Rampancy

Still ten shopping days left, but Aleph One has left all the old school fans a present to open early: a new version of the open source Marathon engine for playing Marathon 1, Marathon 2, Marathon Infinity and third-party scenarios on PCs, Macs, and Linux computers.

GamesIndustryBiz has put up the second part of an interview with Bungie's Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard and Luke Smith. Here is part one.

Sketch remarks therein that Bungie has complete freedom to choose the publisher and platform for their new intellectual property-- property that Microsoft does not own. Microsoft does own Halo, and Bungie has a team working on the Halo 3: Recon expansion, due out next fall.

I'll do some spin right now: just because Bungie can choose a different platform and publisher doesn't necessarily mean that Bungie's next non-Halo game won't be published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360, but it doesn't mean that it won't, either.

GameCock, famed interrupter of awards ceremonies, holder of funerals for tradeshows, and publishers of games by Wideload such as Hail to the Chimp, have been acquired by SouthPeak.

SouthPeak published last year's Two Worlds RPG on the PC and 360, a game that was widely criticized for failing to live up to the high standards set by Bethesda's similar game, Oblivion.