The Alternative Gamer's Online Resource!

September 6th, 1999
TAGOR opens it's filthy mouth.
Never thought we would make the move, did you? Neither did we. Actually. But if you're interested in seeing what's become of TAGOR.COM I suggest you go there and see. Also, this is probably the last message that will ever be hand-typed into AntiVoodoo. This update method is terrible, and there's no way I'm going to ever resort to using EditPad and FTP to update a site like this again. Sheeeesh.

-Fuse!

August 9th, 1999
A Good Day for AMD, but I Liked Yesterday Better...
If you work for Intel you might want to be careful out there on the internet, seems there is a lot of praise out there for the AMD Athlon (Still sounds like some crotch disease to me. -Ed.) This seems to be a revolutionary new chip, or do we call them cartridges now? Intel has a little to worry about, but then again... I've got a BH6 motherboard, and with Intel dropping prices of Pentium III like their going out of style (They might be. -Ed.) it would be cheaper for me to buy a slightly slower Pentium III, than upgrading to the Athlon. I'll probably get all sorts of e-mail for that one telling me what a bad idea that is, sort of like I when I mentioned getting a K6-2 last year. Well, it is a good day for AMD, graphics companies are suddenly announcing support for 3DNow! and sucking up to AMD like they did for Intel a few months ago when the Pentium III came out.

Let's see, what else is going on? Had an old friend come by yesterday, had some other friends come by, including Fuse and it just seemed only necessary to start a LAN party. We only had one problem. Computers, had plenty, just didn't have enough love in the world. We also didn't have enough horsepower for most of the newer multiplayer games. The low end was either a Pentium II 233 laptop w/64mb or a Pentium 266-laptop w/32mb, the Pentium 120-laptop w/32mb was ruled out, quickly. So with that group at the low end what do you play? Quake was out, we didn't have Starcraft, and Carmageddon was out... Break out the tried and true copies of Total Annihilation. We abused a lot of Kbots late into the night. Thanks to Moebius, Redd, Kroms Avatar, Short Circuit, and even Fuse for a great game, until the computers started acting weird. ( *SNIP!* Blah, blah, blah... -Ed.)

I think I read somewhere that Psygnosis's Drakken has gone gold too. Wow, another game which requires too much horsepower to have been played yesterday... Oh well. -Noxious?

August 6th, 1999
Slot PCI Celeron
It is very rare that anyone here has a top of the line PC, at least for long, and it is sad to toss the PC to scrap after one week of ownership, after you have been through so much together. You've probably seen PowerLeaps solutions, which allow you to use an AMD K6-2 or K6-III to bring your old Pentium system up to spec. Evergreen has an interesting new option called the AcceleraPCI. It is basically a small Socket 370 motherboard, which plugs into a PCI slot. This little card contains the 370 socket, a SO-DIMM socket, and an Intel ZX chipset. So far the card can use up to a 466mhz S370 Celeron and up to 256 of PC100 SDRAM. According to Evergreen this card should work in any 75mhz Pentium system with a PCI slot, and they offer software to check your system for compatibility. Prices for the card without a processor or RAM is $199, and with 64mb of RAM, and a 433 Celeron the card is $399. For benchmarks and more info check out the site. (You will need that annoying PDF reader...) -Noxious?

August 3rd, 1999
Q3Test v1.08
Another version of Q3Test has floated within grasping range, but it will be a hefty load. Seems you won't be able to patch this one. Thought I wouldn't try for it today, downloading that thing on the first day is always more work than it is worth. At least I think so. For all your troubles though id has included a new model named Sarge. Not sure if he is the one from Beetle Bailey or not. Got this news from some Q3A site. If you go there you'll find download links too... -Noxious?

Watching Football (Yawn)
If you feel up to watching football, Acclaim has some QuickTime videos for NFL Quarterback Club 2000. Yep, you guessed it. I could care less. This is the latest title to claim the 2000 in the name. I think we'll soon change the name to TAGOR 2000 just so we don't feel left out. I think I'll go work on the graphics for that. -Noxious?

