Way back at E3 we reported that Epic was producing a mission pack for Unreal Tournament in conjunction with Digitalo Studios (story). Since quite some time has passed since then with no word as to the status of the add-on, we contacted Epic's Mark Rein to find out what happened to this project. Here's his brief, but concise explanation:

Infogrames canceled it because UT continues to sell well and they also had other, more important, Unreal products in the pipeline including the awesome UT Dreamcast which should hit stores any day now.

Being the official site of a print magazine has its perks, as shown by the preview of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault available this evening on Daily Radar. The preview originally was published in PC Gamer magazine, and while virtually everything in here has already been released in one form or another, it does contain a good rundown of the overall concept and gameplay.

• Breed
  UK developers Brat Designs have replaced their Breed screenshots gallery with a completely new set of 27 high-res images illustrating off their upcoming space- and surface-based 3D action game.
• Hidden & Dangerous 2
  The Unofficial Hidden & Dangerous 2 Site has posted new pair of Hidden & Dangerous 2 screenshots, showing off the third-person tactical action game in the works at Illusion Softworks.
• Serious Sam
  A brief but hands-on preview of Serious Sam on Game Revolution includes a few new screenshots of Croteam's shooter, along with images from the official site.
• WWII Online
  There are three new World War II Online screenshots on Stomped, offering some scenes in the massively multiplayer war game by Cornered Rat that similar to but subtly different from other recent showings.
• Echelon
  Sim Extreme has posted a new pair of Echelon screenshots showing more aireal scenes in the futuristic combat flyer by Madia and Buka.

The Star Wars Battleground news keeps on coming today, as GameSpot has posted a Q&A with LucasArts' Tom Sarris talking about the game. There isn't anything here that hasn't been said elsewhere today, but Tom does explain how the game fits into the Star Wars timeline, saying that "Star Wars Battleground will combine elements from classic Star Wars and Star Wars: Episode I."

The newly unveiled fan site Undying World has conducted a brief Q&A with Clive Barker, talking about (what else?) Clive Barker's Undying. The interview is brief, and Clive talks about how he approached the project and his feelings on video games in general.

Continuum Entertainment has released an English playable demo of Outlive, available for download from Daily Radar. Outlive is their isometric RTS that will be published by TalonSoft, and the 52.9 MB demo offers a mini-campaign with a tutorial and three missions, as well as multiplayer.

RPG Vault has conducted another installment in their series of Dragonriders Q&As, quizzing lead designer Oliver Sykes about progress on the third-person adventure RPG nearing completion at Ubi Studios UK. This time there are some technical details, a summary of what's left to do in the art, code, scripting and design departments, and a few comments from several other team members.

Also on RPGVault this evening is a new Wizardry 8 Design Log II, with programmer Steve Taylor penning a diary about his work on Sirtech's upcoming first-person RPG. This installment deals with the challenges of getting the monsters to path their way through the game world.

Fansite Blade Universe has posted an alpha OpenGL renderer for Blade of Darkness, which may be of use to those having trouble with the Direct3D support in Rebel Act's just-released melee-combat game. This is an unsupported alpha release, so apply at your own risk.

RPG Vault has posted a short Summoner movie clip that was not included in their most recent Elements of the Week feature, but is now available for download in two sizes. The 24 second clip shows "Joseph summoning and then banishing a Celestial Samurai." Also, the official Summoner site has been "relaunched" in anticipation of the upcoming PC/Mac release of Volition's 3D RPG, with little change apart from a new downloadable wallpaper.

The Mankind download page mentions that a new version 1.7 client for this massively multiplayer space game was released some time ago, although curiously all of the links listed are for version 1.6. The new client can be download via this direct link though (16.7 MB), as well as at 3DFiles who have additional mirrors online. Also, a new version of the 10Six client was released last week for the massively multiplayer strategy game formerly running at HEAT.net. There are no details on the changes in this 37.0 MB download (it's just 1 MB larger than the previous version).

Slightly later than the intended 2:00 PM EST release, the new version 1.2 of Front Line Force is now available at its official site. Front Line Force is the Half-Life mod where the players are divided into Attackers and Defenders teams with battles focusing on control over Capture Points spread throughout the maps, and the Windows client/server can be downloaded as a 68.7 MB full install or a 28.7 MB upgrade from version 1.1. The online manual has details on the changes in this release.

