POSTAL BULLETS
News From The Postal Underworld

Doug Lowenstein Blasts Industry For Cowardice
In a speech that was a long time coming, Doug Lowenstein, on the occasion of his departure from the ESA, fired a salvo at gutless game companies who fail to defend their own product.  Among other things, Doug said:

"The publishers and developers who make controversial content and then cut and run when it comes time to defend their creative decisions... If you want the right to make what you want, if you want to push the envelope, I’m out there defending your right to do it. But, dammit, get out there and support the creative decisions you make.”

Vince Desi immediately issued a statement of support for Lowenstein’s remarks:

"I agree with Doug Lowenstein, retiring ESA President, everyone in the video game industry needs to stand up.  Running With Scissors has had its balls on the line from the very beginning, and we've managed to stay alive despite the hypocrisy, blacklisting and banning.  I credit our fans; it’s their support and loyalty that made it all possible”

So make Doug and Vince happy and start fighting for your rights by clicking on the enormous button below!

Now You Can Go Postal In Sweden Legally
It all began with a mysterious email of congratulations that arrived around Xmas from Swedish Postal Nation member Magnus Johansson.  When Vince asked for more information, Magnus explained that a retailer in Sweden was taken to court when he dared to sell copies of the POSTAL games only to be freed by all nine jurors in a case that establishes the POSTAL games as completely legal to sell in Sweden.

“A long time ago, “ Vince recalled, “his attorney contacted me, and I offered to go to Sweden to appear on his behalf in court, but I never heard back. I am so happy with this result and that he is free of all charges.”

It turned out that this victim of attempted judicial censorship was Johan Berntsson, the owner a toyshop in Ängelholm outside Helsingborg, according to Magnus, who diligently followed the case for us. Johan’s lawyer was Krister Azelius and the games, it turned out, originally came from Denmark which in turn obtained them from the Netherlands.

Good grief, hash deals go down with fewer middlemen than that!

In any case, Magnus translated a report on the verdict from a Swedish newspaper: “The Justicekansler’s [loose translation: Justice Chancellor] attempt to stop sales of a violent computer game has failed. The jury freed the distributor who imported the game POSTAL 2 to Sweden, so the charge is dropped and the jury’s verdict cannot be appealed. ‘This means that they can sell violent computer games in Sweden,’ said the Justicekansler. ‘It’s carte blanche for violent computer games.’”

Way to go, citizens of Sweden. It’s nice to see that some people do value their freedom. (Special thanks to RWS Correspondent Magnus Johansson)

The Little European Postal Shop
Our good friend Stuart reports that his European Postal Shop is now open for business and can be reached via www.postalshop.eu. He has games and shirts in stock and will soon have posters as well.  What’s sad is that he runs the site in English-only because of his fear that his existence, perfectly legal though it is, will be under attack by his country’s censors.  In fact, he has even requested that we not mention his nation of origin.

It is, of course, Postal Nation.

Support this guy!

“In [his country],” he writes, it is necessary “to hide the games until i make sure the customer is at least 18 years old. The games are not visible for [newly] registered customers. They have to send me a copy of their ID, and then they get Full Age Access and can see and buy the games. Believe me, I'm the biggest enemy of this kind of procedure, but it's necessary here.”

Vince Interviewed In 'Breakthrough' Games Article
Andrzej Klimczuk, features editor of Gry.o2.pl, a leading Polish game site tells us that they have just posted the third part of the site’s report, “Breakthrough 2006-2007” with comments from Derek Littlewood (Creative Director of Free Radical Design, producers of HAZE); Paul R. Statham (Public Relations & Community Manager of Bohemia Interactive Studio, developers of Armed Assault); Derek Reeve (PR of Freeze Interactive, devs of Field Ops) and, of course, Vince Desi, CEO of Running With Scissors ("Postal III").

You can get the entire piece, in Polish and English at the Gry.o2.pl site.

POSTAL On Discovery Channel In March
Unfortunately, that’s about all the information we have on this story as we go to press. However just check back at the gopostal.com site for updates as they become available.

