Just heard from our old friend [GAY]Superman. Apparently (and take notes kids!) one should never make jokes about coming to school and playing Quake in real life. This is what's known as bad, and will attract the attention of the people we know fondly as "the fuzz". Remember: Making jokes about killing people is bad. People have no sense of humor when it comes to this sort of thing, even if you're not serious. If you are, it's still not funny to the police.

Who sucks? Rogers sucks! As an interesting side note, look who owns rogerssucks.com!

Hey, you all hate mice right? GOOD! 'Cause Harvey the Mouse MUST DIE!!!!!!

LOL. From a quick look at 3D Mark 2k1, the only new thing I noticed was the Advanced Raster Shader Test. Wow. That is some SWEET candy! :) Isn't it about time for 3D Mark 2002 to come out tho? Come on MadOnion! Show me the monahy!

On the only few pieces of news I have for today (Being the lazy bastard that I am.) C64.com has passes 10 million downloads. Not bad for a site dedicated to the emulation of a machine that's been dead for ten years eh? Still the computer I had the most fun with, of all time. Comodore forever!

Nolman just sent this over. I was shocked and dismayed, but apparently CANADA has a WARSHIP. And it's got like, guns and stuff on it. Wow. Gooooo Canada! Raise the white flag of war!

Marauder out! :)

Ahhh, well I lost my little AMD pic thingie like marauder has for his lamaa, oh well I'll get a new one soon, on with the news.

I'm sure you all remember the big WAHOO!! over the release of Windows98SE, well seems madonion has decided to follow suit a little, and have released 3dmark2k1 SE, in my opinion its nothing too special, a whopping one new test to see, haven't run the demo but I highly doubt its different. Anyways if your interested head on over here and grab it. It also includes a few bug fixes and compatibility issues.

Almost had myself a shiny new GF4 Ti 4600 a few days back and would have if Best Buy hadn't realized their bumbling mistake, they originally had it listed for $129US, and as you can imagine just about everyone jumped on this one, except best buy caught the mistake, changed the price to $399.99US and cancelled everyones orders, WAY TO GO YA LAMERS!!! hope that teaches people to buy from a company who can't even post a price on their site correctly.

Just recently picked up a few new things unfortunetly I have a lack of a camera for pictures so when I get one I'll do some hardware reviews, though what I have in store is the Lian Li PC-65USB case that comes stock with a plexi-glass window installed (WOOHOO!!) cost me an arm and a leg and huge chunk out of my credit card. Also decided to step into the world of a 10/100mbit network so I picked a little (and I do mean little) GVC (gnet) 10/100 switch, weighs in around umm well I don't know if a scale goes that low, but its about 5 inches long and bout 3 inches wide, not bad for a 5 port switch, tucks away nicely under my monitor at the moment.

I'm sure you guys have all heard about the new Intel P4 "300A" type processors floating around, yea you know the one, its currently out to make AMD its bitch and its not doing very bad at all, the 1.6A is doing roughly 2Ghz out of the box with stock cooling at about 1.6Vcore, yes my friends I think intel deserves a little look-see, well I'll wait for a while as intel is still continuing their trends of high prices, its coming in around $270CAN (actually not all that bad)

Umm yea, PayPal our favorite friends, well sorta I guess, are in a little hot water at the moment suffering from a patent infringement and being shutdown in Louisiana just as they were about to announce stock options in the company... oh well I guess every company has their problems when they first start out. Read the rest here.

More news a little later, gotta go out for a bit then I'll be back.

Allrighty folks, here's the news for today. From now on we'll be having three news updates a week. Marauder on monday, Iceman on Wednesdays and Rune on Fridays. We'll also be doing the regular reviews, rants, artivles and such. I'm currently working on two reviews... One for the Trackercam, and one for Serious Sam 2: the second encounter. A seriously sweet game, for seriously small amounts of coin. I love you Croteam!

More tomorrow from Iceman. :)

Some news in from Skotos:

Attention to all hardcore computer gamers!! Pack up and haul a$$ to the hottest LAN event to EVER be held in the Greatest Little City in the East.

