Gaming News Round-Up: September 30th, 2004

Today's round-up includes crippling problems for classic golfers, a roll of the dice for Konami, a seminal Microprose title on the rebound, and EA's plucking of rooster teeth. - Electronic Arts has announced a general product recall for the PAL-specific version of PlayStation 2 sports title Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005, after multiple consumers reported a problem with accessing golfer Seve Ballesteros in the 'Legend Tour' and 'Legend Scenarios' modes. It appears that the game freezes up entirely, making the mode uncompletable, and enquiries to EA's UK office have received the response: "We are currently in the process of producing a new version of the game to cure this problem. We expect to have this new version available in approximately three weeks." It's unclear whether this PAL-only bug was due to QA issues, or if there was some kind of disc flaw during the duplication process. - Konami has announced that its gambling subsidiary, Konami Gaming Inc., is further expanding in the United States, with a massive new 120,000 square feet headquarters opening in Las Vegas in early 2005, and official licensing to sell gaming equipment, software and hardware in the States of New Jersey and Missouri. The company produces multiple video-based slot machines, as well as the Forcise casino management system. Although Konami Gambling's titles show little evidence of influence from Konami's videogame sister companies as of yet, it's interesting to speculate on the crossover of video gaming technologies and talent into the gambling market, as slot machine hardware gets ever more complex and computerized. - In an email to consumer site FiringSquad.com, Galactic Civilizations creator and Stardock CEO Brad Wardell has confirmed that he is in talks with Atari regarding the creation of a new title in the Master Of Magic PC strategy franchise. Wardell indicated: "Stardock is excited for the potential opportunity to license the Master of Magic title to do a sequel that would adhere to the spirit of the original while enhancing it to today's PC game market." The original Master Of Magic, published by Microprose in 1995, was a Civilization-styled strategy game which many PC gamers class as one of the best strategy titles of all time. - Red Vs. Blue machinima creator Rooster Teeth Productions has announced that it's teaming up with Electronic Arts to produce in-game animated movies based on the just-released EA title The Sims 2. The machinima, commissioned by EA and called The Strangerhood, feature "a group of eclectic characters all suffering from amnesia... [and] gathered together in a mysteriously remote suburban neighborhood", and new movies will be premiering on a regularly scheduled basis, with Rooster Teeth founder Burnie Burns indicating he hopes to run the machinima for a full 22-episode season. The third season of popular Halo-based machinima Red Vs. Blue is also scheduled to debut shortly from Rooster Teeth.