A new preview of Steel Soldiers, the 3D sequel to the original Z is up at GameSpot this evening. The preview is based on what they were shown during a demonstration of the game, and contains their impressions, a healthy amount of gameplay details and new screenshots.

AVault is reporting that Highlander Online, Kalisto's planned massively multiplayer game set in the Highlander universe, has been put on hold. No explanation was given, although since very little information has been released on this game it's not too surprising. They are also reporting that the action/adventure game based on the Relic Hunter television series (which bares more than a little resemblance to Tomb Raider) has been placed on hiatus as well.

Fan page Vault13.net has conducted an interview with 14 Degrees East designer Chris Taylor. Rather than focus on Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, the interview deals with the background of some of the characters from the original Fallout.

id Software programmer Jim Dosé posted a follow-up to John Carmack's earlier clarification on Slashdot (story) regarding the facial animation shown in the new Doom technology demo, explaining that it isn't based on a parametric system as animator Fred Nilsson determined "that he could do a much better job by hand." Jim goes on to briefly discuss the pros and cons of parametric versus hand animation. Thanks The Gaming Union for the tip.

TechTV Extended Play (the online media channel formerly known as GameSpot TV) has conducted an interview with LucasArts' Tom Byron, discussing the game that everyone seems to be talking about today, Star Wars Battleground. The interview is offered in a couple of streaming media formats, and Tom talks about their partnership with Ensemble Studios and provides some hints at what we can expect from the game.

Tonight the official Sci-Fi Channel site is holding a chat with science fiction authors Marc Laidlaw, Greg Costikyan and Laura Mixon, to discuss storytelling in the interactive age. It should be particularly interesting to hear what the trio have to say, as Marc Laidlaw of course worked on Half-Life at Valve, and Greg Costikyan is the cofounder of Unplugged Games, a studio that makes minimalist games for cell phones and wireless devices (seemingly an odd choice for a writer). To join in, point your IRC client to events.scifi.com and join room #auditorium at 9:00 EST. You can also use SciFi.com's Java based client.

3D realms has dug into their archives and found the original design document for Wolfenstein 3D Part Two: Rise of the Triad, the game that eventually mutated into Rise of the Triad, an FPS that had no connection to Wolf 3D. The document is by ROTT and Anachronox designer Tom Hall, and offers an interesting look at a game that was never really made, and there are also some images showing off the artwork that was created.

GA-Source has posted the first screenshots from Dune, the upcoming action/adventure game from WideScreen Games (which is related to Westwood's venerable series of RTS games only by its source material). In addition to the six screenshots, GA-Source has also posted a summary of the game's story, which appears to be largely, if not completely based on the first book in the series. Thanks Stomped for the tip.

Fansite Operation-Flashpoint.net has posted an on-site preview of Operation Flashpoint based on their visit to Prague-based developers Bohemia Interactive Studios. The article includes a diary of the trip itself as well as hands-on impressions galore, all illustrated with plenty of new screenshots of the 3D tactical action that ensued. And elsewhere, GameRush has added another eleven new screenshots to their Operation Flashpoint gallery captured from the press build.

In anticipation of the client releases later today, the Front Line Force site now offers the new version 1.2 Linux server of this Half-Life mod for download, so that server administrators can upgrade in time. It is only available as a 57.1 MB full install, and a Win32 server download is forthcoming as well.

Continuing the theme of the day, developers Xenopi Studios have announced Dreadnoughts, a multiplayer "first-person action game set in the distant future which pits different competitive factions against each other in a battle to determine dominance over whole planets." Their newly opened official site offers more details on the game and their in-house Flex Engine, a FAQ, and the first set of screenshots.

• Red Faction
  A new pair of screenshots of Red Faction, Volition's upcoming first-person shooter of destructible enemies and environments, is up at VoodooExtreme.
• Hostile Waters
  The official Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising site has been updated with ten new screenshots of the 3D action/strategy game nearing completion at Rage Software.
• Gothic
  RPGDot has expanded their Gothic gallery with another 30-something new (dark) screenshots of the first-person action RPG by Piranha Bytes.
• Paradise Cracked
  The trickle of Paradise Cracked screenshots continues with another trio of images on Russian site GamePort.ru, showing off the 3D tactical combat RPG in the works at MiST land.
• IL-2 Sturmovik
  Likewise, WWII flight sim IL-2 Sturmovik keeps storming the skies with yet another trio of new screenshots also on GamePort.ru.