Impossible Realities is presenting the Advanced Smackdown 101, Class of March 2002, Ultra LAN party on March 9-10, at the Courtenay Bay Inn in Saint John, NB in the Waterloo Room.

Door prizes, tournaments for your favorite games, and more! Dual mega high speed internet connections will be onsite courtesy of NBTel and Aliant Telecom for your gaming pleasure. Public dedicated servers for Tribes 2, Counter-Strike and Quake 3 will be running all weekend so you can even invite your Internet buddies to the party!!

The doors open at 12 Noon on Saturday and the fraggin' never stops until 2PM on Sunday afternoon!! Make sure that you get your seat as they're going fast. Only 50 guaranteed spots available so sign up NOW at our website at www.impossible-realities.net.

To summarize the details. Name: Advanced Smackdown 101 Place: Courtney Bay Inn, Saint John, NB Time March 9, 12 noon until March 10, 2PM Games: Dedicated servers for Tribes 2, Counter Strike, Quake 3, These servers will be running full time. We will also have dedicated servers for other games but they will be used on demand. Size: We have room for 50 players... it's filling up fast though. Cost: $15 advance, $20 at the door Internet connection: Yes... two ultra fast DSL connections.

Rogers can kiss my shiny metal ass. My Execulink DSL is working, and I... I.. I can game again. After two months I can game again. Thank the Lord! :) I can even send ICQ and emails now! WOOT!

Kingpin is down for a few days, as a Roger's IT expert came out and "fixed" his cable. Fixed it REAL good.

The review for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is posted. What a great game. What a crappy ending. God. Go look at the screenshots, you'll see what I mean.

Rune has promised he'll have a review up for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter this week as well. :)

More later, no news to report really, and I don't wanna rehash what all the other sites are posting. (Amazing how many guys do that isn't it?)

Hey folks, as Marauder mentions we've hit a bit of a news slowdown lately. Sorry about that. Both Marauder and myself have been incredibily busy with school / work / life lately and it's affected the frequency of our posts somewhat. If you enjoy writing gaming news or doing the occasional review please let either myself or Marauder know.

The Sidrial site is getting worked over pretty hard right now and with good reason. This Quake 3 total conversion literally looks like it's an entirely new game. Hard to believe that's the Quake 3 engine in there. Once you're done drooling over the new Pappy's swank screenshots of the game be sure to check out the movie of it in action and the brand-spanking-new demo that just came online.

I also noticed that Katherine Anna Kang (founder and big cheese over at Fountainhead Entertainment, the folks bringing you Sidrial) posted up a bit over on the Shacknews forums concerning the release of the Sidrial demo (and the fact that it's not really a game per se). Here's some of what she had to say:

Perhaps a clearer explanation should be made about Sidrial so everyone here understands what we are trying to do. Sidrial was created as a Machinima project, not a game (for info on machinima, visit machinima.com). What does that mean? It means that new media is being created to tell a story, an animated story within the environment (ie: the levels that you are playing in, we film the story in - it's our set and it's our playground). This is why you do not see any AI and why the single player is relatively simple.

While developing the animation, we were having such a good time running around the environment that we felt others would enjoy it too. We put a lot of work into the animation and thought it would be cool to release some of what we had done as a TC for Quake III. We think Machinima is cool and that it has a future that coincides with games. I think the fact that some folks think this is a demo for a full retail game is evidence that the synergy is there.

Check out the full post here.

Those wacky german guys over at Giga.de have posted a couple of new Unreal Tournament 2 movies. If you missed these before there's no time like the present to see 'em. Most of the movies have various members of the dev team showing off the fantasic new features of the game engine. In particular have a look at the physics movie, it's really impressive.

Al Qaeda = h4x0r3d!

Well, well, well... looks like some new ATI Radeon beta drivers have just been leaked. Download the 4.13.9012 drivers for Win9x/ME over here and the 6.13.10.6018 drivers for Windows XP here. Again, be careful as these babies are beta! Check out Rage 3D for more info on what's new in these latest releases and if you're feeling funky let everyone else know what you think about 'em over on our forums!

