Fishfood quit the z2 staff yesterday. Apparently he took z2 far enough to where it is now and he wasn't contributing too much anymore, anyway. I'm not really sure, seeing as I haven't heard a word from Fishfood himself yet. Here's what craNKGod said about it on z2:

"This simply means that you should address all of your concerns pertaining to the site to me. He was the very foundation of Z2, and it's very sad to see him leave. He said he will not leave the community and ZZTing; rather, he stated that he took Z2 "as far as [he] could take it." He will still be in contact concerning server-side questions, but, unfortunately, I am in control."

Toxik somewhat recently joined Cheezit's revived MegaZeux company, Crimson Abyss. He is the third member (after Cheezit himself and Jasukan) and is currently working on Twisted and an as of yet untitled game.

Wayward has announced that Nameless Awards are again to be held are now annual awards instead of bi-annual awards. They are to be held in July of this year, and only games released between July 1 2001 and June 30 2002 will be eligible.

The judging phase of the Winter 2001/2002 24 hours of ZZT contest, hosted by zzblue, ended surprisingly fast! The results have been published here. The judges were zzblue, Knightt, skullie and Tseng -- zzblue omitted Dexter's scores, because he didn't send them in on time. Also, Eurakarte and Zamros apparently never really were judges.

Leamas and Grinch won the first prize with their entry "Welcome to Seasons" (average score: 8.47). Chuck placed second with his surprising entry "Seasons of Love" (average score: 8.12) and Theta14 came in third with his entry "Farmer Man and Season Control" (average score: 7.87). Congratulations go out to the winners!

If you haven't downloaded the entries yet, you can grab them here. More news on next season's contest will follow later on.

Today, a new graphics patch for the NES version of Mario has been released. The graphics patch changes the graphics to ZZT style: Mario is char 2, the coins are gems, the floor consists of 'normals', some enemies are ZZT enemies, etc. You can download the ROM/graphics patch here. Also please remember that you need a working NES emulator for your PC to run this.

The Winter 2001/2002 24 hours of ZZT contest, hosted by zzblue, has ended. The topic was "SEASONS" and in total, 14 entries were received. You can download them here. The judging phase has started and we'll have to wait several days to see the results. The judges are zzblue, skullie, Tseng, zamros (though he might be replaced by Fishfood), Eurakarte, Dexter and Knightt. Visit the 24hoz page here.

zzblue has announced the 24 hours of ZZT topic, which is "SEASONS". All entries are due today on 6:00 PM EST (5:00 PM EST + 1 hour grace-period). For more information, visit the 24hoz page.

I have posted the results (winners and nominees) of the Interactive Fantasies Annual ZZT Excellence Awards here. The council consisted of Hercules (council chair), Hydra, aetsch, Robert Pragt, Kracken, Nadir and Leamas. Some of the big winners include coolzx's "Infestation 3" (Best graphics, Best action game), craNKGod's "Little Square Things" (Best puzzle game, Game of the Year) and Hydra's and mine "Deceiving Guidance" (Best adventure/RPG, Best gameplay). WiL was once again the big man in the ZZTer awards, just like last year, winning 3 of the 4 awards there (Best programmer, Best musician, ZZTer of the Year). Until next year!

zzblue has finally announced the details on tomorrow's Winter 2001/2002 24 hours of ZZT contest. This information came late due to zzblue being ill in bed all week. The contest starts tomorrow (January 26) on 5 PM EST (10 PM GMT, 2 PM PST). The topic will be announced on #mistanthropy (IRC, Stratius: irc.stratius.com) and on the 24hoz page. Also please visit the latter for details on the contest.

To our somewhat big surprise, Akwende has released MZXAK 2.0. You can read the Reference Guide here.

Other MZXAK files:

+ MZXAK 2.0 and MZXrun 2.0 binaries
+ MZXAK 2.0 source
+ MZXAKrun 2.0 source
+ Tetris Special (runs under MZXAK 2.0 and doesn't require SMZX_MODE)

Vertigo (also known as FreeZerBurn) has joined Knightt's big ZZT group Random Inc yesterday. It's not yet sure on which projects he is working, though. In the past, Vertigo has been a member of for example Interactive Fantasies and Eagle Rock Interactive (of which he also was president for a short while).

I got a small notice that Chili and Zacholian, two ZZTers who used to be members of Interactive Fantasies back in 1998, may be releasing the sequel to their first and only ZZT game, "Journey to the Center of Nowhere". JCN was released under the Interactive Fantasies banner, also back in 1998.

A most interesting bit of ZZT news comes from Monthigos, who has started an update to his ZZT game Sivion! Sivion was released back in 1995 and was a smash-hit in the ZZT scene back then. Monthigos moved on to other things -- MegaZeux at first (Sivion MZX demo), but then came other things, real-life and his marriage.

Here's what Monthigos himself has to say about the update:

"I've actually started redoing Sivion ZZT with updated plot and graphics. More for nostalgic fun than anything. I just don't want to embark on a project that will take years to complete. I mean, game creation is just a hobby now, less than it was when I was younger.

I have to say, its been really fun. I've been using KevEdit, so I don't have to do that annoying STK switch back and forth thing I had to do when I redesigned it the first time. Anyway, since the actual plot has evolved quite a bit (hey, when you don't make a game for a few years, that tends to happen), I have decided to change Sivion ZZT so that it will be a new independant plot.

Does anyone remember the name of the hero of game before it was Rook? Yep, that's right. It was Quiblex. I don't really care for that name much, so I'm going to use the name of Quib instead. I don't have to change the plot too much, considering it's completely different now. I've thought about adding in some additional endings as well, and maybe setting the game in the same timeline as Rook's adventure so Quib and Rook cross paths.

