Dragonchasers
Archive for August 4th, 2004
Posted on August 4th, 2004 at 1:43 pm under Gaming

Remember the story from a day or three ago about the kid who murdered his friend with a hammer? The media claimed it was because he was obsessed with the videogame Manhunt.

Well here’s a fun twist. MCV is claiming that it was the victim who owned the game, not the killer. Oopsie! Maybe the kid begged his friend to bludgeon him with a hammer because he wanted to be just like a Manhunt victim. Or not…

New twist in Manhunt controversy

But it gets jucier (thanks to Slashdot for spreading this link around):
Florida Attorney on Manhunt for Rockstar

This Jack Thompson comes across as a nut-job in this interview:

GD: You are going to target Rockstar North?

Thompson: Not just Rockstar, another target will be Sony. The tie-in between Rockstar and Sony is rather firmly established.

GD: What is the ultimate goal here?

Thompson: To destroy Rockstar.

GD: What does that mean in terms of…

Thompson: (cutting in) So they don’t exist anymore.

and

GD: You don’t see any other way, such as the ESRB jacking up their ratings?

Thompson: They are a joke. They are a deceptive joke. Doug Lowenstein makes Saddam Hussein look like a post-reformed Pinocchio. [emphasis mine -dc] He will say anything to protect the industry and his annual salary. It doesn’t matter what they say or do anymore. So, you destroy people and their institutions who have such a track record of not caring about human life and who will lie through their teeth to protect their P&L statement.

GD: Thanks for your time Mr. Thompson and good luck in your struggle.

Thompson: Thanks. We don’t need luck. The vectors are locked in, these people are dead meat.

Sounds like Mr. Anderson has been staying up late playing Doom 3 to me…

Posted on August 4th, 2004 at 1:23 pm under Gaming, World of Warcraft

Planning on playing World of Warcraft when it releases? Or maybe you’re already in the beta? A bit confused about what’s going on? Maybe this will help.
History of Warcraft
There’re other sites with this kind of info littered around the ‘net, but this comes from the source!

Posted on August 4th, 2004 at 9:55 am under TV & Movies, Tech Talk

From the Dow Jones Newswire:

An industry group including Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said Tuesday it expects DVD player/recorders compatible with the “Blu-ray” read-only disc format to hit the market in the second half of 2005, signaling the possibility of a more intense battle next year over the high-definition successor to the current generation of DVDs. So far, the group Blu-ray Disc Founders, made up of 13 global technology firms, has only established a recordable disc format for Blu-ray technology — one of two rival next-generation DVD formats. Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. are also promoting HD (high-definition) DVDs — a new optical disc format that they jointly developed. A Toshiba executive said last month the company plans to launch two home-use HD DVD devices next year — a DVD player and a DVD player/recorder equipped with a hard-disc drive.

Let’s hope this is a short battle with a clear winner. I want a HD DVD player SOON and I don’t want to end up with an orphaned format!