March 2004 - Page 3 of 3

Verant the Second?

Posted on March 8, 2004 by Nimgimli

I just got a press release announcing that Mike Hutchins has joined Sigil Games as a Senior Designer. Hutchins was a level/zone builder on the original version of Everquest.

Sigil Games, you’ll recall, is Brad “The Vision” McQuaid’s start-up and is getting packed full of ex-Verant people.

Press release ends with this snippet:

About Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Sigil Games Online, Inc. is a game studio dedicated to the development of massively multiplayer games. … Sigil Games plans to play a key role in taking MMOGs into their third generation and beyond.

Color me skeptical. EverQuest was the first 3D MMRPG and so it was mighty popular, but the game demands you devote your life to it. After McQuaid left, things lightened up a bit but still EQ is an incredible time sink. I just think if he builds a new game that puts such intense time demands on potential customers in today’s MMRPG climate, he’s going to be very surprised indeed.

XBox 2 Dev Kits

Posted on March 7, 2004 by Nimgimli

This weeks Pulse reported that the first XBox 2 (XBox Next?) dev kits have gone out. They sport dual G5 processors and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video cards. Pulse was quick to add that these are prelimnary kits and don’t reflect the exact end hardware, but I thought it was pretty nice that the closest thing they could get to the graphic capacity of XBox 2 is a Radeon 9800 Pro. Not too shabby.

The only confirmation I’ve found so far seems to come from The Inquirer which I’m not familiar with, so I don’t know how much credit to attribute to them. But read it for yourself and decide:
Xbox 2 SDK released on cool Apple Power Mac G5s and a bit more at Microsoft ships first Xbox 2 development kits using Apple G5 hardware

Druids

Posted on March 6, 2004 by Nimgimli

I just watched a movie called Druids in English, and Vercing�torix in French. It wasn’t a great movie. But it portrayed a period of history that had never even crossed my mind before. In fact I wasn’t sure it was based on real history at all until I did some Googling.

Turns out that Vercing�torix was a Gaul chieftain who opposed Julius Ceasar for a time around 52BC (when Ceasar finally defeated him). If you search on his name you’ll find a lot of pages in French, but sadly I don’t read French very well. But I did find a couple of links in English:
The Iron Age in the Auvergne
From Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Neither of these are extensive references but they at least show that the movie was based at least loosely on history. And so I’m glad I saw it, from the point of view of it exposing me to a bit of history that, as I said, I’ve never even considered before.

PoP Movie

Posted on March 6, 2004 by Nimgimli

According to various sites, Jerry Bruckheimer’s (Pirates of the Carribean, King Arthur) production company is in negotiations to buy the film rights to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The creator of the original Prince of Persia game, Jordan Mechner, is already working on a screenplay. This isn’t as alarming as it sounds, as in the years between the original game and the recent Sands of Time Mechner has been making his living as a screenwriter and filmmaker.

Here’re a couple of links, but if you Google “Bruckheimer Prince of Persia” you’ll find plenty more:
Bruckheimer eyes Prince of Persia
Bruckheimer Films buys Prince of Persia film rights.

Desert Rats vs Afrika Corps

Posted on March 5, 2004 by Nimgimli

This one just appeared on my radar, though its going to release this month. Its a RTS game that takes place in North Africa during WWII (you probably guessed that from the title, eh?). But it sounds like it’ll have a bit of a wargame ‘feel’ to it. No resource management, the troops and equipment you start with are what you have to complete the mission with, and it uses ‘accurate’ weapons and such. Plus it allows giving orders with the game paused, so it won’t be a twich game as so many RTS’s are.

Couple of previews for you:
at Gamespy
at Gamespot

Update 3/6: I just saw a segment on the game on the atrocious X-Play on TechTV. (The show is best watched with the sound off since the hosts act like total morons.) Anyway, the game looks amazing. Not that good graphics are everything…but they sure don’t hurt!

Horatio Lancelot?

Posted on March 3, 2004 by Nimgimli

I just found out (because I am the Last to Know Everything!) that Ioan Gruffudd is going to play Lancelot in the upcoming King Arthur movie.

You may know Gruffudd from The Titanic (I know he was in it, but as I never saw the movie I don’t know how big a part he had) but to me, he is Horatio Hornblower!

Looking forward to seeing him portray Lancelot…

Nintendo DS details begin to emerge

Posted on March 3, 2004October 31, 2004 by Nimgimli

CNNMoney today published an article on the upcoming Nintendo DS handheld system (Nintendo DS details begin to emerge – Mar. 3, 2004). You’ll recall this is the handheld with two 3 inch LCD screens.

According to an analyst’s report, they’ve managed to cram a 2 hour movie onto a 128 meg flash cartridge and played it back on the DS. The speculation is that Nintendo is going to broaden the range of applications for the gizmo beyond gaming and into multimedia entertainment and…well why am I yammering? It’s all in the article.

This is a neat battle shaping up though, with the recently delayed Sony PSP in one corner, and the Nintendo DS in the other. Wouldn’t it be great if MS surprised us with a handheld at E3? It could be a modified PDA in the same way the XBox is basically a modified PC.

Mars!

Posted on March 2, 2004 by Nimgimli

History in the making… as I write this I’m watching a streaming press conference from NASA about whether there was ever water on Mars. On the off chance someone reads this in the next few moments, click on http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/landing.cfm.

Everything or Nothing

Posted on March 1, 2004 by Nimgimli

So I’m watching this week’s Pulse and they have a bit on the new James Bond game (James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing). And I’d heard they got the stars to do the voices and all that, but it never really clicked with me until I saw them in action.

I mean, its quite a cast!
Pierce Brosnan as Bond
John Cleese as Q
Dame Judi Dench as M
Wilem Dafoe as Nikolai Diavolo

Plus people I’ve never heard of, but I guess are Somebody
Heidi Klum as Dr. Katya Nadanova (a definite Bond Girl)
Shannon Elizabeth as Serena St. Germaine (ditto)
Mya as Agent Mya Sterling (ditto again, and she also sings the theme song)

Not shown in the piece but listed on the website are:
Misato Ito as Miss Nagai (what? Another Bond Girl?)
and of course,
Richard Kiel, as Jaws (does he talk? I thought he just bit)

Suddenly I really want to play this game!

Origin Closes

Posted on March 1, 2004 by Nimgimli

OK, I totally dropped the ball on this one…this is news from last week.

Electronic Arts, the Evil Empire of the videogame world, has shut down Origin Studios. The end of yet another era, thanks to EA. Word is that they gave employees a choice of being relocated to California, or a severance package, so maybe they handled this situation with a bit more tact than, say, the closing of Westwood Studios.

Anyway, apparently this won’t have any impact on UO:X or the next expansion pack for Ultima Online.

Dragonchasers

Month: March 2004