This Day in Geek History: November 24
1995
Nintendo publicly unveils the Ultra 64 at Tokyo’s annual Shoshinkai show and reveal its name, “Nintendo Ultra 64.” The company demonstrates the games Kirby’s Air Ride and Super Mario 64. The president of Nintendo Company, Ltd., also announces the continued development of a mass storage device called “64DD,” on which game players can write or customize games. The magnetic disks will be installed in the front panel of a platform that slips under the Nintendo 64 console. Each disk will be able to hold up to 64MB of data. The first photos from the show will be published online two days after the event by Game Zero magazine, though the first photographs of the system had been published as early as June 1993.
Philippe Kahn resigns as chairman of Borland International.
1998
America Online (AOL) announces an agreement to acquire the Netscape Communications for US$4.2 billion in stock. AOL also states that, despite the acquistion, they plan to keep Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the default browser for new AOL users. Netscape’s server products and its Professional Services group will become part of iPlanet, a joint marketing and development between AOL and Sun Microsystems.
Nintendo ships The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 in North America. Pre-orders for the title exceed 325,000, and it will go on to sell over seven million units in the first six months. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: E (Everyone) Price: US$59.95
1999
Attorneys representing Haggard & Parks, P.A. in Coral Gables, Florida file a class action lawsuit in Miami-Dade County judicial court against Microsoft alleging that the company overcharges consumers for its Windows 95 operating system.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution released Toy Story 2, directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voice talents of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack, to 3,236 U.S. theaters. It’s the first commercial film to be released simultaneously to both conventional theaters and “e-cinemas” that use electronic projection in California, Florida, and Texas. Produced on a budget of US$90 million, it will gross US$57,388,839 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: G) Running Time: 1 hr 32 mins
Version 1.02, a pre-beta, of the iMesh file sharing and online social network is released. It is the first release of the application. Visit the application’s official website.
2000
Eidos Interactive releases the survival horror game Resident Evil 3: Nemesis for Window in Europe. BBFC: 15
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) introduces the PlayStation 2 in Europe. The system features a 294.912MHz processor, a single analog DualShock2 controller, two memory card slots, two USB ports, one i-Link (IEEE 1394) port, and a 128-bit Emotion Engine graphics processor. The system is backwards compatible with PlayStation games and supports CD-ROM, Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD-ROM, and DVD-Video media. Visit the system’s official website. Price: £299 Weight: 5 pounds
2001
The BadTrans worm is released. BadTrans is a malicious computer worm distributed through e-mail which takes advantage of a vulnerability in older versions of Microsoft’s Outlook and Outlook Express. Upon execution, the worm installs a keystroke logger then replicates by sending copies of itself to other e-mail addresses found in the host’s machine’s address book. An e-mail account at IJustGotFired.com receives over one hundred thousand keystroke logs in the first day alone. Other addresses receiving keystroke logs were registered at such free e-mail providers as Excite and Yahoo.
The Qualcomm website is hacked anonymously by someone at the University of Wisconsin.
2003
Version 8.4.5 of the Tcl/Tk programming language is released.
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