Sob. It's not fair. I'm going to start going into fits if some of these games don't get released soon. You know the ones. Halo... Tribes 2..... Sacrifice. More tasty, savory screenshots have been posted.

Sacrifice money shots HERE. The amazing thing is that some of these screenshots are in true 3D. If you have quicktime, you can actually rotate around inside the screenshot? Isn't that just the damndest thing? The main sacrifice site has undergone a renovation as well. Pretty darned buff I'm thinking.

New Tribes 2 movie HERE, courtesy of Tribal War. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....................

Speaking of Tribalwar, they've apparently been having hacker problems. If anyone knows who this little puke is:

A) Break his knees for him.

B) Send an email over to Tribalwar and turn the bitch in.

Hate guys who do this sort of thing. Need to have their teeth kicked in. And not in a nice way either.

Gamespy has posted an interview with Dave Georgeson, Producer of Tribes 2 that answers quite a few of the questions I've been having. Sounds like they're going to be adding quite a bit of stuff that makes me giggle like a little schoolgirl on Iceman's crack, and greatly appeals to my sneaky, campy, snipey nature. Cloaking pack good. Shock lance good. Underwater battles good. Tribes 2 very good. Interview good.

Gotta tell you guys. I've been playing Tribes avidly since 2 days after it was released. It's still a damned good game now, and I'm so pumped over Tribes 2 I can hardly believe it. I can't think of any other game I've been so interested in. :) My list right now runs this way: Tribes 2 (Way out in front), Team Fortress 2. Sacrifice & Halo are tied for third. Mainly I'm looking forward to getting my hot little hands on that sniper rifle in Halo and making sweet, sweet love to it on a hill top somewhere. :))

And remember kids, despite our constant references to crack.. Winners don't do drugs! (Well, unless you're a proffessional athlete..... Or maybe a top executive.... or....... Uhhhhhhhh... Never mind.)

HEY! Our good friend Flagg has done a revamp of Tribes-Universe. Check it out, so very, very sweet! Guys a freakin' web design Picaso. Well, I guess maybe a Rembrandt. (If he was Picaso his Bioderm logo would have 3 heads. :)

Site's starting to look pretty good in it's new configuration I think. A little more polished and high tech. The current site is 1/2 new and 1/2 old... So it clashes sometimes. :) Should be done in a few days.

Penny-Arcade has poked fun at The Registrars, who after their wonderful "database" error took our website down for a few days may just be my fav biatches for a while.

Was posting a letter to Tycho over at PA about it (Hey, I'll rant to anyone who's Outlook doesn't yet automatically delete my incomings!) I was amused by my ranting so here it is: (Read it, and know that YES! Customer service is indeed alive, well, and living in the Registrars' pants.)

"Speaking of the Registrars, those idiots had a database errors a week ago that took my ranting, ravings, and incoherent mumblings offline for 3-4 days.

Now, while many of the people out there (Mostly the Mac guys, and prehaps John Romero) would view this as mearly the work of God and "the right thing to have happened" I was somewhat pissed off. SO! I wrote away.

Here's the letter.

Part 1:

We aplogize for the sudden change, our database malfunctioned and updated a lot of domain names to our dns servers. Please email us the dns servers and IPs, so that we can make the proper update.

(Bitches. Free advert for them, courtesy of everyone who went to my sites. Grrrrrrrrrr) I figured maybe they'd do something nice for me, you know for messing us up for a few days... Did they? Oh yes! They certainly offered to move the earth and moon to make sure I was happy with thier services!

Part 2:

Dear Sir, We would be happy to send you a Registrars.com T-shirt for your enjoyment! Please email us with your mailing address and specify the size(XL or Large).

Yes! That's right! A fucking Tshirt! Oh my god! Their database "malfunctions" (No backups?!?) and takes my web site down for days and I get offered a TSHIRT!?!?!?!?!?!?! If this was a site I relied on to life I'd offer them a damned lawsuite to go with that Tshirt.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......... Nice to know customer service is alive, well, and living on mars.

/me boots Registrars in the head. These guys are going to be my fav "making fun of" biatches for a while I think. "

I've somehow got a bad taste in my mouth. This would be comparable to Nike making a pair of shoes that explode and put you out of work for a few days offering you a god damned Nike Tshirt (Ex. Advert) by way of compensation. Not happy with these guys at all.

I've been playing Counter Strike religiously for quite some time now. Just found that THESE guys have made the same type of thing for Unreal Tournament. The download is about 100 megs, so you dialup guys are all doomed, but for everyone else it looks SWEEEET!

And you can play with Bots to practise, which is VERY cool. That's one things that is sadly missing on CS. Learning CS when it involves getting gang raped online constantly just isn't much fun.

Anyhows, I'm downloading Strike Force right now to try it out. Will get back to you in a day or so with a quick review. Looking pretty damned buff tho.

Greetings everybody! I'm the mysterious Rune that Marauder sometimes talks (rants?) about and steals news from. Watch out or Marauder will make you his newsbitch! (and that's Mr. Newsbitch to you!) Now that that camper (literally) is gone for the weekend I'll bet that all sorts of cool news will go down. Take for example the whole Napster situation. They've just been granted a stay from having to shut down so all of you sleep-depraved music junkies can stop downloading madly now and get some rest. :-) In other news Nvidia has just posted another mouth-watering per-pixel OpenGL bump mapping demo. Click here if this kinda thing makes ya feel funky in all the right spots.

You guys like that Serious Sam demo? Gamespy says that G.O.D. (the game developers not the Big Guy upstairs) have just signed a deal with Croteam to publish Serious Sam. Check it out. Apparently they're working on a multiplayer demo of this bad boy which will be released in a couple of months. Don't know wtf Serious Sam is? Grab the demo here and find out! Kind of like Quake meets Doom meets Nvidia tech demo...

Allrighty lads and lasses! Fragtopia.com is now on it's own web server, so it should perform a little better than before. We also now have complete control over the site, whereas before it was somewhat limited. Next step is getting the mail server running properly so we can get all the @fragtopia.com email addys working.

Woohoo! Marauder's loose on the web with a new toy! Beware small children and furry animals!

I've posted a new section in the index, HOSTED. Have an interesting page you'd like hosted? Just let us know.

Got cooling? THIS guy has more fan than Dopper himself! My god! :)

Since about 50 people passed this onto me, and people seem to like Petitions, SIGN here. And then go download more music from Napster. :) Quick!

I'm going away for the weekend camping with Mrs. Marauder. So we'll not be back untill Monday morning. Cyah all then. :)

Well Duoh! Apparently gamers are having issues with their Voodoo5, wherein the V5 runs faster in Single GPU mode than in dual. That's gotta suck eh? 3Dfx isn't certain whats happening. Read the thread HERE.

In rather depressing news for everyone's MP3 collection, Napster has been ordered to "stop distributing copyrighted songs." CNN posted the story. Personally I think the recording industry are acting like idiots over the whole MP3 issue. They claim they'd like to "regulate" the technology. You may as well try to regulate smoke. Sorry guys, I'm thinking the battle for the online music standard (And distribution, heh.) was fought a while back, and guess what?

The recording dinosaurs completely missed the fight. Now they've shown up late for the battle and are desperately trying to stop something that happened months ago. Best of luck lads and lasses. :) They're also talking about designing their own proprietary format for distributing digital music. I think the problem with this is that:

A) They've been blabbing about it for months, and pulled this idea out of their asses when they were first in a huge panic about MP3s. They've never done anything to implement it as near as I can tell

B) I have this funny feeling that the 20+ million folks out there on the net who are currently using MP3s, FREE, are not going to be willing to pay for the music now and will continue to use MP3s. Pretty hard to stop 20 million peeps. Whatcha gonna do? Lock them all up? :)

C) I'd really wonder how much actual financial impact the whole thing has had on the recording industry as a whole? I'll have to check their financial statements for the last few years (If they have any) and see.

