Friday, September 19, 2003

Jedi Academy: Yes! -- 10:10 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I just saw on the Transgaming forums that someone managed to get Jedi Academy installed and running using WineX. A quick perusal of the Gone Gold forums just happens to show Jedi Academy on sale at Best Buy next week for $39. Gee, and I just happen to be going through Green Bay on Monday. What remarkable coincidences!

Arr! ToEE Impressions -- 3:42 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Thanks to Atari and Kazaa I was able to acquire the 6-hour time-limited version of Temple of Elemental Evil this afternoon. I installed it and took a quick spin through the tutorial, which lasts about 15 minutes and gets you into some of the gameplay mechanics.

The game runs very nicely at 1024x768 on my old clunker (800 MHz Athlon, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 3). Graphics are very pretty, though somewhat dark (it is a dungeon, after all). I won't comment on audio, since music is missing from this version. Mouse movement is kind of slow: moving the cursor across the screen takes more mouse movement than it should, but when you're actually playing you don't make such large sweeping movements with the cursor. Tonight I'll start on the game itself and see how I like it. If the tutorial is any indication, I can see that I'm going to have a tough time waiting for a good sale before buying this one.

Ahoy Mateys! -- 1:17 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Shiver me timbers, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day! Avast, check out User Friendly's take on the bilge rats at Verisign. Arr, I'm off to get me some grog!

The Master comments: You, sir, need to get whatever that was fixed. Or something :-)

A.T. Hun comments: Pieces of eight! Where's Lake Pahoe?

The Master comments: AAAAAAaaaarrrrr ... (woops)

UT2K4 on DVD-ROM? -- 11:05 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Boomtown is reporting information from a "highly reliable source" that Unreal Tournament 2004 might be available on DVD-ROM in a limited fashion. I think that would awesome, since I have a DVD-ROM drive. No CD swapping would be A Good Thing. Thanks Shacknews.

Thursday, September 18, 2003

Pondering the Imponderable -- 11:02 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Our thoughts are with Stephen "Blue" Heaslip, one of the elder statesmen of the gaming community and the man behind Blue's News. According to a post on his site, his mother suffered a massive stroke. We hope everything turns out as well as possible for them all.

Epic, Microsoft, and You -- 10:15 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Beyond Unreal contacted Epic's Tim Sweeney to ask what effect that Epic and Microsoft's new publishing deal will have on future games and the operating systems they work on. Here's what he had to say:

UT2004 is on track for release for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, published by Atari. Atari and its corporate predecessors Infogrames and GT have always done a great job of publishing Epic's games. They'll continue to have our full support and we'll have theirs.

Two future Epic games are signed with Microsoft. These games haven't been announced yet, so it's a way too early to lay out a platform roadmap, but Epic has always done the right thing when it comes to supporting popular computer and OS platforms, and there's no reason to assume that's going to change now.

I hope this remains true. Thankfully, Epic is the kind of company that can pretty much dictate its own terms.

Star Wars Trilogy to DVD Next Year? -- 12:46 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

From the "I'll believe it when I see it" department, Digital Bits is reporting that Lucasfilm will finally release the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD in Q4 of 2004. It will be a four DVD set, one for each movie and one bonus features disc. They also indicated that this will be the Special Edition versions of the movies. That's fine with me. I especially like the SE edition of A New Hope. Thanks Shacknews.

ToEE Via Kazaa, Legally! -- 12:41 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Atari has produced a downloadable version of Temple of Elemental Evil and made it a free download through Kazaa. The catch? You can only play it for six hours. After that, you have to pay $49.95 to unlock it. Basically, it's the full game. It's a cool concept. I wish that you could get it cheaper than in a store since there is no box, manual, CDs, etc. I can see where a brick-and-mortar retailer would freak if you could download and buy it for 1/2 price. I also wonder if you would need the manual to play the game (I know I need the one for Neverwinter Nights). Still, my hat's off to Atari for coming up with new ideas. Thanks Evil Avatar.

J.t.Qbe comments: My download is halfway complete (love my DSL!). I've heard enough good things about the game to give it a try and see if it'll work on my "old" 800 MHz system. If so, I'll probably end up buying it. If not, nothing lost. Thanks, Atari!

Senator v. RIAA -- 11:22 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) introduced a new bill aimed clearly at the RIAA. Wired has the scoop. The bill would require the RIAA to file a "John Doe" lawsuit to obtain a person's online information instead of just getting a subpoena. It would also create a labeling system so that any products with digital rights management (DRM) would be labeled as such. I hope this passes. It would allow the RIAA to go after pirates, but they would actually need to have facts first. It would also enable me to know what I'm buying and then make a decision as to whether or not to buy something with DRM (I won't). Thanks Ars Technica.

UPDATE! I just called my Senators Kohl and Feingold to express my support for this bill. And yes, I gave them my full name and address along with my comments. Sentor Brownback's site has more information too.

Past Two Days' News

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