Whoa, he's back and he's actually posting news!!!! Yes, don't worry folks Rune is indeed alive and well and off the crack-pipe/bong.

Has anyone actually managed to get a Playstation 2 ?!! I still don't see what the big deal was about couple of weeks ago. Why can people actually get away with selling them on E-bay for like $198349835345024923? If you even try to pre-order one now I hear that you get treated like this. I'm just a disgruntled Dreamcast and PC owner...don't mind me...

Speaking of Dreamcast, I managed to snag myself a copy of Quake 1 for the Dreamcast. This is no easy feat considering that this game was actually never released for it but some guys from Australia hacked it to work with a DC. I thought that this was pretty l33t until I tried using the Dreamcast controller pad to control it... Ah well, at least the graphics are cool...

Damn it, I need to get a beta of Tribes 2 soon as all of these sweet screenshots are just killing me.

Alas, poor 3dfx. Everyone thought that they were getting ready to finally release that Voodoo 5 6000 bad-boy and instead they canned it and decided to stop manufacturing boards altogether. Apparently they plan to go back to licensing their chips to other manufacturers again. Doh! I guess that's what losing a $100 million a quarter will do for ya. I'm glad that 3dfx has finally gotten a wake up call but they're gonna have to do some serious ass-kissing to all of those manufacturers that they screwed over a couple years back.

If you like that little Unreal Tournament game you might want to grab that new Assault Bonus Pack that just came out a couple of days ago. A few of the designers over at Epic games thought that this was really impressive and they seem to think that this guy improved upon the original Assault gametype. I've been playing it for most of tonight and it's a hell of a lot of fun. Most of these maps are a lot more fun to play than even the ones that were released with the game! Grab it Here... I think that we're gonna see a lot of servers running it pretty soon.

Monkey Boy from the PVK Half Life mod has agreed to an email interview. Will be posting it in the next few days, as soon as he gets back to me.

Will be turning the FRAGtopia Just 4 Fun Tribes server into a dedicated Starwars TC server for testing, most likely today. Don't have the Beta? Talk to Machine and get it. Wow. I haven't had this much fun playing a mod for quite some time. They've done some really nice work on it. It does require some work, naturally as it's still a Beta.. But damn it's fun. I've been hosting a listen server in the evenings and messing around. Nothing quite like seeing a Sandperson sniper take out a Rebel Trooper on Hoth I tell yah. And hey, you'll never see this in any of the movies.

More news in a bit.

Quickly, back to the Maraudercave!

Machine just let me know about a quick interview that Gamespy did with him regarding Tribes 2 mods. In it he reveals his dark plans for Tribes 2, and indeed the world. Check it out!

Despite the fact that their web site appears to be currently down, the Half Life paintball Mod team has made something that is actually fun to play, unlike the actual paintball games out there, which all suck ass. In fact, Xtreme Paintbrawl is by Headgames. No more need be said about it. It's not quite as polished as the Quake II mod I saw a little while ago, but hey, it's better than a good kick in the shins.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if Vikings, Knights and Pirates were all fighting over chests of gold? Yeah, that's always been one of my big questions in life as well. Glad we think alike... WELL WONDER NO MORE YOUNG MAN!! Go here and read all about an interesting and inovative new Half Life mod with three completely different teams. Makes for some extremely interesting gameplay. :)

Ever heard of Planetside? (The game, not the porn movie.) I can't even remember how I found it, but I'm glad I did. The whole premise of this thing is a first person shooter in a massively multiplayer world. It's being developed by Verdant, the team of course behind the nefarious evil time stealer known as Evercrack. God does it ever look sweet. Someone may finally be getting my $15/month. :)

You know, I always hate when I have to kill someone and just don't have the time to dispose of the body, or any inconvient witnesses. If you're having the same problem, Hormone has the solution! Cadaver Incorporated is there for you, for all your corpse removal needs. :)

I posted that rant yesterday from Pestcontrol of the Iron Knights. Forgot to post a link to their sweet, sweet website. Check it out, one of the most professional looking clan sites I've ever seen.

I'm not sure WTF these guys are going on about. But it's something about a kid.. and a computer.. Or maybe a knife? Or a cat? I dunno. Let me know if you understand this.

Unless you've been living under a really, really heavy rock you are aware that Counter-Strike 1.0 is out at long last. New models, some new weapons. Looks good to me, but almost everyone I know who plays CS hardcore can't stand it....... If you have any opinions, let me know and I'll post 'em in here in the news.

Not sure who sent me this. Nothing to do with gaming, but it's funny as hell and answers the question we've all wondered.... Which Backstreet Boy is gay?

Heh. I'm sure we've all killed a few PCs in our day... Especially Dman, who seems to get that little gleam in his eye everytime a hammer and a computer are together in his vicinity. This guy has killed quite a few in some rather interesting ways. Good read. :) In other related news, here's 102 ways to kill a computer. Hah! Dansdata is also ready to hook you up with all the vital information you need to know when preparing to murder your bug ridden little buddy.

