Slashdot Mirror

If you're a lazy windows user like me that's never played one of these before and don't know exactly what to download but you'd like to just play the winning entry, download and install WinFrotz and then grab the winning entry. Run the program, open the slouch.z5 file and you're on your way.

Well, this photo certainly looks like on of those frikking Intel bunny men escaped from their clean room, only to be crushed by the NOAA-N Prime... Maybe their caused the accident in the first place, dancing around in a lab and all...

From the article: It's easier to vandalize a Web site than to program a remote control.

Translation: The author of the article has done neither. If you are an editor, this is one of those phrases that tip you off that the author is willing to say anything to make the article more interesting to the average reader, even if it is entirely invented. Further translation: It's time to fire Steven Levy, the author.

This article, I'm guessing, was paid for by Waggener Edstrom (wagged.com, as in "the tail wagged the dog"), Microsoft's PR company.

Notice that they are already preparing you for the reality of Microsoft's efforts: "I firmly believe we will be shipping with bugs," says Paul England.

The article says, One hurdle is getting people to trust Microsoft. Here are more than 200 pages in which the U.S. government said that Microsoft could not be trusted: U.S. Justice Department complaints against Microsoft.

Will we begin trusting people who have abundantly proven that they cannot be trusted, and have been convicted of breaking the law? Will the government let Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson free? Will an adversarial, self-destructive company suddenly become charitable?

While I've often dreamed of an update to M.U.L.E. (or Archon), I question whether simply updating the graphics and adding new cutscenes can really enhance the excellent gameplay. M.U.L.E.'s gameplay was such that the random events every turn could throw off the balance of the game just enough to give any player the opportunity to take the lead within a couple turns (there were only 12 turns in the game, each representing a month). There's nothing quite like making the richest players pay over $200 per unit of food because they're starving. Besides that, it had arcade and strategic elements (try figuring out which plot of land you're going to grab at the beginning of each turn can be somewhat stressful) along with a certain 8-bit charm that probably won't translate very well to the modern PC.

I'll definitely grab the demo, but that's only if EA doesn't sue them out of existence first...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi

I wonder now what impact this will have on Richard Seed's infertility work...