D) Like it'll take more than a few weeks before someone cracks whatever security they've spent all this money on to protect their downloadable songs. :) Du'oh!

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Very interesting.

Cool! Nothing quite like a Tribes 2 screensaver I always say. Grab this PUPPY if you actually use these things. :) Personally I hate screensavers.

Finally went out and bought a 3M mouse pad to go with my Microsoft Optimouse. What a difference! I don't like these mouse pads with a normal mouse. They wear too quickly and are too small. Nice with the optical tho. Now I'm sniping like a mofo in Tribes. :) (Just ask |WC|Brutalbiatch!)

I got prices and avaliablilty on Friday from our suppliers on the new ATI Radon cards. The 32 meg DDR will be $374.99, 64 meg card will be around $499.99 (CDN) Much as I love my GeFORCE 2, these guys beat it at higher resolutions. Impressive! Good show from ATI. At long last they actually have something that can compete in the high end gaming market. Now mind you, at the resolutions that most people run (1024x768, 1280x1024, the GeFORCE 2 kills the Radon.)It'll be interesting to see how they're next gen cards perform against the Voodoo 6000 & NV20 chipsets. Tom's Hardware has another review of the Radon & GeFORCE 2 (32 & 64 Meg) cards. Pretty decent read, check IT out.

Loki over at Arctechnica has done a "Stateof PC Hardware" update thats a really good read. Check it out HERE. Some bad news, mostly good things tho. :)

Huh. Just found a neat website I've never wandered across before. Tech Extreme has some very cool news, atricles and reviews. Take a peek!

Hmmmmmmmm.. nVidia just announced the Quadro2 yesterday.. Ummm. Yes, Mr. nVidia Sir? I really need one of your cards to test for a review for our.. Ummmmmmm.......3D development site.. Uhhh.. Yeah! That's it! And our 3D Game DEVELOPERS site! And maybe to demo for those guys over at.. uhhhhhhh.. Disney! Yeah! Disney! (Heh heh... Suckers....That'll fool 'em. Quake 3 at 1000 FPS, here we come!) :)

Sweet! From the House of Recovering crack adict Iceman comes news of THIS little device. A full size keyboard for your Palm. Pretty damned sweet, check it out!

More news a little later. For now I'm off for a swim, 'cause it's too damned hot not too! I'm just soooo happy we're back online. :)

Well WE'RE BACK finally. Damned Registrars. I'd be pretty pissed off if this was a site I'm actually making any money on. I'm still pretty annoyed. Their database apparently got screwed up, and so any hits on FRAGtopia.com or .net resulted in the person being directed to the Registrars server instead of ours. Apparently it affected a large number of sites. Sigh. I imagine if any large sites go down for 3 days they'd have a lawsuite on their hands. Lucky I'm a nice guy, eh?

Anyho! Read all the news I posted for the last three days. Some good stuff there, especially for you Tribes tourney players. You've likely heard by now that S3 has retired themselves. :)

Speaking of Tribes players! Have you checked out the Team Arial Combat mod yet? No? You're missing out on one sweet, sweet mod! It's a real riot, and it's one mod that actually forces you to play as a team. You have no choice. :) I'll be posting it on the |WC|/Fragtopia server tomorrow for everyone to try. Trust me, I hate mods.. This one is worth the play!!

Well, after all the years of being told that playing video games will turn you into the next Charles Manson, perhaps they're wrong! Read all about IT.

Got a note from the Registrars yesterday. It's their fault no-one can see the damned site. They're working on fixing their database... Maybe sometime soon people will be able to read my babbeling again.. And I won't feel so alone in the cruel, cruel universe. It'll take 24-36 hours for the change to take effect worldwide.. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........

On the good side of things, the Tribes server is now running right offa a T1, and it rocks. :) Check it out! |WC|/FRAGtopia Just 4 Fun. 209.135.105.57:28001. Guys from the Toronto to Barrie area should ping about 30-40. Now we can all be chainwhores. :)

]S3[Dopper sends us this one: Whoa. S3, one of the best Tribes out there has announced their retirement after playing both IE (Imperial Elite) and 5150 in the same day. The puts them in first on OGL as well as TeamPlay. Nice run guys. :) Man there's going to be some commentary on the Tribes sites about this one I think! Read Bluenose's post on TribalWar HERE. Good time to quit.. I mean, this close to the release of Tribes 2, when you're at the top..... There's no where to go but down.

Damned DNS server is still pointing in the wrong direction.. Grrrrrrrrrrr..............

You may remember I mentioned Startopia a little while ago as being a game that looks like it may have considerable potential. After I pestered Muckyfoot about it, Cathy Campos was nice enough to send me this here LINK. Check it out. Looking pretty nifty in my not-so-humble opinion!

The demo is out for Kiss: Psycho Circus. Get it HERE. Just downloading it now. Sounds like a retarded premise for a game, but you just never know. :) Graphics are pretty sweet. Lithtech engine good.

Apparently the PATCH is out for Daikatana. Wow. It's a huge freakin' patch that fixes tons of issues. Damned things 45 megs! Somehow I just don't think it'll make the game fun tho. I think that's pretty much unpatchable. You're better off spending the 45 megs of bandwidth on your porn collection. :)

I have no idea what the hell this thing is all about, but man it's pretty sweet. Sodaconstructor. Check it out! Freakin' sweet! Thanks for the link Hormone!! Forget Diablo2! I'm onta this puppy. :)

OGL has posted a news ARTICLE which may be interesting, regarding the proposed ASUS SeeThrough drivers.... But they didn't post a link to the news release, and I can't find any mention of it on the ASUS site. If this is what it sounds like, it could be a huge boon for the cheating little sluts we all hate so much. If you have any information or links related to this, LET ME KNOW!

For some reason the Fragtopia site's DNS settings over at the registrars.com got screwed up. No idea why or how... But currently I'm the only one who can see the site. Damn it. Damn it to AOL! We're working on it, but naturally it's Sunday. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.................

A little note from an old friend, HJ|Bayonet Kagato.

"A Sad day for Gaming. There was a time when you could browse through the video game department and buy a game strictly by the name of the developer. Back in the heyday of the Commodore if it was made by EA, it was good to go. A simple matter of a company taking pride in its work.

These days, there are only two that fit that criteria for me. Dynamix and Looking Glass Studios. Unfortunately, that number is down to one, what with the closing of LGS. That hurts. Thief and Thief II were groundbreaking games that showed IMAGINATION! Ingenuity! A fresh approach. Things sadly lost in todays "Me too" world of video game developing. Hats off to the men and women of LGS for bringing back hope.

On the other hand, I see games like MW3 come out and, I am sickened. Most games I have to wait several weeks, even months before I buy them. Wait and see the reviews that Players give the game rather than waste my 50 dollars. Its nice to see that one company still lets me buy a game on its release date. There is one company I still have confidence that they did the best they could to ensure it was ready.

Thanks Dynamix. -a grateful Tribesman

PS: If any developers are reading this, know this one thing. If players dont give it a good review, I'm not buying. I give a damn what PCMagawhat or Videowhothefuckever says."

Thanks Bay! :) I hear yah brother.

Going to be too busy playing Diablo 2 today to post much in the way of news, but here's a few quickies. (And hey, screw you. I deserve some time off too, damn it!)

Xeric was nice enough to do up a quick review of the Ratpadz Gaming Mousing Surface. Going to have to get me one of THESE bad boyz. Pretty sweet lookin'!

Voodoo Extreme has started posting screenshots of Sacrifice that are looking mighty tasty. I posted a quick PREVIEW a few months ago on this one that includes a wack of screenshots that Kingin snagged at E3. Definately an RTS to look forward to.

And now, a moment of serious contemplation.

