dumb business plan?

ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES, BUT WAIT I'M NOT DONE YET. AS A MAGIC 8-BALL I GET ASKED ABOUT A LOT OF STUPID THINGS, BUT THIS MAY JUST BE THE DUMBEST ONE I'VE EVER HEARD.

Wow, we've never seen that answer come up in the 8-Ball before! This DigiScents thing must have really been an idiotic concept.

Don't let the giant cow eat us!

Could we all be villagers in some cosmic game of Black & White? The Brunching Shuttlecock thinks it's a possibility:

Which is the One True God?

Whichever one dumps the most food and lumber in your home town. It's a lot like congress.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Many reasons. God may be too busy playing with his giant cow to notice. Or God may have tossed, burnt, or electrocuted the good person in order to impress the good person's friends. Or maybe God is just a bored asshole.

Short and funny, just the way we like 'em. Thanks Andrew Bub!

3am

Eurogamer is reporting that the $20 Serious Sam may be priced at 30-$40 in Europe when it's released there. That's some serious price jackage. Spotted at Stomped.

EQMaps is now a subscription-only site. Harbinger of things to come, or harbinger of the end of EQMaps? Spotted at Lum's.

Core Magazine is reporting that an Xbox version of Kingdom Under Fire may be developed. Uh, sure, if they want to help sink the Xbox, go ahead and port this turkey. Spotted at Blue's.

Dark Horizons has a blurb about a Red Dwarf movie -- sounds great. They may even do a triology. And no, it's not a D&D movie. It's a BBC sci-fi comedy series. Stop reading Tolstoy and embrace popular culture! Dark Horizons also is reporting that a movie may be made based on Gex, the video game gecko.

Up for some cosmic golf? The Times has an article about how asteroids could be steered by nuclear explosions and used as the ultimate weapon to destroy cities. �It is a sort of deadly cosmic golf, played with an odd-shaped ball,� said Dr Holloway, a former military scientist at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. �It is very difficult to get a hole in one, or even to make a par five, but it is a pretty simple thing to get the ball to the hole in 15.� We've made 15 on plenty of holes before. No cities were destroyed but some golf clubs were.

Finally, just to make you sick, here's an article in the Irish News about how Oracle's Larry Ellison is trying to outdo Bill Gates by building an even more expensive home. Can't these boys just get in a room and bitch-slap each other?

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