Mailbag
July 28,1999 -- Previous Mailbag

Letters are edited for spelling errors only (occasionally), and may contain profanity. Commentary by Jason "loonyboi" Bergman.

Who says we suck?

From: Alexei Novikov
Subject: Sucking blows

Hi there!

Just a small note concerning this piece of news

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Vampire Preview [Blue-7:36 AM EDT]
Thresh's FiringSquad's Vampire: The Masquerade Preview is up, looking at
Nihilistic's upcoming third-person action/adventure game where the more you
suck, the better you are.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course I couldn't keep from chuckling after reading it (he said suck, heh-heh-heh), but it isn't entirely accurate. In Vampire universe, the more blood you suck (particularly if you suck a man dry) the less of a human and more of a monster you become. Which is considered bad. So, even in Vampire, the more you suck the more you suck. There's no way around it :-).

Cheers,
Alex.

Woah. Dude, that sucks.

The ever lovin' end.

From: Geoffrey Hickey
Subject: Not Quite The End

Allright, this is definitely nitpicking of some stripe, but I just couldn't let id be maligned for bad endings without saying this:

One of the things added during one of the very early Quake II patches was the ending sequence. I had already played all the way through to the horrible "The End" screen, but when I read that they had added the real ending, I set the map to the last level, defeated the boss again, and viola! Ending sequence. It's a shot of the escape pod landing on some planet (Stroggos?) in rocky terrain, and a hand emerging from the wreckage. Not bad, especially for id.

- Geoff

Guess that's what I get for playing through the game before the point release, eh? :)

Now why didn't I think of that?

From: Scott Dudley
Subject: ISDN

Hello Blue,

You know, if you printed the telephone number for looney's phone company on your site.. they'd probably have his ISDN turned on in a few hours ;)

Best regards,
Scott

You're probably right. Oh well...it was turned on eventually, at least. :)

Halo - the real definition.

From: Sean Bonney
Subject: Halo Interview

You know what "halo" means to a military guy? High Altitude Low Opening - This is when you jump out of a plane at really high altitude, over 30,000 feet, and rocket towards the ground like a meat rocket, and open your chute only a 1000 feet up. Come to think of it, that would make a great scene in a military game.

devilbunny

Carmack - the actor?

From: czar
Subject: Quake 2 N64 commercial

I recently saw the n64 quake 2 conmmercial, and I swear John Carmack is in it, although I can't be sure with out some sort of credits of which I've been unable to locate, but then I'm not the web surfer that you or Loony are. maybe it really is John, maybe not. Perhaps you want to look into this one just for kicks.

I couldn't find anything about the commercial, but hey...did you know that Carmack's listed in the Internet Movie Database as "miscellaneous crew" on Quake? Furthermore, Quake's got its own page, which lists Romero as "Production Designer" on the game. Weeeird.

Where's the chicks?

From: James G Sheldrew
Subject: Female DEMOS

Where is Kornelia? Were are all the other chicks, dammit? I like looking through a chick's eyes.

Dudes left and right. Is there an explanation?

DEMOS DEMOS DEMOS!!

garett

www.femalefrag.com. Happy?


Trash?

From: SpaZ
Subject: Please Do Not Post Trash!

Hi Blue,
Your page is informative and usually is chock full of great stuff. But Please!!!!....Don't post downloads like "Absolute Terror". That was the most pathetic excuse for a game I have ever seen! It almost makes me wonder if there was another motive to install the demo. Terrible Terrible stuff.

-Christoph

Um...we're sorry? :)

Harsh words about Mortyr.

From: Paul R Wendt Jr
Subject: FPS -- sometimes new is not better

Hello,

<rant>

This is a message regarding Mortyr in particular, but some others actually come to mind. Think, avid gamers, back to the wonderful days of Wolfenstein ... killing nazi's blah blah, the whole nine yards. Now think of the 3d environments that Quake offered. Now think about pretty graphics in current id games. What Mortyr has done is combined all three ... and I mean combined all three. There is not one scrap of new material here whatsoever. Actually, I wondered if this were an official id port because just about everything matched id's style. The levels of difficulty ... they almost perfectly match id's humor "little kids and grandmas" etc. There are more details, but it's 430 am and I'm getting tired. As I sat there, playing that internet demo, I was laughing to myself, saying "this is the worst game I've ever played".

The basic theme for the first demo level is [from what I've seen] kill the guard with the key and get it to unlock the door. Other than that, the first level is completely linear. At least Unreal had REALLY great graphics ... this game doesn't even really have that. I'm not an id-nut; in fact, one of the games I'm playing right now is Descent 3 ... but come on, people enough is enough.

The AI looks like it was ripped from Wolfenstein too.... The sad part is, with the FPS genre becoming so popular [ie: moneymaking], I think this is just the latest development in an ongoing trend that will dilute the market with crummy games. For the record [and possible rebuttals for some of you Mortyr fans] I fully enjoy what id has done so far with Q3Test. I'll buy Q3 based off of what I've seen so far; I can't say the same of Mortyr.