3Dfx sadly enough may be loosing one of their most fanatical fans. I recieved an ICQ at home last night from Iceman. Apparently he's getting off the crack, and is currently trying to get himself into the nVidia Treatment Centre. Once he's recovered fully from his irrational fasination with all things 3Dfx, perhaps he'll be fit to join modern society as a valuable and contributing member, along with his new GeFORCE companion to keep him on the straight and narrow. We're all pulling for you buddy! Hang in there! Click HERE to send a card to Iceman in support.

Huh. Vortex of Sound has posted some more INFORMATION on the problems over at Aureal. According to the news we shamelessly yoinked, it's the borg over at Guillemot who are looking at buying them up. Interesting. Guillemot has already aquired Hercules and Thrustmaster.. If they get their hands on Aureal, they'll be producing quite a number of the vital components for gaming happiness. Will be interesting to see what happens.

Enough news for today. It's time for Diablo 2.

Marauder out.

OK everyone! It's time to do drugs! Now, aside from Iceman's crack habit, I normally do not advocate the usage of illegal substances. However! Now that John Romero is apparently speaking out against drugs, I think we should all start hitting Icey's pipe as soon as possible. It's just safer to do the oposite of everything that Romero does. A few examples:

Ex. Suckering Edios out of $30 million & wasting it making a crappy game rather than taking off to Cuba or Switzerland, which would be the honorable and right thing to do.

Ex. Playing Daikatana, which can result in damage to your santity and somehow to the enviroment and ozone layer as well. (Hey! I can make outrageous claims too!)

Listen to THIS for all your reasons to start hunting up a dealer. :))

Allrighty, now that I'm done my bashing for the week, I've taken a quick look at Deus Ex. I now have some good things to say! :)

It's actually looking like a damned fine game! I'm hoping that Ion Storm has put the bad things (Ex. The "D" word and Dominion") behind them and are settling down to make some kick ass games. I'll start playing the game sometime in the new few days and let you know what I think of it. But everyone I know who's sat down with it so far has had problems getting up and continuing their lives without it. Of course, Warren Spector of System Shock fame is one of the designer, so it couldn't really go all wrong. Warren, as we all know, knows and sees all.

Was talking with Tycho from Penny-Arcade today. He was nice and didn't mind my apparent fixation with their truly excellent comic strip. You may have noticed I mention PA constantly and link to it constantly as well....

"I can't help linking to PA.

My name is Marauder. And I have a problem Doctor.

It's those Tycho and Gabe guys... They're just so... so funny.. And the first one was free. I just keep linking and linking. At first it was easy to stop. I just told myself it'd be just one more link.. You can stop anytime I said... But I soon found myself missing school.... Missing work... Making love to my wife started to get boring without "them" there... Just couldn't wait to get back to the computer and read some more PA..... I found myself printing them out and taping them to my underwear on weekends.

OH GOD! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Anyhows, I like Penny-Arcade. You will link there. You will enjoy it. If not you may as well just kill youself now, you're missing so much in life. :))

Some new Napster cartoons up on the Camp Chaos site. Speaking of funny, these guys just about kill me. :) Funny with a capitol E.

Got myself one of those Microsoft Intelimouse Opticals to try out yesterday. My Boomslang is starting to bother me. It's a good mouse and all, but the damned thing is just too hard to hold onto when my hands get all sweaty from the por..... Playing too many hours of Tribes. I'll post a quick review on this little guy, but so far... Very nice. Damn. That's twice in two days I've posted something nice about Microsoft. Better be careful before the computer gods smite me down for my hubris and sacrilage. Anyho, if anyone happens to want a Boomslang, lemme know. Cheap.

Xeric sent me over his quickie review of the Ratpadz mouse pad. Apparently those that like 'em, like 'em alot. I'll post that tomorrow night most likely. Thanks man!

Off to work I go. :)

Today's news has turned into a bloody novel. Sorry guys, but many good things have come to my attention today. :)

I'm so damned relieved. Yesterday Bungie announced they WILL be releasing Halo for the Mac. Now, we all know that Macs are horrible little tackily coloured boxes of Satan, and that no true gamer would actually admit to owning one. However this does mean that Microsquash is not planning on an exclusive release for the Xbox. Due to the fact that Bungie was acquired by the Evil Empire so close on the heels of the Xbox announcement, it was seriously starting to worry me that it might never see the light of true gaming. (Ex. My PC) And from the sites I've been reading, others were thinking the same way I was. (Now that's something that genuinely frightens me. :)) Anyhows here's the news from the Bungie site:

"Halo for the Mac [7/19] We've moved to Redmond, and our web and gaming servers are back online. Hot on the heels of this good news comes a second announcement: early this morning Steve Jobs and Alexander Seropian announced plans to bring Halo to the Mac! We'll have more details on this announcement after the conclusion of the MacWorld Expo. For now, rejoice, and if you're going to be in New York this Friday be sure to stop by Freewill's FanFest, which we'll be attending. See ya there!"

You know. I have to admit that deep down I really don't like Macs? Why? Well I think it's mostly due to the fact that the majority of the people I know who are Mac users have their heads stuck up their asses about their Macs and refuse to admit any short comings of their machines. In fact, when you mention something negative about a Mac, or mention that platform in anything less than a glowing light, you may as well be raping their grandmother and defecating on the Holy Grail at the same time. Yeah, they're that vemenant about their cul.. I mean computer. They're alot like the Amiga fanatics of the late '80s & '90s, but at least the Amiga guys had a really good point. PC's did truly suck ass at that point. They don't now. I do however like Bungie very much, just from reading their page. It's amusing, and reads much more like a personal page then a stuck up corporate page. Very cool. :) Perhaps not all Mac users are the evil, Satan worshiping cultists that I figure them for. Maybe I just run into the ones who've been smoking a little too much crack. (ICEMAN! Stop loaning the Mac guys your crack pipe, damn it!)

I imagine the Mac gaming community (All 7 or 8 of them) are just horrified that Bungie has been absorbed into Microborg. However the fate that has overcome them will hopefully not be as bad as that FORESEEN the sages at PA. As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft has been releasing some excellent games, even if they can't get an OS right. Digital Anvil is bringing out some very cool new stuff. Hmmmm. Freelancer looking VERY good. Loose Cannon is also looking like it might be a very sweet game. (I have to add here that I think DA also has one of the coolest logos & web sites in gamingdom) Anyhows: Kudo's to MS....... For now. :)

OK, WienerBoy would.. I dunno... Annoy me or something if I didn't mention this. The much anticipated Radon card from ATI has been released. Now, normally I just kinda laugh at ATI for anything to do with 3D. I mean, they hardly tend to live up to their promises (Ex. Drivers!) and if they do come out with anything revolutionary, 3Dfx and nVidia overshadow it with something much better within a month or so. (duoh!) This time it looks like they may have actually come up with something truly killer. Tom's Hardware has posted a review, and an explanation of what all the words and numbers mean. Check it out HERE. Going to see if I can finagle me one of these guys and see how it compares to my Annihilator 2. Who will win? Will Bill Clinton get a seat in congress? Will ATI finally live up to Wienerboy's claims about them? Are bunnies really the harmless little fuzzy creatures they appear to be, or are they in fact horrifying minions of hell, patiently biding their time? Only time will tell.

News from Bjorn Lynn (A.K.A. Divornium)(Formerly known as Dr. Awesome of the Crusaders for you old school boyz.) a very talented musician. The Eurochart is at long last back, alive and well! Remember how I mentioned the demo scene a few days ago? Well here's what was, many years ago, a very cool part of it. Download demos and vote for them here. Well worth checking out.

Speaking of demos, Rune just sent me a link to another really cool one for us nVidia Video Card using guys. (TM) Grab it HERE. Well worth the download. :)

Hmmm. Rumors speak that nVidia has just bought Aureal. I've asked nVidia for confirmation on this one. Will let you all know what they have to say about it. Could save Aureal's asses if it's true. They've been in a lot of hot water recently, and were pretty much DOA as far as I was concerned. Which was too bad, considering how good their soundcards were. Very nice, and as far as I was concerned, much better than the Creative Labs cards. Better sound technology. Tribes was a whole new game with one of their cards installed. Man. Anyhows, we'll see what happens. Would be nice to see them come back with the power of nVidia behind them. :)

Speaking of nVidia, here's a guy who claims he's gotten info on the specs for the NV20. Ironically enough he's posted it on 3Dfx Gamers forums. :)

Well, I have to get to work. I think that's quite enough news for today.