Sorry for the lack of news all, I've apparently been abandoned by all those who promise to post news. Yes, abandoned.. Either that or they promise, and no news does it appear. *sigh* It's hard to find good help these days, just ask Pappy.

Anyhows, I'm still fighting with Rogers@home and I'm getting really, really sick of it. As of next week it'll be 2 months that my internet at home has been pretty well unusable. Now I'm funny this way. I use my internet FAR more than I use my phone or TV. Hell, I can count the number of times I've made outgoing calls on my phone at home in the last two months without even removing my pants. Yes, it's that seldom. Same with TV. I could care if the damned thing worked. My internet however, is all.

It's how I get music, do work, post here, talk to people, get information.... It's how I spend my time usually when I'm home. Yet the idiots at Rogers (Needless to say, my invoices arrive right on time, and they expect them to be paid promptly!) don't seem to take it too seriously that 1/4 of my home town of 20,000 people is down. In fact, they don't really seem to give a rat's ass. As I've mentioned before, they've had a work order open for our area since November the 26th. In other words, they KNOW we're down. Yet I just got one of the bastards to admit it last week... before this it was "We have to reinstall your TCP/IP protocal." Uh huh... And why is half the damned town down with the same issue? You idiots seem to have a router problem.. Perhaps you should fix it.

They don't care... But like I said, don't pay YOUR invoice they're all over you like Rosanne Barr on a cake. I expect this low level of service from the damned Government, not a private sector organization like Rogers. What does it tell you when they just don't care that you're paying for a service they KNOW is broken? Hmmm?

Bastards.

Pappy the PQ Overlord sent me over a link to a new Quake 3 mod that's coming out. Take a boo, it's frickin' sweet.... Pappyz0r also has some screenshots up of the game. Wow.

Out.

Hey all! You may have noticed I've not been playing any games online for the longest time now... This is because my internet connection from home is, for lack of a better set of words "Complete Shit.". And that's speaking from a technical standpoint. For the last month or so, the cable in my section of town has been absolute CRAP. So bad in fact that it's hard to surf or do anything at all with it. Rogers of course claims there's nothing wrong. I couldn't figure out what the problem was, but then I got this new press release from the Dark Lord himself that explained all! (Not that I'm bitter or anything!) At the moment, I've got so much packet loss I can't even connect to game servers, and it's diffcult to transfer files or connect to a mail server. Hell, sometimes I can't even send ICQ messages.

I'm so mad right now, I'm off to play Empire Earth single player. (gah) but I thought I'd just share a link that was sent in by Mike Baker. (Thanks man).... It's final proof of something I've been claiming for years... The holiness of LEGO!

Marauder out.

Dunno how many of you have listened to the Klipsch speaker systems... But... Oh my god. We've had some of their 2.1's hooked up at work for a bit now and they're nice.... But you have to see and hear their 5.1 system. It's not cheap ($675 CDN)... But it's worth the money my friends. Incredible, the damned subwoofer wieghs in at something like 43 pounds, and contains w 8" woofers. So loud, so crisp.

Dunno if you've all been keeping up on the recent warez and movie group busts, but take a look at this press release from Washington. Oops, they really don't like these guys. :)

Stumbled across some screenshots from UT2 on Gamespot. Must have game. Must have. I mean, that just looks incredible!

Just in from Rune, Toshiba has brought a 5 gig hard drive to market..... That fits in a PCMCIA slot.... Pretty slick.

More tomorrow. :)

Woops, I goofed. Apparently the Warcraft 3 beta period has been extended. Go here to sign your ass up. Thanks to Kingpin for the update.

Thanks to the Evil Overlord for a most interesting tidbit. This news is the reason I don't trust anyone in a red velvet suit, even if they have 8 tiny moose with them. Imagine being the cop who had to write this report? Shesh.

Chisel sent over an excellent example of how NOT to advertise your web design business, unless you happen to be Jeff-K. Shesh, what a "wanker" as those limey's put it.

I always laugh like a drunken Geisha when I read shipping labels from Asian countries. These guys don't just laugh, they made a whole website of bad "Engrish" labels and signs. Sweet. :) Thanks d0zer.

Got a review posted of Stronghold, the castle sim. Not a bad game, not bad atall.