And remember kids! If TV and video games have taught us one thing, it's that destroying things is fun. After all.. If God had REALLY meant guys to be creative, he'd have made it more fun to build a computer than to beat the bejesus out of it with a baseball bat, right?!?

OK, got really busy yesterday. :) Here's all the news I've been saving up. This is gonna be a big one, chock full of linky goodness.

I've lately been wondering why I've been getting so god damned much spam ICQ. You can likely thank these bastards. Nice that people go out of their way to write utilities that are used to spam mail and torment other people. Very generous of them, they must be a riot at parties.

Taking a little look at Mankind. Never heard of this game before, but it looks pretty good. It's a massively multiplayer strategy game. These guys even have a service where, if you are about to be attacked they'll send a message to your mobile phone. :) Wow.

Always been secretly proud of that Kcar you drive? Think that Kcar drivers are changing the world to be a better place? Goshwin does. :)

We love Machine! He's the man. Hooked us up with the Starwars TC Beta a few days ago. Finally felt well enough to start playing this morning..... That's brisk baby! I'm all impressed. :)

Started playing Sacrifice (Finally) Wow. Buy it. This game is really sweet.

More in a bit, playing Starwars.

Allrighty! I'm back from the dead! (Booyah!)

First off my appologies guys. I've had a headache, fever and terrible cold since Tuesday. Needless to say I haven't really felt like my normally bubbly self, and so have posted nothing. Won't happen again I hope. Here's some news, and now Dman can stop bothering me. :)

Thanks to Pestcontrol of the Ironknights for his permission to repost his rant "Clanners vs. Gamers" An excellent commentary on honor in gaming, and sticking with your buddies. Really enjoyed this one.

More news a little later today, late for work.

Marauder out..... For now.

Working on a few things today. A huge download, the details of which will never be revealed.... A "Computers of the past" type write up, and a review of Rune. Much news will ensue as well. Be patient grasshopper.

Since we're apparently on a news reporting streak, and some dialup guys are starting to complain about the size of the main page, I'll be archiving every 10-15 days rather than once a month.

Marauder out. For now.

praetorian (click to icq me); 10:35 pm

just thought i'd poke my head in with a thought: icq is owned by aol.

now, i'm just remembering that when i first heard of icq some years back, it was a no-nonsense, stripped down instant messenger- #1 on a slimware list i frequented, and at a paltry 2.3 megabyte download, was the answer to aol's bloatware of an instant messanger.

now, granted, broadband internet access grows daily across the net and download sizes aren't as large a concern anymore, but as a user of icq2000b, i find myself somewhat bedazzled by all of its features, most of which i find useless. the right-click (or left-click menu for llamas) context menu is, in advanced mode, is a whopping nineteen lines long, full of options i just don't use on a regular basis- and the whole program is becoming like that. now, i'm the last person who will ever discredit a program for providing options, but if this software is supposedly designed to be running on my computer all the time, i want it to be little, to the point, and not a resource or bandwidth hog. it takes at least three or four times as long to load (on my athlon 700 with 128 megs ram) as does microsoft outlook 2000- and microsoft is not known for their speedy and efficient programming.. if icq continues to develop as it has, adding admittedly powerful features, many of which i do use and appreciate (especially the outlook 2000 integration), my only advice is that it starts giving some choice to the user; a customizable setup that will allow to choose if i want to have "sms messaging capability" and similar features which drag down the load time a push up the resource requirements.

don't forget your roots, icq- the gamers who drove you into mainstream use do not need a bloated app hogging their resources and bandwidth.

Yet again, I'm forced to add Shaw Cable to the list of people who can just kiss my ass. I hate them so much it's... well... It's beyond mear hatred really.... . It's now into the "plant fire ants in their underwear drawer, then stand back, laugh and spray them with honey" type of anger. You know...... It's the type of anger that can only be experienced when one is dealing with the truly stupid and apathetic.

I'm getting 15-20% packet loss to their DNS server, and 25% to my own god damned Tribes server. I'm 5 hops away from it (The first being my own machine) You have no idea how frustrating that is, when I'm 1km from the server, and I have PL out the wazzoo. Nothing more annoying than hearing Shaw give me the "Well it's a known issue. But again we're waaaaaaay to fucking stupid to have any idea what's going on, or how to fix it.. and we've only had 3 months to work on it. Give us time!" Well DUH. Damn it. Actually, damn them. Grrrrr. So much PL right now I can't even upload this news update. I go now to destroy them, and perhaps their families just in case. (You just never know after all.)

Found the Tao of Tribes when I was out wandering about the Internet like a newbie on Rollercoaster. This is just too funny. Their home site is also pretty neat. Llamasrus is under construction, but it looks like Kissmyascii is doing a good job so far!

