Hercules, Gone

A good thing gone bad?

By now, everyone's heard the news, and has gone on with their life. Hercules, creators of what was probably the fastest TNT2 card available, suddenly up and disappeared. Rumors flew, accusations surfaced, and in general, confusion was the order of the day. For those readers unfortunate enough to set their sights on buying the company's Dynamite TNT2 Ultra products, disappointment was only the beginning.

Performance and price was Hercules' ace in the hole. The fastest product for the lowest retail price - if only it could materialize. This was more than enough to entice a number of customers to pre-order the card, and wait. And wait. Even now, over a month after the event, the implications are a portent. How many Hercules-type vendors are still out there, and what does this mean to the industry? Are we all going to have to settle with full-price, 120MHz clock rates on GeForce 256 products because of this?

We've heard a number of rumors of Hercules' financial problems and "impending doom" several months before the actual event, and there's still a question of what really happened to the company. What's more, how many Dynamite TNT2s are sitting around gathering dust, and what can be done about it? To try and answer these questions, we got hold of Joe Lau, former Marketing Coordinator for Hercules. He was kind enough to participate in an interview for us, and the rest can be surmised! Joe's answers to our questions are in bold, and may be followed by a FiringSquad analysis.