Nintendo teases Microsoft over Halo2 launch

YOU MAY well have heard of the I love bees phenomenon which has accompanied the launch of Halo2. It's a viral marketing campaign run by Microsoft and has had players hunting all over the net for the next clues in the story.

According to a report on Eurogamer this morning, Nintendo have been taking rather a close interest in this campaign in the run-up to the launch of their own FPS sequel, the next installment of Metroid.

Channel51.org appears to be a site run by the main character in the Metroid game, Samus - a chick with a scientific background and a penchant for kicking alien booty.

More interesting, however, is the array of URLs that appear to be registered by Nintendo purely for the purpose of taking the michael out of MS. Ilovetease.com and Iloveseas.com both display teaser images for Metroid along with the caption 'Never send a man to do a woman's job' - a clear reference to the sex differentials between the lead characters in Metroid and Halo. Also printed is the geeky catchphrase 'All your bees are belong to us', a reference to the internet buzzphrase of 2003.

We did a little investigation of our own, and all the clues seem to point to Nintendo registering these domains - they are registered by the same chaps that are handling their Channel51.org site, although not in Nintendo's name. Those chaps are 2Advanced.com, a prestigious new media web design company. Nintendo, however, isn't listed amongst their clients - but the Channel51 site has pride of place as a featured site. Mysterious indeed.

We contacted Nintendo to comment on the whole shenanigans, but got the line that 'Nintendo doesn't comment on internet rumours'. D'oh.

We always like to see companies taking puerile digs at each other. How long until we see duskanddawnhookeragency.com ? The new Metroid title, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is out on the 26th November, a little after Halo 2 on the 12th. µ