I take back some of the things I said about Rune. You actually do get to quaff mead.... Still no wenching though..... but hey, 1 outta 2 ain't bad!

It's 1am, and I am now going to bed, to dream about all the nasty things that happen to tech support reps who have no clue what's sneaking up behind their cubicle..........

Marauder out.

Hah. Looks like Tomb Raider is FINALLY getting a graphics update after about a thousand years in the gaming world. (Thank God!) Check out this, this and this. I notice she's also had a breast reduction for the next gen console games. Must have gotten sick of all the letters from pre-pubescent geeks and the back pain. :) Thanks to Daily Radar for the shots.

Poking around the Infogrames, in the land of the devious frenchmen... They've announced Duke Nukem: Land of the babes for the Playstation. Now... Correct me if I'm wrong, but there have been about 50 Duke titles for consoles... Yet nothing lately for the PC, where it all began..... Duke Nukem Forever seems to be taking just that..... Is it possible that the big guy has forgotten his true roots? Is it time for all us PC users to begin a letter writing campaign to 3D Realms?

Welp, Darksiege just finished Elite Force. His review? "It sucked. Not a Star Trek episode. They were stretching for the plot." Apparently the game is of the old school "Give the player some guns & some health, then throw huge numbers of monsters on it." Bascially He feels that the game is almost like a quake 3 mod with a wacked out story line. Oh well. Looked so good initially...... But remeber.... It doesn't matter... It's got curved surfaces. (Shesh)

He's still playing Deus Ex after more than a month. :) You might want to play that instead.

Gamespot has posted the 15 Most Influential Games of all time. I have yet to read the article, but I'd put Wolfenstien, Quake I, Half Life & pong on the list. Check it out!

Now this is really interesting gaming news. I like to drop by Digital Anvil's website occasionally just to see what they're up to these days. (I mean hey! The Roberts made Wing Commander... Good idea to check up on them from time to time. :) They also have one of the coolest looking logos & website in existence. Seems that Microsoft has decided not to publish their upcoming RTS, Conquest: Frontier Wars. Haven't been able to get any comments at to why this happened so far. It's interesting though, the press release from DA claims the the game is "several weeks" from completion... Why the hell would MS drop a game so close to completion? Seems a little odd to me. They hyped it at E3.. Now they abandon it. Strange. I also find it strange that a game so close to being finished has so few screenshots on their site.. This is the only page I could find on Microsoft's gaming site that had anything to do with the game. Not terribly informative, as per usual Microsoft. :) I would leave DA's press officer a question, but the link on their contacts page is not working. Grrr......

I did manage to find a preview of Conquest on Gamespot... Man... Pretty decent looking game, and it sounds quite interesting. We'll have to see if anyone picks the game up. Fortunately for DA they reserve the intellectual rights on all products they create, so they can go to another publisher if MS turns them down.

In other news of the evil empire, they've assimilated the Oddworld Franchise. Naturally Microsoft is scurrying around like a rat behind the baseboards of Gamedom, trying to talk folks into releasing AA games exclusively for the Xbox. I think Penny-Arcade says it best, along with one of my favorite quotes from Krusty the Klown "They backed a dumptruck full of money up to my house! Oh god, I'm not made of stone!!!!!" *collapses in tears*

It will be very interesting to see how the Xbox stacks up against the PS2, and whatever else is out at the time of it's release. Screenshots and a few little graphics demos are all very well and fine, but it's the product at the end that pays the Bill..... er... I mean BILLS. Yes.. Pays the bills.

Still working on my little review of Rune. If you are playing this game, make damned sure you install the patch or one of the levels is unbeatable. One of the doors simply won't open most of the time! I wandered for hours... then installed the patch.. Then had to restart the level (Still doesn't work unless you restart the map...... Argh!) Turned out it was a 5 minute map, tops. Until the review is done, here's another tasty screenie for your viewing pleasure.

Creative Labs has launched a gaming site! :) I wub these guys... Sorta. Nice looking site, a bit of interesting news going on.... Most of it slanted towards EAX and other Creative stuff naturally..... But starting to look OK.......They've got an interview up there with Gooseman of Counter-Strike fame. Two pages of... Well... Nothing much actually.

I was thinking about my Mac comment yesterday, when I asked if anyone could name 2 hardcore game players who own Apples... I'm changing the question slightly... Does anyone know ANY, and guys who are "hardcore" Myst or Riven players do NOT count.

Marauder out.

Funny little article over at CNN about the origins of Mac Gaming. These guys actually refer to porting a game from the PC to Mac as "Bringing it over from the Dark Side to the Light." Maybe they should have actually said "Dark Side to the Grape." or "...Tangarine side." or something like that. :) Shesh. Mac guys. It's kinda like watching ants run around in a little maze really. Can anyone name 2 or more hardcore gamers who own Macs?

