After a huge delay, the Interactive Fantasies 4th Birthday World has finally been released. IF's birthday was on June 2, but I (Hercules) had to wait for a few submissions. Robert Pragt sent in his submissions yesterday (he already had it finished for a while, but he doesn't have net access at home, which is a problem), but unfortunately the zip file was empty. Now that I'm going on a holiday myself tomorrow, I decided to release it now, without Robert Pragt's submission (I guess this will be put in a later issue of iFantasy). The 4th Birthday World contains stuff made by IF members (me, Hydra, Jacob Hammond and Venom) and ex-IF members (Tseng, Knightt, Zenith and Fejj). Download it here. Once again, I apologize for the extreme delay.

After Skullie and Lemmer quit Reptile House a while ago and joined Tseng's company Death Defyer Products, Dexter now owns Reptile House. Currently the members are Dexter, voighdt and Jujubee. If you're interested in joining, e-mail Dexter or talk to him on AOL Instant Messenger as Dexm0n/Dexter393.

Due to some misunderstandings, FreeZerBurn quit Interactive Fantasies and formed his own company, together with Draco and xabbott. This company quickly merged with Knightt's Random Inc and Lenin's Company Inc. The new company had three presidents: FreeZerBurn, Knightt and Lenin. After FreeZerBurn realized there was a misunderstanding, he rejoined Interactive Fantasies. There will be a voting for the new third president. The vice-presidents of Deep End are Masamune and Cait Sith and the other members so far are Kadro and jimbob. It's not sure whether xabbott or Draco are still members.

Currently, the council of the resurrected MegaZeux Excellence Awards consists of 9 members: Hercules (me), Kev Vance, Wervyn, Myth, Matt Williams, Akwende, Waka, Luke Drelick and Ibrahim. Akwende made a design for the webpage and Hercules will be writing the contents later. Most of the rules will be the same as in 1996 and 1997, but so far, a "Best Day of Zeux game" category was added. More news will follow later, when I (Hercules) return from my holiday somewhere near August 8.

Gemini has made a MegaZeux conversion of the first ZZT game ever, Town of ZZT (made by Tim Sweeney, the author of ZZT). It's amazing to see how much this MegaZeux conversion resembles the real ZZT version. You can download it here.

Myth has informed that the Summer 24 hours of ZZT contest will probably be held in the second week of August. It's the earliest Myth can do it and he realises it's a little late for summer and that some people might be back to school again by then. He's currently looking for some webspace to put up a homepage about the contest. More news to follow later.

Blue Magus tells us the following about his page (ZZT articles archive) #Char 2 White on Blue: "I've added a few new articles to char2.net, most notably a preview of Zenith's new project. Also, the design is currently fully compatible with NetScape. trap's http port is down right now, but once it is back online the articles will be viewable."

Where's Waldo and Ryosuke have quit the ZZT company DirrCo, led by Mrs Claus. It seems like some "sudden fallout" and Where's Waldo is now looking for a new company. Ryosuke has joined Inverted Thoughts Dot Inc.

Knightt has formed a new company, called Random Inc. Currently Knightt is the only member, but he's looking for some people to join. If you're interested, e-mail Knightt here with a sample of your work.

Inverted Thoughts Dot Inc, the ZZT company of FishFood, Lord Igsel and Zamros, seems to be gaining members rapidly. Right now they have 14 members. People who joined recently are Dragonlord (ex-president of Eagle Rock Interactive, co-maintainer of zzt.org), Ryosuke (who departed DirrCo), Jastice (BeTeCo), coolzx (winner of the Summer 2000 IF24AHOZ, creator of many a ZZT game) and Dogbert.

Skullie has recently joined the ZZT company Death Defyer Products, owned by Tseng/Mike Renner. Now that both Lemmer and Skullie have joined DDP, I am not sure whether or not the ZZT company Reptile House is still alive.

I (Hercules) decided to revive the MegaZeux Excellence Awards! These awards were held in 1996 and 1997 by Adam Parrish (Myth). A council of ten famous MZXers nominate their favorite MegaZeux games of the past year in different categories and eventually, the winners will be announced. Of course, I cannot host these awards without the help of a council. So far, the idea has received very positive feedback. Right now, the council exists of me (council chair), Kev Vance, Wervyn, Ibrahim and Adam Parrish himself. I know, I'm early with this (the awards will be held in December of this year), but it's always to good to get a few things settled in advance.

Blue Magus writes in to announce the following about #char 2 white on blue: "I've archived the articles from the first two designs of #char2 at char2.net. Sadly, the design doesn't look right when viewed in Netscape. I'm going to fix this eventually. Also, I plan to add more essays to the archive, including some new ones."

After zzt.org got his new look and a review system, the work on reviewing all games had to be started. Dragonlord, maintainer of zzt.org, hired a review team of several people (including himself, FishFood, coolzx, Zamros, Knightt, Raichu and ZorkBoy). Work on the reviews is going smoothly, as FishFood says on zzt.org. It'll still take some time before all games have been reviewed, though. Almost 1000 games - that does indeed take a long time. Also, Dragonlord and FishFood have created an extremely useful newbie help guide on zzt.org. The reason for this guide is the low quality of games released lately (of course, there are some exceptions). Dragonlord doesn't want to filter games (which is indeed a bad thing), so instead he and FishFood are now trying to help newbies to create games.

DoggyShop finally uploaded the new Eagle Rock Interactive page. The design has been done by Blazer and DoggyShop wrote the sections. Two sections, the downloads and projects pages, aren't up yet, but they will be as soon as DoggyShop gets up-to-date information from the ERI members, as stated on the page. It seems that ERI is pretty alive lately, with releases such as Banana Quest and #play 3.0 (both by WiL) and stuff by Agent Orange and Benco.

Myth, who won the Spring 24 hours of ZZT, is supposed to host the Summer 24 hours of ZZT. However, there's no word on the contest yet, which is strange. Judging from Myth's LiveJournal, he's still quite alive, but he hasn't replied to my emails. If there is any news on the contest, you will hear it right here.