Following up on this morning's Italian announcement (story), Stomped has posted the official LucasArts press release, which of course is in English and so it makes a little more sense than the one we filtered through Babel Fish. More Battleground fun can be found over at PC.IGN, where they have conducted an interview with LucasArts' Randy Breen. Randy answers a lot of questions on the minds of both Star Wars and RTS fans, and clarifies that the game is being made internally at LucasArts, using Ensemble's 2D RTS engine. Here's an excerpt regarding the future of the series:

IGNPC: The press release says "future ventures are envisaged to encompass new technologies developed by Ensemble." Can you give us any clues as to what you guys are thinking for down the road?

Randy Breen: We're just trying to describe the direction. We're not ready to say exactly what we're going to be doing because we don't necessarily know that. There's certainly been things that we've touched on, but not something we can announce per se. What I can say was that the agreement was done to allow us to extend it in more than one direction over multiple products. How that develops depends on how successful the first one is obviously. My sense is that the process has gone rather well in a content standpoint and, if we're as successful as we seem to be tracking, then there's a good chance that you're going to see other products that are really a collaboration between the two companies.

GameSpot is reporting that Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge, Mythos Games' planned return to X-COM style strategy, has been canceled. Their source is this post on the official Mythos Games forums, which has Mythos' Julian Gollop explaining why this is necessary, although he doesn't provide any reasons why their original publisher dropped the project. Here's what he has to say:

It is with great regret that I have to announce that Dreamland has been canceled. We have been looking for another publisher for a while now, but no agreement has been reached and we have run out of cash. This means that there will be no further development on the game.

Thank you to everybody that has contributed to this forum and thanks for your encouragement and support. If there is any further news about the future of Dreamland I will keep you posted.

Update: Pete Hines of Bethesda Softworks (the game's American publisher) sent us this e-mail, clarifying that they do not actually own the rights to the game and therefore can neither help nor hurt the future of the Dreamland property:

We were surprised to see the recent post regarding The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge. While we have been kept informed of the development of the title through Virgin Interactive, which is the European Publisher and rights holder to the title, Bethesda Softworks does not have a direct relationship with Mythos Games and does not own the intellectual rights to this property. We cannot comment beyond that at this point and will let you know when we have more information.

The official Vavoom site has been updated with the release of a new version 1.7 beta 1 of this hybrid source port for DOS, Windows and Linux that mixes the public sources of Doom, Heretic, Hexen and "a little bit" from Quake. This release allows the use of sloped floors and ceilings, and includes a major source code overhaul as well as other changes.

Today is turning out quite the day for new game announcements, as Adrenaline Vault reports that The Episolon Conflict is in development at O3 Games. The Episolon Conflict is a 3D top-down real-time strategy game with role-playing elements being created upon the Starbreeze engine that is also powering their upcoming first-person shooter Enclave. Further details on the game's features are available at the official site.

This story on Italian site Multiplayer.it announces a strategic alliance between LucasArts and Ensemble Studios to develop a new series of real-time strategy games. The first game will be titled Star Wars Battleground, is being created upon an engine by Ensemble, and is scheduled for a Fall 2001 release. Here is full Italian press release which you may like to read via Babel Fish, and this is the main part from that translation (manually touched up a bit):

San Rafael, California - 27 February, 2001 - LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC has announced today an strategic alliance with Ensemble Studios in order to develop a new series of Real Time Strategy (RTS) for the digital market of interactive video games. The first product that results from this collaboration, Star Wars Battleground, is realized with technology that is based on the PC created by Ensemble and used in the acclaimed Age of Empires series. Arranging the creative talents of LucasArts and Ensemble - including the renowned designer Bruce Shelley - Star Wars Battleground is based on the game engine of Ensemble in order to introduce a new phase of the evolution of games RTS. Star Wars Battleground will release in autumn 2001. Future collaborations with LucasArts are expected in order to take advantage of the new technologies developed by Ensemble, weaving new "ingegneristici" elements expected of interactive strategic war in the Star Wars universe.

Stomped cornered Headfirst's Andrew Brazier for a quick Q&A on their just-announced Battle of the Planets game (story). As it is still early in development, details on the game are sketchy, but Andrew talks about how they ended up with the license, the kind of 3D action gameplay they are aiming for in the first game, the characters you get to play, and "a 'cel shader' modification to our 3D engine so the graphics will have that cartoon look but be realtime."

