Daily News Spin — July 30, 2001 (Monday)

Planet of the Hollywood Dopes

It's not about games, but it is about monkeys, and nothing gets hits like monkey stories so we're shamelessly running with it. Here's a link to the Filthy Critic's review of Planet of Apes, the Stupid Remake. Warning, there could be a small spoiler in this excerpt:

One day maybe two or three months ago, some executive ran down his checklist, "Let's see, costumes-check, wardrobe-check, actors-check, marketing- check, nostalgia to milk-check, script-oh, shit! We better slap something together fast!" Then, when he learned the script sucked, he ordered "well then, make the apes look better!" This mutt is limper than an old man's dick and it's powered by Hollywood's assumption that if people are dressed up like apes, we won't ask why a chimp is traveling through space with a pistol, why some hundreds-of-years-old spaceship still has power ("power that lasts forever," the script says), how the fuck horses got on the planet, or were they on the ship too, or how the fuck so many species of primates spawned from a small group of chimps on the spaceship?

Thanks Jeff!

Some people are morons

Newsflash! There are idiots among us! That Madcatz Bioforce controller that gives players an electric shock if their character gets shot is back in the news again. Here's a story from Silicon Alley.

``It caught a lot of people's imaginations,'' said Mad Catz' president, Darren Richardson.

But:

Richardson acknowledged the product ``seemed like an odd idea to us, too.''

Well duh. And:

Richardson said Mad Catz plans to study its medical impact before Bioforce reaches store shelves, but he stressed that the technology isn't new. He said customers face little risk of being barbecued.

Little risk? Little? We've got news for you. THERE HAS TO BE ABSOLUTELY ZERO RISK OF BEING "BARBECUED" BEFORE WE USE IT. NONE! NADA! ZILCH! AS IN NO POSSIBILITY THAT WE'LL LIGHT UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE AND OUR EYEBALLS WILL SPIN LIKE SLOT MACHINE TUMBLERS!

One fellow summed up our feelings:

``I don't want to be giving myself electric shock treatments,'' said John Ripley, 34, as he waited in line at a Sony outlet in San Francisco for a copy of Gran Turismo 3, a new driving simulator for the PlayStation 2. ``It sounds stupid.''

Indeed.

Happy Birthday computer games

The BBC is claiming that today's the 40th birthday of the computer game. Here's the BBC on the inspirations behind Spacewar!, the first game.

The informal group, some of whom were students at MIT, included Dan Edwards, Alan Kotok, Peter Sampson, J Martin Graetz and Steve "Slug" Russell.

All were huge fans of science fiction, especially the space operas of cereal chemist E E Doc Smith who, as Mr Graetz notes, "wrote with the grace and refinement of a pneumatic drill".

Cake and ice cream for everyone!

We fondly recall spending many hours curled up with "Doc" Smith's Lensman series. Yes, they were terrible, but just as the writing in Max Payne is terrible, we were compelled to see how it all came out.

Interplay confirms layoffs, Torn cancellation

Interplay's confirmed that Torn is dead as one of the casualties of laying off 55-60 people. If Interplay loses the D&D license, we guess they'll just focus on the Fallout universe. Perhaps related to the Interplay news, Fatbabies is passing on a rumor that Microforte is reported to be having problems paying employees. Microforte made Fallout Tactics for Interplay and currently is working on the MMOG Citizen Zero.

MMOGs taking it on the chin

With the rumor that Microforte is having payroll problems comes word that Fallen Age is probably never going to see the light of day. Avault has the story:

Fallen Age, a massively multiplayer online game from Netamin, has been placed on indefinite hold, the company announced Friday. Citing creative differences with their partners in Korea, producer Daniel Manachi said Netamin �had no choice but to put the game on hold� and announced the end of the open beta test.

No big surprise that some of these MMOGs are falling by the wayside. There are far too many in development for the market to support we suspect, and investors are starting to sense that.

3am

Frisbees of death! Monolith is working on a Tron game. Wonder what they had to pay for that license? Some pocket lint and few Malt-O-Meal boxtops? We joke, but sure, why not a Tron game? After the success of Tex Atomic's Battling Bots, there's no stopping Monolith! Update: We've been informed that there's a Tron movie sequel in the works, so maybe, just maybe, Monolith's pretty crafty. Of course, that still doesn't explain the Tex Atomic game. Thanks Jim!

In case you haven't heard, the hot rumor going around is that Raven is doing Quake 4 for id. They'll probably announce the game at Quakeworld (Quakecom?) this weekend.

Max Payne giving you hiirikyyn�rp��? That's the Finnish name for "mouse elbow" which we think roughly translates into English as "He who has an elbow like a lutefish." Go to introspectsoftware.com to download a program that shows you how far your mouse travels every day and how many times you've scaled Mt. Everest with it or 23 other famous monuments or landmarks, like the Eiffel Tower.

Fuckedcompany is saying that PC Magazine, a Ziff Davis publication (Computer Gaming World), has laid off 13 and the Editor has left. The mags are having a hard time of it. Our advice? Naked women draped over the latest PCs. Put the fun back into computing!

Unemployed.com can be your domain for only $25,000, according to this Yahoo story about one squatter who has a slew of domain names for sale, such as birthcontrol.net and avocado.net. Seems they're not quite as hot as they used to be. Our take? We'll gladly pay you Tuesday for hamburger.net today. Thanks Lil' Petey!

Scientists at Oklahoma State University have spent the last three years studying methods for making peanut butter sandwiches more quickly, because it's important that we don't fall behind the Russians or the Chinese in peanut butter sandwich technology. The New York Times has the story. The result? Slices of peanut butter wrapped like slices of cheese. They add something to the peanut butter to make it, um, wrappable. They're now studying ways to make slices of jelly. We are not making this up.

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