Lord British ... in SPACE!

This guy is smarter and richer than you.

Lord of video games, Richard Garriott, rocketed off this weekend on a trip to outer space. (Perhaps scouting locations for the next Ultima game?)

The millionaire king of nerds paid a hefty sum to be the 6th space tourist in history, blasting off from Kazahkstan on Sunday to spend two weeks participating in research before his return on October 24th. Garriott follows in the footsteps of his father, Owen, an astronaut who worked on the US owned Skylab in the early 1970's. Pretty cool, actually.

Space travel was always a dream of the young Garriott, who spent most of his childhood and teenage years programming video games in his bedroom. He created the highly successful Ultima series in 1980, when he was only 19 years old.

According to Yahoo news reports, Garriott's shuttle carries "the digitized DNA sequences of some of the world's greatest thinkers and musicians — as well as athletes, video game players and others."

Video game players?

See mom, it's not a waste of time! Nance on......

More videogame and comic movies. Oh boy.

While at least we can take heart that Uwe Boll isn't involved with any of these projects, it does seem like the producers are scraping the bottom of the barrel -- though what else is new.

Mass Effect is the first to get the studio treatment -- unsurprising since Bioshock has been in development for some time. But since The Rock has already been there done Doom, they probably won't find anyone interesting for Shepard. Project director Casey Hudson said in interviews that Aliens, Blade Runner, Star Wars, and Wrath of Khan all served as influences for the game. Gee, I wonder if this movie will be as good as those.

Second in line is less predictable and far more ludicrous: The Sims. Yes, that's right. The Sims. Not Sim City, not Sim Farms. The Sims. You know, that game with no plot? Well, I'm sure the movie will just be full of twists and turns. (And maybe some ghosts or mad scientists?)

And to prove that third is not always the charm, Megan Fox will be playing a mermaid in Fathom, one of the 42850259 low-reader comic-to-screen projects announced recently. Apparently the project is being "rewritten" to work as a vehicle for Fox ... aka the original script sucked something fierce and producers are banking on her sex appeal to make their $ back. Not sure how this will work since a mermaid can't spread 'em, but I'm sure they'll find away around that.

Nance on......

EA Hates Space Nazis

Spock and Kirk would be relieved.

Everyone in our shiny MIB marble world knows that highly anticipated pseudo-evolutionary game Spore has just been released. Unsurprisngly so have the floodgates of wankery.

While Will Wright laughs and swims through piles and piles of money, the most popular "discussion" point about the game seems to be the issue of DRM -- as in, why the hell does Spore use DRM, especially when the program has already been cracked, why must we install SpyWare on our computers, and why must the software be limited to three installs. Boo, EA. Boo.

The second hot topic is why each copy of Spore can only activate ONE player account. Further fail, for sure. You mean that if I want to battle my brother with penis monsters we have to buy TWO copies? That's $100! Rock Band 2 is only $60, and we get to sing Bon Jovi!

Then there's the Amazon 1.5 Star average. Ouch.

But none of these really compares to the stupidity discovered when some idiot tried to make das master race on his account. (Hey, at least he's not trying in real life.)

So some dude makes space Nazis. He feels special. EA doesn't think so, so they ban his account four 7 days with no warning. Assumedly, they delete his Aryans too. Boo. So someone comes onto EA's official Spore forums to vent, and the topic of his post includes the phrase "third reicht." Everyone laughs silently to themselves about the guy's clear idiocy until they realize he typoed BECAUSE REICH IS BANNED FROM THE FORUMS. Uh, what?

And not only that, but Hitler, Nazi, swastika, Stalin, Osama, and Saddam are banned too, cutely replaced with "SPORE" whenever typed. Of course like on any forum there's typos around that, resulting in clever new terms like "swatty sticks." Oh, Intarwebz.

But back to serious land: last time I checked, the ONLY place in the WORLD where a ban on these terms could be justified is Germany, and even that's a little shaky. But EA is an American company running a site on American soil so ... what gives? Are EA WW2 deniers now? Doesn't everyone know the adage if we don't learn from history we're doomed to repeat it? So why try to erase history from Spore?

Okay, granted you don't want Neo Nazis trying to commandeer everyone else's planets -- even if you DO want them to buy your game. But you kinda have to forsee that potential situation and not react like asshats, especially when you allow Vag and Penii monsters to roam the galaxy. I mean, controversy would only sell more copies of the game, and unless users are truly emitting hate speech, what's the point of banning them?

Users have been suspended so far for making Obama creatures (using the default person tools -- it's not anyone but EA's fault that when you change the skin color the creature looks like something out of an 1890's travel book) and for making German tanks ... what next?

You guys created the game. You made it expansive enough to create anything. Deal with it. But don't try to rewrite history.

Nance on......

Samba! De Amigo

We at the NP wanted to remind everyone in cyberspace that there's other news in gaming this month besides the Spore DRM wank and the release of Rock Band 2. And that news is Samba De Amigo for the Wii, coming to stores near you on September 23rd.

Samba was a sadly neglected yet totally awesome maraca game that premiered on the Dreamcast back in the day. Looks like the Wiimote is gearing up to replace the peripherals, but the game boasts over 40 licensed songs to shake your bon bon to.

Take that, Red Octane. Nance on......

Buffy <3 Wow

It might be time to retire that dark elf, fandom: Joss Whedon's muscling further into nerddom with a brand new Buffy the Vampire Slayer MMO, if IGN is to be believed (and let's face it, it probably is). The game, while functioning in a 3D environment, will be playable through a 2D flash interface. Nifty, but can gamers really be content to quest in-browser while facebook and gmail chime at you incessantly? And can you raid with others through flash? Serious questions, friends. Nance on......