Multiplayer.it sends word that the official DroneZ site (which they're hosting) has been opened for business, showing off this oddball 3D action game by Zetha gameZ that mixes platform and shooter elements in a "cyberspace" environment. There are ten new screenshots on the media page, and you can also download a new movie trailer in three sizes that sports nearly three minutes of in-game footage (and that is also included on the GeForce 3 Demo CD). Lastly, three soundtrack MP3s are available.

Massive Development has opened its official AquaNox site for business, showcasing their upcoming underwater 3D action/adventure which is the sequel to the Blue Byte game Archimedean Dynasty. The site is online in English and German incarnations and offers game details galore, information on their in-house krass engine, a "making of" section, and a handful of new screenshots and wallpapers.

Headfirst Productions sends along this press release announcing they have acquired the license to develop computer games based on the classic Battle of the Planets cartoon series. The first game will be an as yet unnamed action title scheduled for a late 2002 release. We also have the original PDF press release online (Adobe Acrobat required) that includes some art from the series, and here is an excerpt:

Fondly remembered by many as “the original” animé series, Battle Of The Planets follows the adventures of five fearless young orphans who protect the galaxy from alien invasion and the plans of the evil mastermind Zoltar.

The first game, initially planned for release during Q4 2002, will allow the player to take control of the combined might of G-Force in an adrenaline-pumping action game featuring cartoon shaded realtime graphics, single and co-operative multiplayer gameplay, and even the Fiery Phoenix!

Inside.com is reporting that Davidson & Associates has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Blizzard Entertainment and Havas Interactive against New Line Cinema, over New Line's plans to make a movie titled Diablo. New Line's Diablo film has been in production since last December, with actor Vin Diesel in the lead role, but Blizzard has filed this suit because they intend to make their own movie with that title (which would be based on the original game). A second film titled Diablo II: Salvation is apparently also planned, as Blizzard has a trademark registration pending on that title.

It's been all-but-announced for some time now, but apparently this month's issue of Computer Gaming World has the first details on Earth & Beyond, Westwood Studios' upcoming massively multiplayer title. Red Alert 2 eXtreme has posted a roundup of all the information contained in the magazine while wisely leaving out the screenshots, which will inevitably make their way online via Westwood in the very near future. Here's an excerpt from RA2 eXtreme's roundup with some gameplay details:

Earth and Beyond is the only game that actually gives the players the opportunity to carve out virtual lives for themselves in the finest Buck Rogers tradition, Building their own spaceships , fighting for or against good, amassing enviable fortunes, and exploring the most distant reaches of the far flung universe.

GA-Source interviews Chris Longpre of Westwood Studios, talking with him about Emperor: Battle for Dune, their upcoming title that marks their first foray into 3D strategy. Chris comments on the game's storyline and engine, and also says that Emperor is well along in its development, saying specifically "All features are complete and in the game and we are currently going through the final quality assurance testing. It should be on store shelves by this summer."

PlanetFortress' PowerPlay interview gives some background on PowerPlay, the improved connectivity project that we have not heard much about lately. PowerPlay is described as "...a set of protocols and deployment standards for Internet consumer entertainment..." , and the authors of the article take the occasion of their visit to Valve Software to talk with Gabe Newell about its progress. The conversation covers the current state of the project, how it will be rolled out, who is participating, and what users can expect from PowerPlay. Their Valve trip concluded, this article offers a wrap-up of their visit.

Future World Relations interviews Per Edman (thanks RPGvault), talking with the MindArk designer about progress on Project Entropia. Get used to the word "society" if you read this, as all but one of the conversation's dozen questions use the 's' word in discussing the group aspects of the game, in which players can band together in groups called societies.

There's an Archaean: Massive Online World interview on RPGPlanet talking with Niklas Weidel, the producer and original designer on Archaean. One of the main focuses of the conversation is the distinction between a Massive Online World and an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online RPG), while another distinction they attempt to make is that this is not actually a game (but we won't spend too much time puzzling over that or we'd have to delete this news story as being off topic).

