Prìomh.com Archives -- June 2001

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Prìomh Picks

Music
Verve Pipe - "Never Let You Down"
Staind - "Epiphany"
Tool - "Parabola"
3 Doors Down - "Be Like That"
Nonpoint - "What A Day"
PC Games
Hellfighter
NHL 2000
Unreal Tournament: Chaos
Tony Hawk 2
VGA Planets
Abandonware
Pendulous
Slix n' Slide
Front Page Sports: Football
TV Shows
Farscape
Roughnecks: STC
Haunted History (THC)

Best of IRC v2.3 Released   -- Primis 6-24-01, 2:45PM

I've officially released the Best of IRC v 2.3 for public consumption. It's now 201k in size, raw and pure Text. Do not be fooled by imitation compilations that have redundant quotes and things not actually related to IRC or IM'ing. This one's the real deal.
The document is now over 2 years old. And contains material from at least 4 years-worth of logs.
Enjoy!

Rage On   -- Primis 6-15-01, 2:20PM

One of the things PC gaming has always lacked in was good beat-em'-up arcade games. While NIntendo and Sega always had Double Dragon or Final Fight or even TMNT II, the PC never seems to get such games. Why?
Don't ask why anymore. Fluid Games has a new demo version of their Arcade Fighitng game for the PC called "The Rage". And it rocks. The game is totally 3D. As in any good arcade beat-em'-up game you get to pick up weapon like baseball bats, and knives, but also tommy guns and bazookas (yes, bazookas).. Lots of objects on the levels are destructible (wait until you blow up a car for the first time). It even features an original MP3 soundtrack.
The game also supports hotseat, LAN, and Internet play, up to 4 Players at once.

One Word -- Pendulous   -- Primis 6-14-01, 2:50PM

I debated over this a bit and finally decided that it's only fair I not only post regarding Pendulous, but also host the installer for it on this site.

Pendulous is a bare-bones basic, turn-based abstract wargame that employs envelopment and supply lines, zones of control, fog of war, and a computer opponent that is completely customizable and you'll love to hate. It has a scenario editor (which is tons of fun), and a Replay option that lets you view replays of any scenario you'd like. Pendulous supports up to 4 players at once (hot-seat or any combinmation of human and CPU you'd like). Pendulous is shareware.
You'll be hard-pressed to find this gem elsewhere on the web anymore, which is why I decided to host it for now. The initial team behind the game appears to have vanished and is no more (or at least has no presence online). There's a great fan page set up at http://mujweb.atlas.cz/Zabava/titans/Pendulous.htm for the game (which I grabbed the screenshot from), and it has it available for download there, but the site isn't always up and running I've found. There are also various download sites that host the installer but none of them seem to have the last version of it (which is the one I have available here). It's not easy to find, in other words.
If there's enough interest in such, it might be fun to dedicate a proper fan page to Pendulous complete with a small archive of Custom-Created scenarios (.SCN files) to share with the rest of the world. If there's interest in this venture, contact me and maybe I'll get my act together and set aside a section for it.

"This... Is Silliness"   -- Primis 6-14-01, 1:45PM

ESPN runs some of the best promos in the known universe for SportsCenter. Whoever comes up with the sheer volume of these clever spots is just a genius. Not all of them are great, mind you, but enough of them are that you have to admire their advertising and marketing departments.
In case you've been under a rock for the past 3 years and haven't seen these dozens and dozens of spots, head on over to the This Is SportsCenter website and have fun streaming videos of the newest promos as well of some favorite classics. There's a brand-new spot unveiled every week (ISDN or Cable/DSL recommended, unless you're patient enough) .
You don't need to know much about ESPN, SportsCenter, or even sports to appreciate these, but if you do you'll get an even bigger kick out of them because there are tons of subtle and hidden things in every spot (mainly random cameo appearances for no real reason other than because they can).

Get Off the Phone!   -- Primis 6-14-01, 12:10PM

We as human beings in this post-2000 era have come to depend on the telephone for its convenience, usefulness, and quite frankly, its magic. It's cheap, it's effective, and it's also ridiculously-handy. However with it has come several new problems, mainly in the arena of common decency, etiquette, and manners. We as human beings suck anymore when it comes to thinking about someone other than ourselves, and this now easily spills over into phone usage... and I'm sick of it.
More...

