Ho Ho Horror
This is truly awful...hide the children. Yes, a 65-foot tall Santa Claus attacks San Francisco in our special holiday screenshots. Note: He's not an official monster, but he may show up as an easter egg (I guess in this case we should call it a candy cane).Here's an in-game animation of Giant Santa getting gassed by the army (hey, I told you it was awful).

Santa Claus doesn't exist. Well, he did, but we had to kill him.

DECEMBER 1, 2002:
"It's the kingdom of the spiders, it's the empire of the ants -- you need a permit to walk around downtown, you need a license to dance"
    -- Warren Zevon, Life'll Kill Ya

A few new ant shots, and a new Technical F/X (warning: it's pretty darn technical this time). We've also completely redone the game interface, which you'll see here soon.

I know, Halloween is tomorrow. But I just wanted to say howdy to our visitors coming from UGO.COM, where you'll find an interview with us, and some exclusive screenshots. Howdy! Take a look around, have some Chex Mix, pull up a chair, but watch out for this guy...yes, just for tricks, Lars gave our giant mantis a Halloween costume. I'm warning you folks, you'd best cough up the treats if this shows up at your door:

OCTOBER 28, 2002:
"I don't like hearing noises, especially when there ain't supposed to be any."
    -- Gravedigger, Plan 9 From Outer Space

Shriek of the Week
I'd like to thank Michael Futreal of Runtime Sound and his scream team for sending us some fabulous screams.

Feature Creepy
In TCFH, you can now switch to black & white mode on the fly, making it feel like you're really playing a 1950s monster movie (it also features a jumping film scratch or two, and some wild stray hairs). One of a few new screenshots:

We've also got a new Technical F/X: all about hazard maps.

OCTOBER 18, 2002:
"It's no fun being an illegal alien, no no no no no"
    -- Phil Collins of Genesis

You can stop building that mashed potato replica of Devil's Tower on the kitchen table now, the UFO is here...

Lars tells a little story about our recent D.B.Cooper Bug (don't worry, it's fixed, and for all you young'ns who don't know who D.B.Cooper was/is, here ya go):

"Because it would be a real computational nightmare to have hundreds of thousands of individual people running around the game, we cheat and keep a dense crowd only near the monster. As the monster moves, people are teleported and spawned nearby to keep the world looking populated. Recently, I implemented the UFO, which flies around at a steady fifty-foot altitude instead of walking around on the ground. As it flew around, it spawned new people to keep the world full.

Normally the game logic takes the monster's position as a starting point, offsetting the people spawn target from there. In this case, it used the UFO's starting point -- which happened to be fifty feet above the ground. Clumps of people would spawn up in the air, then immediately fall to their deaths, triggering a respawn (since the people count would drop when they died), resulting in an endless rain of little people falling from the sky."

Hallelujah, it's raining men!

You can also find out how our terrain tiles work in Technical F/X.

OCTOBER 7, 2002:
"This is like deja vu all over again."
   -- Yogi Berra

In what we assure you is not becoming become an annual event, we're probably going to have to move our release date out to Spring. More details to come. But we're hard at work, and here are a few new screenshots: from our new supersized San Francisco map. More to follow later this week. I've also added a new section called Technical F/X, where you'll find Lars writing semi-regularly about all sorts of geeky technical details in TCFH.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2002:
"You know how to whistle, don't you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."
   -- Lauren Bacall to Humphrey Bogart in To Have And Have Not

Yup, our game really blows...now that Lars has implemented wind modeling. I moved this article to the Technical F/X section, since it was pretty darn geeky.

Note: We changed web servers last week -- I apologize if you had some problems connecting to us (but don't worry, we weren't devoured by a giant mantis or anything).

AUGUST 21, 2002:
"I just want the key to your Ferrari, cause aliens ate my Buick."
   --Thomas Dolby

We've redesigned the UFO so it looks more authentic...and by that we mean more like a pie pan or a hubcap:

Lars is out of commission, recovering from sinus surgery (he'll be subsisting on a tasty diet of applesauce and Vicodin this week), but when he's back we'll have some new screenshots and a bit about some nifty details we've added.

JULY 30, 2002:
"Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four."
          -- Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

Yes, we need your SCREAMS! We're collecting screams for our sound effects...your scream could be in TCFH. Visit the Send Us Your Screams page for rules, details, legalese, and handy tips. We look forward to hearing your screams of pain, horror and anguish. Yeah, we're sick like that. :)

JULY 17, 2002:
"I will hunt down the alleged arachnid and spritz him to Kingdom Come."
-- Delbert McClintock, Arachnophobia (1990)

Eight Legged Freaks opened in theaters today -- hmm, wonder if they were inspired by Harold Haxton's 1959 giant spider movie, Eight Legged Evil? We've got a new haiku kaiju review about it, anyway...

Just updated the Enemies page with more details. I'd also like to welcome everyone visiting from recent links on Blue's News and Gamershell.

JULY 8, 2002:
" Tiny people, with little guns - little armies march, to little drums - What do they want? What do they want? " -- Oingo Boingo, Little Guns

I've added a few shots of the little army men...little troop trucks, Jeeps, guys with flamethrowers, and the M1A1 tanks. What do they want? To avoid becoming road pastrami underneath the feet of a giant monster, I think. But don't we all?

There's also a new interview with us over at Screaming Monkey Labs, in which we discuss TCFH gameplay in detail, monkeys, and who will portray us in the major motion picture. Go on, read it, it's funny.

Do I smell something burning?

