John Romero Loses Daikatana

DALLAS - Dallas, Texas was the site of a major upset Friday as celebrity designer John Romero lost to a 20-year-old gamer in the final round of a Deathmatch tournament.

After hosting a month of preliminary competitions on Mplayer.com (using the Daikatana demo), Eidos and Ion Storm, brought the four finest Daikatana deathmatchers - Gauss (Philip Marcus), Golden (Eric Hong), grindage (Brad McKelvie) and Messiah (Phil Kennedy) - to Dallas to engage in a double-elimination competition. The winner would receive an overclocked and loaded-to-the-gills 800 MHz PC from Sys Technologies Cryotech and a host of other prizes. The winner would also get a chance to engage John Romero in a head-to-head final match and try to win a specially molded Daikatana sword.

After three grueling rounds, Messiah, a college student at the University of Central Florida, remained the last man standing. And then he did the unthinkable.... He beat Romero - who had far more familiarity with the game map - five frags to four in the ultimate challenge. When asked what happened, Romero could only reply, "The kid is good."

"I got lucky," Messiah explained as he collected his loot.

According to Ion Storm sources, Daikatana will appear on store shelves in early to mid-January. (Retailers say it will be in stores on January 21).