• GeForce 3 Previews
  Brace yourself, the expiration of an NDA means a flood of GeForce 3 previews, which can be found on GameSpot, and Sharky Extreme, and 3DGPU, and Tweak3D.net.
• Matrox Drivers
  The Matrox Graphics Latest Drivers page has new eDualHead drivers for their Millennium G450 and G400 video cards running any version of Windows but NT.

Unafraid to make a sweeping statement on the subject, Everything You Know About Video Game Violence Is Wrong on The Adrenaline Vault. The article is really more about being uncertain about where the situation stands than being certain, attempting to correlate the mixed messages coming down on the subject. Here's the introduction:

"Cognitive dissonance" is a mental state produced by having two contradictory pieces of knowledge in one's brain at the same time. If you as a gamer are feeling a little dissonance these days, you're not alone: February was a confusing and contradictory month on the whole harmfulness-of-game-violence issue.

On the one hand, game industry executives were revealed to be working behind the Oz curtain to curtail the access of teenagers to violent computer and console entertainments. On the other, the American Office of the Surgeon General released a major report telling people that violent media aren't really that big a problem, after all. A game industry watchdog group told us that sales clerks were ignoring the game rating system; but still praised the industry for having the best entertainment rating system around. Those who follow these issues closely were left wondering: Overall, did we gain or did we lose? Perhaps the answer is neither… but we did take a few steps forward.

This post on Slashdot by John Carmack answers this question about the animation in the upcoming Doom game, clarifying that credit for the cool characters seen in the demonstration video (story) belongs to their new animator, Fred Nilsson:

We don't have any technology specifically directed towards character features. The animation was done pretty conventionally in Maya.

Our new animator comes from a film background, and we are finding that the skills are directly relevent in the new engine.

A post on BarrysWorld gives word that they will be "reborn" because "The assets of the company have been bought from the liquidator by Electronics Boutique (UK)." Word is that there will be staff cuts, but "They intend to run BW as the service you already know, with a few fundamental changes to make it pay its way." On the subject of web economics, Micropayments and sorta-micro-payments on Ars Technica is a thread that further discusses alternative future approaches to collecting revenue through the web (thanks Neal). On a semi-related note, Group issues standards for bigger Web ads describes an effort to increase the effectiveness of web ads by making them bigger.

A new version 1.4 of the SCTA modification, the "Super Configurable Team Arena" mod for Quake III: Team Arena, is now available. The update addresses a few bugs, and adds a bunch of new features, which, true to the mod's nature, are all super configurable.

The PureCTF website has a new version of the Pure CTF modification for Quake III Arena. Unfortunately, one of those nasty bugs snuck into the original version of this release, so a small fix has been posted for those who have downloaded it already, but the full release versions have now been updated, so if you get the new release now, you do not need to apply the patch. Included with the release are seven maps, including a remake of the classic McKinley base.

A new version 6.0 of the Make it Compatible! utility for Quake III Arena is now available from RTD Quake III. MIC is designed to ease the process of switching between the more recent version(s) 1.27g/h of Quake III Arena and the previous version 1.17 for those trying to run modifications that will only work properly with one version or the other.

Metroid a First Person Adventure on IGN reveals details about Metroid, saying the upcoming project from Retro Studios is what they describe as a "first-person adventure," providing a detailed history on how the project evolved to where this is the case. Also, an update to Andy Taylor's .plan gives word from the Legend Entertainment programmer (who is additionally a former member of Duran Duran, and of course, sheriff of Mayberry) that, after a few game proposals that have been turned down, and he can "deftly tip-toe though (their) NDA" to reveal their next project is an Xbox title. Finally, Cube for the Masses on IGN is a report that Nintendo's Game Cube manufacturing plant is complete.

Part two of the official Sacrifice Player’s Guide is now online. Also, The FAQ/Walkthrough on the GameFAQs Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine page is now complete.

MilLANium Event Details is a write up of a successful recent event held by the Arizona LANBasher's League. Also, The Cyberathlete Professional League page has word that an additional $5,000 in prizes have been added to the Speakeasy.Net Counter-Strike tournament, brining the prize package up to $30,000. Also, there's word on Lock -n- Load on how you can qualify for the Speakeasy.Net Counter-Strike tournament via their qualifier, though you'll have to make your own sense of the CPL's statement that this is "a Qualifier Tournament which is not bound to the rules of eligibility of Regional Tournaments." Additional word from the CPL is that "Any teams that are not fully registered with at least five players by March 19, will be deleted from the registration" for the C-S tournament (and registrations fees are non-refundable). A final note is that the CPL sends along the following statement about the prize awards from their previous Counter-Strike tourney:

Today the management of the CPL had a conversation with Robert Krakoff of Kärna/Razer in which he stated that the Babbages CPL Counter-Strike prize money should be mailed to all of the winners in a few weeks. While the CPL is not directly responsible for late or unpaid cash prizes, we will stay in touch with the management of Kärna/Razer on behalf of the winners of the Counter-Strike tournament, to monitor the progression of this situation.

