News #1 - Gamer Allegedly Killed over a Forum Dispute

On September 21st, An Advance Wars fan, Matthew Pyke, was stabbed to death (The Press Association).

The body of 20-year-old Matthew James Pyke was discovered by ambulance crews called to his flat above the Orange Tree pub in North Sherwood Street, Nottingham, at about 6.15pm on Friday.

Detectives believe that Mr Pyke’s killer or killers would have been heavily blood-stained following the murder and are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police said a post-mortem examination carried out at Leicester Royal Infirmary had confirmed that Mr Pyke died from stab wounds.

From the Telegraph:

Police confirmed a man, believed to be 21, had been arrested near Frankfurt in Germany following the death of student Mr Pyke, who was killed in his flat in Nottingham.

Shortly after the killing a fellow gaming fan, David Heiss [picture below], 21, from Frankfurt, posted a message on the Facebook site of Joanna Witton, Mr Pyke’s girlfriend, apologising “for having caused so much trouble lately”.

Police refused to confirm or deny that Heiss was the arrested man, although detectives admitted internet links were a line of inquiry they were actively following.

Mr Pyke, 20, and Miss Witton ran a website called Wars Central, devoted to fans of computer strategy game Advance Wars.

More details at 1Up:

Advance Wars fan Matthew Pyke, 20, was stabbed to death in his home in Nottingham, England, over what police suspect may have been an online dispute with a German gamer (via Telegraph.co.uk).

The suspect, 21-year-old David Heiss, was arrested near Frankfurt in Germany. Police at first didn’t say whether the arrested man was Heiss, but details later emerged confirming that Heiss was in fact the man arrested in connection with this case (via This is Nottingham). Not long after the killing, Heiss posted a message on the Facebook page of Pyke’s girlfriend, Joanna Witton, where he apologized for “having caused so much trouble lately.”

Pyke and Witton ran a fansite for Advance Wars, which included (as many gaming fansites do) a forum for patrons to chat with each other. Police suspect a possible motive may be that Heiss — who was a member of the forum under the name “Eagle the Lightning” — entered into a dispute with Pyke online, and actually flew to the U.K. in order to exact this tragic “revenge.” Curiously, another anonymous poster suggested that some forum members may know more about the case, with a message that read, “We may know a lot of what was going on prior to the killing, but I, for one, am not going to say any more.”

Heiss is believed to be in custody in the German town of Limburg an der Lahn. He was scheduled to appear in court in Frankfurt for an extradition hearing, although according to MSN U.K., the hearing was delayed due to Nottinghamshire police failing to provide the extensive paperwork needed in time. It’s also not yet known whether Heiss will contest the extradition application from British authorities.

News #2 - New DS

From Gamespot, and confirmins something we already covered, a new DS should come out by the end of the year:

Earlier this year, Nintendo projected hardware sales of its DS handheld system to total 28 million for the current fiscal year. While that can be considered a massively successful year, it is down slightly from the 30 million portable game players the company sold last year. That anticipated slowdown led one industry analyst to predict a new iteration of the DS hardware is on the way, while another had been expecting such a redesign since last November.

Today, Japanese news site Nikkei Net (subscription required) is reporting that the time has finally come for Nintendo to roll out another new DS and that the system will arrive in Japan by the end of the year. Planned features for the unnamed DS revision include a camera function, music playback, and improved wireless capabilities. No mention was made of previously speculated upgrades, such as larger screens, enhanced memory, or a smaller size.

News #3 Nascar Driver uses Video Game Strategies…

… and Miserably fails.

Carl Edwards tried to beat Jimmie Johnson by bouncing his car off a concrete wall… on purpose. He then went ahead to provide the following bits of mental computation:

From Kotaku:

“I planned on hitting the wall, but I didn’t plan on the wall slowing me down that much,” Carl Edwards said. “In video games, you can just run into the wall and run it wide open. That’s what I did, but it didn’t quite work out the same as the video game.”

Kitty picture source is here.