Marauder out. (Whew)

Speaking of that new law in the states, Penny-Arcade has a cool little 'toon about it. Ahh, where would my links be without the mighty power of Tycho & Gabe? Speaking of which, are you reading PA on a regular basis? If not, you can't really call yourself a gamer. In fact, when gamers take over the world, the non-PA readers will be forced to fight to the death in small cages for the edification of the PA readers. Yes. Forced to fight like the scum sucking, Romero loving rodents that they are.

Ever have a day like THIS? (Thanks Madcat. :)

Dynamix has posted some Tribes 2 Alpha screenshots. Ohhhhhhhh.........

And Tribal War has some NEW ONES as well.

Gotta love Rambus Memory. At well over double the cost of SDRAM and little or no performance gain on current chipsets, ir hardly seems like a memory technology that's going to be sweeping the world anytime soon. And of course there were all those rather interesting "deals" (And by deals we mean bribes) made with Intel and other companies to ensure that Rambus made an offer the industry couldn't refuse. You know, it's kinda like when Viny's posse decides they want a piece of the action down in Gino's section of town. That kind of offer. Anyhows, Techweb has some very interesting information on the deal that Intel and Rambus cut a ways back. Very interesting, very stifiling of Intel's future, especially since DDR RAM seems to be the wave of the future, what with AMD announcing support for the new memory and all.. Oh, and DDR may just offer better performance than Rambus and it's ONE HELL OF A LOT CHEAPER! If I were Rambus I'd be running scared as well. Read all about it HERE.

ZDnet has posted an article about the FBI's new "Carnivore" software, which basically operates as an internet wiretap. Scary, isn't it? Can't really think of all that many legit reasons to use something like that, but I can think of quite a number that I'd rather not see it used for. Check it out HERE.

Heheh. They're basically putting an age limit on violent video games in Indianapolis. Adreneline Vault has a post on it.

Now let's all think here. (We may as well, the politicians won't.)

A) Were we all turned into killer maniacs from all the games we've played over the years? Well maybe, but they can't prove it. :)

B) How many "non-violent" video games did you see last time you were in the arcade?

Shesh. The BC Virus spreads.

HAH! Killer advert from Creative Labs! Watch the whole banner ad, and think about the 3Dfx adverts. :)

Now that's funny. And the video card really is fast as hell, I have one. I can hardly wait to try it out with the games that are actually going to support T&L fully.. Hmmmm. Tribes 2 good. Halo (?) maybe good.

Avault also has some screenshots from Eidos' upcoming shooter/strategy game IGI (I'm going in.... Which could also easily be a porn movie title if you think about it.) Check em out, looking very hot. I like the shot of the sniper with the Dragonov. :) One of my fav rifles.

Here's a CONTEST that should be really easy to win. $40,000 in prizes, and there should only be about 4-5 people playing it it. :)

News from Iceman's corner of the universe: Adrenenline Vault has posted a little opinion article on the recent classification of SOF as porn in BC. Check it HERE.

Think you've got a sweet looking case? How about THIS invisible one some guys made up? Pretty trippy.

Thanks bud! :)

Sorry but that's all I'm likely to post today. Had an incredibly frustrating day trying to troubleshoot a network from hell. Bascially I'm off to kill some folks in Counter Strike before I go get Dman on something.

Wow. I used to be big time into the demo scene, but I've not been paying much attention for the last little while. Rune has sent me a few demos from a group called Sunflower that does just amazing working. Grab their latest demo (Tesla) HERE and prepare to slobber. So very, very cool. Just unzip it into a folder and run the .exe. Enjoy!

Interview with my favorite guy. John Romero over at Evil Ed's Gaming News. Click HERE to be his bitch.

Well son of a bitch. Planet everything strikes again. Planetdiablo is up. Grrrrrrrrr....... It's not fair. Selling crack is illegal, Diablo 2 should be as well. But oooooh no! It's legal to sell games like Diablo 2 to small children and adults alike. Only after the world ends because 90% of the IT population is in Diablo 2 created comas and stupors will the gov't realise the errors of their ways and repent! We don't need saving from games like SOF & Kingpin! It's the ones that take over our very lives we need help with!

As Jesus (tm) puts it: (Paraphrasing my statments below)

"Diablo 2 righteous. Goddamn this more needest be did say. Wave palms at it, lose thine dwelling, thine servant and thine job. Playest nothing but D2."

Again Life (tm) took over. Have a few more guys who are interested in doing news updates, so you'll be seeing more regular news updates, and not all from me. :)

Diablo 2 good. No more need be said. Buy it, lose your house, your wife and your job. Play nothing but D2. Stupid Blizzard. Software version of crack cocaine. :))

Anyhows! More Tribes 2 screenshots from Tribes 2 Players. Click HERE to climax. Some more over at Fragpipe. THESE ones are especially impressive. 3DGN has some amazing new vehicle pics in their Quickie Review. Man alive.

I'm so damned happy! Tribalwar has announced that Tribes 2 has gone ALPHA! YAY! They're on track and the goodness is getting closer and closer.. Hmmmmmmm...Tribes 2.

Do you have a GeFORCE? Download the new nVidia Chapel demo HERE. Thanks Rune. :) Wow.

In Diakatana news, we've found another site that has the same opinion that I do. Click HERE to ROFL.

We've asked Jesus to consult on the web site. HERE's what he's suggested we change around.

For those of you actually still playing Unreal (?) HERE'S the final patch for it.

Good news for all of you living in BC! The government has stepped in to save us, our children, the whales and the world at large from... SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, THE GAME! Thank the computer gods these wonderfull and understanding government types are here to save us. Read the STUPIDITY.

Huh. From Iceman's crackhouse comes the website for Thandor.. A new 3D RTS. Never heard of it before, but from the looks of the site it may actually be pretty damned good. Check it out.

Also from the crackmiester: Want a sweet, sweet case? Get some ideas from THESE guys and walk the walk at your next LAN event. :))

ANYHOWS! Enough for today. Will do some more posting tomorrow afternoon, when I wake up from my D2 induced coma.

- Marauder out

Well, we're back, sore and welted. :) Paintball good, but more fun when one gets to shoot back. (Just like real life(tm) ironically enough!)

News from D0zer that has nothing to do with gaming, unless you're into destroying keyboards whilst playing. Anyho! Click HERE for the hot news. As he puts it "What's the world coming to? I mean really!" Heh.

From Overclocker's Workbench comes a few pics of a NEW MACHINE called a "C Box" someone designed. Hmmmmmm... Well, it's very... Yellow. Nothing I'd want, but maybe those guys who buy VW Beetles, Perrier Water & I-Crap's will want one. Personally I think there's something sad about a person who bases their computer buying not on power or upgradability, but because it's pretty. Shesh. May as well pick up one of the new Compaq "Help me, I'm melting" machines. Click HERE to view the Satan of home "computers"

Well, finally had time to install Diablo 2. What can I say? It's been sitting on my desk for over a week, taunting me.. Now it's in my pants. :) Diablo 1, but more so. Hmmmmmm.........

I should take this moment to thank Gabe & Tycho of Penny-Arcade. Not only are they funny as hell, they give me lots of great stuff to link to for the news. :) Thanks guys, keep up the great work.

Thanks to Rune & Tribes2 Players we have a few new pics from Tribes 2. Man THIS guy just got his ass nuked back to Hell. How about a little WATER action? You know you want it.

Well, Kingpin and I are taking off for a few days (Untill Monday to be exact) So no news from us untill then. Rest, relax, ref paintball.. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.... Cyah all then, and have a great weekend.

