MICROSOFT SHUTS DOWN FASA STUDIO
There were a lot of rumors during Shadowrun’s development that Microsoft would be shutting down FASA Studio once the game was complete. Well, it looks like the rumors were true as according to a post on the official Shadowrun message boards (found by way of Kotaku) the studio has indeed been shut down.
"It is my sad duty to announce that FASA Studio has officially closed its doors. Today was the official last day of employment for those of us who had not moved on to other positions within Microsoft Game Studios. While the rumors have been circulating forever, we chose to wait on an official announcement because we didn’t want people’s attention distracted from our last product, Shadowrun, a game we love." - Mitch Getelman, producer – Shadowrun
According to the same post, roughly half of the employees from FASA have taken positions elsewhere within Microsoft Game Studios and Microsoft proper, and I’m quite sure that Microsoft will continue to hold whatever intellectual property rights they gained from their purchase of FASA. Still, it’s sad to see one of the last remnants of FASA Corporation go down.
- FASA Studio – Company website
- Shadowrun – Official website
- FASA Studio has closed its doors – Official Shadowrun forums
- Shadowrun Developer Shuts Down – Kotaku
- Microsoft to Shut Down FASA Studios? – NYLatenite.com (3/22/07)
XBOX 360 TONY HAWK’S PROVING GROUND DEMO NOW AVAILABLE
An Xbox 360 demo of Activision’s Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is now available for download in all regions except Asia via the Xbox Live Marketplace. Download size is approximately 1.04GB.
- Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground – Official website
MAME32 .118.6 RELEASED
Following in the footsteps of the latest MAME update, MAME32 v.118.6, the Windows GUI port of MAME v.118u6 is now available. The same advice I gave about the latest build of MAME applies to this version of MAME32 as well.
Check out the official MAME32 page here for more details and the download links.
- MAME32 – Official home of MAME32
MAME V.118U6 RELEASED
Unfortunately, it appears that there were a few bugs in the last interim update of the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, so version .118u6 is now available for download. This update makes a few fixes to the emulator as well as adding a few new clones as well as Mega Man – The Power Battle to the list of supported titles.
As version .119 should be right around the corner, I’d recommend holding off on upgrading your installation until the next full release. As always, those of you interested in testing this build for the dev team should download the update and then head on over to MAME Testers to find out how to get started.
The updated emulator files can be found at the official MAME development page at Mamedev.org. You can Click here to see the full list of what’s new in this update.