Poking around the console world (Xbox and all yah know.) and stumbled across THIS. These guys are wondering if perhaps Microsoft will be assimilating Sega next... Interesting read... Apparently Sega is screwed large...Poor Rune with his Dreamcast.....

Got a response from Stevie "Killcreek" Case regarding the argument I had with Mr. Unnamed about her sleeping her way into the gaming industry.

My letter:

Heya. Having a argument with a friend of mine yesterday.

He claims that you must have slept your way into the gaming industry. I argued that no, while you are a major babe, you seem to have a huge interest in the industry and have talent and that it's unfair to assume any attractive woman who's doing well is "sleeping with the boss."

Any comments I can direct towards my rather belligerent yet lovable friend? :)

Stevie's reply:

Hah, well, no official comments.

Your friend is welcome to read my FAQ if he wants more info on my past work experience etc. :) I will say that I have worked my ass off thus far, and I don't plan to stop anytime soon. It's too bad people always jump to negative conclusions, eh?

-stevie

Stevie "KillCreek" Case

http://www.stevana.com

L3v3l D3516n3r, t34m X 10n 5t0rm

So there. :)

I'm guessing that one of the guys over at Penny-Arcade had the same initial thought when they heard that Quake III was available on the Dreamcast... and that thought was... BURN IT! BURN IT NOW!.

Just got an ICQ from my good friend Dman. Seems he got his ass published on MP3.com. Go download the tune and make him some money. :) It's a sweet trance/hard sounding track.

Whahahahaha... Seems that Uri Geller is suing Nintendo for turning him into a Pokemon character who runs around giving people headaches. Interestingly enough, the real Uri tends to give me headaches with his bitching. I personally volunteer here and now to become a Pokemon character: Mara'uder. Carries an ELF gun and runs around killing people with higher ping than he. Booyah baby!

Argh. That idiot Senator Lieberman is up to his evil tricks again. Read about his daring and courageous crusade against the evils that permeate our society HERE. Nothing like a little do-gooing to make me feel ill.

Well, tried Blair Witch 1 yesterday. Lost interest the second I lost my sound, which was about 10 seconds into the demo. Du'oh. Interestingly enough, the game is based on Nocturne and you in fact play an agent from "Spookhouse" Right off the get go I got attacked by THIS thing. Not sure what it is, but man... it's bigger & nastier looking than Rosie O' Donnell when you're between her and a bucket of icecream. Needless to say I hadn't bothered to read the FAQ, so.. Ummm. As you can see I'm bitching about not having a gun. Very bad. I'll try this thing out again today. Have to crank the gama on my video card from Windows to see anything though. Grrrrrrrr..... Oh, and it only goes to 640x480. Grr again. I dunno if I'll like this game or not. I wasn't a huge Nocturne fan. It was OK, not great... And a monster killin' game just isn't great unless your character declares "Thiiiiiisss is my BOOMSTICK!" or other evil dead/Ash remarks. But we'll see.

Rumors are circulating that all you bastards who are on the Tribes 2 beta team should be getting your discs late next week sometime. I hope you all choke on them. (Not that I'm bitter or anything.)

While on the subject of Tribes 2 (Hmmmmm......... Tribes 2!) Firing Squad has posted an Interview with Dave G from the dev team. Check it out, very cool, lots of gorgeous screenshots. They even have a screenshot of my beloved ELF gun going into the action... Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.... I dunno though, I hope they severely limit the ELF's range. I've been messing around on some Base+ servers lately, and the ELF gun requires no skill whatsoever to use. Complete newbie gun. Personally I like it the way it is now. No one uses it, because they are all fools. I LOVE it. Such a great weapon. :)

It's been a while since we're heard from Iceman. Apparently the forces of nVidia did indeed free him from his Voodoo 3 crackhouse, and he's been happily gaming ever since. :) Last night though, I received THIS from him. Wow. That's quite a heatsink they've got strapped onto that bad boy. :) And look! 'Thing" is working on this one.

nVidia (Speaking of the devil) has a few new demos posted on their site for those of use who wield the blessed GeForce in the battle against evil. Download 'em HERE. My fav new one has gotta be the Toy Soldiers. Wow.

Woops! Forgot to upload some of the files from yesterday's news. Here again are movies 1 & 2 from the hard drive shooting incident at Windrivers. Sorry about that everyone, thanks to Dopper for catching the error, my bad.

A few other sites worthy of note in from Dopp. (Geez he's a busy guy eh??)

THESE fellahs have some interesting information and files/tutorials for tweaking out your GeForce card. Very nice.

Also from the Doppmiester: Interkodex has a cool little utility to convert BMP & JPG files over into HTML, and it works mint! The files are a little big, but hey. Check out the FRAGtopia logo converted. Warning, it's 1.5 megs of text. :)

A few people have been complaining that some of their games (Notably Quake III) stutter when using a GeForce card. Dayton's may have the answer you've been looking for, read up on it. :)

Dop is also thinking of putting up a site dedicated to tweaking out your games & system for optimal gaming goodness and performance. Think it'd be interesting, or wanna help out? Email him.