Marauder out.

First off: Happy Indepence day to our American Friends. :)

Secondly: I've noticed a few wierd things in Counterstrike 6.6. Things like getting shot around corners, dying when the enemy has not fired at you in 1 second, things like that. Tweak 3D has a tutorial on Valve's new Half Life netcode that explains alot. Also has some instructions on turning many of the options on and off, and using the new netgraph. Check it out HERE.

Overall, my impressions of the new CS betas are quite positive. This may be because I'm doing much better than I ever have before. (29-0, as Rune is my witness!) Let me know what you guys think of it in the FORUMS.

Beeer goooood. Halo better. Spielecity has shiny new Halo screenshot.... Ohhhhhhhh...... So very very creamy good. Click HERE. Notice the screenshot to the left, which is of an alien just sooooooooooo Predatorlike impaling his oponent on a lightsaber. Man. I wanna do that!

OK, Halowar has posted a few new nice toys for the gaming girls and boys out there. (Ex. You.) Click HERE for a quick weapons overview. Click HERE for the new E3 Movie. (Thanks to 3D Actionplanet) Ohhhhhh.. So so very niiice. Dirty little jeep! Diiiirty little jeep!

I dunno about you guys, but I'm starting to get ready to go down and start killing folks if this and Tribes 2 don't get released soon. I'm getting a little twitchy about all the soo very delicious screenshots and movies, but no beta.

Rune and I have come up with a new plot to get some tasty stuff. We're calling it "The Beer for Screenshots" Fund. Due to the fact that American's don't have "real" beer, apparently subsiding on a watery substance known only in the north as "bude-wyser"(tm) we will start shipping cases of good wholesome (Ex. 6.5 % alc) Canadian beer to developers to brib.... er... Assist in the development proccess of our favorite games. If this happens to say... Get us some interviews, (Even if they're incoherently drunk) all the better. Please mail all beer to "www.fragtopia.com" Please .zip or .rar all beer.

The Beer For Screenshots Fund:

"Help Us Help American Game Developers."

First off, Happy Canada day to everyone. Enjoy the time off work, 'cause it's back to drudgeville in a few days.

Penny-Arcade made mention of a little game called Startopia that actually looks pretty damn cool. Sorta looks like it could be a combination of Populous, Dungeon Keeper and Star Control 2, three of the best games ever made, in my not-so-humble opinion. (SC2 is still I think #1 or 2 on my list of the finest games ever known to computer geekind) Darksword has posted a little preview HERE. I'm bothering the guys at Mucky Foot for any aditional info they're willing to shell out. Anyhows, I'm off to Teamplay.net to use my admin powers over the tribes players for good, not evil. (As is my penchance.) :) [Ironically enough, I almost died when I went to that evil link. Man.] As a sidenote, Hiyah Horm!

Mad Onion has just announced the updated version of 3Dmark 2000, the gamer's benchmark. If you don't have this bad boy yet, grab it HERE. Very, very cool benchmark and it's a funky graphics/sound demo as well.. Apparently the new version gets along with Windows 2000 well too. Grab it. Not much news for today, I'm too damned tired. Cyah all tomorrow.

Rune just let me know that our friends at IGN PC have all new Tribes 2 pics from Dynamix, with shiney vehicles. Check 'em out HERE.

Just got Earth 2150 to review, I'll let you all know tomorrow how it is... Apparently it's a TA killer... and that I doubt.. Pretty damned big shoes to fill....And it doesn't have nearly the units that TA did/does... *Sigh*

Rune has announced his next gaming platform will be a new IBM "desk"top machine.... Of course, he'd need a desktop the size of Rosanne's ass, or perhaps John Romero's Ego. Click HERE. Kingpin picked up a copy of Diablo 2, the collectors edition. (ohhh... ahhh) so we're all waiting with bated breath to hear all about it. He's at home with the kid these days, so he's got looooots of time to play games between running errands, and changes, and feeding etc etc. :)

I notice they already have a patch out for the game. Duoh. It's HERE if you want it. And you know you want it. ;)

Icewind Dale has been pushed back a few days, damn it. So I guess they didn't beat D2 to market. That's gonna hurt their sale at least a little I'd think.

Interview with Dave Georgeson of the Tribes 2 team by Pubknight on TSN. Some interesting stuff. Download it by right clicking HERE. 78 Minutes long, but pretty cool. :) Very interesting comments on the progress of Tribes 2, software piracy (And if you pirated Tribes <cough*red*cough> you should have your balls cut off with a spoon and fed to a rabid weasel while you watch), what they're doing about the huge range between the low end and high end gaming systems etc. Worth the listen if you're interested in Tribes!

Oh. My. God. It is indeed a dirty little jeep. Grab the new Halo trailer by right clicking HERE. No more need be said. Just do it or your life is forfeit. *shivers* Thanks Prae! I must have this game, even if it means a blood pact with Microsoft.

Hehe. Talking with Xeric yesterday of Fragtopia 1-1 Quake III fame. Like a few other guys we've talked to (*cough* [xeno] emplate!*cough*) He seems to think that there's little effort involved in setting up a large LAN party. *sigh* So we thought when we set out on the journey that was FRAGtopia 2000.

Let me tell you guys, it's not that easy. I'll be doing a short write up in the articles section over the next week or so about the pitfalls and the good things we ran into. It WAS a lot of fun, don't get me wrong. But it was a hell of a lot of work. I didn't even have time over the weekend to get my computer on the network.

My total gaming was 3 quick tribes duels on Doppers machine at 1am Sunday morning. Approx. 4 minutes of playing in 36 hours. That's how busy I was!

If you are setting up a LAN party, the best place to start is Lanparty.com.

If you need help, ask us! We still have all the network cable (Over 3000', including more than 200 20' cables), 75+ power bars & extension cords from FRAGtopia 2000, and are more than willing to help out other parties who need it. We have a spare server machine, web cam, a few 10/T 16 port hubs, and a 10/100 16 port hub we loan out.

The main thing is: Have lots of help, and lots of dedication. It's a huge hastle, and you're not going to get many games in. But it's about the players, not you. Anyhows, read the article for all the details. :)

News from Prae: Is Windoze ME the last revision on that tired old Win9x kernal? The Register doesn't think so. Read the article HERE.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm so very very tired of those sons of biatches @ Microshaft releasing another Windows 95 bug fix and charging money for it. Large amounts of money at that. And the next revision is always buggy as hell. A little less buggy than the first one, but buggy none the less.

I've talked to a few people who have been running Windows ME, and apparently it's pretty good (so far!) with amazing bootup speed, which will be a nice change. I'll have to get my hands on a copy and play with it to see for myself. Personally I run quite a number of beta drivers on my hardware, especially the drivers for my lovely and much bragged about GeFORCE 2. Windows ME from what I've heard has some issues running anything other than Microsquash certified drivers.. Grrrrr.

I'm really starting to wonder what happened to the consumer version of Windows 2000 that was supposed to run the Nt Kernal for home use. So very sweet.... If they ever release it. *Sigh*

Got myself a copy of Linux Mandrake 7.1 (Thanks to Dopper for the alert that it was out) I'll be installing it a little later today or tomorrow if I have a chance. The initial Mandrake 7.0 has serious issues with my NIC, so I would have ended up using dialup. Hah! Since my mad gaming SkiLLz consist of 90% hardware and 20% ping I would have been screwed more than usual. :) The new version apparently has quite a few new features that might actually make it usable. Once Linux actually becomes usable enough that I can get it up and running my games without having to learn the command prompt too much I'll definatly be recomending it to everyone. And of course once all my utilities work right under it, I'll be off to the races! Apparently (and I've seen it in action) games such as Quake III run approximately 10% or so faster under Linux than Windows. Sweet eh? And no fucking registry to make you format your hard drive every few months.. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............ Nothing quite like a good Windoze reinstall to flush the gremlins out of your system I always say!

