Odds And Ends: Tuesday News Roundup
(Updated throughout the day.) Tribes available from Sierra for free, Joint Ops goes gold, Box Clever Interactive approved as DS developer.
Following its recent appearance on registration-only FilePlanet (is registration really that big a deal?), Starsiege: Tribes, the multiplayer FPS that kicked off the whole Tribes dynasty in the first place, is now available to download for free from Sierra's website. It's 135MB and available here. Although that's it for now, don't be too surprised if Tribes 2, also released for free via FilePlanet, joins SS: Tribes on the Sierra download page in the coming days or weeks. We'll be sure to note if and when it does.
NovaLogic has revealed that after months of dithering around with beta tests and the like, ambitious multiplayer first-person shooter Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising has gone gold - and should be released on June 25th in Europe, bringing 150-player battles to the vast online terrains of the publisher's online service NovaWorld. We'll be attempting to address the question of whether you really need 150 people to enjoy a multiplayer FPS when we get our grubby mice on it later in the month.
From GI.biz: Staffordshire based handheld game developer Box Clever Interactive has been officially approved as a developer for the Nintendo DS platform, and is actively seeking contracts to work on the forthcoming hardware. The company, whose staff has significant experience of handheld development having worked on GBA titles including Reign of Fire and Freestyle Scooter in the past, is currently working on three NDS prototype games, and one GBA prototype. According to Box Clever founder Mark Crane, the firm is interested in any DS development work - including both original titles and ports of existing titles to the new platform, which is similar to the Nintendo 64 in terms of graphical prowess.