Gaming News Round-Up: September 27th, 2004

Today's round up sees Duke getting a little physical, The Sims 2 coining in the simoleons, Jesper Kyd making out all Konami crazy, and Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima finally going bananas. - Swedish-based physics middleware company Meqon has announced that 3D Realms has purchased the company's Meqon Game Dynamics SDK for the upcoming, near-mythically delayed FPS title Duke Nukem Forever. George Broussard, CEO of 3D Realms, commented of this purchase: "We evaluated several physics SDKs, and Meqon was really fast, had the cleanest interface and integrated into our game very quickly." Although the game is now renowned as one of the most-delayed of all time, with 3DR's Scott Miller once mentioning: "We're confident that DNF will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game of 1998", this move shows continuing and active development on the title, which does not currently have a confirmed release date. - Electronic Arts has announced that, according to its internal sales data, The Sims 2 sold more than one million copies at retail stores worldwide within the first ten days - the biggest PC launch in EA's 22-year history. More than fifty percent of those games were sold in Europe. Although there's no official word on a console version of The Sims 2, the company is preparing to ship console and handheld SKUs of The Urbz: Sims in the City, a Sims spin-off and yet another 'urban'-slanted title which promises the chance to "Go to work and be challenged by bosses at locations like the Sushi Bar, Chop Shop, or Bootleg Fireworks, Inc", as well as "nine exclusive re-recorded music tracks from The Black Eyed Peas all in Simlish - the game's quirky language." - Veteran videogame composer Jesper Kyd has announced the completion of new tracks and remixes exclusively for Konami's Dance Dance Revolution: Ultramix 2 on Xbox. The game, shipping on November 16th, features Kyd tracks including "Istanbul Café," "Red Room" and "59 (Kyd Konami Mix)", somewhat of a shift for Konami's habit of using its internal Japanese sound teams or licensed dance music for Bemani-related titles. Kyd, who started out in the Amiga 'demo scene' of the early 1990s, is particularly known for soundtracks to games such as Messiah, Brute Force, and Hitman 2. - As part of the Tokyo Game Show coverage for Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, creator Hideo Kojima has revealed a special, unconventional tie-in with Sony's Ape Escape videogame series, which he is reputed to be a big fan of. The wacky game mode, called "Snake & Monkey", has Solid Snake chasing down and darting cartoon-like Ape Escape monkeys in the realistically dense MGS 3 jungle. Meanwhile, the title has been re-confirmed for Japanese release on December 16th, but U.S. and European debuts are not yet firm, despite many U.S. online stores listing the game as shipping in November.