Penny Arcade

It’s now 4:13 in the morning.  I got home at about eleven o’clock and starting moving my mail over to Thunderbird, the Mozilla mail component that Scott said Gary said had nice spam filtering.  I imported my old mail into it for some reason, to accelerate my hair loss I think, but I’ve trained it like a faithful pup to ferret out spam and viruses from of a sample of fourteen thousand hand-flagged mails.  I am at the point where coffee just makes my teeth vibrate.

The new comic strip concerns the N-Gage Special Forces, a crack group of liars and miscreants whose job it is to spread lies about the N-Gage.  When I say lies, I mean things like telling people that it is good or that someone should buy one with money.  I wince when I look at it.  When it comes time to account for why it is such a monumental fuck-up, in my mind I see a group of men all around a long conference table.  They all shrug in unison.

I asked people to tell me if they could recall the community standing up, claiming a game for their own, and taking over development on a game besides Allegiance - and readers responded, revealing a world of wonder and limitless amusement. 

Virgin Interactive’s Subspace is a mixture of of Asteroids and Deathmatch, which I think we can all agree is probably a very good thing.  Something it was not, however, is a financial success - and Virgin closed down the servers, as you might expect.  Fast forward to today, where player-run servers are the norm, bizarre mods have taken shape, and the entire game has been reverse-engineered to allow access to the undercarriage.  Many players invited me to give the game a shot, and I have a mind to do just that.

I would be disappointed, yes, disappointed in you if you were not familiar with Bungie’s Myth.  Almost universally adored, and luscious with (then novel) 3Dfx accelerated graphics, Myth games were good in virtually every way one can reckon a tactical fantasy game.  It had a beautiful interface that allowed access to a wheelbarrow full of great maps and gametypes, it was essentially the cat’s pajamas.  We’re all aware that when Bungie became a part of Microsoft, Bungie’s own multiplayer matching service would eventually become a thing of the past.  Of course, this was long after I had started playing other games - so I was not aware that the community had risen to the challenge here, as well.  I had heard about this more recently, when gamers displeased with the state of Myth III successfully petitioned Take-Two Interactive to gain access to the source code in order to fix the game. 

Think about that for a second.       

In any event, their legacy is real - modern, playable versions of all three Myth games, and a matchmaking service to tie it all together.  It makes me want to clap.

(CW)TB out.

jam after jam of inaccurate songs

LANWERX GAMING DAY

Here are all the people who have registered for the Halo tournaments as of yesterday. If you signed up last night or this morning your name won’t be on this list yet.

Amateur Teams:

Names in capital letters are walk-ons

1 [No Name] David Bikk, Timmy V., Michal M., JESSE ALBERT
2 [Otaku Gamers] Brendan, Aaron, Jared, Matt, Cid
3 [Infidels] Rizky, David, Evan, Ming
4 [Internz + 1] David Stears, Mike, Varun, JOEY BAITY
5 [Pillow Biters] Kevin Nelson, Raging Panda, Bastich, Velveta
6 [Davidson Inn] Nic Rupe, Brant, Jay, Tony
7 [Don’t Say Mole, I Say Mole] Matt Turnbull, David, Eric, Kristo
8 [Warthog Overdose] Miles Thayer, Ted, PETER REIKE, KEN CARLSON
9 [HALOrds] Dustin Ray, Maverick, Warmonger, Maximus
10 [Bent 7] Simon Gordon, DJ, Graham, Colin
11 [Do it for Kevin] Nicholas Hassell, Kyle, Danny, Tommy
12 Olah Olah Tim Chen, Joe, Rerkboon, Shu
13 [????] Cole, Jeff, Jeff, DAKOTA SHELTON
14 [Walkons 1] GRANDIN DONOVAN,MACIEK SZMYTKOWSKI, JESSE WEST, JOEL PENNER
15 [Walkons 2] JORDAN DIONNE, MIKE LYNN, BARCLAY ZIMMERMAN, MIKE WOODSIDE
16 [Walkons 3] BRANDON HOENISH, JORDAN WAKEMAN, NATHAN WALLPOLE, MICHAEL SANSREGRET
17 [Walkons 4] SEAN REID, ALEX ELMORE, WILL MCCOLLOUGH, ANDREW SMITH
18 [Walkons 5] CLINTON PETERSON, DAVID CARSWELL, BRIAN CAMPBELL, (still looking for 4th)

Pro Teams:

1 [Team 116] Char, Ad, Pi, Striker
2 [Olah Olah] Tim Chen, Joe, Rerkboon, Shu
3 [????] Cole, Jeff, Jeff, DAKOTA SHELTON
4 [Don’t Say Mole, I Say Mole] Matt Turnbull, David, Eric, Kristo
5 [HALOrds] Dustin Ray, Maverick, Warmonger, Maximus
6 [Otaku Gamers] Brendan, Aaron, Jared, Matt, Cid
7 [Bent 7] Simon Gordon, DJ, Graham, Colin
8 [Monkey Cheese] Chris, Mike, Stephen, Matt
9 [H.N.I.C.] Geoff, Denis, Brent, JB Boniacio
10 [Renjyu no Semeru] Harrison P, Ryan P, Patrick B, Erik Bear
11 [Les Soldats Mike Townsent, Matt, Stewart, Brian
12 [Walkons A] BRYAN THOMAS, KEVIN GRAHAM, NIC RUPE, NATHAN WALLPOLE
13 [Walkons B] MACIEK SZMYTKOWSKI, BEN SOLEM, MIKE LYNN, MIKE WOODSIDE
14 [Walkons C] MICHAEL SANSREGRET (still looking for 2nd, 3rd and 4th)

We still have space in both tournaments. If you want to register for one or both of the tournaments Email the following to brad, if it’s a team application, just give us a team name and all your handles:

Name
Handle
Email
Type of Entry (Individual Walk-On or Team)
Team Name (if applicable)
Other players on Team? Name/email/handle. (if applicable)
Tournament (Amateur Level, Pro or Both)

Tomorrow is gonna be a blast. Remember we’ve got Halo 2 demos at 3:00 and 5:00. Halo PC available on 8 machines. Guilty Gear XX, Soul Calibur 2 and Halo on six televisions. 64 computers. Two tournaments. Tons of prizes from Monster Cable. Penny Arcade shirts and posters. The first four pages of the Cardboard Tube Samurai comic book “Purity”. Original PA artwork to giveaway and the possibility of a special surprise from Bungie. I expect to see you all tomorrow.

Also the event itself is free to get into. Everything is free in fact except the Pro Halo Tournament and time on one of the 64 computers.

-Gabe out

Weren’t you gonna talk about that thing, you know with the guy?

-Gabe out

Can you be more specific?

(CW)TB

The whole thing we talked about with the Phantom and all that.

-Gabe out

It really comes down to this:  is it a hoax, or are the forces involved in making this system absolutely inept?  I’d call that six of one or a half dozen of the other.

Anybody tried to actually submit ther information on the pre-registration screen?  It’s not a button, it’s just a sort vestigial nub with no function. 

An interesting mail from Josh Parker, Private Eye:

In my amazing boredom, I researched the status of these trademarks on , but could find no record of either being trademarked. I tried various search methods, never did I see the slogan or the name Phantom trademarked by Infium Labs.

Uh, yeah.  Might want to get one of them trademark things.

Steve from HardOCP dropped the following science on me yesterday:

We had a reader go by Infinium Labs and take pictures of their “facility” ( that’s when we found out it was a strip mall in the Florida Keys ) only to find out it was a single desk in a 100 x 100ft room with two phones and no furniture. That was about 4 months ago.

I talked to the Tim Roberts guy on the phone when he returned my call ( 22 days after I left a message ) and when I asked him about all this…he HUNG UP ON ME. I asked him if he was looking for investors, he said “We are actively recruiting investors”. I asked him if they had any consoles on hand, he said “We have several hundred prototype models here in the office”. So then I asked him where the prototypes were made, he said “right here in our facility”. Then I told him I had seen his 100ft x 100ft office space conveinently located next to Missing Link Art Gallery in the strip mall ( located at 5380 Gulf of Mexico Dr. Longboat Key, Fl 34228 ) and he went NUTS!!! “WHO THE FUCK IS THIS!?!?! BLAH BLAH I’LL SUE YOU”.

Then you have articles like this one on Newsforge that make the whole thing seem sensible!  Goddammit, I’m trying to dismiss something here!  Stupid journalists.

(CW)TB

I think it’s fake. I’d say it’s a publicity stunt. The company that made all the videos and the website does some bad ass work. My guess is that this is their way of getting their name out. I mean come on, first they miss E3, then they miss GDC and the fucking thing is called the Phantom for Christ’s sake.