Look at Diablo
Blizzard has a new screenshot for Diablo II. (Aren't they done with that yet?) Something about watching the Barbarian smashing a beer can on his forehead, or was it watch the Necromancer cross dress? Something like that. -Noxious?

Ego Sroking
Ever wanted to watch as a company feeds its own ego? Oh wait, we see that every time we boot our computers. If you want to see how Creative feels about themselves, look at this press release. -Noxious?

That Golden Tiberian Sun
Yesterday, Westwood's most resent addition to the Command & Conquer series went gold. Don't you hate it when you sneeze on your monitor? Oh well, lost my train of thought. Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun went gold, end of story. -Noxious?

What the fuck?
Yes, that was an update. With multiple news items. I know, it feels weird. So what is up with the site? Everything was going along just fine with the new site up until the evil day Fuse pre-ordered his Sega Dreamcast. He then looked up the technical specs of the machine, and vowed to never touch a PC again. He now just sits in a corner of his room in a semi-comatose state, muttering about how much the PC sucks (he's right you know) and asking if the Dreamcast is out yet. Maybe things will return to normal in September when we'll not update the site for no reason at all as well. -Noxious?

June 27th, 1999
Kingdoms!
Well, according to Cavedog (and they should know) TA: Kingdoms is out. Damn damn damn damn damn. I spend my money paying a bunch of stupid bills yesterday too. Auuuuugh. See what happens when your not paying attention? Geez. -Noxious?

June 17th, 1999
Year One
Exactly one year from today The Anti-Voodoo Gamer's Resource went online. At the time, the PC Gaming world was looking grim to me, and I was beginning to wonder if it would be necessary to shell out $600 for dual Voodoo2 cards to be capable of playing video games on my PC. So I started a web page which I was going to put on Xoom to voice my angry opinions. I had asked Fuse for help since he knew a lot of the technical aspects of things and he is one of my closest friends. Though after I had edited out a few colorful expletives (Probably, shit and fuck.) and explained to Fuse that Xoom wouldn't allow the cussing, he put TAVGR up as an addition to his personal web site.

In the computer world things change quickly, and that is an understatement. Soon Fuse and I decided that there was a hell of a lot more than the dominance of the Voodoo2 cards that annoyed us about the PC, so the name changed to The Alternative Gamer's Resource, or TAGR. A week later Fuse decided to rename is The Alternative Gamer's Online Resource, and amazingly that name has stuck.

In that year we've slacked off more often than we worked on the site. The main reasons being that my HTML was too difficult to update. Though, we are going to change that. You've seen talk of a new site, and it is currently under wraps, but it is close to being done. Care to voice your opinion? Fuse and I have some big plans for the new site, mainly to work on it more often, but other things as well such as maybe a forum and a tabloid section. You'll see more when the time comes… -Noxious?

May 21st, 1999
New News Site...
The site has been quite, and we've been hammering out the new site and nobody cares. But cheer up, there's less than 30 days until the dead-line. That's when something totally amazing happens.

No, you won't all lose your virginity, you people can just give up on that idea. You losers aren't ever going to get laid. But you might do something ALMOST as cool.

I can't spoil it now, but just hang on tight, soon everything will be clear.

-Fuse!

May 20th, 1999
iMiga? Perhaps. Hope not.
Gateway, unable to get the Amiga Boing Ball on the roll, decided to copy the iMac, a shameless and uninspired move but certainly one worth giggling at.

Check it out here. -Jace of Fuse!

May 12th, 1999
Liveware 2.0 Released...
What does this mean? Well, it means that if you have a Sound Blaster Live or Live Value, you can download the newest Lameware from Creative Labs. Apparently, this adds new and totally uninteresting features to the software tools that you don't use. A chart of features compares the newest version of Liveware to the original version.

Amazingly, they claim the addition of 32 hardware audio streams is a new feature, but most of us have been using this new feature since last November when the last Liveware update was made. The new update also increases the number of Midi voices to 1024, but it's not like you're going to notice.

