Terràvista (http://www.terravista.pt) started years ago, as the first free hosting site for websites in portuguese language. At the time, there weren't that many free hosting services, and the most popular was, by far, Geocities.

Terràvista was a project of Portugal's Ministry of Education [MoE], but it all came to an end, after the most stupid reason: pornographic manga pictures, hosted @ one of many sites.

Terràvista had too strict rules and some people couldn't even express political opinions, judged as un-admissible.

I once had many sites @ Terràvista, and I remember regular problems with one them, just because I used the "$" character, to express the prices of some hardware components. According to the Terràvista policies, I shouldn't do it, because if I did, I would be using my pages to promote commercial activity!!

The problems @ the old Terràvista, the bannerization of Geocities, and the lack of decent alternatives, were the one of the many reasons that got me building this website and hosting it @ its own domain.

But there is a NEW Terràvista, no longer on the hands of the MoE! The new Terràvista is now available on BETA release, which is kind of original for websites :) Still, the BETA has no bugs I can think of, and it really looks cool!

I am a contributor to this DAY #1 of the NEW Terràvista: you can find adapted versions of my Artificial Intelligence articles @ the "farol das ciências"; just follow the link, to visit that page directly: Farol da Ciência

One of the many interesting things on the NEW Terràvista, is the e-scudo, kind of virtual money that you get from visiting hosted pages, and that you can later exchange for gifts. Interesting.

Beetle Crazy Cup

15 years ago, people were still playing games that were the proud climax of the european 8 bits software industry: Knight Lore, Hypersports and Starquake cross my mind.

But with the advent of the PC, the european games' industry started a slow decline, losing it to the USA developers. However, a small niche of british and french programmers resisted the "cross of the desert", to become some of today's most assuring personalities, behind entertainment titles. Peter Molyneux and Infogrames are just superb examples of that.

Peter Molyneux will surely justify (again) thousands of commentaries, when the expected-to-be-revolutionary Black & White, finally hits the shelves. But today is Infogrames and their rather more conventional approach to gaming, that is worth all our attention.

During the last few days, I had the chance to try two racing games, both from Infogrames. And I LOVE THEM! I am writing about Beetle Crazy Cup [BCC] and Michelin Race of Champions [MRC].

While not being absolutely outstanding, which means that they are not the new GP Legends :), these games are fantastic, incredibly better than nearly all similar titles, edited for the last 300 days!!

Just to refresh your memory, please remember the recent M25 Racer, Ford Racing, Le Mans 24 and F1 99... these titles are SO BAD, that you have to wonder how did the worst of them achieve a >50% score, on most magazines. To make suspicions worst, Le Mans 24 got some rave reviews, and that surely WARNS YOU, if you are informed, that something wrong is going on: it is the mission of specialized magazines and specialized websites to review software, under zero pressure, and tell you the NUDE truth about them... but that is not happening.

Well, let me focus on Bettle Crazy Cup (tomorrow, I will focus on MRC).

The first thing you'll notice in BCC, is the joy, the energy, the fun, the color and the sounds! The game's interface is designed a la arcade fashion, allowing to choose between single-player game / multi-player races / replays / options and records.

The fact that there is a replay system and such a cool interface, makes you expect something special, but perhaps kind of arcadish...

BCC turns out to be really special and not that arcadish!! I was very, very surprised to drive Beetles with great handling, great force feedback (for wheel and joysticks), and a damn fast graphics engine, that manages to pump ~50 fps @ 1024 x 768 (16 bits color), with all settings pushed to the max.

On the competitive side, your adversaries can be hard to beat, but never impossible. In fact, I think that the game's weakness is the AI opponents: they could drive faster and they should have a smarter approach to some situations. Of course, most players will never notice these details, mainly because they don't have enough PC racing experience to win, just after a few races... Still, it is fact that I would prefer them harder to beat, and that most players will love them exactly as they are :)

There is originality in BCC: not only you can race regular races, on different surfaces and scenarios, but there is the Monster Truck and the Jump challenges!!, which are quite unusual and mega addictive!

Jump mode is so different, that you'll probably start the game doing just that, rocketing a VW Beetle...

But I get more lastability from the Monster Truck challenge and its penalty system that prevents you from smashing every object on track with your Monster Beetle...

To make it short, BCC is fresh, cool, addictive, very playable and a must buy!, after so many crap racing games!! Way to go Infogrames! (not Infrogames, please).