Direct2Drive is offering a free copy of the first Manhunt when you pre-order the PC version of Manhunt 2. Remember Vista/7 users, once you get Manhunt 1 downloaded and installed, you'll need to run the patcher for it to run.

Pre-order: Direct2Drive

Last year I released a patcher that patched Manhunt to run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, however, the patcher used a hex edit method which relied on the executable being the same executable that I used. This caused problems with people that got their game from Direct2Drive, US retail, etc. In this newer patcher, it uses a Microsoft created way of changing the DLLCharacteristics of a compiled executable that's not dependent on hex editing and as such should work with every version of Manhunt.

Download: Manhunt Patcher

This weekend Steam is offering a 50% discount off of all Rockstar Games on Steam. The titles include:

Max Payne is now $4.99
Max Payne 2 is now $4.99
Midnight Club 2 is now $4.99
Manhunt is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto 3 is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is now $9.99

Not sure which ones you want? No problem! You can get them all for only $29.99! Hurry up as the deal will only last until this Monday.

Buy Now: Rockstar Games on Steam

A user called "Smucker" over at the Steam forums discovered that if you changed a couple of bytes in the exe, the game would run on Windows Vista with out crashing. However, to make the edits, you would need to use a hex editor and potentially screw up your exe in the process. To make things easier, I have created a simple little tool in VB that will do the edits for you. Just download the patcher, put it into your manhunt folder, and run the program. At the current time, only the Steam version of Manhunt has been tested. It is most likely that the patcher will work with other versions. If you have a version of Manhunt other than Steam and the patcher works, please contact me at aj@rockstarwatch.net.

Official Site: Manhunt on Windows Vista Patcher

A few discussions have been taken place all over the web on Manhunt being available on Steam. Obviously with Manhunt being banned in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany it was to be expected that people would see the recent addition to Steam to be a godsend, sadly though many underestimated the entire thing. Rather then being purchasable by anybody, anywhere, Australia has been blocked from purchasing Manhunt on Steam. It's believed this is the same for the UK, Germany and New Zealand however this has yet to be proven.

This does come as a shock, I myself expected the game to be freely purchasable by anybody, being it online and all. Seems censorship of games is slowly becoming a huge annoyance in all cases, be it purchasing from your local Target store to purchasing online.

As we discussed in the past, it is completely legal for persons of the UK to download games that have been banned or refused classification. It's unknown but believed that Australia follows a different guideline in response to downloadable games.

This comes as bit of a surprise. Rockstar has acquired the Manhunt3.com domain from Joel Reed, a Rockstar Games fan. Now this could be just a case of Rockstar and Take Two making sure they protect their trade marks, but they haven't done this to any of the fan sites for other games which feature trade marks Rockstar's games. Though it doesn't confirm the game is coming, it is interesting. Only time will tell if Rockstar will make a Manhunt 3.

Source: GameOfTheBlog