From Hormone comes something that's kind of a game....Yet not really.. It's an online Reflex Tester. Kinda funky, and you just keep doing it..... Stupid little toys. My best time was .16 and I cheated... You?

Also from Hormcentral comes a story about a boy and his dog... or... well.. Something. :) I thought it was pretty amusing anyhows.

Really need the money for that new NV20 when it comes out? The Chinese government just might be able to find it in your HEART to help you out! Yech. What's the matter with these people?

DaLurker was once again lurking around HardOCP and took THIS thread by surprise on their message board.... I know the feeling, I likely couldn't explain something like that to my folks either. :)

Just talking to Playafly187 from Project 1Ghz and he just posted a review of a frickin' sweet NEON package for your tower. Kingpin has gotta get himself one of these toys! Man that's just plain cool.

Still playing Rune. Still enjoying it. Doing up a quick review later today or tomorrow hopefully with some nice screenshots.

Anyhows, I have to get to work. Thanks to everyone who's helping us out my sending me news, and nice comments. :) Really appreciate it guys!

Oh, sorry about the speeeling yesterday. :) I forgot to run my checker before I uploaded the news. Ahh well. :) Pobody's nerfect.

Marauder out.

Thanks to Dman, we now know what happens when the guys over at Windrivers blow the hell out of a hard drive with a .22 rifle. That's it guys! Work out those frustrations the non-violent way! Part1 Part2. Heh. Nothing like a little pointless violence to get those computer related angers cleared up!

From iLL Techneeqs comes one wacky eBay auction. Don't know if it's actually serious or not, but if it is THESE guys really need lives. Thanks iLL. :)

Just out looking around yesterday and I drunkenly stumbled across Bud's Troubleshooter. It's a cool little site that contains a useful aray of information on troubleshooting Windows 95/98 problems. Well worth the read.

Gee. The recording industry was pissed off about Napster? Checked out Scour Exchange yet? This bad boy doesn't just work with MP3s, it works with anything as near as I can tell....Excellent.... :) Right now there are over 140,000 people online using it, according to their page.

Dopper, the mad firstmouse+ hermit sends over a sweet link. Case-Mods not only builds custom cases, they also have some amazing looking mods other people have done.

Oh hay! Was just reading Lethal Doses & Penny-Arcade and they reminded me.. Did anyone actually rush out to buy a Praystation 2? Was talking to Horm on release day.. Apparently there were 10 arrests in his area because of PS2 assaults.... I guess it's true.. Video games DO indeed cause violence!

PS2 Comics: LD1 LD2 PA1 PA2

Heh. Love those guys.

A little later today I'll be posting some screenshots from Red Leader.... To say the least, this guy just owns in Counter-Strike. You'll think he's cheating from the screenies, but I've seen him play. He's not cheating, he's just too good at CS....... God I hate him so much.

Was cruising around on Windrivers, downloading new software for those too foolish to download it for themselves when I found a perfect example of the new "Wearable" PC crazy that's sweeping the nation. Don't have a billion dollars to spend on such gadgets? THIS is the answer! A wearable PC that's affordable, and best of all you can make it yourself!

Hmmmmmm... Next version of Windows..... About.com has posted a preview/quick look at the next incarnation of the Windows OS, code named "Whistler" (MS Whistling past the Linux graveyard perhaps? :) Read it HERE. Sound like they're finally coming out with a consumer version of NT, and stopping this silliness of having two completely different OSs in their stable. Of course, they've been promising to do this for a very, very long time. Windows ME was never supposed to have existed in the first place.. Neither was Windows 98 or 98SE. Ahhhhhh well. It'll be interesting to see how they do it, and if it doesn't suck. Release is scheduled for late 2001, so we have lots of time to throw more rocks at Bill & crew before then.

I'm so happy. Other than those wierd hard drive errors that kept erasing my WINNT/SYSTEM folder everytime I moved the machine, (Bad hdd....BAD! NO COOKIE!) my box hasn't crashed since I installed Windows 2000 on it 30 days ago today. Very nice, VERY stable (My Win98 had developed some very, very strange DirectX errors that it was unable to recover from, and as usual were completely unrepairable without a format.) I haven't had any Photoshop or Dreamweaver hangs... In fact, the machine hasn't hung period. So nice to have stability for a change. If you've not tried 2000 yet, screw ME. Go get 2000! We've been having many reported issues with ME, and none with 2000.