JUNE 12, 2002:
"I'm not wild on spiders that are big and move fast and tear your head off." -- Eddie Izzard

Yes, by "Our full E3 report...this weekend", I meant, naturally, "Our full E3 report...like, two weeks later." Here it is, now that "E3 reports" have become more omnipresent and unpleasantly stale than "all your base are belong to us". Sigh. Move zig.

MAY 30, 2002:

HARRIS: I thought that, uh, I'd show you around town a little bit, you know, a few kind of secret places...a kind of a cultural tour of L.A.

SARA: That's the first fifteen minutes. Then what?

Yup, we're back from E3. If you were wishing for big monsters under your Christmas tree this year, you'd better clear some room...we checked out two, count 'em TWO, upcoming monster-vs-monster games: War of The Monsters (Sony, PS2) and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee (Infogrames, GameCube). We even got a chance to talk to the producers of these games -- both look great and promise some real monster-whompin' action. The games, I mean, not the producers. Not that they weren't both handsome devils...but if either of 'em took on an angry 200-foot lizard, my money would be on the lizard. And I'd have to send it Western Union, 'cause I'd be at least several hundred miles away cowering under my "Harry Potter" blanket. Er, not that I have one of those.

Our full E3 report, complete with some very silly photos, this weekend.

MAY 18, 2002:
"Who stole the kishka? Who stole the kishka? Who stole the kishka? Someone call the cops! " -- traditional polka

Welcome to our Polish visitors! Yes, if you read Polish, there's an interview with us at Wirtualna Polska. There's also a non-Polish interview with us over at Gamersclick.We'll be at E3 next week...no booth or anything, just walkin' around like all the other schmucks. But do say hello if you see us. How will you know it's us? Well, we might be wearing a t-shirt with this on it:

APRIL 26, 2002:
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide

Yes, that ghastly sound you heard was a big ol' Charlie Brown "AAUUGH!" rising up from the depths of Octopus Motor. We're moving our release date out to Fall 2002. Why? Well, we've still got a lot to do. We've added a new city map (the desert town of Custer's Tibia, Nevada). And getting our new map process perfected has been sucking up all of our time. But on to the good news: new screenshots of Custer's Tibia. See Cities to learn a bit more about this town.

M1 tanks...kill bugs dead

APRIL 3, 2002:
"Space, it seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you. And that's how you play the game." -- Fry, from Futurama

Ah, the Game Developer's Conference. Once again, it was a melange of fun, laughs, interesting people and bad sandwiches. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, and all the CAs and staff. Greetings to all the other indie developers I met, and everyone who just came up and said "hello". Ya'll rock the metaphorical Casbah.

In the "How Can We Be More Like Cosmopolitan Magazine?" category, find out what kind of giant movie monster you would be by taking our Giant Monster Personality Test. Eyeliner tips & tricks will have to wait until next week.

MARCH 18, 2002:
"Shake, shake, shake - shake, shake, shake - shake your booty, shake your booty" -- K.C. & The Sunshine Band

We're happy to announce that TCFH will be supporting the dance pad for PC (made famous by the game Dance Dance Revolution). Yes, we got these doodads for the Playstation and the PC, and I've been jumping up and down on 'em like a complete idiot (insert comment about my idiocy when remaining stationary here).

I also added a few screenshots: trailer shots and a composite of some San Francisco model renderings.

MARCH 10, 2002:
"Don't tread on an ant he's done nothing to you - there might come a day when he's treading on you" -- Ant Music, Adam & The Ants

A new monster enters our lineup, due to popular demand: THE ANT. Our giant ant is 30 feet tall and just itchin' for a picnic. The ant's special ability? He shoots destructive formic acid out of his behind. Ya'll can make your own "next time don't order the spicy burritos" jokes.

Anyway, his name is Marcus, from the Monty Python "Buying An Ant" skit, which I will refrain from quoting as to avoid exploding in a violent burst of extraordinary geekitude.

FEBRUARY 9, 2002:
"An object at rest cannot be stopped" -- The Mad Bomber What Bombs At Midnight

We're not actually takin' a rest...just working on game stuff that isn't very exciting. However, there's a new interview with us over at Blue Monday (link no longer active). Of course, you may have actually come here from there...in which case you are now trapped in a recursive time loop of my own working! HA! HA! Now I will take advantage of this temporal warp by returning to three minutes before I was born and reminding myself not to get that perm in ninth grade that made me look like Eddie Van Halen! Now I will be unstoppable! The UNIVERSE will be MINE!

Uh, but right now, I gotta go make some toast.

JANUARY 13, 2002:
Hey, everybody, it's Lars' birthday today. Happy Birthday!

Computer Games magazine's Cindy Yans gave us a nice mention in her recent column (Feb '02 print issue). I also hear there was a little article about us in the UK magazine PC Zone (thanks to Greyarchive for typing it out for us, since I can't find the mag over here across the pond).

Greetings to all our visitors from the UK - I wave my Dr. Who scarf in your general direction. Oh who am I kidding...I don't actually have a Dr. Who scarf. I do, however, really want a Dalek coffee table.

JANUARY 3, 2002:

MIKE: As a special treat Crow, Tom and I have written and are going to perform an original Christmas carol.
CROW: Mike, it's not just for Christmas...it's for holidays of all faiths.
TOM: Yeah, and don't call it a carol, because Carol is a woman's name and we want this song to be all-inclusive.

     -- Mystery Science Theater 3000, Episode 521, "Santa Claus"

Hope everyone who celebrated something had a good one. In other news, an interview with us by John Callaham recently appeared on the gamesite HomeLanFed.