There will be a Daikatana mappers chat this Thursday, according to the Ion Storm Daily Informant. KillCreek, Rocketman, weasl and guf will be discussing the enviroments you will encounter in Daikatana. Also don't forget the Nocturne developer chat tonight on AVAult.

Since a bit of a debate on game sales erupted when I posted a link to a Forbes article a few days ago stating Ion Storm needed to sell 1.2 million copies of their next 3 games to break even, I emailed Todd Hollenshead up at id Software asking about the sales figures for Quake1 and Quake2 for comparison sake. Here's what Todd sent back:

about 1 million for Quake1, and about 1.2million for Quake2 not including console ports and OEM deals.

So there you have it. I wouldnt be surprised if Ion Storm did pull it off honestly for 1 or 2 of the titles. But 3 in a row is a bit steep.

Planet Daikatana has a big-ass Daikatana preview, based on impressions of the press demo that went down October 4th.

Stomped has scored a pair of new screenshots of Daikatana for you guys to check out. Mikiko attacking skeletons, and a radius blast damage effect.

Billy Wilson over at VoodooExtreme fired off an email to John Romero of Ion Storm to ask if they planned on adding support for any of that newfangled technology that video card vendors have been coming out with. (S3TC, T&L, etc). Here's the one liner:

Nope, sorry -- we are finished upping our technology. We're almost finished polishing the game and tech isn't being touched...

Of course, that article I linked yesterday which talks about the financial situation over at Ion Storm seems to be quite a popular topic.

IGN has their Daikatana preview up, taking a look at the long awaited Ion Storm title that's currently in beta testing.

AVault has a Daikatana Development Update. It offers the latest "what's up" and also 3 new screenshots. Let's see if they can really get it out the door before Christmas. Apparently that will be the case though, as they say "only testing and bug fixing remains".

Ion Storm's Daily Informant has a new screenshot of each of Ion Storm's upcoming games, Daikatana, Deus Ex and Anachronox.

Daiktana.com has posted an audio interview with John Romero (click news). Can't say I like each question broken into a seperate audio file, just list a darn index with time stamps on when each question starts eh? At any rate John talks about the upcoming Daikatana press demo which is slated for release next month. The interview also covers quite a bit of ground on anything else you might want to know about the game.

The Ion Storm Daily informant went out a little while ago with word that the Daikatana website has been updated with a couple of bits of news. Check this out kiddies:

John Romero’s Daikatana is in the final stages of development and will be in stores in December 1999, ION Storm announced today."We at Ion Storm are excited to confirm that Daikatana will release for Christmas 1999," says Mike Breslin, ION’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development.

What is also cool is they released a pair of new screenshots of the game which are some of the best yet. Check out [shot1] and [shot2]

Amusing Daikatana story of the day has to go to FGNOnline who recently talked to a Ion Storm representitive about the possibility of the Gameboy color version of Daikatana shipping before the PC version. The N64 version looks like it will ship before the PC version btw. Dig this quote:

"We definitely do not want people thinking that the Game Boy will precede the PC version" an Ion Storm representative said. "As we understand it, the Game Boy version will not be available until March 2000, which will be decidedly after the PC release."

PlanetQuake has slapped up a quick interview with KillCreek from Ion Storm talking about her whole "girl gamer" thing and Ion Storm, and of course the mention of her Playboy appearance.

Taking bets on what comes out first? N64 Daikatana or the PC version? Well here are some shots and a preview of the N64 port which is mighty close to going out the door.

Wanna see screenshots of Daikatana on the N64? Check out PlanetDaikatana.

The PlanetDaikatana page has a new ports section and to kick off the event they have slapped up some footage of the N64 port of Ion Storm's title in action.

To start things off, we've posted the E3 '99 movie of actual Daikatana64 gameplay. In addition, we've setup pages listing KEMCO's game descriptions, feature lists, box cover art, and also have pages with screenshots of the N64 pulled from the video (for the bandwidth impaired).

The IGN guys have come across some new information on the Daikatana N64 port. It seems work on the port has already begun and in fact is at least 50% complete according to the article.

The Ion Storm page has slapped up some Q&A action with Luke Whitside of the Daikatana development team asking about..... development of Daikatana!

Another Ion Storm employee departure to finish up the day for you guys. Today the lead programmer for Daikatana, Steve Ash has handed in his resignation for personal reasons. You can read the John Romero .plan update on the subject, and also here is word from Steve himself (Thanks Rick)

It's true, I am leaving ION, but only for boring personal reasons, I'm afraid. I've had a lot of fun working at ION for the past few months. I got to add a lot of cool tech to DK, and now that that's done, I'm heading back to Cali. It's been cool working with John and everyone else here, and I wish them all the best!

John Romero over there at Ion Storm has an interesting propositon for those of you who can make it to the Dallas area for the month of August. Daikatana beta testing! Dan "Rix" Hammans, the QA Engineer at Ion also put out a request. Here's what the long haired wonder has to say:

Okay, all you denizens of Dallas... I'm looking for on-site beta-testers for Daikatana for the month of August.  You will be rewarded for your efforts with T-shirts, games and hardware!  Just send your resume to dktest@ionstorm.com and we'll see if you're good enough to make it in.

PlanetDaikatana has posted a new interview with Noel Stephens of Ion Storm.