Questions Answered

Thursday, December 10, 2009 2:0 PM EST
As usual, if you contacted the site, in the last six months, you probably haven't heard anything back. Good news, though: That all changes today. I've gone through and answered all the questions/comments/corrections to the site, so be sure check out the latest Q & A.

In other news, Pandemic Studios, responsible for the creation of Battlezone II, has officially closed its doors. Related to the subject, Pandemic's Ken Miller, who programmed on 1998's BZ is working on a 1.5 version patch to the game. You can check out the progress on Ken Miller's blog or at the Battlezone1.net Forums.

Updates:
Q & A - Answered

More on the new Mechwarrior

Saturday, July 18, 2009 3:48 PM EST
With the announcement of the new Mechwarrior game, there seems to be a good deal of early buzz and anticipation already. I'm actually quite surprised by the whole thing, as I figured people just weren't into the half-simulation/half-action type of games anymore. But not only is the new Mechwarrior announced (not as a sequel, but as a series reboot), but it's also including some of the original "unseen" mechs, such as the Warhammer and Rifleman whose image rights had been lost over the years.

For more info, IGN has a news article with the new Mechwarrior trailer and a 6-page interview with Jordan Weisman.

Updates:
Mechwarrior History - New game development added

Sequels

Wednesday, July 8 2009 3:15 PM EST
Surprisingly good news has popped up, as it looks like a new Mechwarrior game will be announced shortly. Smith & Tinker had aquired the IP from Microsoft some time ago, and as I had mentioned then, there had to be a reason behind it.

According to Shack News, Piranha Studios is working on the new game. Should be fun to see where it goes...

In other sequel news, Deus Ex 3 has been noticably absent as of late. For whatever reason, I had convinced myself that the game would pop up in some form - screenshot, movie, demo - at this year's E3, and even though I let myself sit through and watch it on G4, there was no mention of it whatsoever.

Stephane D'Astous of Eidos Montreal recently posted this cryptic message on his twitter account: "DX3 has never been so greenlight!" I'm assuming that it means some portion of the game has been given the go-ahead, and not that that Deus Ex 3 has been in limbo for the past several months. Either way, hopefully more info will be made available soon.

No More Geocities

Sunday, May 03, 2009 10:52 AM EST
After all of the hubaloo about Tripd.co.uk going down, another major player in the free homepage market is coming to an end. Geocities, one of the first homepage providers has announced that they are no longer accepting sign-ups and will be shutting down by the endo fthe year.

Long time visitors (are there any?) will know that this site started off at Geocities, back in 1997. At the time, they had a different approach to to website catagorization - that of neighborhoods. So, all of the sites about games would go in the TimesSquare/Arcade neighborhood. After that, everyone had a number (7891 for me), much like your homepage was an apartment on the block. You could browse sites by streets and addresses and check out your virtual "neighbors."

Perhaps it wasn't the most useful way to organize sites, but it was an interesting interpretation of how these homepages should be structured and really showed off some of the early unique appraoches to the internet at the time.

Eventually, Geocities succumbed to an overload of ads and pop-up banners and was bought out by Yahoo!. The old neighborhood categorization was gone and instead replaced with the more standard geocities.com/username approach.

Most people, however, seem to know the place as a location for horrible web design with pages that say little more than "Welcome to my corner of the internet. Here is a list of my favorite links." Maybe time hasn't been so kind to the site, but I'll have fond memories of the place, figuring out this whole html thing and looking at the random homepages of my geo-neighbors.

In other news, the I '76 FAQ has been reordered and had some parts rewritten, just to explain things in a tad more detail and offer clearer solutions.

Updates:
Interstate '76 FAQ - Reworded and reordered

Quickie

Saturday, April 11, 2009 1:00 PM EST
Just a quick update today: some new thoughts in the Mechwarrior section. This is something that I wrote back in January, but finally got up on the site.

Updates:
Mechwarrior Thoughts - Now has content

More Clans

Thursday, April 2, 2009 11:32 AM EST
If you've an interest in the development of Mechwarrior 2 (or you've been following the site), then you probably know that at one point in time, the game's original programmer, Eric Peterson, had his Mechwarrior 2 memoirs posted at his Port of Evil forums. These posts, along with all others before 2007, were unfortunately lost.

Good news, though. He has been reposting these at his planet E blog. It's a fascinating tale and an inside look at how Mech2 came to be, so check it out.

Updates:
Mechwarrior 2: The Clans - Link added

What's the motto?

Saturday, March 28, 2009 3:37 PM EST
I think this place needs a motto. How about, "Where all of your favorite dead games are buried: The Local Ditch." Sounds good to me. It's been a while since the last update and in the mean time, I've been working my way through the FreeSpace series and System Shock.

That doesn't mean there aren't things to add to the site. I've finally got the links fixed for some of the Battlezone II Wallpapers and there's a another set of overhead maps from Kalle, this time for the Interstate '76 Nitro Pack.

Updates:
Battlezone II Downloads - Wallpapers fixed
Nitro Pack Downloads - Maps images added

Daylight Savings

Saturday, March 7, 2009 2:33 PM EST
A few days ago, I received an e-mail asking if I wanted to put some maps to the I '76 levels on the site. After checking them out, the answer was a defenite, "Yes," so those are up on the site in the I '76 Downloads and through the I '76 walkthrough.

I went and cleaned up some the of I '76 links last week and it seemed like I should do the same for the other sections of the site. So, the Battlezone and BZII sections have had all of the broken external links removed.

There are a few small changes to some pages on the SEGA section, but I can't even recall what they are.

As usual, there's some behind-the-scenes stuff as well, most of which isn't noticable.

Updates:
Battlezone Links - Old links removed
Battlezone II Links - Old links removed
Interstate '76 Downloads - I '76 Maps added
Interstate '76 Walkthrough - New maps for maze levels

It's No Accident

Tuesday, March 3, 2009 10:43 AM EST
This is a much larger update than I had originally anticipated it being. There's new questions to be answered, new downloads, some behind-the-scenes tweaks, and best of all, that goddamn Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries Walkthrough is finally completed.

I feel like I've written a small novel about the game at this point. There's a guide to get through every single scripted mission in the game. Hell, not even the official strategy guide (and especially not the guides on GameFAQs) do this. It's a big relief to finally have it done, and in celebration, I'm going to sit back and just enjoy just playing through a few games.

Next on my list? Descent: FreeSpace, Tron 2.0, and Yakuza 2.

Updates:
Interstate '76 Links - Most (kind of) work now
News Archives - Old news archived
Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries Downloads - Game manuals added
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries Walkthrough - Complete
Q&A - I '76 Question answered, old pages archived