-Gabe out

I have been meaning to talk about Crystal Chronicles for a while now but I’ve just been playing it instead. I took a break to check out some forums and get some tips when I saw this post:

From: OSX | Posted: 8/20/2003 9:01:44 PM | Message Detail

My immediate reaction is to call this guy a fucking shitstick but then I thought “No. He’s not a shitstick, he is just uninformed.”  Since I’ve seen this same comment made by lots of people recently and I figured since I’ve actually played the game with four players I should address it here and perhaps ease some fears.

First of all yes it is true that in order to play with four players each person needs their own GBA. While it might sound odd at first, in practice it ends up being fucking brilliant. Imagine that you are playing with three other people. If you haven’t seen the game it’s not played in split screen. Picture a game like Hunter or Zombie Revenge. You’re all on the same screen fighting monsters and picking up loot. Now imagine that you need to access your inventory so that you can equip a new spell you picked up. Were it not for the GBA’s you would have to pause the game in order to bring up your inventory. Meanwhile no one else in your party can do shit because your cycling through menu screens looking for that new Ice spell you just grabbed. That’s bullshit and it would never work.

Instead what happens is that you hit the select button on your GBA and immediately you have access to your entire inventory and character customization menus via the GBA screen. You can sit there and alphabetize your items if you want and you aren’t bothering anyone else. The game is continuing on without you and your character automatically moves to keep up with the rest of the party. The other thing it allows is for multiple people to be using their inventories at the same time. I can be dropping Money for one person while he is dropping a spell for me. Fucking brilliant! This sort of thing would never be possible without the GBA.

Square also uses the GBA connectivity in other cool ways. One person in your party will have access to the map of the level you are in. It’s random so you never know who will be the navigator from level to level. You’re also given goals via your GBA screen before levels begin. Certain things like “Only use magic to kill monsters” or “don’t pick up any items”. Everyone is graded at the end of the level according to how well they accomplished these goals and the people with the highest scores get first dibs on specific kinds of loot picked up by the party during the level.

As wonderful and fantastic and totally fucking bad ass Crystal Chronicles is I will say that I think someone will die because of this game. That’s right, I believe it is only a matter of time before someone kills their friend because of his or her actions in this game. Let me give you some examples of the sort of behavior I have seen spark fights among our own group.

One of the most common ways for a fight to break out is over what we refer to as “Dropping the bucket short.” In case you don’t know the world of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles is poisoned and your party carries with it a magical container (the bucket). This container creates a magic bubble around our party that all characters must remain inside if they don’t want to die. In order to progress through the level someone obviously has to carry this bucket around. While holding the bucket a player can’t really do much of anything else. They have to keep an eye on all the other players and make sure that the bubble they are casting is safely covering the entire party. Players that dash off without warning the bucket man often find themselves on the wrong side of the bubble and in a world of hurt. As you can see bucket management is a very important job. It’s easy for the bucket man to get blamed for all kinds of tragedies that might befall the group. “Well if you had just moved the bucket over here I could have killed that guy!”  This is where “Dropping the bucket short” comes in. Monster X appears on the edge of the screen and the party rushes to engage him. The bucket man drops the bucket in order to join the fray but misjudges the size of his bubble and fails to envelope the monster in it. Now the monster sits just outside the bubble firing projectile attacks into it and picking off your party one by one. Meanwhile the members of your group must now brave the poisoned landscape beyond the bubble in order to battle this beast. This is often a lost cause as not only is the monster beating up on them but the very air around them causes massive amounts of damage. It’s not unheard of for an entire party to die this way, simply because of a bucket that was dropped short.

In our group the bucket man is Robert and there have been times when I thought that Porkfry was actually going to kill him. You see Pork carries a knife that he refers to as Mr. Stabby and it’s already tasted human blood. Recently Pork produced said knife after a particularly disastrous bucket drop left our entire party in spirit form. He waved it menacingly at Robert and as the rest off us held him back he screamed that he was going to “CUT THAT BITCHES FACE!” It took quite a bit of talking and consoling before I was sure that no ones face was going to be cut.  This time everyone survived but who knows if we will be as lucky next time.

Later I’ll tell you about item hording and lollygagging and how it can lead to broken bones and punctured lungs.

-Gabe out

Wow. I don’t know what to say. You guys seem determined to hate this game.

I just got a ton of mail from people who, after everything I just said still think using the GBA is a bad idea and are pissed at Square and Nintendo for requiring it.

I was trying to be cool in the post above. Trying to explain why it’s actually a very good idea but that didn’t work and so now I’m just going to be honest.

You do not have to own four GBA’s! Each person that wants to play needs to own ONE GBA! If your friends do not own a GBA already, then I think you need to get yourself some new fucking friends.

-Gabe out