(ƒ) does a happy lil' dance

 
 


news archive  


January 2001

MZXEA 2000 Ampersand Awards winners announced
Saturday 27 January 2001
I (Hercules) have announced the winners of the MZXEA 2000 Ampersand Awards (public "Best of Show" awards). All MZXEA 2000 category winners were automatically eligible for the Ampersand Awards and the public was allowed to cast their vote on their favorite category winner. Engine: The Second Attack (by Luke Drelick) won the Golden Ampersand Award. Bernard the Bard (by Jeremy Lamar) got the Silver Ampersand Award and Adlo (by craNKGod) got the Bronze one. Check out the details here. Note that the MZXEA 2000 are over now. Preparations for the MZXEA 2001 will start somewhere this year, but it may take a while. Also, I'll be handing my seat as a Council Chairman to somebody else, as the MZXEA tradition goes.

Random Inc news
Saturday 27 January 2001
Random Inc, the ZZT company run by Knightt has been undergoing several changes lately. The biggest changes include the joining of Zenith, who quit Lame Game, and Dragonlord (who is working on a ZZT project again) and the new homepage that Knightt made. Visit it here. The members of Random Inc are: Knightt (president), Cait Sith (vice president), Atom, Flimsy Parkins, zzblue, Moonpie, ZZTDogbert, Zenith and Dragonlord.

BiG BuBBa leaves already, fejjy joins
Wednesday 23 January 2001
BiG BuBBa, who only just joined Interactive Fantasies, has left the company already yesterday. He found it a tough choice, because he wanted to be in Interactive Fantasies, but he had problems leaving Duky Inc (of which Maxim and Luke Drelick, two of BuBBa's better friends, are members). One of the reasons he did quit Duky at first was because it was inactive. Right now it seems like Luke Drelick is working on a page for the company and BuBBa decided to head back to Duky. It's sad news and even though BuBBa has only been with us for a day, we will miss him. IF's MegaZeux 'division' did get another member - fejjy (Jeff Conroy) returned to Interactive Fantasies, the company he used to be a member of for about a year (1998/1999). Welcome, fejjy! This also means the MegaZeux 'division' still has one open spot. If you're interested, you can apply by sending a sample of your MZX work here.

BiG BuBBa joins Interactive Fantasies
Sunday 21 January 2001
BiG BuBBa has joined Interactive Fantasies' new MZX 'division' as well. He came back to MegaZeux a while ago and was still a member of Duky Inc. BuBBa is best known for works like Blocks (which got nominated for a MegaZeux Excellence Award) and Project Difa, on which he worked together with people like Akwende and Maxim.

ZZTyrant hosts the Survivor of the 1337357 contest
Sunday 21 January 2001
ZZTyrant is hosting the "Survivor of the 1337357" contest. Quoting ZZTyrant: "Basically, I will hold a series of 24hozzt-like contests that will not praise the winner but punish the loser. I will publish the entries and results as a ZZT file, and the ZZT file will basically be like an episode of Survivor, the person who got last place getting kicked off. I will continue to make these ZZT files until one person is left. Then, there will be some sort of special congratulations party at the end for him." For detailed information, go here.

Akwende and Thundercloud join Interactive Fantasies
Saturday 20 January 2001
Akwende and Thundercloud have recently joined Interactive Fantasies. How is this possible when IF has no open spots, you might wonder? To get IF more involved with MegaZeux, I (Hercules) opened up an MZX 'division' with four spots (one is being reserved for Jeff Conroy, though). If you interested in applying for the last spot, e-mail me at s_pieterse@hotmail.com with a sample of your MegaZeux work. IF currently has 13 members (10 in the ZZT/general 'division', 2 in the MZX 'division' and 1 honorary member, The Agonizer). Akwende has returned to MZX after a period of absence, because of college. He is working on several things at the moment (see the Upcoming Titles page for more info and for info on Thundercloud's projects as well).

MegaZeux Excellence Awards winners up!
Wednesday 17 January 2001
I (Hercules) have finally announced the winners of the prestigous MegaZeux Excellence Awards 2000 (awards covering 1998-2000). The council consisted of me, Ibrahim, Wervyn, Kev Vance, Xwing1056, Kayin, Luke Drelick, Hydra, Exophase and Matt Williams. Some of the winners are Bernard the Bard (Best Adventure/RPG), Adlo (Best Action-oriented Game) and DigitalMZX (Best Website/Internet Resource). Read all about the winners here. Also, be sure to cast your vote on your favorite category winner in the public Ampersand Awards today!

About mWorld's move
Wednesday 17 January 2001
Matt Williams announces the following on the moving of his MegaZeux website mWorld: "I'm sure many of you are wondering why mWorld has yet to move. It has been a slower process than I expected. Whenever I need something added to my account (CGI, the GameSpy news program, etc.), I have to email tech support and then wait a day before everything is set up. And I've found out I'm not going to be able to use the same news system as I'm using now (NewsPro) because of server-side includes restrictions. Anyway, it hopefully won't be too much longer. =)

Also, I cancelled my Simplenet account this afternoon, which means the archive will consist of entirely broken links within a day or two. If you need to access games during that time, use this link: http://dl.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?classicgaming/mworld/gamename.zip, where gamename.zip is the filename you need."