A few tasty pieces of news for you all. First off, I hope everyone who was interested payed heed on Monday and signed up for the Warcraft 3 beta. Signups are over. :) Dunno, I was never too impressed with Diablo 2, so we'll see how Blizzard pulls this one off. I'm hoping it won't suck, and be playable out of the box.

As many of you know, local boy d0zer went over to Korea for the world cybergames. While he didn't 0wn like we all hoped he would, the Canadian Counter-Strike squad did. The Toronto Star has an article about it HERE. Thanks to Skeezix, and then d0zer for the heads up.

I've gotten a few interesting links from Shiloh lately, the first being the reason all human males are jelous of rodents, and the second being the reason why I don't keep a pet goat. Damned things just keep dying on me!

Iceman sent me this link, apparently some nutbar they caught claims that Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist chums have hax0red Windows XP and will cause it to be unstable, insecure and bug ridden. Hah! Not to worry tho, we've just recieved a report from Microsoft that will clear it all up.

Marauder out.

Well, no real news today. Actually, I have a slew of news to post, but I'm too damned tired, and still at work at 9pm. So here's the most important one:

WARCRAFT 3 BETA SIGNUPS ARE OPEN IN JUST A FEW HOURS, AND ONLY FOR ONE DAY! (Thanks Asmo)

Go here. Now.

Marauder out.

Gamespot's slapped up an informative interview with Mr Chief Scientist himself David Kirk from Nvidia. David talks about new technologies such as the proposed OpenGL 2.0 as well as some of the challenges facing Nvidia these days.

Speaking of Nvidia, Gamespot has also put up videos of that realtime rendering of a scene from Final Fantasy; The Spirits Within running on a Geforce 3 card. Most impressive. It certainly says something about how far customer rendering technology has come in only a few short years. Check it out over here.

More rumours on the Geforce 4 than you can shake a good sized stick at. Apparently it's supposed to be announced on Febuary 5. ExtremeTech has the exclusive on this one.

Macworld (of all places) has an interview with none other than Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. Among a bunch of mac (duh) questions one in particular caught my eye:

Q: After providing the music for Quake, are you scoring any more games?

Reznor: I've been discussing things with Id Software for Doom III. It's not formalized at this point, but it's something I really want to do. When I did Quake, we were still questioning if the audio was going to be streamed off of CD, which if it wasn't was incredibly limiting. But with as interactive as things are now, and as immersive as the engine they've been working on is graphically, and some of the program is so moody; it's like scoring a film. Yet it's much more intense than a film because it doesn't always go the same way, it has to be interactive. Plus the mood of the game is so dark and evil, it's interesting to me.

Voodoo Extreme just got word that UT 2 is officially a go! w00t! Listen to this:

Infogrames confirms Unreal Tournament 2 in the making by Digital Extremes. As rumored all week online, the co-creators of Unreal and Unreal Tournament are currently working on the sequel to the infamous 1999 Game of the Year. Late next week, in conjunction with the February issue of PC Gamer, Infogrames will officially announce the game and detail all the news currently available at this point in development. The cover story includes an in-depth interview with the development team at Digital Extremes, specifics about the gameplay and globally exclusive artwork to be seen only in PC Gamer.

Jim.be has much of the early presskit material for the game up for your viewing pleasure right over here. Especially note the mouth-watering screenshots section!

Looks like Serious Sam; The Second Encounter has just gone gold and it should start making it way out to stores on Febuary 5. The swank official flash site here has more info. Also, do yourself a favor and download the demo that can be had from said site. It's a blast...I spent the better part of a day playing around with it myself. It's safe to say that if you enjoyed the original than you'll love this game too.

Marauder's been raving about the new Noblesse case that he just got a few days ago. I had the opportunity to see it in action myself and I have to admit that it's very impressive. Check out his review of it here. It even comes with a mirror so that you can see who's sneaking up behind you. BOO!

On a final note, what with the fur flying because of that ION storm retrospective on Salon.dot from the other day and the subsequent comments made by John Carmack over on Slashdot it's interesting to note that Planet Romero seems to be down. Interesting... Go talk about it on the forums already!