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Buy John Romero's Ferrari On EBay
TheMightyZog writes: "John Romero is selling his Ferrari Testarossa: eBay and his own site. Is anyone else distrubed by the graphic on the top of his home page?" At last check, the reserve was not yet met.
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He's actually got (at least) 3 of them. Another one of them was won by Thresh (a high school friend of mine, BTW) in 1997, after the Red Annihilation Quake II tournament. (Pictures from there are here).
Anyways, it's not his Testarossa, but one of a few...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm vastly amused by the fact that this Italian supercar is humbled by the same annoying automatic seatbelts that I, to this day, cannot stand. It was DOT regulation at the time, so all US-market cars in 1991 had them, but ... you just don't think about that when you think about Ferraris.
Incidentally, "testa rossa" is Italian for "redhead" -- I believe it was a reference to the fact that at least some of these had red valve covers (or something like that -- anyone know?) in the engine. Most are red to go with the meaning of the name.
Don't care much for the wheels. I'd think a good set of BBS wheels, like the ones on this car, would be nicer. But if you have that much money to spend on a car, you have the money to drop $1500 on a good set of wheels and tires.
i am a soviet space shuttle
If you really wanted that same model, you could find it from another less well known seller and end up paying less for basically the same car. Minus the mods made to it. Shop around first of all. You don't have to buy it off the famous John Romero.
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Description for anyone wanting it.
Now some other Ferrari Testarossas that are better deals
http://www.findit.co.uk/uk/cars/ferrari/173188.
http://www.findit.co.uk/uk/cars/ferrari/174393.
http://www.findit.co.uk/uk/cars/ferrari/195377.
http://pro-auto.com/showroom/91fertest.htm
--Metrollica
A few years ago he wrote a little computer game with John Carmack. You may have heard of it... it was called Doom. He went on to do Quake before falling out with Carmack, and leaving id software to start his own company, Ion Storm. They released the moderately successful Deus Ex, and the, erm..., not so successful Daikatana.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
theRomero was on the Quake team. Deus Ex, however, was done by the awesome, ever-so-talented Warren Specter. Deus Ex was also done at the ION Storm Dallas (or wherever it was -- not Austin, where theRomero was) office, which was not closed. Instead, it went for some name change, I don't remember what. That same studio is now working on Thief 3, as well as Deus Ex 2. ION Storm Austin is gone. Dead. Finito. Tom Hall (also an ex-id guy, sucked into ION Storm by theRomero, made the moderately successful yet still fun Anachronox) and theRomero started Monkeystone Games, where they make games for various handhelds. They already have one game out for the PocketPC, something about a delivery boy. Maybe theRomero is learning, since this game was done in a matter of months, rather than years.
And remember, "Design is Law!" Oh, yeah, and theRomero has cut his hair. He's no longer sexy.
Even though Ion Storm did release the quite successful Deus Ex, I think it needs to be made clear that Romero was not involved in the project. Executive producer was Warren Spector, lead designer was Harvey Smith. Check the Deus Ex Team list for more details.
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I'm actually suprised he got that kind of milage out of a Ferrari engine (not at ALL known for reliability) running turbocharged (which is absolute HELL of an engine not designed for it), and that kind of power level. That is absolutely fantastic that he got that kind of lifespan out of his engine. I know people who have burned out $15k engines with $10k of mods on them in a couple thousand miles!
As someone who has spent way too much money modifying cars, I can say for certain that reliability is entirely dependant on how well done the entire collection of modifications is. At that price level, even on a Ferrari, he didn't just slap a turbo on the engine and call it there. I'm sure there was a lot of fabricated parts that went to ensuring the whole package ran reliably, and clearly whoever did it did a fantastic job.
The Motec ECU is a pretty serious system. It gets used in LeMans LMP cars, WRC cars, and the like.
http://www.motec.com to see. You can download evaluation copies of the programs to play with, if you like.
I have a similar system in my race car, made by GEMS (http://www.gems.co.uk) and it's awesome. Computerized fuel injection has revolutionized racing. You wouldn't believe the crap that thing can do.
Of course, the downside to having complete and total control over the engine is that you have to do all the calibration yourself. After having programmed the idle control/antistall stepper motor, and the accursed warmup maps, I have a huge amount of resepct for the OEM calibration guys.
Getting a car to idle smoothly under all weather conditions is tough work.
In any case, if Romero's Ferrari has a Motec system in it, then that ain't your garden variety Ferarri.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
The scariest thing is his girlfriends dog .. that mutt looks damn right evil!!
To be fair, the guy complaining has 9 negatives and 12 neutrals.
Not exactly ebay premo himself.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
As stated in other posts, John Romero was a kind of 90's game-designing rock star. His conspicous excesses, trophy girl, and dubious new-money lifestyle became emblematic of dot.com and new tech millionaire waste in general. Thus, the fact that Romero is selling his Ferrari (an object scorned and ridiculed at Oldmanmurray.com, among others) is also emblematic of how the mighty have fallen.
And, to accomodate an earlier post: no, long hair, especially girlish long hair, is *not* sexy on men. It's silly and immasculating. Anyone not half as "tough looking" as Lorenzo Lamas (ha!) comes off appearing oh-too-fey. This isn't 1988, John Romero. The '80's called, and they want...actually, you know what? The '80's didn't call you at all. Nobody is, in light of the Daikatana debacle.
Rock and Roll, baby.
He's got a real hosting service, I suspect that he didn't expect the page views that he just got today and didn't pay for the larger service agreement from them.
He's obviously not being extravagant like he was with Ion Storm these days. The core Ion Storm crowd seems to have formed a new company called MonkeyStone and they're producing games for handhelds (Something less ambitious than Daikatana and more easily done on a garage style development budget). The official offices are in Quinlan, TX (A small town some 15 or so miles to the south of Greenville, TX, a town 45 minutes drive time to the east on I-30 from the Dallas side of the DFW metro area...)- office space is dirt cheap there in Quinlan (it's not exactly "pricey" in Greenville, either...).
Looks like he's going for the garage games route of develoment, etc.- something sustainable with reasonable resources. Your guess is as good as mine as to why he's selling it. Could be he's trying to capitalize the GBA version of his game (they DO have to pay a license fee to produce the game for GBA) or he just decided it was an expensive toy (read: penis extention) that he just couldn't justify anymore and is trying to shift it for that reason.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
- Wolfenstien 3d (good)
- Doom (good)
- Doom 2 (good, and it had his head on a stick at the end)
- Quake (good)
- Quake 2(good, he might of left ID after quake 1)
- Diakatana (crap.)
between him and john carmack there has been no one who has had as big an effect on the current game industry (with the except of warren spector and sid mierer). this was posted for the humor fact that he is broke as hell now, he used to buy such things like toys.Gosh, it must be a slow news day, huh? Maybe there isn't stuff going on like spyware reading your forms, system config, and search engine queries.
Sigh. Well, I've got something more up their alley. There you go, guys. I've got extra karma, so one of you can submit it.