Dsone hosts the Spring 24 hours of ZZT comedy contest
Saturday 13 January 2001
Dsone is hosting the Spring 24 hours of ZZT comedy contest. It's a contest similar to the popular 24 hours of ZZT contests, but the it's based on humor. Details can be found at the Akim Productions website.

The Nameless Awards page
Saturday 13 January 2001
Wayward has put up the page for his new ZZT awards, the Nameless Awards. It contains detailed info on the whole event. You can find the page here.

The Hoodians results are up
Wednesday 10 January 2001
Lemmer has posted the results of the Hoodians (the ZZT awards formerly run by Tseng) here. Some of the winners are Tseng (Lifetime Achievement award), Chase Bramlage (Rookie Sensation), King's Quest ZZT 2 and Gem Hunter 3 (a tie for Game of the Year).

Wayward to start new awards
Wednesday 10 January 2001
Wayward is planning on starting new ZZT awards. It will sort of be a combination of the IFAZEA and the Hoodians and at this moment they're called the "Nameless Awards" (name to be changed later). A council will vote on games, but popular vote will be included as well. Wayward is looking for a council of about 10 to 15 members, so if you are interested in a spot, e-mail him (you can also e-mail him if you have some ideas). Some of the categories will be commune-based as well (e.g. IRC channel of the Year) and there will be categories like "Most Improved ZZTer". There is no website up yet, but there will be and it will probably be located here.

JZig stops MegaZeux 2.7 production
Sunday 7 January 2001
JZig stopped working on MegaZeux 2.7. As stated on mWorld: "As of January 1st, I, JZig, have decided to stop working on MegaZeux 2.7. Before I stop, though, I will release one final version of mzxlib and 2.7, in a state ready to be worked on by somebody else. My reasons are best expressed on my journal entry at jzig.livejournal.com. Basically, it is no longer fun and rewarding at all. I wish who ever picks it up the best of luck." Many MZXers were and are waiting for version 2.7, so this news isn't good, but luckily JZig is taking the time to ready the code for the next programmer (who that is going to be is not known yet) by adding comments and such.

MegaZeux Excellence Awards 2000 nominees up
Saturday 6 January 2001
I (Hercules) have announced the nominees of the MegaZeux Excellence Awards 2000 (the awards that cover the years 1998, 1999 and 2000). You can check them out here. The council (consisting of me, Ibrahim, Kev Vance, Wervyn, Xwing1056, Luke Drelick, Kayin, Hydra78, Matt Williams and Exophase) has now started the actual voting and the results should be announced somewhere in the near future. After the winners have been announced, it is time for the public Ampersand Awards (users vote on their favorite category winner). Visit the MZXEA 2000 page here.

IF Annual ZZT Excellence Awards winners announced
Saturday 6 January 2001
I (Hercules) have announced the winners of the Interactive Fantasies Annual ZZT Excellence Awards here! The council consisted of me, Hydra, BenW, Jacob Hammond, Robert Pragt and WiL. Some of the winners include King's Quest ZZT 2 (Game of the Year, Best Adventure/RPG), Gems and Pipes (Best Puzzle Game - tie, Most Innovative, Best Programming) and New Earth Operations Disc 1 (Best Graphics, Best Action Game - tie). WiL won three of the four ZZTer awards (Best Programmer, Best Musician and ZZTer of the Year which was a tie with Chase Bramlage).

Winter Day of Zeux results
Wednesday 3 January 2001
Ibrahim has announced the winners of the Winter 2000 Day of Zeux contest. Team Psychic Unity (Exophase, Starfire and Ghent) won with their awesome entry "Soul Excursion". Micah Lee (flucknugget) came in second with his entry "StarQuest - the Next Generation" and DarkCloak placed third with his entry "Space Scout". You can view the complete results and download the entries here.

zzt.org message boards back
Wednesday 3 January 2001
Dragonlord helped Knightt (current maintainer of zzt.org) to bring the zzt.org message boards back. The message boards are an Ikonboard (instead of an UltraBoard, which zzt.org used before) and the lay-out and color scheme match zzt.org's. Visit the message boards here. One last minute note - the boards have gone down twice already, due to unknown problems. At the moment of writing this, they are down again, but Dragonlord is trying to fix it as soon as possible.

mWorld to move
Wednesday 3 January 2001
Matt Williams's popular MegaZeux site mWorld is going to be moved. He is also planning to get a bigger staff. Quoting Matt: "mWorld will be joining the Classic Gaming section of the GameSpy Network fairly soon. The new location will be www.classicgaming.com/mworld, but it's likely not to be fully moved for several days to a week. In addition, mWorld is going to hopefully have more staff after the move (much like zzt.org and digitalmzx.net). If you want to offer your services, and will actually do a job on a regular, reliable basis, feel free to email me. I intend to add a couple people and possible more later, depending on the success a larger staff has."