See, Lies Can Be Fun!   -- Primis 6-7-01, 7:55PM

What is wrong with people named Dave anyhow? :-p I present to you Dave's Web of Lies, with a new lie listed each and every day of the week. My favorite lie so far has to be the following:
"In 1994 Xodyx, a Silicon Valley start-up company, developed an e-mail server that could deliver messages up to 36 hours before they were sent. The temporal informational paradoxes the device created, however, caused the founding of the company to unhappen in 1993, thus precluding the invention of the device itself a year later. The disappearance of the Xodyx device from space-time briefly caused the NASDAQ stock index to sink to a negative number."
Either that one or:
"A logical statement is true if and only if it is palindromic."
Hmmmm, maybe we need to stop giving free time to people named Dave or something....

"We Interrupt This Explosion to Bring You A Slightly Larger Explosion..."   -- Primis 6-7-01, 7:55PM

Ok so I'm not going to get my All Explosions Channel (AEC) on cable anytime soon. This is a good start though. Implosionworld.com is a site that collects .RAM (RealVideo) files of stuff going *blooey*. There are 25 files there at the moment, and presumably more to come.
If you like watchign stuff blow up, you'll probably like this archive.

"Yes! Spam Satan!"   -- Primis 6-7-01, 1:35PM

Sluggy Freelance is cool. Possibly even cooler though is the collection of Sluggy quotes that someone names juggleme has compiled, complete with links to the strips in which each quote has appeared. It's kind of like having a "Best Of Sluggy" at your disposal, only not. Go worship the comic and the quotes.

"Coffee?.... Tea?.... SORE LOSER!"   -- Primis 6-7-01, 1:35PM

I spotted this quote in another publication. It's originally taken from Electronic Gaming Monthly, May 2001:
"If you want to play online games, a PC sucks. How many times do you have to reinstall (software like) DirectX How much time did you waste having to decide on what graphics card to buy? One the PC side, you're always having to deal with technical issues. For us, online gaming on a console has to be the same plug-and-play, ease-of-use experience our gamers expect."
And who is this authority on how much online gaming sucks on a PC because of technical and hardware reasons? None other than Charles Bellfield, Vice President of Marketing for SEGA. That's right, the same SEGA that couldn't handle the hardware end of things even on their own consoles and is getting out of the consoles hardware market. Nothing like shooting your mouth off on a topic you know nothing about, and a market you're abandoning yourself.
No wonder why SEGA's going under so quickly.

"Mommy, What's an APoD?"   -- Primis 6-4-01, 9:10PM

This is simply one of the coolest sites ever. The APoD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) features some the coolest pictures and photos you will see ANYWHERE. And it's not just all about space. It also ocassionally features more terrestrial offerings. If you're a fan of gorgeous JPG's, GIF's, and BMP's, the APoD will never disappoint. For even more fun check out their archives and see what all you've already missed.

Force Feedback Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong?   -- Primis 6-3-01, 9:05PM

Slashdot is running a blurb on this currently (which is where I first saw it). But game controller-maker MadCatz is currently working on a gamepad that will lightly zap players with electrodes when they get "hit" in a game.
It supposedly doesn't hurt actually, but still the more I think about this the bigger the grimace on my face gets. Especially when you come to the realization that SOMEONE out there is going to make a hack of the thing so that it really will zap you pretty good. Why? Because this is what we as humans do. We don't know when enough is enough.
Otherwise though, I do have to admit that it's at least a new idea in controllers, and if someone can regulate these things and push the initiative in the right direction, who knows what we might do or feel when playing Unreal II down the line?

Gaming And Music -- The Match Made In Heaven.   -- Primis 6-3-01, 6:45PM

GameSpot has revealed what appears to be the soundtrack list for Gran Tourismo 3 for the PS2. This isn't offical, but the artists on the list include 8Stops7, Motley Crue, Jimi Hendrix, Papa Roach, and more.
This is what makes a great game, to me. One of the best things about Tony Hawk 2 is the awesome soundtrack it includes, and I always dug the soundtracks to Gran Tourismo 2 and Road Rash, and others that used REAL songs by REAL bands. And while some other games like EA's NHL series and Westwood's Command & Conquer series have always produced great original soundtrack music, there's nothing like the real thing sometimes.
Let's hope this trend continues in gaming in the future.

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