Stupid Windows. Stupid Microsoft. Well, off to install Linux. Back in a bit, maybe. :)

And remember.. Shiny things are GOOD.

Huh. Just visiting GameSpy Arcade's new home page. Might be a cool little utility for finding folks to kill. UH... I mean chat with. Yes. Chat, that's the world I was looking for. Here's how they describe it:

"GameSpy Arcade is a "people-finding" program that helps you set up and play computer games with people from across the country to around the world. Dozens of games are supported, from hardcore hits like Age of Kings and Rainbow Six to board game classics like Monopoly or Scrabble. "

Now, I dunno about these "scrambled" or "monopoly" things. I suspect they may be some kinda of disease or plague or something, have to do some research on them. Rainbow 6 I can live with tho. Woohoo! Check the FEATURES page for all the things it can do for you. :)

And now for our feature presentation. Is 3D Gaming Realistic? We say NO. And here's a movie to explain why! Just right click on MR. LINK and save target as, you won't be able to stream this one most likely. :) I almost died, thanks to whoever put this on my desktop.

Speaking of things that don't suck, I have to mention one that does. A while since I made fun of Daikatana. So! Recap: It's shit. Don't buy it, even if Viking hordes threaten to rape your dog and kill your sister. It's not worth it, trust me. Click on Prae's artwork to the left for all the details you'll ever need.

Been playing Ground Control. Wow. Not bad atall. Bascially one of the best RTSs I've seen since Total Annihlation in fall of 1997. And certainly the sexiest. True tasty 3D rendering glory. Man alive. Check out this screenshot I snagged of a flock of birds against a beeeeeeoootiful sunset. Natually, just below this sunset my troops were beating the living crap out of the enemy. But I still took the time to look away from the glorious carnage and bloodshed to take in the view. *Sigh* Will be posting more on this lovely little game soon, depending on how long it takes me to get bored or frustrated with it.

Special announcement! The Counterstrike team has just announced.... Counterstrike for the Gameboy! This looks like one sweet shooter boys! Check it out HERE. Thanks to the Runemiester for the link.

For now, off to beddie for Marauder.

Hehehhe. Check this site out: CS-National Enquirer. It's a killer CS Fun-E site for you Counter-Strike fans. Thanks Rune.

Just got prices on the new AMD Duron proccessors. Intel may be having fits as we speak.

600- $169.99

650- $199.99

(And that's Canadian pesos!) Cheaper than Celeron 466 & 500, and smokes 'em, due to the bus speed. Intel cripples the Celeron to 66, our friends at AMD leave the Duron at 200. Hmmmmm....... Finally a pretty damned hot proccessor for gamers on a budget! AMD claims the Duron is 25% faster than an Intel Celeron at comparable speeds. Tom's Hardware has a great write up on the Duron. Click HERE. Their Thunderbird write up is HERE. Man. AMD again lays the boots to Intel. Intel's just gotta hate those guys. :)

Speaking of Intel, some write ups @ Tom's Hardware (again. :) about that i820 recall I mentioned. Read it HERE. Man, how could Intel release such a buggy piece of garbage? Oh yeah, I forgot.. They tried to make everyone buy RDRAM at $600+ per 64 meg module.. For no performance improvement... And then realised they'd goofed and tried to recover from it by modifying the chipsets. Fools. Fools all. May they all wake up in bed with Rosanne Barr one morning.

News from resident crackmonkey Iceman, stolen from 3D Concept. A company called Realvision is actually making a Voodoo2 card with a T&L engine onboard. Check it out, they've got some interesting little tid-bits on their site. Click HERE for the juicy goodness.

HardOCP has posted a review of the new Intel 815 Chipset with the new Abit mobo. Click HERE. Maybe Intel can get something right. From the looks of it, it's no faster than the good 'ol BX, tho it does have more toys. Sigh. Speaking of Intel chipsets, apparently they've recalled the i820 chipset. SO! If you bought a 820 motherboard, take it back. Most manufacturers have recalled all the boards and are replacing them with comparable VIA chipset boards. Sucks to get a VIA rather than an Intel, but Intel really doesn't have anything to compete on the market right now. 815 may just change that, we'll have to wait and see. So far of the Gigabyte 6cxc boards that we've sold (Aprox 20 or so) only one is still working. The ASUS P32000 boards seem to be much better, no failures so far there.

Yoinked from the HardOCP review as well is a picture of a Voodoo5 on the new Abit motherboard. Hehe. Now I see why Firing Squad had problems getting one of these monsters into their test case. I've seen smaller American Midgets. Not quite as large as the preproduction card that our friends at Something Awful posted, but close. :) These things better blow my GeFORCE 2 outta the water, considering they're double the size. Should be twice as fast then, right? Well: Depends on who you ask. (Du'oh) I'll be posting a bunch of links a little later today, since I've been getting lots of calls and emails asking which card to buy. Read the reviews and make your own decision. But remember, as men we know that Bigger is indeed better. I've talked to guys who own both, and they're all impressed. Of course, most of the Voodoo5 owners had V3s and not GeFORCEs, so they would be impressed. They get 32 bit colour now.

Ah man. Microsoft bought Bungie. Here's the letter from their web site. (Thanks Rune)

"Dear Fans, Bungie began as the two of us in a basement, duplicating 800k diskettes, shrink-wrapping Minotaur boxes by hand, and selling games at tradeshows and through a PO Box. What drove us then drives us now: to make the games we want to make, on our own terms, and in our own way.

Holding true to this vision allowed us to create the Marathon and Myth series, and has now led us to Redmond to work closely with the Xbox development team. ONI will ship for the PC, Mac, and Playstation 2 later this year. We have yet to decide when and for which platforms Halo will ship.

We owe our continuing success to the dedication and loyalty of the people that work here and our fans. We thank you all for that. Our goal has always been to create the best games, and make it fun for our fans and ourselves. Nothing about this deal changes that.

At Microsoft we'll set up as the Bungie Studio - sort of a mini-company within Microsoft. It's our job to preserve our personality and culture. With the might of Microsoft's testing, distribution, and other vast resources we'll lead the way on Xbox while holding true to our original vision.

We're diving into this with our eyes wide open, and are eager to make it succeed. The last seven years have been a real blast. We hope you'll join us for the next seven, after which we'll blow up the world.

- Alex and Jason "

Hopefully Microsquash doesn't ruin Bungie. The bold letters are mine, and are something that worry me greatly. If Halo isn't released for PC, I'm going down to Microsoft and kicking some beuro-nerd ass. I'm sure you'll all join me in my quest. :)

Interview over at Daily Radar with Jason Jones of Bungie. Read it HERE.

Well, I'm working for the weekend (heh), so no news updates 'till monday from me.

Got a message from Roman Ribaric, head of Croteam, the Serious Sam engine guys. He's okayed an email interview next week sometime. Wicked, eh? Should be interesting.They've done a revamp on their site, making it look more like a pro news site. Looks very cool, and theres some amazing new screenshots up. Check it out, let them know what you think. :)

Ritual Entertainment has just launched the official Heavy Metal: FAKK2 site. Check it out HERE. Check out the Ritual site as well. Man, that's some sweeet sweeet candy. Someone obviously put alot of work into their sites. You can also get your fortune told by Clarence @ Ritual HERE. At least their site isn't boring.

Several people have asked why the devil link a few emails back was a link to Microsoft. It's because they're they are the incarnation of Satan on earth, you stupid bastards. I mean. Duh! Hoping those were just joke emails. :)

Speaking of stupid bastards, check out iamanidiot.com It's a killer page, and I'm proud to announce that Canadians rank #1 in visits to this site. Yay for us!

Marauder out! Cyah all monday.

Ok well it been a while since anyone's heard from me and no I've not been held up in a prison in serbia somewhere!

