bruceb news

The next hot market is online gaming – plenty hot already, but due for a big push in the next eight months. Many people are joining massive online worlds and investing oodles of time in their online characters. Everquest, Ultima Online, Asheron’s Call – all of them are more popular than you probably realized. There are lots more in the works, and several major players are making huge investments in hardware and software to support the next generation of MMORPG – massive multiplayer online role playing games. Watch for a huge splash when Star Wars: Galaxies is rolled out later this year. […] continued

Video games are surging (even the PC games sector is rebounding a bit), but other categories of high-tech toys are slumping. Intel put out some cool toys, but is now exiting the market. (Did you ever look at Intel’s microscope that would hook up to a PC? Very hip.) Here’s an article that talks about the sorry state of an industry that ought to be flourishing. It mentions something that ought to be obvious to every parent – kids’ software is hideous. Almost nothing creative or interesting has been done for kids on computers in years. The best-selling titles last year were Living Books and Carmen Sandiego, which are ridiculously dated. […] continued

The original Lego Racers is a fabulous game – simple, addictive, fun. I spent a lot of time with it myself. (You can pick it up for under ten bucks now. Do it!)

Lego Racers 2 just hit the store shelves, and it’s got a nasty problem. The hardware requirements are simply out of sight. In addition to a fast processor, it requires a 16Mb 3D accelerated video card. It won’t run on less. That’s not the main system memory, it’s the memory located on the video card itself. The video cards aimed at gamers in the last year or two have gotten more and more powerful, with more and more onboard memory – the current high-end cards have 64Mb of memory just for the video card. […] continued

If you’ve got your Shockwave plugin all spiffed up and ready, go play 3D first-person pong. A remarkable bit of programming.

Windows 2000 is so stable that it’s easy to forget to keep it up to date. If you’re running Windows 2000, visit Microsoft Windows Update and check for critical updates. (If you haven’t installed Service Pack 1, it’s a good idea, but not if you’re on a dialup connection – it’s a big download.) And if you’re a gamer, look for “Application Compatibility Updates.” They allow more than 180 programs to run that initially weren’t compatible with Win2K – especially games. Yesterday it became possible for the first time to play Grim Fandango on Windows 2000. Life is good!