My Brother and his Fire Staff

I was talking to some friends earlier today about when the balance of power shifted between my little brother Alex and me while we were growing up. One day he is the little brother and I can beat him up and the next he is bigger than me, lettering in Wrestling and eventually getting his 3rd degree black belt.

I remember our last fight when he was a Junior in High School. He pinned me to the ground in the front yard and then waited till I gave up. It took me about 45 minutes to finally admit that he beat me.

As it so happened when I got home tonight I found an email from my friend's wife, Rita. She tapped this performance of Alex playing around with a fire staff in his backyard.



I was really excited when she told me that she put the video up on YouTube, but I have to say I think I know some flashier moves. Granted I've never tried them while the staff was on fire so there is that. I have a desire to go out and play with a staff right now and see what I can whip up. It’s only the lack of a staff that prevents me. I left all that stuff back in Vegas.

Finally I think I should point out that he did have people standing around pretty close so maybe he didn't want to do anything that might get away from him and risk setting them on fire. Also Alex hasn't been doing the serious martial arts training for a few years now; though I'm sure he could still whoop my ass pretty easily.

Fury Beta Keys

I had a few things I’ve been wanting to post but every time I sit down at the computer I always have one small thing I want to do first and then I vanish into some pan-dimensional time warp not to return till way past my bed time. I think it has something to do with Deadwood. I’ve been re-watching seasons 1 & 2 while waiting for season 3 to arrive from Amazon.

But before it isn’t relevant anymore I thought I would point out that Fury's official “actual” beta is coming up. Not to be confused with the “pre” beta. You can sign up here and if you got an “in.” Know somebody working on the game… somebody like… ME! You can tell me what email address you used to sign up and I may be able to poke around in the piles of beta applications and give yours a push toward the accepted pile. Assuming your machine will run the game, looks like we won’t be doing a Commodore 64 version, sorry.

Fury Beta Sign-up Link

For those of you without an in, Ten Ton Hammer is offering a limited number of Beta keys free to people who sign up for their brand new membership program this weekend. First come first serve so either get on over there in a hurry or get to know me!

Ten Ton Hammer Beta Keys Offer

And for those of you still sitting on the sidelines, and those sidelines happen to be in Los Angeles, Gamecock is going to hold a Wake for E3. You can read all about it over at Joystiq or a little about it here on Kotaku. Anyway point being Fury will be there and will be playable.

Just a real quick post from work

There is a review of ‘Fury’ in the July 2007 issue of Atomic, an Australian computing and technology magazine, It should have hit the stands today though I didn’t see it when I checked out the news agent at lunch.

Also, Lords of the Dead, one of the guilds participating in our ongoing pre-beta weekend tests have posted their first impressions of ‘Fury’.

And now I’m off to Sydney. Why you ask, for a game convention, trade show or something else exciting? No. I lost my passport and I have to go in person to the U.S. Consulate in Sydney to report it lost and apply for a new one. I did manage to get a list of all the comic book stores around Darling Harbor so it won’t be a total wasted trip.

Oh by the way there are still 'Fury' pre-beta keys available from IGN. We are increasing the number of players each weekend during the pre-beta period. Just remember that this is still an unfinished version of the game. It isn't even at the beta stage hence the name "pre-beta". Now I'm sure YOU understand that, but you know how those other people are.

Fury Pre-Beta

This weekend was our big pre-beta test. There were loads of people in the game battling it out. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them as I started to get sick Friday and was pretty much at dead to the world all weekend. I blew my nose so much I swear it must have been brain matter that was starting to come out toward the end.

I wound up laying on the couch most of the time under some blankets while watching really old South Park episodes. I finally got to see the Terrance & Phillip episode that they ran instead of the second part to the ‘Who is Cartman’s father’ story as well as said second part. I had missed those when they originally aired and I feel much more complete having finally seen those two episodes. I had actually meant to watch seasons 1 & 2 of Deadwood again, but I couldn’t get motivated enough to get them off the shelf.

Anyway… If you have signed up for Fury’s beta you should get a move on. That Fury isn’t going to unleash itself! Here is the link.

And just to get you into the mood here is our latest promo video.

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