Got back into Counter-Strike with the new beta 6.5 (6.5 GOOD, VERY GOOD!!!) also playing Tribes as well again. (ok.... At this point I should mention that I was at the Valhalla of the game world, also know as E3! ) where I got the the chance of a lifetime... That's right I got to play the pre alpha of TRIBES 2 (ok another bracketed comment coming........(you know this has got to be good (ok all I can say is HOLY JUMPING CATFISH BATMAN!!!!))) This is going to be a must have... If you loved to play tribes (and tell me who hasnt) WHAT A GAME. Now this was only a pre-alpha so there was a lot still missing, like the med. and heavy transports and ground vehicles, but they had the lights (mind you no weapons of any kind on them whatsoever) but it was still TRIBES 2! Look for more details in the reviews section in a bit for a more indepth report.

I don't know if any of you have noticed... But I have the Speeling abilety of a too year oold. To this end I have found a great program called ASUTYPE. This neat little program not only corrects your speeling mistakes on the fly, it dose it in any program you use! Including the program that I am using right now to make this new article. (And yes I know that I spelled speeling wrong! It's to make a point! Not that you think that the program has failed me.) The nice thing about it as well it the face that it dose it all on the fly but can be disabled if you want to make a mistake on purpose! (get it now?)

Ever wanted to get that file a bit faster? Sick of waiting? Have that High Bandwidth but not using it to it's full capacity? Well the people at Amazesoft want you! I'm sure everyone's heard of gozilla and getright right? Well the nice people at Amazesoft have taken it one step further. We all know how some servers have the ability to resume a file transfer if you get disconnected right... Well why not use this to our advantage? This neat little program takes the file you are requesting and fools the server into thinking that you are "X" number of people trying to get the same programs but from different resume points! In other words person 1 has just started to get the file but person 2 has already got 1/5 of the file and person 3 has got 2/5 of the file and so on.... it then proceeds to get the file form all of the different start points and when done put's the whole file back together for your use! What dose all this power cost Kingpin i can here you asking... Well it won't cost you $200.00 not even $189.99, not $149.99 not $129.99 not even $99.99 And we all know it's worth it for that.... Not $80 not $60 not $40 not $20, you might be asking yourself how low can he go well you can have all this power for the amazing low price of $0.00 Just download it! Here (Fragtopia in no way shape or form supports the use of this or any other hair removal product, nor do we feel that Microsoft should be making billions of dollars off of us. We also have found out that ICEMAN is indeed on crack for thinking that the voodoo5 will outperform the Gforce2 GTE, Fish do swim upstream and the sun is the center of our solar system!)

You'll have to excuse us if some of the pages links don't work properly. I've done alot of house cleaning today trying to organize things a little, changed the site around a bit as well. Lemme know what you think of the new look, and also if you happen to find any links that don't work, there's likely a few around. :) Sorry but pobody's nerfect.

Dopper sent me a cool link for all you guys running Counter-Strike servers. Check THIS site out. Lots of help and hints for yah at Counter-Server.

From Iceman: HardOCP has posted an interesting review of a high performance, relatively cheap gaming video card. Probably not for you folks like me who'd gladly sell their souls to the devil to get yourself the latest in hot hardware, but cool none the less, and affordable! Click HERE to read all about it.

Madcat sent me something that all you guys need and wish you had! Check it out HERE. :) Heh. Cute.

On another note, my GeFORCE 2 arrived yesterday. Wow. Nice card! Not as huge a difference as when I went from the Voodoo3-3000 to the standard GeFORCE, but still it's noticeable. No matter what Iceman says in his crack induced hallucinations. Tribes is running alot smoother at higher resolutions, and I can now run 32 bit everything in Quake III. With Trilinear filtering at 1024x768, 60FPS+. Sweet.

We're looking for some people to do write ups, submit news, do reviews, rants etc. Interested? Just email me HERE. Doesn't pay anything, but it's something you can have some fun with and get your voice heard.

About 20 people sent ICQ's and Emails to scold me about a mis-posting yesterday. Bioware made MDK2, not Shiny. Sorry guys, I am your humble servant forever. Speaking of Bioware, they've posted some damned nice backgrounds of their logo HERE. Check it out, they're dead sexy!

Ohhhh... New screenshots posted of Sacrifice. Wow. Check 'em out! Nicest ones I've seen so far, very hot and tasty.

Click HERE to read the lazy man's preview of Diablo II.

Coming at you live straight out of the depths of laziness it's Praetorian here, folks. As Marauder has been hinting, YES, I've been playing the Diablo 2 multiplayer beta... when I haven't been playing Q3A or MDK2. Having finished it, expect a review on the latter eventually- although I'm not sure yet whether it'll be a full review or an "At a Glance". I will tell you this: if you're hankering for some quick 'n dirty FUN, grab yourself a copy of MDK2 today!

The much mourned Looking Glass Studios has posted a farewell letter and a little explanation of their demise on their site. Read it HERE. Again. Sigh. They'll be missed. :(

Allright! Canpar has not yet arrived with my GeFORCE2. And so I finished up the quick little preview/links article on Shiny's Sacrifice. Read it HERE. This is looking like it's going to be one amazing game.

An interesting little opinion article from Daily Radar regarding the end of iD Software. :) Check it out HERE. I don't know about you guys, but if iD brings out Doom3, I'll be picking it up faster than a Revenant can BBQ a Marine. I remember the hours upon hours spent playing Doom and Doom II. The erie feeling of creeping around demon infested dungeons, the adreneline rush of deathmatch. I wasted so much of my youth playing those damned games. Now I want to waste more of my adult life playing them! Go iD!

Sacrifice look/preview thingy will be done a little later today, assuming I don't get my GeFORCE 2 before then. If I do, then too damned bad. I'm taking it home and playing with it, and hell with work. #1=toys, #2=games, everything else unimportant.

Was on PCgamer today doing some research for that little writeup. So very pissed off when I tried to exit the site and got 3 pop-up windows full of contests and other crap I don't care about. Why the hell don't companies put such things on a link off their site, rather than on pop-ups. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Speaking of pop-ups. If you hate them as much as I do, AnalogX has the cure. They've got a great little utility that closes those annoying little windows for you. As he puts it: "You didn't open it, why should you have to close it??" Check it HERE. This guy has some seriously amazing stuff on his site. All FREE.

I'm really liking Beta 6.5 of Counter-Strike. It'll be much easier for new users to get into.Valve's new net code makes it feel almost like you're playing on a LAN, and the new weapon and player models are quite nice. The smoke grenade also adds a new element to the games tactics. Very nice. If you play Half-Life, get this MOD and play it! It's huge, but well worth the download.

News from our very own Rune, the ocasional Newsbitch. Ars Technica has just posted an interview with Matt Holmes, former Associate Editor at PC Accelerator, the (formerly) worlds greatest gaming magazine. Matt gives some info on what happened to shut down PCXL & what they're up to these days. Just brings back the bitter memories. Read it HERE. As a side note, I picked up a copy of Incite magazine a few days ago hoping to find a PCXL replacement. Man, it sucks. Pathetic to see someone trying so very hard to be funny and failing so badly. Sorta like seeing Michael Jackson trying a stand up comedy routine on red necks in South Carolina. Just falls flat. :)

AMDZONE has posted some sweeet looks at the new AMD "Thunderbird" proccessor. Hmmmm. Must have Thunderbird. Athlon 750 to slow. Might give Intel a kick in the ass again. Read it HERE. Heh. Always good to shake up the big guy as much as possible. Hopefully the new chipsets don't have all the damned AGP and incompatibilty issues. It's a shame that the industry spends so much time building everything to Intel's specs and screws AMD.