Still, if you feel the need to pretend you give a shit, go here and download Liveware 2.0. It even includes an update to Creative's WinAmp Wanna-Be, Creative Play-Center.

Enjoy.

-Fuse!

The New Benchmark
As soon as I learned that it was possible to run a benchmark with Q3Test, I set out looking for how it was done. A quick search revealed nothing. So, I decided it was time for me to do the work. Here is how it is done. At the command line type:

timedemo 1
demo q3test1

It will run through a demo and at the end it will go back to the menu. Pull up the command line again, and there are your systems scores. This should run, even if at first it seems like it crashed, give it a moment. It will figure everything out and run the timedemo shortly. -Noxious?

May 11th, 1999
Q3Test for Win32
There are times when few words are better than a lot. This is one of those times. Get Q3Test from one of these servers HERE. -Noxious?

May 8th, 1999
Microsoft announces inovation, still has time to screw it up.
Sprites, double buffered 3D integrated on the desktop, and forced support for 32 bit colour in all resolutions... it all sounds like something straight off of a real computer platform, but it's not. It's the goal of GDI+, Microsoft's proposed new standard for Video Card displays for Windows 2000. The new standard has many new features that will be totally new to the PC, and some of them new to personal computers in general, but does this mean Windows is likely to set new standards for Operating Systems, and indeed User Interfaces for years to come?

Well, only time will tell, but until that then, feel free to read the draft yourself. Much of this sounds too good to be true, and even more of it won't mean a hill of beans to most users. But those who realise what this means will immediately come to the same conclusion that I came to.

When Windows 2000 comes out, we'll all be using obsolete Video Boards, and it could be years before any vendor make a single card that does GDI+ correctly.

-Jace of Fuse!

The 4th Generation, Card, Whatever...
Look! It's another month. Who let that happen? Oh well. I've not come across any good news as of late, and if you think I missed something... Why the hell didn't you tell someone about it? I think the general feeling right now is anticipation. Of what? For one thing, that Quake 3 test for Win32 or the PC as most of us use it. Another area, would be those upcoming TNT2 cards. Depending on where you look they are calling these cards the 2nd or 3rd generation 3D Video Accelerators. Odd, if I was to buy another 3D Card, it would be the 5th one I put my money towards... So what generation is it really? I suppose it's not important, but I think someone wasn't paying attention at first. -Noxious?

April 26th, 1999
Emulators, Deadlines, Beer, and Arson
In case you haven't heard, the Courts are tugging on socks as usual, swallowing the toe-jam of companies with larger bank accounts. In this particular case, The Courts™ have ruled that Connectix must stop shipment on the Playstation Emulator, Virtual Game Station. Sony® Spokes Bandicoot, Crash, is quoted as saying "Now the piss poor quality of Playstation Software will remain a true mystery to Mac owners, that is until they play the classic titles on Playstation 2."

In non-related news, Noxious decided that the site's 1 year aniversary of June 17th would make a cool date for the release of the new site-overhaul. While that is actually some time away, I was realising today how we seldom work on the new site anyways, since we spend more time drinking many bottles of Amber Boch than anything else. So by my calculations, the new site is exactly 720 bottles of Amber Boch away. Then again, maybe more than that.

Lastly, Amiga Inc. wants you to set your copy of Windows on fire and buy an Amiga. Really. They've even gone through the trouble of making a book of matches just for the job.

Do yourself a favor, set Windows on fire.

I'll post details on getting yourself a book of Amiga matches when details are available.

-Jace of Fuse!

