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   For many of us, it was quite a shock when id Software's coder extraodinaire, John Carmack, decided to return to his old days of low-tech programming and made a role-playing game for mobile phones. The name of the game - as I'm sure you known by now - is Orcs & Elves, and it was released by Verizon in May 2006. Since then, it went on to receive several "best of" awards, including IGN's "Best Wireless RPG of E3 2006", "Best Mobile Game" at the Games Convention in Leipzig and "Best Story" for IGN's 2006 Wireless Awards.

   Having enjoyed such a successful departure from their usual first-person shooters (need I name them?), it seems that id Software now hopes to build on this success and take Orcs & Elves onto other platforms. More specifically, on the Nintendo DS handheld consonle.

   Chris Kohler from the Wired blog Game|Life sat down with Carmack earlier this week, and they got to talking about the DS Lite sitting on his nightstand...
"We're hoping to do a DS game version of Orcs and Elves", Carmack confessed, "moving over and enhancing the cell phone game on there, which would be our first real direct entry back into the Nintendo world."    Apparently, their relation with Nintendo hasn't been too close, ever since they had to dumb-down (i.e. politically-correct) Wolfenstein 3D for the SNES. No Natzi swastikas, green blood, silly stuff like that...
John Carmack: We've never had a close, good relationship with Nintendo from like way back, when we had some back experiences really early on...
Chris Kohler: Like when they made you put rats in...
John Carmack: ...Wolfenstein stuff...
Todd Hollenshead (id CEO): ...green blood...
John Carmack: ...and we were always just kind of peeved at the whole Nickelodeon censor arrangement with Nintendo. So we've kept them at arm's length for many console generations now.    Let's hope they can finally get over it and make the call to Nintendo. If not for the sake of Orcs & Elves on the DS, then at least for something else on the Wii. That would be a perfect platform for Carmack to try out his wicked ideas.

UPDATE: id Software was awarded two Technology Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 8, 2007.
"The Pioneering Development Work in 3D Game Engines award was won by John Carmack, co-founder and technical director of id Software, for his cutting edge contributions to rendering technology as the lead programmer on Doom. id Software, a quintessential leader in technology development, was awarded a second Emmy for the company's technological leadership in rendering breakthroughs with the Quake technology." The company's official website has more details on this. [10.01.2007, 17:49]