International Insanity

German The Dude Magazine - This is the most ambitious POSTAL fan magazine project we have seen and contains original material. We at RWS are in the process of granting them free access to all materials from The Urinal – in fact, since some of these publications can show nip, you might want to check them out for POSTAL Babe shots that even WE can't show you. In any case, at the moment this is simply a magazine devoted to POSTAL and The Dude and whether you can read German or not, it's well worth checking out. In fact, when you check out the Postal Nation column in this issue, you'll learn about an incredible new project being launched by Stefan – The Dude DataBase!

Also, our old friend Ralf Strugale has updated his cool German POSTAL site at http://www.postal-world.de/

Russian Russia has certainly embraced the POSTAL series – we've sold, like, millions of copies over there – so it was inevitable that a site such as this would turn up. Take a trip that melts the Iron Curtain, comrades, and see what a Urinal looks like in Russia .

Portuguese Postal Network: Pedro is among our oldest and most loyal fans and among the first to seek permission to translate our newsletter into other tongues.

Swedish I mean, with all those hot, blond POSTAL Babes, you KNEW there hadda be a Swedish version, right?

Italian Manuel Marino, another of our true veterans and hall of fame fans brings you a Urinal with Italiano zest!

Benelux/Dutch D. Dam Wichers decided The Benelux countries need The Urinal too, folks. This is a recent effort and we wish Danny Dam the best of luck.

Japan Toshi informs us POSTAL is extremely popular in the Pacific Rim and I'm sure we'd do even better there if we included bondage shots in the games. Oh well, you can't have everything.

Gallic/French This is the publication that drew 18 different suggestions for an appropriate translation of our title. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Ouamdu Ouamdu to run here.

This International POSTAL phenomenon has somewhat overwhelmed us, but if you're game for posting our newsletter in the language of your choice (from Klingon to Hobbit to Brad Pitt in "Snatch"), let us know and we'll do anything we can to help get you started.

Seeing the POSTAL Sites

As always, here's an arbitrary list of POSTAL-related sites presented in no particular order:

*http://www.purepostal.com : Jon Merchant's RWS fansite, soon to be revamped

*http://postalprojects.theoagh.com/ This is the oaghs postal 2 fansite, he's an awesome asset to the community, with many maps under his belt.

*http://www.ne.jp/asahi/denkousekka/gamefreak/index2.html A very intresting Japanese p2 site

*http://www.scottshome.com/ The website to Scott's postal 2 server. I credit this guy with the sussess of p2 online, as he was the first person to show us how to use the gameservers.net redirect for custom content, and run a server that was a little diffrent from the rest. 3 years later, he's still in the community.

*http://www.gameservers.net The community has alot to thank these guys for. They have provided two 12 man servers for postal 2 for over two years, and also let us use the redirect for fast server downloads for custom contect.

*To see some new zombie images from the Eternal Damnation Mod check out http://resurrection-studios.com

* http://www.freewebs.com/postalaw/thepostalworld.htm has a new Share The Pain review up.

* http://postalfr.tonsite.biz/news.php French Postal forums. Parlez des machettes de boomerang en Français!
Le' W00T!

 * The new URL for the Bitches With Attitude forums is: http://www.bitcheswithattitude.net/Site/ go chat with the Grrlz that WILL kick your sorry ass.

*http://moddb.com/ Your one-stop shop for all things Mod related.

* www.postalnetwork.org The first and greatest Postal portal!

* http://www.resurrection-studios.com/ Home of the Eternal Damnation Mod project.

* http://www.purepostal.com//kamek/ Kamek's batcave of Postal Moddery. Loads of cool stuff for multiplayer Postal!

* http://postal2.tk/ Looks like a store page, smells like a store page, but under the brazen attempt to sell you Share The Pain are links to free multiplayer maps and other Postal-related goodness!

* http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=15229050 Ever wonder what The Dude's friends are like? Well, you can meet 27 of them right here.

* http://www.geocities.com/hellchild1989/home2.htm Another Postal fan sharing his pain. Quick, check out his Postal cartoons for some extra Deep Hurting before he does something crazy...

--Bill Kunkel
Editor, RWS Newsletter