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June 30, 2004
Girl Has Heart Attack Playing DDR
A local Omaha TV news channel reports (via Slashdot) that a 15-year-old girl had a heart attack while playing Dance Dance Revolution at a local mall arcade.
Apparently the girl had a pre-existing heart condition, hypertrophy cardiomyopathy, that could have been triggered by any vigorous exercise. Police gave her CPR at the scene, while paramedics arrived and shocked her with a defibrillator.
She’s now been fitted with a pacemaker, and expects to be back at the mall soon, although she’s ruled out a return to the DDR dance mat.
Link: http://www.theomahachannel.com/family/3472497/detail.html
Posted by gamegal at 05:07 PM
Farm Equipment Game Excites Dozens
You may think the Japanese have the market on wired game concepts cornered, with their flower-arranging, cow-herding and date simulating games. But a company named Bold Games is working on a SimCity-style farming simulator called John Deere: American Farmer, based on the line of green-painted tractors, cultivators and other farm equipment.
If you think that’s exciting, you should see the cow-milking mini-game. We kid, we kid…
Link: http://www.boldgames.com/johndeere.html
Posted by gamegal at 05:07 PM
June 21, 2004
MSNBC: Women in Gaming Industry
Cable news website MSNBC.com has an interesting feature on how the games industry is trying to recruit more female programmers and artists.
They quote Laura Fryer, director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group at Microsoft, as saying, “"Half of the population isn’t having input into what’s being created. And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games."
They also point out that the Sims series has a player base that is 50% women, and the Maxis team that develops the games is 25% female – more than double the average.
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5113554/
Posted by gamegal at 01:27 PM
Thief: Deadly Shadows Review
Figured we’d start mentioning new game reviews here on the newswire. We’ve just reviewed Thief: Deadly Shadows, the generally excellent new entry in the classic stealth series.
Link: http://gamegal.com/thief3-xbox-re/index.htm
Posted by gamegal at 01:25 PM
Sync Magazine Launches
Yeah, it’s a plug, but it’s still pretty cool. One half of the GameGal executive management team has a day job as a staff editor at Sync, the just-launched consumer gadget magazine from ZiffDavis.
Check it out at your local newsstand, and look for Libe’s two-page spread on girls and gadgets.
Link: http://www.syncmag.com
Posted by gamegal at 01:25 PM
June 11, 2004
Half-Life 2 Arrests
The 2003 theft of part of the Half-Life 2 source code has been blamed for delaying the game’s release, and has prompted a vigorous investigation by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
The current theory was that hackers somehow planted a key tracker on the computer of Gabe Newell, chief executive of Valve, and were able to swipe the right server passwords to snag the code.
Now we hear that several arrests have been made in the case. No details on who or how many people have been clipped, but this may have some connection to a January raid that seized computers from a San Francisco man connected to a well-known hacker group.
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3797167.stm
Posted by gamegal at 04:07 PM
Gollum Plays Kong
Another day, another motion-captured performance for actor Andy Serkis. Best known for being the voice and physical manifestation of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Serkis will reunite with director Peter Jackson in the upcoming King Kong remake.
But if he’s worried about being typecast as a stand-in for computer animation, Serkis also has a flesh-and-blood role in the flick, as a character known only as “Lumpy the Cook.” Naomi Watts, Jack Black and Adrien Brody also star.
Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/11/film.serkis.reut/index.html
Posted by gamegal at 04:06 PM
June 08, 2004
The Dating Game
Are you ready to have your mind blown? Are you sure you’re ready? Then look upon me and despair…
That’s right, we found a website called MMOdating.com. It’s apparently for Everquest dudes to find Everquest girls. Hopefully ones who are real girls, unlike most of the in-game girls, who are actually guys. You following all this?
We also love the hottie-heavy stock photography on the site. We’re sure most MMO gamers don’t look like that – except us, of course.
Link: http://mmodating.com/
Posted by gamegal at 01:44 PM
EA for Sale?
They’re the 800-lb gorilla of the gaming industry right now, so it makes sense that big media conglomerates would want to buy the company. Viacom apparently looked into it rather seriously.
We certainly appreciate 80-year-old Sumner Redstone’s interest in gaming, he says the $20 billion price tag for EA “is so high, it would be dilutive to our earnings.” So look for the company to remain independent for now.
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/04/technology/viacom_erts.reut/
Posted by gamegal at 01:43 PM
Thief Bug Makes Headlines
Most games have bugs – we’ve all come to accept that. But the unlucky souls at Ion Storm seem to have made a rather noticeable boo-boo with their high-profile game Thief: Deadly Shadows.
Apparently, the super-smart AI resets itself to normal every time you load a saved game. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Ion Storm made such a big deal about the realistic AI. Now it’s on Slashdot and a ton of other websites, so expect all hell to break loose.
We’re playing Thief on the Xbox right now, but we’re big wimps and playing on normal difficulty anyway, so we’d never notice.
Link: http://forums.ionstorm.com/index.php?showtopic=211128&st=0
Posted by gamegal at 01:42 PM
June 03, 2004
Retro Gaming Still “In”
Yes, the retro gaming fad is in full swing, from the special vintage arcade museum to this story in the New York Times.
The latest developments include the surprisingly high-profile TV Games releases from Jakks Pacific, which are self-contained joysticks with ZV outputs. Each one has a bunch of classic game from the Atari/Intellevision era.
Also getting lots of buzz is the new Nintendo GBA series of classic NES games, like Super Mario Brothers and Excitebike. The catch? They’re going for a whopping $20 each – but will doubtlessly sell tons of copies.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03clas.html
Posted by gamegal at 12:02 PM
Gran Tourismo 4 Demo
Want to play the long-awaited demo of Gran Tourismo 4 for the PS2? The 800-lb. Gorilla of driving games finally has a demo disc available, but so far there’s only one way to get it in the US.
Head on over to the Toyota website and fill in a request for a Prius brochure. They’re sending out a special GT4 demo with that. Pretty groovy, huh?
Update: As of right now, they’re out of stock, but keep trying!
Link: https://gotoyota.programhq.com/activity/aspx/tybrp/toyota.aspx
Posted by gamegal at 12:01 PM