Daily News Spin — April 3, 2001 (Tuesday)

SNK bankrupt

The Neo Geo company has declared bankruptcy, according to Gamespot.

Citing debt of $38 billion yen, SNK has filed for bankruptcy. Aruze Ltd., which previously acquired an interest in SNK, began closing branch offices and lightening its inventory in March.

No word yet on whether this move is the end for SNK or merely a move to buy time to attempt to recover their business. They made a number of notable console titles like Metal Slug and Baseball Stars.

Fatbabies with some phat rumors

Love 'em or hate 'em, Fatbabies is undeniably a good source for highly unreliable rumors, so take the following with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

Blizzard may announce two new games at E3 -- a first person shooter (we've heard they've had this in the works for some time) and a MMORPG based on Diablo.

Activision was just sold to a Chinese company.

Eidos is laying off more employees.

Like we said, the above are rumors. Monger if you must, as we have just done, but remember the Gospel According to Fatbabies is often a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury and...we can't think of any more allusions to make.

Exorcist composer making fruity-tooty computer game

What is wrong with these people who want to make gentle games that don't have any killing? Have they no respect for our hobby? Mike Oldfield, who composed Tubular Bells for The Exorcist is one, according to a story in the London Times:

As with an ordinary computer game, you explore a landscape. But this has no thugs or monsters lurking to zap you if you don�t zap them first. �I hate violent computer games,� Oldfield says. �I wanted this to have some kind of elegance, some respect for the beauty of life, instead of a mission to kill everything in sight. I wanted to create a virtual environment that is relaxing, life-affirming. It�s non-toxic; it won�t damage your mind. It�s somewhere calm where you can escape to. Somewhere that makes you feel good, because there are enough things in the world that make you feel terrible.�

And you know what? We can't bend, fold, and mutilate the things in the real world that make us feel terrible, so we like computer games that let us zap the crap out of monsters. If we see a freaking monster, we don't want to hold its hand and rehabilitate it! We want to kill the fucker! Is that so hard to understand? We guess it is.

You waft gently through his magic virtual-landscape by clicking on to beautiful butterflies, or swarms of psychedelic fireflies, or galloping white horses that sprout wings and whisk you through caverns measureless to man. A flying saucer transports you deep into space; or you can visit a surreal desert where you play a kind of croquet � but using pianos instead of balls and mallets.

Croquet with pianos? We'll take two copies!

Sega holding workers prisoner?

The Register has a story about Sega requiring 12 employees to sit in a windowless room all day long with nothing to do. Apparently this is part of a management - union dispute over the employees refusing to be transferred.

The 12 employees claim the videogame giant is bullying them into quitting, According to an intriguing article at Mainichi News.

Sega is obliged to abide by the workers' request to be posted at the company's Tokyo headquarters under law, but says there is no work for them to do there.

Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?

The Rock may be in line to play Duke Nukem in a movie, according to a story on Ananova. As a professional wrestler, he certainly has plenty of acting experience.

CompUSA and Staples change sales policy in Michigan

Both of these retail chains will no longer sell mature rated games to children, according to an AP story in the New York Times.

Gary Cribb, who is the senior vice president of Staples' Midwest division, said Staples employees in Michigan are now required to ask for identification if a customer who looks younger than 25 is trying to buy a ``Mature'' video.

Oh for the days when kids used to only ask for people to buy them beer. Now we'll hear, "Hey mister, can you pick me up a copy of Sacrifice? You can keep the change from this fifty."

Dynamix trimming staff

Blue's News has a news post up with comments from Dave Georgeson, the producer of Tribes 2, about how Dynamix is cutting eight positions to go from 24 to 16.

1) Yes. We are trimming the team from 24 people to 16 after we finish launching the product. We are doing this for purely financial reasons because 24 people is too many people for an add-on and continuing support of a released game. Most of the reductions are natural attrition (some folks are leaving in the next month or so, others transferred to other internal teams, and a few folks separated from this team). All of it is well-planned and planned for so that the team stays healthy and so that those leaving are cared for.

2) We found employment for all team members that left except one person (whom we are still working on getting placed).

If only they could eliminate Tribes 2 bugs as quickly as they cut staff!

X-COM Enforcer gold

The news has been plastered around the net. This arcadish third-person shooter set in the X-COM universe is done and should be in stores on April 17th.

It's hard to muster much excitement over this game after the cancellation of Dreamland and X-COM Genesis last year. Maybe it will be fun though. Maybe there's a secret bonus level where you fight King Koopa.

3am

Launch all Zerg. The bonus map from Blizzard this month is a tribute to Zero Wing. The All Your Base Are Belong To Us map is designed for 4-6 Starcraft players.

Anyone catch the King of Queens rerun last night? Tom Chick had a small role in the episode. He was the groom-to-be and looked quite happy to be getting married, which shows you what a master thespian Tom really is.

Fuckedcompany is reporting that fandom.com is cooked. Fandom isn't a game site. They cover the comic book scene. Games...comics...it's all covered under the bylaws of the International Order of Geeks.

Here's a link to an amusing PVP comic about a mythical entertainment network named "IGO" -- wonder who's being parodied? Thanks to Al from our forums for the link.

Solid Snake spanks the monkey in the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. Weird but true. Read about it at ps2.ign. We spotted this at Blue's News, where we go to read all the latest news about games and onanism. We shudder to think how Voodoo Extreme probably jumped all over this story.

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