The Power Of Ten is a simple idea: make a Myth map using only ten monster tags. Check their site for official rules. Thanks to PlayMyth for the announcement.

Okay, this is a little obscure, but I thought it worth posting anyway.

Mumbo Jumbo is a company that does so-called "casual games". Mobile phone games, Flash games, puzzle games, game show conversions, card games. Some of it's on Xbox Live Arcade. However, the name "Mumbo Jumbo" wasn't always associated with such games. At one point, they were chosen by Take Two, who used to own 19.9% of Bungie Software, to develop Myth 3: The Wolf Age, the sequel to Bungie's accolade-adorned series of real-time strategy (or real-time tactics, for purists) games on the Mac and PC. When Microsoft bought Bungie, Take Two got the Myth and Oni franchises as part of the compensation; Microsoft and Bungie held on to Marathon and Halo.

Oni, it seems, has been left on the shelf. Mumbo Jumbo tapped members of the active Myth development community to make their game, and updated the Myth 2 engine to use fully 3D models. However, the game was received poorly by the Bungie faithful, and shortly after release, the team that developed it was let go. Today, Bungie's earlier Myth games are still more popular and better-supported than the orphaned Myth 3.

It was after this that Mumbo Jumbo, now just a name, became associated with casual gaming. Still, it's interesting to note that MJ has now acquired Ritual Entertainment, developer of shooters. Mumbo Jumbo itself was founded by a Ritual alum, and was formed by employees split off from 3D Realms. They developed mission packs for Quake, and most recently worked on SiN Episodes.

In 2001, Mumbo Jumbo split off from Ritual, at the same time announcing that their first title would be Myth 3.

MJ's website contains no reference whatsoever to Myth 3, or to its prior incarnation before the focus on casual and mobile gaming.

When we heard whispers to expect something "soon" from Wideload, I'm sure nobody had this in mind. Translator Dmitri "Goblin" Puchkov, responsible for many of the best quality dubs of Western movies and television programs into Russian, including some hilarious spoof dubs of films like Star Wars Episode One and Shmatrica, a parody of The Matrix, has turned his eyes to Stubbs the Zombie. In Goblin's version, Stubbs the Zombie: Revenge of the King, the protagonist of the game is none other than Michael Jackson, who died of too many plastic surgeries and returns from the grave for revenge.

The Russian website Buka Entertainment (English version) has an entry for the game, which is scheduled for release on February 8, 2007. Below is a translation:

Goblin studio presents:
Brought to death by his endless plastic surgeries and silicone injections into his brain, Michael Jackson has been raised from the dead to revenge himself on money-grubbing plastic surgeons, and in particularly, an ex-citizen of Russia that is the leading silicone oligarch. In pursuit of this goal he wreaks havoc, rips off arms and hands, eats brains and attacks the clinic. The American people all unite to protect silicon boobs and the other achievements of democracy! Military, police and even militia are standing in furious Michael's way; but nothing can stop the wrathful king of pop! All the guilty will be devoured to death, and the innocent will be punished cruelly!

Project details:

• Get under a zombie's skin! The original name of the game is Stubbs the Zombie. Now the funny translation by Goblin has truly brought new life to it.
• Bloody vengeance takes place amidst astonishingly original surroundings.
• A rare opportunity to fight for the dead in the epic battle against life and its vivid embodiment: silicon boobs.
• Original fighting system. Believe us: you will have all kinds of opportunities for revenge.

Many of Goblin's works reside in a legal grey area, and limited access to and knowledge of the Russian legal system makes it difficult, if not impossible, for foreign intellectual property owners to enforce their rights there. It is not known whether this version is sanctioned by Wideload or Aspyr.

However, Goblin and his parodies are also very popular, and if this one takes off, Wideload's maiden effort might achieve something no Bungie title has so far: gain notoriety in the former Soviet Union. While the region is awash with pirated PC games, Macintosh computers are rare and Xbox consoles are virtually non-existent, as Microsoft chose never to launch it or the Xbox Live service there, despite the phenomenal growth of the economy, due to questions about piracy. While the Halo franchise might be big in the US and Europe, in Russia it's virtually unknown, whereas PC games like Counter-Strike and the Half-Life series are well-known and available in localized versions, whether official or unofficial.

Goblin's own website has additional information on his other projects. However unknown Halo might be, it does seem as if Bungie's earlier PC and PlayStation offering, Oni, is not unknown. Oni's protagonist, Konoko, has been adopted for promotional purposes by the Russian gaming site OGL.

Kudos to my wife, a fan of Goblin's translations, for finding (and translating) this item.

UPDATE: Since the machinations of the industry that produce localized versions of games for publication in far-off lands are many, varied, and complex, sometimes things happen that even surprise those who originally made a game.

So it is perhaps not surprising that Wideload itself isn't sure if this is the real deal or not. Apparently a Russian translation has been mentioned by publisher Aspyr, but Matt Soell of Wideload reckons that Goblin's "Return of the King" version of Stubbs is unofficial.

Project Magma, the guys who keep Myth multiplayer alive and provide patches so the game keeps running on updated operating systems, have launched a new website, Myth Vault, intended to be a catch-all archive for Myth-related files, including films, artworks, and even maps.

A new version of the open source Aleph One engine for playing the Marathon games has been released. 0.17 offers a number of netplay-related improvements, and as such is netplay-incompatible with previous versions.

Four Aleph One netmaps and a Lua CTF script for Marathon fans today over at Aleph One, courtesy of eX and W'rkcacnter.

Nick from HaloDev let us know that their site has re-opened with a new backend system and a lovely bunch of coconuts. The site has FAQs for HaloDev as well as for the Prometheus editor, community forums, and developer blogs.

A blog that seems to focus more on politics than gaming marked the 10th anniversary of the release of Marathon Infinity earlier this week.

Needless to say, this game has given me and my friends many happy moments for the last 10 years, and it will continue to do so in the future, as Aleph One, which is the open-source adaptation of the game, has been available for some years. And it still plays great.

Thanks to source.bungie.org for the link.

Two new packs of maps at Aleph One this week: Azure Dreams and Oblivion Pack 2.0. Enjoy!

Rockslider's latest game-within-a-game that he plays exclusively with Halo 1 is called Shark; you use a Banshee underneath a bridge to induce Covenant units to leap off to their deaths. It's the newest item on Bad Cyborg's Fun and Challenges page for Assault on the Control Room.

Version 0.5 of PhysicsEditorOne for Windows by HogePiyo is out, in English and Japanese. The program edits Marathon physics models, allowing mapmakers to change player physics, monster sequences, sounds and weapons.

Thanks for the heads-up to Marathon Open Source.

A new Marathon film (in Marathon recording and .mp4 formats) called Spectral Falls and a new map pack called Fabrecation are available at Marathon: Aleph One. Check them out!

Halogen, an unofficial fan project to create a real-time strategy game in the Halo universe, is shutting down due to a request from Microsoft. From their homepage:

Hours ago, we finally recieved the words we've been dreading since the mod started to get noticed. Microsoft has decided that we are infringing on the intellectual property of Bungie Studios and has asked us to stop development on Halogen.

The site notes that the forum and other areas will be shut down within a week.

Project Magma has announced the availability of a public beta of version 1.6 of Myth II. The update makes Myth II on the Mac a Universal application, running natively on PPC or Intel hardware, allows it to run in a window on Windows 2000 or XP, and many other new features and bug fixes. This is a final quality-testing release before the final release. The team is offering the beta for download at The Tain and requesting feedback in the Project Magma forums.