Late last year, I had the good fortune to interview Ed Rotberg, creator, among other things, of the groundbreaking Battlezone. This vector graphics tank simulator was the first truly immersive 3D environment in videogames, and probably the first 3D update of a 2D classic, what with it being heavily based on Kee/Atari’s various overhead Tank games.

The current issue of Retro Gamer, 59, includes portions of the interview in ‘The Making of Battlezone’, and the game is featured on the cover as a beautifully rendered faux-vector scene.

This seems to have been good timing by Retro Gamer, since all kinds of Battlezone-related things seem to be cropping up right now. First, there’s Vector Tanks, a heavily Battlezone-inspired blaster for iPhone, written by the supremely talented Peter Hirschberg. Secondly, Wade Shooter’s video for Fujiya & Miyagi’s Sore Thumb dresses the band and instruments in vector ekoskeletons, occasionally cutting to scenes of vector tank warfare.

• Just spent 30 minutes on the phone with the BBC, doing something on the Mac’s 25th for an upcoming Five Live Pods & Blogs: http://is.gd/6mzr #

• The recession eats Designers Republic. Truly inspirational back in the day, but the company lost its way more recently. http://is.gd/gYwh #
• Having been mucking about with Mini vMac lately, this mock-up of Snow Leopard in Mac Classic style makes me smile: http://cubes.fr/6188 #

The BBC reports that Tom and Jerry is to be turned into a live-action movie. Apparently, Warner Bros claims to be “spurred on by the success of live action hit Alvin and the Chipmunks”, although I imagine the absurdly high box-office takings for the utterly dreadful Garfield movies were more of a factor.

As if turning basic cartoons into feature-length films isn’t a bad enough idea, Warner Bros has also gone entirely insane regarding how the Tom and Jerry film will work (or not work, as will most likely be the case). Taking a cue from every other rubbish movie, they want to follow tedious convention and explore motivation (and, presumably, have the ‘heroes’ overcome their problems and kiss at the end, which will require Tom or Jerry to have a swift sex change). In short, the movie will “concentrate on how Tom and Jerry met and their subsequent rivalry”.

Now, perhaps I’m a little bit simple, but here’s how I see it: Tom is a cat and Jerry is a mouse. Cats don’t like mice—in fact, they eat them. And that’s it. We don’t need backstory. We don’t need to figure out why they don’t like each other. One is a cat and the other is a mouse. It’s like exploring the motivation behind why a lion hunts a gazelle. Presumably, in the upcoming Yogi Bear movie, they’ll be exploring the motivation behind the lead taking a dump in the woods…

Having been happily reading the wonderful Complete Peanuts, I only hope Charles Schulz’s classic strip doesn’t get the Hollywood treatment, otherwise I shall get very cross indeed. I may even write a letter.

British Gas has just announced it’ll drop its standard tariff gas price by 10% from 19 February, and I’ve already received some overtly jaunty spam from the company about this. I’m told British Gas will be ‘providing [me] with cheaper energy’. Technically, this is true, but, as ever, the timing sucks.

That the price-drop is occurring in the middle of February, after the worst of the winter’s cold, is no surprise. It’s disappointing, what with oil prices tanking many months ago, but par for the course. After all, British Gas has already made its huge profits for the winter, and can now ‘afford’ to cut its prices and try and grab itself some decent PR while doing so.

The question is whether the company will get away with this cynical business step, and Ed Mayo of Watchdog Consumer Focus has already noted that “Energy price cuts are likely to be too little and too late to help consumers with this winter’s fuel bills” (source: BBC News); also, the 10% seems suspiciously low compared to the drop in petrol prices.

I’d say we can expect another drop around June—and a much bigger one. After all, British Gas will need another chance to crow, and dropping prices by a quarter or more during summer will barely hurt the company. After all, it can (and almost certainly will) hike prices up again come October anyway, ready for another cold winter.