April 17th, 1999
How Things Really Work
Someone must have told PC Gamer that I play video games almost constantly, since they are sending me a lot of mail. One of the annoying tidbits they sent is this little poster (smaller than the usual Playboy centerfold, and contains less silicon) of "The 25 Best Games Ever" from the October 1998 issue. It really is amazing how wrong they were. Here is the list:

25. Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon
24. Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity
23. Chuck Yeager's Air Combat
22. Alone in the Dark
21. Lemmings
20. Red Baron
19. Myth
18. Ultima Underworld
17. NHL 98
16. Battlezone
15. Panzer General II
14. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
13. Unreal
12. Longbow 2
11. Links LS '98
10. Sam & Max Hit the Road
09. WarCraft II
08. X-COM: UFO Defense
07. Heroes of Might and Magic II
06. System Shock
05. StarCraft
04. TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM
03. Quake II
02. Civilization II
01. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Did you notice what they missed? I did. The original Quake for instance, Diablo, Carmageddon, Fallout, Star Control 2, Total Annihilation, Shogo-MAD, Need For Speed III, Populous, Star Flight, Bard's Tale, Tetris, Wing Commander… I could go on, but my point is made. Fuse! and I debated how they came up with this conclusion and found it could only be one thing… It was rigged. I mean, no golf game could ever be considered the best of all time, and Jedi Knight over Quake II?

After we sat there feeling disgusted about it for quite some time we realized that this could work for us as well. I mean, I can always use money. So, here is our Best 25 Games of All Time list: First come first served.

25. $10
24. $20
23. $40
22. $50
21. $60
20. $70
19. $80
18. $90
17. $100
16. $200
15. $300
14. $400
13. $500
12. $600
11. $700
10. $800
09. $1,000
08. $2,000
07. $3,000
06. $4,000
05. $5,000
04. $6,000
03. $7,000
02. $8,000
01. $10,000

Just remember that we take bribes too. Cool hardware, alcohol, attractive and willing women, can be accepted as a payment as well. This list is fair because even if your game sucks ass with the right amount of money can put your game on the top of the heap. Any remaining slots will be filled in with what we really think is one of the top games of all time. This list is for game developers as well as the die-hard game fan. Serious inquiries only, all entries should be sent in before the deadline. -Noxious?

April 15th, 1999
Voodoo 3 and Velocity...
Has anybody but me noticed that the Voodoo 3 looks just like the STB Velocity 4400?

IRS are socktuggers...
It's April 15th, do you have your Taxes filed? I claimed all of my computers as dependants. Maybe I should have also claimed them as a living expense.

Wrapplets...
Since it is apparent that it would be against 3Dfx's SDK liscense agreement to actually use the SDK to develope a wrapper, it's obvious that some new method for gathering information on Glide and it's applications is necissary. An idea I have been seriously considering is that one programmer (or perhaps many) would write individual programs that use one single function of Glide, or perhaps a few related functions, thus being simple programs to wrap. Such programs written for use on a 3Dfx card would not be in violations of 3Dfx's SDK liscnese agreement.

Wrapper authors could then take these simple programs (which I've been jokingly calling "Wrapplettes") and wrap them individually, with the hopes that with enough similar "Wrapplettes", a complete wrapper can be developed without direct use of the SDK.

I recently purchased Visual C++ 6.0 and have been brushing up on my C++ (hasn't anybody wondered where I've been??), so I guess it's time for me to aquire the SDK, since I won't be directly writting a wrapper.

-Fuse!

April 14th, 1999
Name Change...
It seems that the company formerly known as Silicon Graphics is now SGI. Since SGI have given themselves a new name we figured that it must be time for a new name ourselves. So, TAGOR will now be known from here on out, or until we change it again, as TAGOR. I'm officially changing my handle from Noxious? to Noxious? and Fuse! will probably send you hate mail if you call him that as he will now be known as Fuse! Another interesting note is that Chuck will now be known as the voodoo doll formerly known as Chuck. -Noxious?

Goin' Psycho...
Well, according to the parents of the three students killed in Kentucky last year we're all going psycho. Get out your potato cannons it's time to start killing. We've played Doom... We've played games that make Doom look like a walk through the park. We've slaugtered wave after wave of evil and saw all the gore. We've seen movies that depict violence as a logical solution to lifes problems, and we've visited a few adult sites and seen women (get this) naked... So, Fuse! (not Fuse!) and I (Code named Noxious?) are taking the T-tops off the Z28 loading up our potato guns and we're going to go on a killing spree... Or make mashed potatos... One or the other. Just remember, their is no saftey in a prayer circle, or Kentucky for that matter. -Noxious?

