g.o.d. Plays Video Games

When the gathering of developers announced that Rob Cohen, lead programmer for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and late of Iguana Entertainment, had joined its coterie of independent-minded developers, it acknowledged that Cohen's efforts would include g.o.d.'s first foray into console development.

Now, g.o.d. is entering into a copublishing and distribution agreement with Take-Two Interactive and actually has a name attached to that first console title. It will be called 4X4 Mud Monsters. The game is being developed by Cohen's company Edge of Reality and fellow g.o.d. partner (and developer of Microsoft's Monster Truck Madness) Terminal Reality for the Nintendo 64 system.

As its name suggests, 4X4 Mud Monsters will be an off-road truck sim. Cohen is developing a proprietary N64 engine to power the game. That engine is based on Terminal Reality's Photex 2 Engine for PC games and was used most recently in Terminal Reality and Microsoft's Monster Truck Madness 2.

Cohen's company was the sixth partner to join g.o.d. Cohen has Mike Panoff, who worked as a lead developer on Paradigm and Nintendo's Pilot Wings 64, as part of the Edge team.

Take-Two has a license to publish games for the N64 system, while g.o.d. does not. Which goes a long way towards explaining the Take-Two-g.o.d. alliance. G.o.d. CEO Mike Wilson did say in a statement, "Take-Two has embraced our business philosophy fully, and we are excited by their recent growth in the entertainment software publishing industry on both sides of the Atlantic."

Take-Two will distribute 4X4 Mud Monsters in the United States and Europe. The game is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 1999.