Daily News Spin — June 27, 2001 (Wednesday)

Bestselling games

We haven't done one of these lists in a awhile. This is from NPD for the week that ended June 16.

1. The Sims
2. MS Train Simulator
3. The Sims: House Party Expansion Pack
4. Emperor: Battle For Dune
5. Myst 3 Exile
6. Half-Life Blue Shift
7. The Sims Livin Large Expansion Pack
8. Black & White
9. MP Roller Coaster Tycoon
10. Diablo 2

Hot mod city

You want to make mods? Go ahead and kick Cliffyb's ass with some cool levels. There are some interesting articles up at GameSpy and Computer Games Online that will have you making mods in no time.

Before You Start Fragging I and II are written by Kenn Hoekstra of Raven and Alan Willard of Epic Games, respectively, and look at building Quake III and Unreal Tournament levels.

At GameSpy's 3DActionPlanet they also take a look at making mods.

Anarchy Online launches with insecure transactions

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" wrote Yeats, and while he wasn't referring to Anarchy Online, he could have been, because it's slouched off towards Sweden to be born in a rather unseemly mess. Unfortunately for Funcom, they forgot to secure the account transactions which require a credit card, according to Lum the Mad.

People creating their new Anarchy Online account today noticed that the account registration page at Funcom wasn't SSL-encrypted. When you're sending your credit card number over the net, this can be a problem. (Take it from me personally, who's been signed up to, among other things, weird fetish pr0n sites and Russian ISPs.) Funcom's customer support had this to say:

Hi, We are aware of this. The page will become secure as soon as we possibly can, in the meantime, those who don't feel like registering an account on a not secure site, will just have to wait. I'm sorry about that.

Looks like it's impossible to launch one of these massively multiplayer games without a hitch.

37 year old man marries Ms. Pac-Man

Ok, so he's really just seriously dating her. We're given to exaggeration. Read about the fellow who has the world's highest Ms. Pac-Man score, maybe. He thinks it's a record, but he was apparently too lethargic to bother checking, though he may be stirred to write a letter someday.

He plans to write a letter to Bally/Midway, the owner of the Pac-Man label and its spin-offs and find out what records they keep on high scores for Ms. Pac-Man. "Their address is on the screen when you start the game. I'd like them to come out with a new game that I can play. I get tired of knowing where the monsters are going and how fast they move."

This story reads like satire, but we think it's for real. We spotted the link to this story at Old Man Murray, where they work hard to write stuff that's this funny.

3am

Mark's got a new GameSpin column, this one odds and ends.

GameSpy's got a nice two-part feature on what it takes to be a freelance game writer. Check it out if you're interested. It offers a lot of good advice.

Core Magazine's got an interview with Nintendo's Peter Main. He takes a few potshots at the Xbox.

The tradition of the "living goddess" is under fire in Nepal. Some feel it is cruel to the chosen child. How do they pick the living goddess, called the kumari? Glad you asked.

Potential kumaris, aged four or five, are taken to Kathmandu's royal palace and locked in a darkened room filled with freshly severed buffalo heads. The true kumari, who is believed to be an incarnation of the blood-loving goddess Durga, is said to identify herself by emerging unperturbed from the ordeal.

Some nutcase is building a rocket out of a "a converted cement mixer, containing sheets of hardboard and a few computer joysticks" and he plans on being the first "private astronaut" in space. Most people seem to think he'll end up dead, according to this BBC story.

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