Daily News Spin — May 24, 2001 (Thursday)

Quartet of E3

We've posted speculation about four more games we saw at E3. There's no stopping us. Don't even try. Just click on the links on the sidebar to read them, then go to the message boards and tell us we're idiots or gods.

A history of Microprose

Joystick101.org has posted a history of one the great gaming companies, Microprose, which includesa look at some of their best games.

The Master series, which is comprised of Master of Orion (MOO), Master of Orion 2 (MOO2), and Master of Magic (MOM), was a critically acclaimed, and popular, series of games released by Microprose during the early 90's. Created by developer SimTex, and notably, designer Steve Barcia, the Master series are games in the spirit of Civilization, though the games feature a greater emphasis on combat than the Civ series. This emphasis can be seen in how battles are fought in the two series. In Civ, units may attack each other one-on-one, the outcome decided by the "roll of a dice". In the Master games, units may be grouped and stacked together, and battle takes place on an entirely different screen, allowing the player to directly control units during the fight.

Ah, such memories. Barcias's been on a cold streak of late, though. Agents of Justice was cancelled and Retro Studios, where he works now on Nintendo games, has had some problems. They're doing Metroid for the Gamecube as a first-person shooter and the rumors are that it's not going well.

Xbox is toast, claims Sony

My, but the vidoegame war is getting a little nasty. Sony, perhaps heartened by the lackluster showing of the Xbox at E3, is engaging in some propaganda according to this story in the Scotsman.

Speaking to analysts in Japan, Mr Kutaragi - considered the father of the PlayStation console - said rival Microsoft was "finished before it even got started - they have no games".

And:

Mr Kutaragi said that US retailers were also pessimistic about Xbox. "They told me that on a dollar base, they expect 70 per cent of their sales will come from PlayStation. The remaining 30 per cent will come from Nintendo and Xbox but almost all of that will be from Nintendo," he added.

Who's up for a price war? Should be fun this fall.

Online gaming on the rise in China

Only 20 million of them have online access now, but last year they spent $50 million on online games. Ultima Online was the fifth most popular, according to this story on Yahoo.

Multiplayer Online games first appeared in China with the release of ``King of Kings'' and ``SanguoNet'' early last year. The market expanded rapidly in 2001 with the introduction of ``Stone Age,'' ``1000 Years'' and a slew of other titles. According to the latest data, the number of on-line gamers logging in to multiplayer games simultaneously reached as high as 200,000 in China, with more than 500,000 paying users in the nation. These numbers are expected to at least double by the end of this year with more than 30 new online games rushing into the Chinese market.

This news of China going online has given us a vision of the future. Someday, we will put down our weapons and all our battles will be fought on the computer. Then, when we lose these computer battles, we'll pick up our real weapons and bomb the crap out of them. It's just our way.�

The violent arcade tax

In Germany they've decided something must be done about violent arcade games. They held a meeting and the masses cried out, "Something must be done about violent arcade games!" Eurogamer has the story:

So it's perhaps no surprise that the German town of Goettingen has taken the natural next step by imposing a 700% higher tax rate on violent shoot 'em up arcade games than it charges for non-violent ones, in an apparent effort to discourage local arcade owners from using the games. And last week a court in the city of Karlsruhe ruled that the Goettingen council was within its rights, saying that violent games were a "threat to the public good" according to a Reuters report. The court added that "a higher entertainment tax would help control addiction and reduce the number of warlike games, [which] would do much to stem the increasing brutalization of society".

Seven hundred percent? Of course this now means that the German youth of Goettingen will now engage in a rash of crime to steal money to support their arcade habits.

Laser Squad Nemesis site launched

Normally we don't mention the launch of official game sites, but we're kind of excited about this one, even though we know better. Maybe Mythos can finish this game, unlike what happened to them with Dreamland. Here's a bit from the Laser Squad website about one of the three sides you can play, the Mechanoids.

The Human Federation built powerful intelligent machines to fight the alien Spawn that threatened the existence of the human race. These machines were designed to operate independently and automatically in deep space. Unfortunately the vast military AI started to think about its own best interests and turned against its human overlords. It began to build a new race of sentient robots that utterly detested anything organic and mushy. It seems that humanity may have created its own nemesis.

Mushy! Who are they calling mushy! Ok, maybe we're a bit mushy here and there, but do they have to rub it in? That's so mean.

The Mechanoids sound a bit like Fred Saberhagen's Beserkers, don't they?

Salon deconstructed by Old Man Murray

Erik Wolpaw, the fellow who put the "Man" into "Old Man Murray", has written a funny response to the Salon article written by Wagner James Au criticizing our beloved booth babes at E3.

Maybe Au's real problem is that E3 hasn't thought up a decent leftist euphemism for porn that won't taint the thrill of blood rushing to his penis by making him feel as if he's experiencing the unsophisticated boner of the common man.

You gotta love it. We can testify that Mr. Au was found wherever free food and drink was to be had. We know, because we were there too!

Oh, and if you missed Old Man Murray's take on who killed adventure games, it's required reading.

Cleveland schools rocking the house with PSX

We spotted this story on Avault. Apparently a school district in Cleveland is giving Sony PlayStations to students as part of a new program that uses the consoles to teach reading and math.

"The kids think it's fun. It's a game," Lori Kurek, a teacher, said. "It's an adventure, and it engages them."

The idea involves Sony Playstation in the classroom. The Cleveland Municipal School District shelled out $2.4 million on a program called Lightspan, which involves hooking kids up with digital reality.

Of course the kids will probably come out of this program parsing sentences like they were Japanese. "Launch all zig!" "For great justice!" "All your milk money are belong to us!"

Take 2 taking care of business

Take-Two announced record net sales for the quarter ending April 30, 2001. They turned $93.3 million in sales compared with $70.0 million for the same period last year, a 33% increase. Net income was $3.9 million. How did they do it?

"We sold off one million excess Battlecruiser 3000 AD copies to a skeet range where the CDs will be used as target practice," said a Take 2 spokesperson.

Ok, we made that up. Derek, put down the gun. We were just kidding, Derek. Derek!

3am

The upcoming Black & White patch includes a fix that lets players skip the tutorial. Yay! We can skip right to the pooping pet!

Avault's running a story saying that the Xbox tool kits still haven't been shipped to some leading developers, putting the launch date in jeopardy.

Sony Online will translate their games into French, German, Korean, and Japanese. Hmmm�we guess large-breasted elves translate well into any language.

Gangsters 2 is gold.

Nintendo announced a 72% rise in profits for the year ended March 2001 despite the decline in sales of its Nintendo 64 console. Not bad.

Bums. We saw a lot of them at E3, including one who did some kind of birdlike song and dance around RPG writer Desslock after Desslock refused to give him any money. It was some kind of Karate Kiddish Eastern Thought Meets LA Gutters kind of schtick, but it didn't work. Here's a short tale in the Moscow Times about one man's dealing with a bum.

His first punch landed me square on the chest and, although it came with all the power of a fart in a hurricane, something inside of me snapped and I had had enough.

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