Jeff Conroy has recently started a new ZZT/MegaZeux company, Underneath it All (named after a Nine Inch Nails song). If you are interested or want to join, the website (which looks cool) is located here.

Zorkboy has uploaded the first feature/discussion of ZZlisT (a part of Zorkboy's 227 page). The question was: "What is the most influencial ZZT game?". The panellists were Zorkboy, Masamune, Bocco11 and ZZTbenco. Out of the many nominees (including my game Savage Isle), Link's Adventure (by Rotaj J. Russel) was chosen as the winner. More information can be found here (including a log of the IRC discussion).

Jawatrader (also known as Vampy and Koony) has finally decided that the ZZT Carnival will take place this weekend, from Friday 26 to Sunday 28. It takes place in #other (Austnet, IRC). Events include BKZZTs (Blitzkrieg ZZT contests, for those of you who don't know what it means), BKarts, scripting contests, music contests, programming contests, Starcraft (and maybe Warcraft), "Who wants to be a Millionaire?", a roast, role-playing and even more! The main event: every visitor of the carnival gets a certain part in the story (which is probably the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) to make it into a ZZT board file (.BRD) or board files. This collection of boards will be released for public pleasure. The one with the best board will earn tokens, by the way.

Jawatrader's new company, Tea-Time Productions, is now accepting members. Benefits include getting tokens for the ZZT Carnival and getting the chance to be a judge in the next Carnival (according to Jawatrader himself).

Dark FLR has uploaded the page of his independent ZZT magazine, ZZTV. It contains info on the channels, downloads of all issues and more. You can visit it here.

Dark FLR has released the first skinpack for his ZZT music utility ZZT Piano. This allows you to change the background of ZZT Piano. You should unzip it and put the files into your skin/back directory. Download it here.

Jacob Hammond has released version 2.0 of his ZZT Music Player. I quote Jacob: "Version 2.0 of the ZZT Music Player has been released. This version is much better than v1.0, including the ability to hold up to 150 ZZT songs in one .ZZM music file. The ZZT Music Ripper has also been improved, now it will "intelligently" search a ZZT file and attempt to distinguish #play sound effects from actual songs." This sounds interesting, so go and download it here.

Blue Magus has redesigned his ZZT preview/review/news page, #Char 2 White on Blue. It's still at the same URL, but it now contains game reviews (up-to-date), downloads and more. It will be updated daily, according to Blue himself. Go and check it out now, for it severely kicks ass.

Zenith has started work on issue 8 of iFantasy (IF's ZZT magazine), now that Blue Magus finished issue 7. Send all your art, advertisements, previews and more to kfsaltfleet@ukgateway.net.

Recently the old company of Skullie (aka scissor) has returned: Skulsoft is back! Skullie to decided to reform the company and Lemmer (who recently quit Zorkboy's company Explode16) joined him and became the vice president. The current members are Skullie, Lemmer, Breakout, Alias and Atom. Their page is located here.

Blue Magus has released issue 7 of Interactive Fantasies' ZZT magazine, iFantasy. It features a lot of cool previews, reviews, art, etc... and it has some neato humor. Go download it now!

The famous ZZT company Eagle Rock Interactive has recently changed a little bit. First of all ToyKirby returned from his grave and was allowed into ERI again (because he was in it before), making the member count 11. Dragonlord (president) and DoggyShop (head counsellor) have fired GoldenHog and Mako, due to idling for too long. One of the most underrated ZZTers of this moment, FreeZerBurn, joined, which means ERI has 10 members again (and is "full").

XAbbott doesn't plan on updating zzt.org ever again himself, as a lot of us already knew. Still, he has found a way to revive zzt.org. First of all, he hopes to have fixed the problems with zzt.org's URL. Other than that, Dragonlord has been hired to add games. Yes, this means the zzt.org upload function has been enabled again. Dragonlord has already added a lot of games, which is a good thing.

As most of you will know, the Winter 24 hours of ZZT will be held in December (to be exact: December 17, 6:30 PM EST). Go here for all Winter 24hoz information you need. Other than this big contest, tseng will be hosting the Da Hoodian Awards, which is gonna be a big thing. This year there are dozens of award categories and the awards will be presented on #darkdigital. Note that I am one of the judges. ^_^ For detailed information, go here. Furthermore, there will also be IF Annual ZZT Excellence Awards this year (like last year). The preparations for these awards have started and they will be presented on a ceremony/party on #if (austnet), somewhere near the year 2000. More news about this as it comes. With these 3 big ZZT events, I hereby call December 1999, *the* month of ZZT.

Draco has announced that he *will* make a Teen Priest 3. He quit ZZT some time ago, but he has now decided to finish the trilogy of Johnny Danger. Parasite wanted to continue the Teen Priest series by creating Teen Priest 3 himself (without having permission of Draco). He longed to see Teen Priest 3, but he cancelled the project after he heard Draco was going to create it.

tseng has changed the name and URL of his homepage again. Second Coming has now turned into the Roadblock on the Road to Eternity again. It's still a cool page with ZZT news, the Voice Box (previews), Da Hoodian Awards and info on tseng and his projects. The ZZT Top 5 idea has been dropped. Visit tseng's page today.

Fejj has uploaded his homepage, Fejjness again. It was gone for some time, while Fejj was redesigning it. The new look is really cool and you should really check his page out. It is located here.

Blue Magus has moved his page, Fade to Blue, to Mousetrap (Butterwhore's server). The #Char 2 White on Blue (Blue's ZZT preview and review page) URL has also changed. #Char is located here and Fade to Blue is located here.

Almighty Cow has joined Interactive Fantasies, after the departure of Knightt. The Cow is mostly know from his ZZT game Buck Russel and his MegaZeux game Endless Journey. His new project, Endless Journey: Ethen Test (which is absolutely awesome) should be out relatively soon.

Knightt has quit Interactive Fantasies. He finished Stupid RPG Disc Two, but thought it sucked. He didn't want it to be released and he decided to quit ZZT programming (and thus also quitting IF). He didn't leave the scene and in fact, he is now helping Masamune with his new company "Masa's Monarchy". The remaining 9 IF members are busy discussing who'll the 10th IF member is going to be. The 10th IF member shall be announced when we have decided who it is going to be.

Mentalguy, Spider124 and JZig have been working hard and finally it is done: MegaZeux v2.51s2 final has been released. Some of the new features include: under direction fixed, pressing ] captures the screen to screen.pcx, mod * support added (mod that was playing last will be played), updated documentation and more various changes. Read readme.1st or whatsnew.251 for more info. You can download the binary files via FTP here. If you are looking for the source - it is distributed at the zeux.org download page. If you have any comments, email JZig now.

I (Hercules) have uploaded the page of the Winter 1999 24 hours of ZZT contest. There is no date set yet, but it'll take place somewhere in late December. The judges are me (Hercules), Chuck, Blazer and tseng. The page is located here. You can sign up by emailing me with your preferred ID number and name.