Are you getting confused? Most people get confused when I try to explain it. Ah well. Creating a presistant universe is a lot of fun!"

Zanno, script maintainer hired by craNKGod on ZZT.org less than 2 months ago, quit z2 this week. His reason was merely that he was 'PISSED OFF WITH THE ZZT COMMUNE IN GENERAL'. When he left, he decided to delete some forum threads, causing arguments and making him seem very immature. As far as I know, he is still ZZTing, just not much. He no longer comes on IRC or is a member on the boards.

On the bright side, ANCIENT ZZTER Cait_Sith got a place doing some of the minor script work and generally helping out, much like Funk. Cait is not really a replacment for Zanno, just another helper who can make z2 a better site to visit.

Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen again, but hey, power corrupts. :/

Jasukan, or Justin Smith, has joined Crimson Abyss, Cheezit's revived MegaZeux company. This makes the second member, and he's currently working on an interesting Castlevania side-scroller, according to Cheezit.

EmalkaY has rejoined Interactive Fantasies, after a short period of absence. He originally joined IF by suggestion of IF member Thundercloud, back in February 2001. He released a demo of Nonsense 2 under the IF banner, but then quickly seemed to have disappeared. After a few months without word from him, Hercules decided to remove EmalkaY from IF's member list (in November 2001). However, EmalkaY returned to the MegaZeux scene several days ago and has also been welcomed back in IF, since he never really left by his own words. Nonsense 2 is now finished and will be released on this site tomorrow. Also, EmalkaY started work on a new MegaZeux game, Suicide, on which information will be up later.

The Mushroom has recently posted a humor article that satirises ZZT. It's about ZZT's sequel, ZZT 2, and it's pretty funny to read'. Full article here. Please keep in mind this a joke. ;P

"Little Square Things", the highly innovative ZZT puzzle game by craNKGod, has won Game of the Month on z2. The GOTM Committee chose LST by 5 to 1. The other vote went to Wayward's "Apud le Medius Res". You can read Nadir's GOTM review here. Matt Williams' "Warlord's Temple" was picked as Classic Game of the Month -- read the review here.

Just a quick reminder for the Winter 2001/2002 24 hours of ZZT. It's taking place on January 26th, ending 24 hours later on the 27th. A time hasn't been set yet, though. The judges are zzblue, Tseng, Knightt, skullie, Zamros, Dexter and Eurakarte, and you can sign up by e-mailing zzblue.

xabbott locked zzt.org down a while back, and recently re-enabled the file uploads. He looked for someone to take zzt.org over, but today xabbott decided to close zzt.org for good. Here is what he said:

"ZZT.ORG is closed. The boards and submissions are down and the review script will be locked soon. I thank all those who applied but many others help me see that it'll never be the same.

I'd like to thank HM, Viper, Dragonlord, Fishfood, Knightt, craNKGod, Myth, Hydra, Hercules, and many others for the many contributions that have made the site great. I'd also like to thank Nny for the space.

Now go to Z2, ZZT.net, or Interactive Fantasies."

This is definitely a sad happening (in my opinion, anyway). zzt.org has been the main site for a couple of years. I have seen it come and go and used to be the Game of the Month reviewer almost since the beginning. Best of luck goes out to xabbott, and for the main ZZT site you'll have to visit z2.

The results/winners of this season's Duelstream Day of Zeux have been published! You can read a summary of the results here and read the scores/comments of each individual judge here. The judges were wizdom, me (Herc), Tixus (who replaced Omega), Diamond and mordac (who replaced Kayin Nasaki). The winners:

1) Team 804: Exophase, Ghent and Tabris -- "Torn Creation"
2) Team 316: SEGA, Nash and Alabama Man -- "Lake Effect"
3) Team 47: Kev Vance, Lipid and ManOfAction -- "Adam West is John Smoov, Secret Agent in: Instability Syndrome"

Teams 7317 (suxiT, XloCX) and 614 (Blade) got disqualified. For your convenience, here is a list of the ID numbers of the other entries, along with a list of the matching team member names:

+ Team 914: Kurushimi RoSS and Tecky
+ Team 31594: Trev MUN
+ Team 1: Quasar84, Snake Eyes
+ Team 92: Padogle, MZXGiant and PenguZ
+ Team 029: Goku1338, Viper Dude, Thunderdog
+ Team sqrt31: Toxik
+ Team sin113: KKairos
+ Team 1345: Revolution 8819
+ Team 391: MadBrain

Random Inc, Knightt's famous ZZT company, has gained 3 new members in the first few days of 2002. They've added the names of Kevin Carter (creator of Freedom and famous ZZT musician), Eurakarte (of Mr. Shapiro Cares Not fame) and Teacon7 (who recently made a promising 24 hours of ZZT entry). Random Inc currently has 24 members, but I am not sure if there are any open spots. Visit their site here.

Leamas and I (Hercules) have released our newest ZZT game, "A Community X-Mas". This game is a comedy/adventure involving the ZZT community and Christmas. It was originally scheduled for a pre-Christmas release, but we couldn't make it by that deadline. However, we still pumped this game out rather quickly (especially seeing as Leamas released his Game of the Month-winning "The Thief 3" only a few months ago). You can download the game here. :D

Fishfood mentions the following interesting news bit about z2 and ZIGsection:

"Hopefully by the end of the week, z2 will be hosting ZIGsection. What this means in reality is ZIGGERS will be using z2 to upload games and ZIGsection (with domain name intact) for tips and information about ZIG. La Roche, head of ZIGsection, will be getting uploader and admin status. Also, of course, we will be using one boards, and expanding z2's forums for ZIG. In summary, it makes it easier for everybody to access ZIG games and doesn't tear our communities apart."