We will be migrating the FRAGtopia site over to a new server within the next few days to give us a little more control. Excuse us if things are wierd for a few. :)

Still playing Vampire. Just found out that my GeFORCE 2 should be arriving tomorrow. Had to go change my drawers when I got the news. :) Skeez can finally get off my case and pick up his GeFORCE DDR. <grrrr> In the works: Praetorian will be posting his take on the Diablo 2 Beta (He's been playing it, the bastard) in the next few days. I've recieved confirmation from our supplier that we will have Diablo 2 by July 1st. Sweeeeeet. No life for Marauder at that point. I'm working on the little Sacrifice write up, and the Lemmings review still. (Damn I'm lazy, eh?)

The new Counter-Strike beta 6.5 is out.. So far... Damn sweet. Daaaamn sweet. Haven't played CS yet? Buy Half Life and go download CS. It's amazing, especially with the new betas. It's looking more and more like a full out game than a MOD.Guys are doing a damned good job of it. The latest Half Life patch btw contains the new TFC modifications and the shiney new network code from Team Fortress 2. Wow. Definitely a noticeable improvement! Download it HERE.

Got my copy of Vampire: The Masquerade. Damn. So far, excellent game! Compelling plot (Especially if you've read the novels), decent voice acting, great graphics, fun game overall. Also, you get to flirt with nuns, which is always a bonus. :)

Watching Praetorian playing the game today, when Mr. E. Mahn asked what may have been the dumbest question in gaming history. Went just like this:

Mr. "So you're a vampire right?"

Prae: "Yes."

Mr. "And is the guy with you a vampire too?" (They both have fangs. :)

Prae: (Looking at Mr. like he's an idiot) "No. Ironically enough, he's actually a vampire hunter. They're the original odd couple."

:) Score one for Prae! Master of the dry witt as always!

Off to bed with me. :) More tomorrow.

Other reasons to not spend any money on Daikatana:

Just a short news write up today. Got Daikatana last night. And.................... So far it's actually not too bad, as much as it hurts me to my very soul to admit it. Not quite as bad as say.... Oh... An alien anal probe. The graphics are pretty decent, sounds are good. Voice acting is perhaps a little above standard for a video game. The intro movie is a little long. (Like 15 minutes) The only thing I'm getting sick of is the enemies. I've been attacked by about 500 little tiny mechanical frogs that somehow bite me from 10' away, an equal number of mechanical 'skeeters, a few automated gun turrets, 3 mechanical alligators, and one big mother mechanical 'skeeter. ('Skeeter mothership?) The big guys AI was so darned clever that I killed it by hiding in an arch and shooting straight up while it hovered just over the arch. Wow. I'm on level 3 and I'd better find something interesting to kill other than scientists who don't shoot back soon. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) Will post a bigger review in a few days. :) Assuming I don't burn the game by that time.

Dopper sends us THIS link. Interesting article on ZD-Net about playing MP3s on your "gaming" console. Bet the Recording Industry doesn't like this idea! 30 millions consoles.. :) hehe.

Want to see what your're missing if you're still GeFORCEless? Check THESE demos out, then go buy your new GeFORCE.

Finally got Kingpin's E3 photos sorted out. Got some really nice screenshots of Sacrifice. If you haven't seen this game yet.... Wow. Will post more on it with shots tomorrow.

Hah! Suck it down bitches! (tm)My official copy of Daikatana should be arriving today. Still I'm kind of expecting it to suck, as our friend Prae demonstrates HERE. I'll let you all know. Deadeye figures that "Any game that's taken 4 years to make can't be all bad." I disagree, but I'm willing to let Romero have one chance to "make me his bitch" as the advert used to say. :) Next to this news you'll notice a little gift from the ever photogenic Kingpin. It's a nice pic he took at E3, featuring Romero & Killcreek. Don't they make a great couple? Can you see the difference? (Just having a little fun guys, don't go Metallica on me. :))I still have to get my Lemmings:Revolution article posted as well. It's actually a suprisingly good game, for something that involves no guns or naked chicks.

Incidentally, those of you who love the nVidia vs. 3Dfx "we're better than you, so nah nah" wars as much as I do (*&^*$@# $400/6 months in stupid vid cards) should check out THIS article on Something Awful if you haven't already. Man o man. :) Just kinda sums all this BS up in one tasty article.

Du'oh! This is actually new from a few days ago. Pappy-R from Planet Quake posted a little article about the big FRAGtopia LAN Party. Check it out HERE, he has some nice stuff to say and it's an interesting read.

Defiant just asked me to add his demo page to our links section. His page will actually be link off of the demos page I think. :) Check it out HERE. Nice little page even if he does use too many "z"s. Lots of sweet demos for you to drool over. Enjoy!

Dopper sent me this conversation with [xeno]emplate, regarding FRAGtopia & pricing for this years event. Edited a wee bit.

[22:21] <]S3[Dopper> have you ever setup a big lan?

[22:21] <[xeno]emplate> its 3 hours of work

We're hiring emplate to setup the next FRAGtopia! If he can do JUST the setup (Dopper and I were there for more than 12 hours) in 3 hours I'll buy him a GeFORCE 2 out of my own pocket. Shesh. That was the longest 3 hours I ever spent organizing anything. Seemed more like 4 months. Actually, it WAS 4 months. <grumble> Stupid emplate. :)

The official Tribes 2 site is up! Link to it HERE.

Got a note from Michael Romatelli at Looking Glass Studios last night, in response to my request for any information on their closing.

"We're closed. End of story. That's about all the news at the moment. Thanks for the support."

Not terribly informative, but ahh well. :)

Thanks to Lee over at Dynamix, who sent me this great image to replace the older one with the pink sky. Wow. Check the image quality on this bad boy, much better than the poster scan. :) I don't know about you guys, but I'm about ready to start bribing to get a pre-order copy... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... Fall is such a long time away..............As a side note, this is NOT the box cover for the game.. Hmmmmmmm... Wanna see that one!

In other news, I see on Planet Starsiege that Strijder of Tribes Etc has completed a Tribes 2 Companion. Wow. It's a huge compendium of Tribes 2 facts, screenshots and information in general. Check this bad boy out HERE. This guy put some serious work into this one.

NO MORE TIMES NEW ROMAN FONT! THIS IS AN OPEN DECLARATION OF WAR! Email Marauder if you agree with me- he LOVES to use Times New Roman all over the site. I say ARIAL. Hell, email me if you think it should be Times New Roman.

We'll let the people decide, eh Marauder?

A sad, sad day in PC gaming.... Praetorian sent me this little note from Daily Radar

...Molyneaux and Lionhead Studios announced that Black and White will be its last PC title. Peter Molyneux, master designer of God games, has an impressive list of design credits including Populous, Powermonger, Syndicate, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper....the increased capacity of consoles has convinced him to change his focus entirely to next-generation consoles.... Click HERE for full article.

Oh Man. One of my favorite game designers of all time. Sigh. Many a happy hour was spent on my XT & Adlib card playing Populous... Now he's been taken in by the dark side of the gaming industry.. The consoles. :(

May 21/00 - Marauder

What a way to advertise a game, eh? One of the breast things about Tribes 2! :)) Check out the monday news on Neotribes. You have to check these guys out (After you finish Oggling Donna, of course) Doing some sweet stuff with maps. Please note that these Images were scanned out of the world's greatest and deadest gaming magazing.. PCAccelerator. :( Now, I'm off to reserve my copy of Tribes2. Ads don't lie! And from what Kingpin told me, the game is going to be just as sexy as the advert. :) Penny-Arcade mentioned Canada today. :) Hehe. Just found that kinda funny.

May 19/00 - Marauder

Check the new reviews page out... Just starting work on it, but I'll be updating it as I do it.Just got Lemmings:Revolution. (Yeah, I know.. It's not a shooter... But hey.... It's LEMMINGS! I mean, come on!) Also, just posted the Tribes 2 poster Kingpin brought me back from E3 in the reviews area. Including a nice big blow up for anyone who wants a really cool background! :) Lots more pics and audio samples from E3 coming fairly soon. Including a nice big blow up for anyone who wants a really cool background! :) Enjoy. Got any ideas for the site, or want to help out? Email and let us know