If you recall, I was bitching a few months back when I first installed Windows 2000 that it kept blowing my machine up. At the time I was running an Athlon 700, and had tried multiple motherboards, videocards, memory combos... And still Windows 2000 blew up. I actually don't know anyone who got it working right and stable for long periods of time on an Athlon system. I also was having issues running 3Dmark 2000. Under the new Thunderbird 800 CPU & ASUS K7A mobo..... Everything works great! (Mind you under W2K my score went from 6311 to around 2400... Shesh...) I think AMD & VIA finally got their odd little voltage & compatibility issues all worked out, and everything seems to be good and holy. I can finally start recomending their CPUs to people who are not hardcare gamers & tweakers.

Snagged a copy of DirectX8, release candidate 1 from Reactor Critical last night. Acording to these guys there will be no next release candidate. just the final version. A beta tester reported a bug, and MS sent him back a message that it was too late to fix it for release. :) Typical MS, eh? They will however fix it later. It's likely a "Setfiretothecomputer" bug too.

RC has also posted a really good comparison/review of all the major gaming graphics chipsets on the market today. Read it HERE. It's a long article, and very in depth, so read it when you have some time on your hands. :)

I've noticed lately a very annoying habit that many news sites are developing.... When I see thumbnails comparing two different features (Ex. S3TC on/off, 16/32 bit color) I'd REALLY like to be able to click on the comparison image and bring it up full screen (1024x768 at least) to get a clearer look at what they're discussing. You can't make out fine details in low res images. Duh.

Got me a notice in my email from Shiny about Sacrifice going gold.... Actually it was more along the lines of a tiny note that it had gone gold, and 100 lines of bragging. :) Check it OUT.

It's a little late for Halloween, but Kingpin just sent me THIS example of why you should never let your pumpkin into the liquor cabinet. :)

Oh yeah, I guess since I mentioned Ragnar in the datebar I really should post my Rune news. :) Get it. It's a sweet game. You get to see HELL, and other lovely locales. Odd enough, despite the fact that Ragnar is a big ass warrior type, this game does not appear to contain any wenching or quaffing. Very disapointing. Other than these low points, it's a sweet, sweet game.

Welp, enough for this morning.

Marauder out.

You know, it's kinda funny. I know guys on dialup who would gladly sell their souls to Microsoft just to get high speed internet and pings below the cruising altitude of the space shuttle. Our good friend, and apparent mental case, Skeezix just moved AWAY from high speed internet and into the country.... His justification? He doesn't have to pay rent where he's moved to.

Now.. I dunno here guys. I'd rather move into a cardboard box with my computer to keep me warm, as long as it had cable access than move somewhere where there is no high speed. And he's a QUAKE player man!!!! He's so dead. I already warnded him that he'll likely wind up killing himself in despair, but he just wouldn't listen. Despite my claims that this obviously was a sign of border line pychosis, the hospital refused to admit him either.

*sigh* He's doomed.

Well, downloading Blair Witch as we speak. @ 65 megs it better be worth every byte I'm transfering. Somehow I'm not holding my metaphorical breath.

Just on trusty Napster this morning downloading more illegal copyrig... I mean, sharing some of the legal songs I have on my hard drive with other people doing the same. I almost died when I read their new news post. Check it out.

"The Napster Community is, as you know, the largest and fastest growing community on the Internet, and we thank you for making that possible. We at Napster have just announced a strategic alliance with Bertelsmann, a globally respected media company and owner of BMG music. Together, we'll be working to make Napster even better. Over time, and as we gain further industry support, we'll work to transform Napster into a membership-based service that preserves the Napster experience. There will always be a free, promotional file-sharing element to Napster."

The Napster experiance? Hmmm. Lemme see. That's almost as funny as their disclaimer:

"Napster respects copyright law and expects our users to do the same. Unauthorized copying, distribution, modification, public display, or public performance of copyrighted works is an infringement of the copyright holders' rights. You should be aware that some MP3 files may have been created or distributed without copyright owner authorization. As a condition to your account with Napster, you agree that you will not use the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way. Napster will terminate the accounts of users who are repeat infringers of the copyrights, or other intellectual property rights, of others. "

Heh. These guys just kill me. You can just kinda see the Napster guy just off the screen doing the "Wink, Wink, say no more" thing. :)

Hmmm. What should Rune be next? :) Have to think about what to turn him into with my magical skillz.

Heh. Looks like some people are a little more gulliable than I thought. For those of you still wondering, YES.... The little "lawsuit" write up yesterday WAS a joke. However, if you have any spare pocket change, all donations to our legal funds can be made at any branch of the bank of Switzerland to the Marauder's Offshore Bank Account Charitable Fund. Please donate generously. You can make a difference in the life of someone who's got too much time on his hands. An NV20 for Marauder may just mean a key to heaven for you!

Got Rune? Damned good game so far (Other than I'm stuck on a very annoying looping part of the game which is pissing me off.) There's already a patch out for it which you may want to go GRAB. It fixes quite a few rather anoying and potentially game stopping bugs. I hate buggy games, but at least they're quick off the mark to release a fix.

