Excluding a bag of late-night Cheetos, most gamers would agree that food and computer games hardly make a natural match. But that's not the opinion of Texas' Terminal Reality.

　　The Texas-based company (one of the partners in the Gathering of Developers consortium) has decided to link food with computer games in a big way. To celebrate the launch of its upcoming Microsoft-published game Monster Truck Madness II, the company is donating two truckloads of food - 60,000 pounds worth - to Feed the Children, an international hunger relief organization.

　　Terminal Reality announced the delivery at a press conference Friday morning at Dallas' Planet Hollywood. The event was attended by actress Melanie Griffith as well as a number of local dignitaries. From Planet Hollywood, the two trucks were driven to Christian Community Action in Lewisville (a suburb of Dallas, where TRI is based) for distribution to local food banks.

　　At the Planet Hollywood press conference, Jeff Smith, public relations manager at Terminal Reality, said: " had the opportunity to get involved with Feed The Children The company's founders - Mark Randel and Brett Combs - saw a TV program that produced. We were all touched by their efforts and felt that we should be giving something back to the community as well.

　　"We decided that for all those people whose lives we could not make a little better from playing our games, we would try to make them better through the most basic necessity - food. From that moment on, Terminal Reality pledged to support Feed The Children by sponsoring at least one truck of food for every new product that it completes.

　　"Interactive entertainment - like Hollywood - a multimillion dollar industry. In 1997, more than new 4,000 games were produced and sold to the public in America. If every company had donated just one truckload of food for every title it produced, more than 130 million pounds of food would have been generated. Lots more children would not have gone to bed hungry. I would like to openly challenge the entire interactive entertainment industry to follow in our footsteps and give something back to the community. Already, several other Dallas-area game developers and publishing companies have risen to the challenge and pledged to sponsor Feed The Children, including Gathering of Developers, ION Storm, and Ritual Entertainment."

　　Larry Jones, founder and president of Feed The Children, said, "Over 30 percent of children under 12 in Texas are either hungry or at risk of hunger. Many of those are children of single mothers or parents who work but are under-employed. Terminal Reality has generously teamed up with Feed The Children to do something about these sobering statistics and feed hungry children."