--Paul Wendt

Blue's faux pas.

From: Jacek Fedorynski
Subject: Q3(A)Test

> it was only during the day yesterday that I realized that it's Q3Test,
> and not Q3ATest.

Oh, and I thought you were doing it on purpose... :)

Jacek Fedoryñski

That's our Blue, ladies and gentlemen. Quite a goofball, ain't he?

Gaah!

From: legLess
Subject: oh, shit, I *really* didn't need that image...

From Lars Westergren's letter:

>Animals in Outcast are somewhat anatomically correct
>(your ostrich like riding animals have large and realistic anuses),
>and further into the game I have heard hints that mature themes
>will be explored.

I *really*, *really* hope there's no connection here...

legLess

Now that's just gross.

Romero sucks?

From: Thomas Hollingsworth
Subject: Romero Sucks it Down

Heh, you know why Romero lost? He makes 3d games. Chris Taylor not only created Total Annihilation but he also wrote a book on strategy in Total Annihilation as well as a book for strategy games in general. Aoe II being a strategy game, Romero had no chance.
--
Sirex

Perhaps, but we still can get a kick out of it, can't we? :)

We suck.

From: Killer Bunny
Subject: Do not make fun of the Irish!

Bloody Sunday is not something to be mocked...

I'll just assume you're referring to the "Sinday, Bloody Sinday" anniversary. As much as I love to offend people, I can't take credit for that one - it was a promotional thing that Activision cooked up to promote the Sin demo last year.

A whole lot of PS.

From: ted
Subject: "Scratch and Win" Banner Ads

Those "Scratch and Win" ad's you have at the bottom of your pages (middle of your main news page) are evil. Every time I see one, I have to "scratch" it. When I'm done scratching it, it goes to the darn page! The stop button is useless against it. It just keeps going.

Also, when I'm loading the main news page, my browser freezes up for a couple of seconds while it loads the Java classes necessary to display the ad. That's not good at all.

A de-fragmentation of my HD would remedy this, but doing that takes forever.

I think a solution that everyone would benefit from would be to put sex banners up instead of all those fancy ad's. Because we all know that Blue's News is really a sex site disguised as a video game site.

Adios.
-ted

PS: Something else that's similar to the current system and might also work would be to put up "Scratch and Sniff" banners. Of course, then we'd have to be able to transfer digital smells via the Internet.

PPS: I think Al Gore (Tree-Face) is trying to invent a system like that.

PPPS: I like cherries.

PPPPS: I'm going to go back to using my Brain Wave program (www.bwgen.com). Bye.

PPPPPS: Does loonyboi wear Fruit of the Loom undies?

PPPPPPS: When my spell checker (Microsoft) came to the word "undies" above, it suggested "nudies." Very interesting.

It's true, that banner is too much fun. I'll admit to scratching it every time I see it as well, although for some reason I'm able to scratch it without clicking on it, so I don't get forwarded to a different page when I'm done. Which of course, makes Blue horribly jealous, since we're both using the same browser (IE5) but he can't seem to do it.

Everybody Wing Chun (VR) tonight?

From: rogue13
Subject: mailbag fodder

Every time I see that new Unreal engine game, Extreme Wing Chun VR, that you mentioned today, I always see the words Extreme Wang Chung VR instead.

I suppose some one will need to do a Q3A powered Flock of Seagulls. Mmmm, just imagine the shader work that can be done on the hair. But of course we'll need to see a Lithtech2 engine under the hood of Men Without Hats. "We can frag if we want to.."

rogue13

At least it wasn't Vogon poetry...

From: Alaric G. Weigle
Subject: 42!

A pop culture reference in the mailbag!?!

Why it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything!

42

But what was the question?

What is 9x6?

Which some little pip-squeak figured out actually works under base 13.

To which Douglas Admas replied: "You have far, far to much time on your hands."

-Alaric

BTW Douglas Admas signed my copy of Mostly Harmless "We apologize for the inconvenience."

You can call it a pop culture reference if you like, but if you ask me, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the complete series) is a canonical work of literature. My hope is that by the time my kids go through school, the people who decide these things will have replaced Beowulf (quite possibly the most horrid piece of literature I've ever read) with the works of Douglas Adams.

ZDNet sucks? (Think I see a running theme here.)

From: Brian H. Napier
Subject: (Comment) ZDNet and Quicktime Streaming

>Halo Video [loonyboi-3:04 PM EDT]
>ZDNet has posted Steve Jobs' keynote address from the MacWorld Expo in both
>Real Video and Microsoft Media Player formats (although oddly enough, not
>Streaming Quicktime).

This is because ZDNet sucks. All of their streaming for this event was sponsored by Micro$oft.

 DEATH TO MICROSOFT

 Real Audio and Microsoft Media Player are both TRASH.

 Long Live Quicktime!

:)

NSupremo
- A Mac User