In a semi-related note, an announcement on the Xtreme Tournament Gaming League has word that they have "filed suit against karna LLC for not sending out the prizes they agreed upon for last season."

XGR's UT Dreamcast Giveaway offers the chance to win the UT Dreamcast port, as well as a Dreamcast system to play it on, and even an Unreal Tournament poster to hang over your television while you play.

Ground Control Center Downloads page has a new GenEd Update 02 version 3.604, a fix for the bundled Ground Control mission editor. The update to this unsupported program fixes a bug and adds a new mod selector.

Word from Valve is to expect a new version 1.2 of the Front Line Force modification for Half-Life today, around 2:00 PM EST. Also, XLGaming.com's Opera mod interview discusses this upcoming Half-Life modification with the team at work on it. Also, Online Game Review's Deus Ex Modus Moriendi mod interview talks with the folks behind this ambitious upcoming Deus Ex modification. Finally, Stomped interviews Neil Manke talking with the acclaimed author of two "They Hunger" maps for Half-Life about progress on his upcoming They Hunger III.

• Battle of Britain on GamePower.
• Clive Barker's Undying on Rant & Raven.
• Combat Command II: Danger Forward on Gameraiders and GameGenie.
• Crime Cities on PC.IGN.com.
• Ducati World Racing Challenge on GameSpot.
• Evil Islands Demo on GA-RPG.
• Fallout Tactics Multiplayer Demo on GA-RPG.
• Far Gate on PC Zone UK.
• Gunman Chronicles on Gameraiders.
• Heroes Chronicles: Clash of the Dragons on Computer Games Online.
• Oni on SharkyGames and UK Gamer.
• Project I.G.I. on Overclockedcafe.
• SimCoaster on Adrenaline Vault.
• Stupid Invaders on PlayNOW.

• Arctic Silver II Thermal Compound on TacoNuts.
• Asus A7M266 motherboard on Amdmb.com.
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1 on 3DsoundSurge.
• EverGlide Mouse Skatez on EXHardware.
• Shuttle AV32 motherboard on NeoSeeker.
• SyncMaster 955DF DynaFlat 19" Monitor on The-Ctrl-Alt-Del.com.
• Thermaltake Volcano II cooler on FrostyTech.
• Western Digital Caviar WD600AB hard drive on StorageReview.com.

• Online World Fees In Korea on RPG Vault looks at the revenue models of online worlds run in Korea, curious about how this works as we learn just how massive an online RPG can be, as one game reports over 10 million(!) registered users...
• RPGVault's latest Throne of Darkness Developer Profile talks with Erik Cufino, the lead design director at Click entertainment, talking about his history in the game business, and discussing his role in the development of the game...
• Another new edition of The BioFiles with James Ohlen and BioWare Corp.is online, again focusing on the negative aspects of their successful RPG sequel with part four of their "What did we do wrong in Baldur’s Gate 2?" series...

I was feeling a bit trendy yesterday and played with the title in the title bar atop your browser. Like the rotating images that adorn our logo, some of the fun in playing with things like his is not drawing that much attention to it, but we have received so many "corrections" to my English, that, in spite of the way the origination of the related joke was noted here, I have to try to address this once and for all and point out that the grammar there is intentional. You'd think this is unnecessary in light of the fact that this joke has now made it all the way into Time Magazine (as noted in the Tribalwar Forums-thanks PlanetStarsiege). BTW, while we like to take credit for helping spread word on Majir, and have been officially acknowledged as the kooks who spring-boarded the Hamster Dance to popularity, we are not trying to take any credit for the sensation this one has caused, as it was a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon before it was ever mentioned here even once.

Story of the Day: Pokemon Scare was Hysteria (NY Post).
Bonus Story: Battlestar Galactica is slated to make a return trip to network TV (Fox). Thanks theAntiELVIS.