Wargaming legends Gary Grigsby (Operational Art of War, War in the Pacific), Joel Billings and Keith Brors announced this week that they are forming 2By3, a new company that'll manufacture wargames. The name apparently uses the ‘2' to refer to WWII and the ‘by 3' to refer to the three designers, which indicates to me that these three needed a fourth that was good at naming things. Ah well, wargame designers were never known for their wild flights of imagination and creativity. Anyway, this is great news given that Talonsoft has abandoned the market and Combat Mission has proven that there is still an audience for wargaming. Three games are already under development, one will cover the Pacific theater of operations, and they all will be released by Matrix games.
On a foggy morning in Seattle, Washington, park goers were startled at the appearance of a large black metal monolith sitting in a nearby park. Nobody knows how the slab of black metal appeared but it's both hilarious and eerie given the date, the book by Arthur C. Clarke and the film by the late Stanley Kubrick. A local scientist who concluded that the piece was hollow but quite heavy and that it would have taken a machine or a very strong man to lift it.
While the true identity of the artistic vandal is unknown, some suspect an alien race or a giant space fetus in fact, we here at Beatdown believe it to be none other than Monolith CEO and body builder extraordinaire Jason Hall. Sadly no one thus far has become super intelligent after touching it and, despite repeated attempts, bones have not been transformed into space stations when thrown skyward.
Monday Night Football is over until next year, so I'll have to find something else to fill this space. Enjoy the playoffs, and Madden 2001 will return in just a couple weeks to predict the Super Bowl. Who'll be in that fabled contest? Shall I hazard a guess? Bear in mind this is being written on Thursday the 4th.
AFC: Tennessee Titans. You get within a freaking yard of a ring one year, you get there the next year by cracky!
NFC: New Orleans Saints. Frankly I don't have a good reason to make this prediction. It should be the Vikings, given their weapons, but they've got home field advantage and they don't want it! Really, they just asked their fans to keep the noise down so they can hear their own plays! Not good. Plus, they always choke during the playoffs and this year the choking started with Green Bay before the playoffs even started.