Today I have two things to be excited about.

The first one is that a group of people who enjoy a game I wrote are banding together to revive the community aspect built around my game. They have put together a fan web site and are preparing to hold tournaments starting in February. The game is A.I. Wars (The Insect Mind) it is a game that allows its players to develop artificial intelligence for a robot insect (Cybug) that you place in battle simulations against up to 10 other player’s Cybugs. I first wrote the game just before the birth of my daughter in 1996 and I have been improving it ever since based on player feedback. A community of fans started to form after an article was written about it in PC Gaming World (European version of Computer Gaming World). Tournaments were held, fan sites sprung up and players generally enjoyed helping each other out. Somewhere in late 2003 interest started to taper off and the fan sites started to drop off or froze without updates. Every two or three months someone would ask about new tournaments but no one would answer. I wrote a new simplified version of the game named A.I. Wars (Armor Commander) that used tanks instead of Cybugs but this didn’t seem to ignite any new interest. A Chinese company had me write two new Chinese language versions of the game for a planned national scholastic competition in China but seemed to drop off of the face of the earth overnight. I was just about to concede that the game had run its course until all of the sudden a new player came on board that wanted to startup a tournament. He managed to contact some of the old players and now they are putting together this new fan site along with tournaments that are already attracting new player interest. This looks very promising, I am very excited!

The second thing I’m excited about is a package that is being delivered to my home as I write this. It is a video game cartridge / peripheral that I ordered online Monday for a new game console I just purchased. Anyone who knows me, knows I love video games; I have been playing them since the late 70’s and writing them since the late 80’s. I have hundreds of PC and console based games and even some full size custom built arcade cabinets. This new console system will go right along side my other modern console systems (XBOX, GameCubes and PlayStation 2). This new system is so new, that I have only seen two commercials for it, and that was after I purchased one on Monday. Its name is XaviX PORT. The game that is being shipped to me is called XaviX Bowling. What makes me so excited about this game/system is that it uses live human body action as its interface instead of a game pad, keyboard, mouse or joystick. Each game comes with hardware that simulates a real interactive piece of sporting gear. For example Bowling comes with a bowling ball that is laced with sensors. The XaviX PORT will watch you simulate rolling this ball (you don’t actually let it go = not a good idea if you like your TV screen) and it will record every micro movement in real time and translate that into a ball that hits the floor and rolls down the alley on your TV screen to hopefully knock down all of the pins. I love bowling games and have many great childhood memories from actual real bowling alleys to those little electro-mechanical bowling lanes you used to see in bars. I’m hoping for a similar feel to those little bar versions at least. I’ll let you know how it actually is once I’ve had the chance to play it. If I like it enough, I’ll probably purchase the Tennis and the Baseball games that come with tennis racquets, baseball and bat. I don’t know how popular this system will become but I like to see these new ideas. I hope they make millions.