Unlike some companies. (*cough*MS*cough*) Nice page, nice game.. Overall, Humanhead Studios has put a great deal into this game, and it shows.

From Darksiege and cronies comes a few rather amusing screenies from UT. One of these guys has a GeForce2, which sadly is plugged into a... a... (ready yourselves.) K6-2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Yech) I think it's having some voltage issues, as you can see from: UT-ACIDRIP & WHOAWHERESTHEFLOOR! Heh. Thanks guys.

Speaking of which, I just put up a new section under "Pics" for screenshots. If you have any cool screenshots, upload them and I'll get 'em posted for you. :)

Thanks to Lurker for THIS pic from Hard OCP..... Mcillegalopperation.... And would you like fries or a bluescreen with that sir?

Heh. I was checking out the hits on the site the other day. It's pretty obvious when the big party was when you look at the hits CHART for the last year. :) I'm pretty happy tho, we're starting to get more hits every month. Looks like people are actually interested in our little rantings and ravings here. Thanks guys. :)

Found a poll over at Gamespy yesterday that is, to say the least, rather amusing. Would you rather have another Tribes 2 delay, or have a metor hit the earth and kill everyone? Go VOTE, it's about 50-50 so far. Needless to say, I've got my money on the rock.

I'm so happy. Rambus stock just took a massive header yesterday, and fell down a few flights of stairs, hitting the railing on each one. HAH! Hate those bastards.

Speaking of ION Storm, Having a bit of an argument with the ever belligerant yet always lovable <name deleted to protect the guilty> last night, about Stevie "Killcreek" Case. He thinks that she likely slept her way into the gaming industry, and I'd have to say she just seems to really like it and has some talent. What you all think? if you're not sure who Killcreek is, she did level design for Quake & Daikatana. She also happens to be a major babe. Her page is HERE. Hehe. John Romero's "Planet Romero" page is HERE if you care to view it. :)

Hey! I got published on The Bench. I'm so proud of myself! :) Check IT out!

Hmmmm. THESE guys over at Project 1gz are going to need a new name soon.... Project 1gz+? Project FasterthanB4?

Arkmax Cartoons are after my own tiny little heart with THIS cartoon. Viva la anti-spam!

Anyhows, got some more stuff but I'll save it for later today. :)

Marauder out.

Ohhhhhhhh.. AMD is just deeeead sexxxy! DDRAM GOOD! RDRAM BAD! The new AMD chipsets to support DDRAM have been released and is good for launch! I can hardly wait to see how these bad boys perform with actual 200mhz FSBs! Intel naturally is sticking to that crap RDRAM thing they suckered themselves into pushing. Woops!

"Benchmark tests published today indicate that DDR memory does in fact provide a performance advantage over other Athlon PCs and Pentium III computers equipped with Rambus memory. While estimates vary, the switch to the fastest form of DDR gives about a 10 percent boost in power."

Hahehh. Stupid Intel. Doomed themselves they have. Yyyyes. Heheh. Always their eyes on the future. How they could screw people into using RDRAM. Never on where they were.... What they were doing!?!? HMMMMM!?!?!??!?!?!

News fresh in from Wienerboy high! Wondering why the hell you'd ever give up your much beloved and wonderfully stable Windows OS. (In case you were wondering, that's an example of a little something called "sarcasm".) Linuxgames has the answers... "'Cause even penguins wanna have fun." Check it out!

HERE, as promised is the new Sacrifice movie. (65 meg!) Oh. My. God. And HERE is an example of the editor that ships with the game. WOOT! :) I am so cranked about this one.

Hey! More Machine related news! :) Machine redid his STARWARS site. Check it out now, the funksoul..... er...... never mind.

A few more things a little later today....... For now,. back to the workcave! HAH HAH!

Oh yeah, in honor of this evil time of year, and in the spirit of evil.... I have decided to turn Rune into a pumpkin. It's unfortunate, but you know, if you wanna piss off Rune you gotta break a few eggs. Or... Something like that. You get the idea I'm sure. :) The most wonderful thing about it is that Rune's cable is down (Damned Rogers!) and so he can't complain or fight back... Now THAT'S evil for yah! MMMWWWAHAHAHHAH!!!!!

Talking to Machine today, he's informed me that the second Alpha release of the Starwars TC for Tribes will be ready to go in a few days... And they've added more stuff! Woohoo! :)

It's almost time for Halloween, and I'm so excited!

Oh wait. No... I'm not.. I'm too big for trick r' treating, and so my favorite evil holiday has turned into just another day at the ranch. Oh well. So much for that.

Kingpin, myself & the crew were out yesterday playing paintball at Wasagabeach Paintball Adventures yet again, and so there were no news updates. Hope I didn't break too many hearts. :) SO! Today's adventures are going to be long and very linkalicious. Enjoy

Obviously THIS guy really doesn't like l33t too darned much. Thanks to Team Shun for the link.

