WarCentral has a new Daikatana interview with Kelly Hoerner of Ion Storm. The predicted release date? "Sometime in late February is what everyone here thinks."

PlanetDaikatana has a screenshot of the the sword in Daikatana. It's so big!

His game has not been baked, but John Romero has time for interviews, such as this new one on SailorScout's Gaming Center. There's a scary amount of "I think" and "I believe" answers in there.

Well I guess it's about time we had a bit more of an update on the happenings at Ion Storm's Daikatana. As a number of people have noted there are advertisements and stands showing up at computer stores for Daikatana which usually signals an immanent release. The word on the street is they arent ready for release just yet though. Not good for Eidos as was mentioned about a week ago they arent doing so hot lately. A few people who are close to Ion have sent in word that Ion is considering not having multiplayer in the initial release and following-up with a patch. It seems doubtful to me but I'm sure we'll see soon enough.

Also, looks like the KillCreek playboy stuff is delayed some more. Last I heard it's gonna be in the May issue now.

update by Maarten: There's a new movie on Incitegames. It has appeared on their magazine CD before, features ingame footage and a few words from Romero and KillCreek, and is a 43mb download.

update by Steve: As expected, the multiplayer rumors are false. both Romero and KillCreek made comments stating that it's 'ludicrous'. Considering they made an announcement earlier about the DM maps to be shipping...

Stomped.com has word from John Romero on what he's looking forward to for this upcoming E3. His answer? "I will be happy to NOT see Daikatana at this years' E3"

Salon took a look at the history of Daikatana, in the article The Waiting Game. It includes a couple of quotes from various people, including Romero himself and also covers the Daikatana release party that happened December 17. We're still waiting... Thanks loony.

<snip> Kennedy thinks so: "I still believe Daikatana will be extremely successful. It is one of the most anticipated games on the market."

Even Marcus is willing to concede. He'll buy the game when it comes out, though "only out of an odd form of respect for what Romero attempted with it."

GameSpotUK has posted a preview with video footage of Daikatana for the Nintendo64. The developers say they are about 60% complete with the title.

As Daikatana continues to get closer, more details on the game are coming out of course. Here is word from the guys at PlanetDaikatana on what DM maps will be shipping with the game. (Originally from the PDK Forum)

- 10 Deathmatch maps, 2 per time period, including the original mplayer versions of Gibbler, and Storm Sector 7.
- 4 ctf maps, 1 per time period.
- 1 deathtag map
- 1 Blade match map (the dk will be your only weapon)

A little side note, Todd Hollenshead has a .plan update looking back on a few magazine awards.

John Romero being the good sport that he is took some time to respond to the criticism he went under for releasing a screenshot of his desktop of all things. It's pretty amazing how much time some people spent analyzing the thing. Oh btw, the IonStorm firewall prevents access to this page from their office, (I'm told due to the comments system, they dont want Ion employees posting stuff) so you won't really see any responses here. Here's what John had to say:

...I will accept the fact that all popular messageboards are negative. All of them. It's the reason they exist. But the fact that there's just so many highly negative posts about a game that i'm working on just boggles me. I'm just a game developer, like the thousands that are out there, working hard on making a game for you people. Sure, i'm also making it for myself to play and to support myself and my company, but i wouldn't be able to do that if it weren't for everyone out there in the world, thinking that the games that i make are fun. I'm just trying to make a fun game and it's been a pretty rough road with this one, but we're finally at the end. The next one will be an easier development cycle and i'll definitely be toning-down the PR machine on its development. I won't be giving out release dates next time.

The Ion Storm Daily Informant has a run-down of who is doing what on Daikatana as the game is (hopefully) getting close to completion. Most everyone on the team uses the phrase 'finishing up' so that is good news. It's been a long time coming and those screenshots from 1997 are getting a bit old. :)

“Spit, polish, rinse, repeat... I'm finishing up lots of minor touches on a couple of levels, stomping bugs wherever they stick their cursed heads out, and working with Luke on an Episode 2 CTF level.

With all the hoopla about Daikatana yesterday and delays, here is a look at John Romero's desktop courtesy of the VE guys.

For those of you wondering when the cook is gonna finish Daikatana, this is not so good news. The rumor going around recently has been that Daikatana would be done in early February, according to this press release it's still gonna be this quarter, I'm just a retard though and can't read very well. (Sorry about the earlier mix-up)

...A further three, F1 World Grand Prix (PC), Urban Chaos (PSX) and Daikatana have been delayed until the quarter ended 31 March 2000.

8pm EST update: A bit of followup on that Eidos announcement. It looks like the Eidos stock took a serious beating today, dropping from a close of 60.5 yesterday as low as 42.5 today and closing at 43.75. That is what they call a 'bigass drop'.

Bake me a ...you know the drill. Anyway it seems the boys at Gamefan brushed John Romero's hair the right way and scored two Daikatana screenshots that where previously unreleased on the web. They also say the game should go gold early next month.

GameFan has a few new images of Daikatana running on the Nintendo64. The PC and N64 versions are still neck and neck for release.

Saturday is just followup day. The story that ran yesterday about Playboy and KillCreek caused quite a stir as expected, thing is of all the emails I got claiming the February issue of Playboy is available, nobody seemed to bother and look before firing up the email client. Well, it looks like she's not in there. The 'next issue' listing on Playboy.com shows her as being in the following issue though which should make it available around the end of the 1st week of February. (March issue)

I guess I should subscribe to Playboy now, strictly as a service to gamers to keep them informed. :) Of course, here is an encore presentation of those KC images: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3]

I've gotten a stunning number of emails related to the latest Playboy issue being available now featuring some 'in the buff' images of Stevie 'KillCreek' Case of Ion Storm. Several of you I'm sure remember when I posted these 3 images of KillCreek [shot1] [shot2] [shot3] a little while back. There, I posted it. You guys can stop emailing me about it now :) For the nostalgic, here were the original stories on the subject: story1, story2

The guys at PlanetDaikatana have posted their report from the recent Daikatana 'almost-released' party that went down last year.

According to the Daily Radar, Eidos has pinned down a release date for Daikatana and says it will actually be released this millennium! Mwah, maybe, just maybe, but I'm not holding my breath.

Missed that Daikatana IRC event last night? Planet Daikatana has an edited log. Thanks redm.

I've covered this a couple of times before, (story1, story2)but it looks like Ion Storm is now confirming that Daikatana will not make Christmas. On a positive note though the quoted Ion employee (John Kavanagh) states 'finally have a good game on our hands' which is good news.