April 10th, 1999
Emu News Service...
Did anybody even notice that Emu News Service went offline officially on the 23rd of last month?

That's okay, I didn't make the connection until just now myself.

Site Redesign...
Yes, yes, I hear you saying "Sure sure, that's bullshit, Jace."

Actually, we have been working on redesigning the site. For quite a while, in fact. The new site has many new features, but getting it all together has taken much longer than any of us thought.

Amoung the new features completed are all new graphics, a easier to keep track of format, and a more news oriented structure (to cut down on disappointment when there are no new reviews or articles to speak of). The final changes that are keeping the new TAGOR from showing it's face are still being explored, and they're also distracting us from updating the site frequently. One of these changes is the addition of discussion forums. This is a popularly requested feature, and I am personally working on providing just that. The other features are much less obvious to the site visitors, but are welcomed changes to the TAGOR members.

Lastly, we will be welcoming a couple of new members and saying good-bye to Annex, who upon closer inspection appears to have died in front of her computer; here we were thinking she finally just shut up for a change.

-Jace of Fuse!

April 9th, 1999
What 3Dfx is doing, right, this minute...
From the deepest darkest reaches of the universe there expands a force so powerful it can take down the mightiest of adversaries. It's galaxy wide growth so feared, even Microsoft has not been able to stand clear of it's grasp. It is the wrath of Legal Action.

Those just tuning into our program, as well as our returning champions, may find themselves wondering why such a relatively popular company such as 3Dfx would want to spend so much time and energy (not to mention money) creating stumbling blocks for a group of Wrapper Developers and Web-Site Authors.

We won't review the facts here, for they are many, but let it be known that one all mighty force could stand up to thwart this powerful threat! Too bad that force was accidently mauled in a Vending Machine Accident a few days ago.

So instead, the team over at Glide Underground has drawn up a Petition!

What more should I say? Go sign it already.

-Chuck

April 3rd, 1999
Get paid to surf the web...
Not quite the April Fools joke I initially took it to be, AllAdvantage.Com is paying people to surf the web.

Apparently the revenue to pay web-users is generated as advertisers pay to have ads seen in a web-ticker which participants must keep opened if they want to get paid. An interesting program and definately worth looking into if you don't mind getting paid for what you're doing already.

The only real bummer is that they will only pay you for 40 hours of your web-viewing time. Too bad, too, because I could really make a living if all I had to do is sit in front of my computer!

If you want more info, click here.

-God!

April 1st, 1999
Cavedog Entertainment no more...
The company formerly known as Cavedog has changed their named officially to FrozenYak in accordance with various Legal Snafu. The full press release can be read here.

Time for a new motherboard...
As many of you already know, Intel will soon be releasing a new chipset for use with the Pentium III. Today Intel officially announced the BS23 Chipset. Included with this chipset is AGP 4x support, as well as 24 IRQs. Also included is built in support for a new digital global tracking system that interacts with the ID feature of the Pentium 3, allowing easier tracking of Intel's userbase. Intel has yet to comment on wether or not users will be able to disable this feature.

New IE 5 contains critical bug...
Microsoft has issued a press release suggesting that users of their new browser uninstall the software immediately and delete all of the setup files. To quote part of the article directly off of Microsoft's site...

"As of yet we are unable to resolve the issues responsible for the reports that Version 5 of Internet Explorer actually works. We are rapidly working to solve this issue and until we release a bug-ridden service patch, we recommend all users return to Version 4."

Apparently, their first order of business is to add new non-standard features intended to slow the browser down, require more memory, and in some cases additional hard disk space.

Commodore buys Amiga...
Gateway, unable to get the Amiga Boing Ball on the roll, placed Amiga Inc. up for sell monday morning. Today former Commodore Business Machines CEO Irving Gould announced that he is currently in negotiations with Gateway to purchase all intellectual properties including trademarks and logos related to the Amiga. The press release can be read here.

Jace of Fuse!