Good news everyone! Apparently, according to UBI Soft we speak French in Canada. Now, we all know that this is pas true. Go HERE and tell them differently. Kingpin has just informed me that this is likely because of Quebec's Nazilike language laws, which prohit a Qweeebec company from having a web site primarily in English. Pretty cute, god I hate those guys. Hate them so much.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into gaaming... Sharkygames brings us a LIST of the most vile and depressing crap to pass into gaming history this year. Read it and cry like a girl.

Thanks to Deadeye I'm able to run Amiga software on my PC. Thanks bud. :) The links of goodness: The Emulators and software. More Software. Warlock's Demos Archive. (WOOHOO!) Never heard of an Amiga? An Amiga was the first really cool personal computer ever. In my opinion, the Amiga was the greatest computer ever made. It would take PCs roughly 10 years to get to the same stage as the Amiga! (What with the true multi tasking on a 8 Mhz processor! Digital 4 channel sound! etc etc.) Pretty sweet. Download the demos and check them out. And remember that most of them were coded 10 years ago.Wow. History is damned impressive in some cases.

Speaking of the Amiga, they're BAAAAAAACCCCKKKKKKK. I'm so excited! Only problem is, the Amiga likely won't be the technological renessance that it was in 1985. None the less, I can hardly wait to get my hands on one and check it out. I even found a SCREENSHOT from the new OS.

I have a few more things to post, but it'll have to wait. Kingpin and I are sitting around reminising about the good 'ol days.. Amigas... c64s.... And of course our beloved PCs.... Back in a bit.

Marauder out.

Well, I'm freezing today, and my fingers don't type so well when they're cold. So! Lets keep this short and to the point.

First off, it appears that some hackers broke into Microsoft's network and made MS their little bitch for 3 months before the breach was detected. Sucks to me MS, and maybe they should get themselves a real OS to run their servers on. Read all about it HERE, laugh some more HERE. Hard to feel sorry for the cocky bastards, isn't it?

Ever heard of Gunman from Sierra? No? Me neither. I did find some cool SCREENSHOTs from it tho. Wow. Check it out! Lookin' buff.

We got props on Planetstarsiege & Tribalwar yesterday for the interview with Machine. Woot! :) Haven't read the review yet? Read IT!

Starting to find my MS Intelimouse Optical a bit of a pain in the ass. I think it's because I have big clunky hands that it's so damned slippery when I start to get into intense battles... So I'm trying out the Logitech Gaming mouse.... We'll see how it works. Right now I'm getting owned by all the newbies on our server.. Grrrrrrrr..

More posts in a while, back to work for now!

Allrighty! The interview is done, the screenshots have at last rolled in. Introducing, for your viewing (And drooling) pleasure, FRAGtopia is proud to present an exclusive interview w. screenshots from the upcoming very, very sweet (As in Pamela Anderson sweet) total conversion for Tribes based on the Starwars Universe. The goodness is right HERE. Woot! :)

We had a problem a few days ago with a little fucker named NoFix. Perhaps you've heard of him? This idiot's idea of a good time is to run around attacking Tribes servers. Charming. He seems to get a huge kick out of causing servers to reset, or filling them up with fake players so that no one can play. I got a tracert on the little bastard and called his ISP. UUNET refuses to do anything about it, or even look into it. In fact, they're pretty ignorant about the whole thing, and their "abuse" rep (I guess I was taking him away from his porn downloads or something) was pretty ignorant. So needless to say I'm pretty pissed and think they are complete assholes. Not happy at all. I've asked our ISP to check into it. I'd really like to nail this little jerk, he's been causing so many problems for server admins.

Remember my little rant on letting Classic Games Die? Remember the Pacman comment? It seems that Hasbro (A.K.A. "The Gaming Borg") has just put out THIS. I will be playing it tomorrow. If it is crap I swear to god they'll regret ever having an email in-box.

Anyhows, more tasty news later in the day. Right now I'm off to pimp up our little interview. ;)

Marauder out!

Hey all, just setting up the hosting for the Starwars TC on our server. He should be online (Under the hosted button over there <====) in the next few days.

Hormone sent me Skifree, a sweet map for Tribes. Bascially it's a huge skiiing map. Check it out, lots of racing fun. The main site is HERE, download the file HERE. It gets old fast, but it's cool to mess with.

I can't remember who sent me THIS... But.. Well... I gotta get me one. :)

From that music link I posted a few days ago comes Electric Fun Stuff! Cool site, and their music is just killer, and game related.. Which makes it just that much better. Download the music here: (They're site is slow as hell. Yesh. I've mirrored them.)

Have you seen my corpse? (Everquest parody)

The next big thing (Game developers. Funny 'cause it's true!) My fav of the lot.

Sim-Hilarities (Well duh. It's the Sims.)

Download and enjoy.

More links in a bit. Sorry for the lack of wonderful humor, but I just don't feel like posting huge amount today. :)