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Here's the missing link between the RPG and the cardgame!

By the way, the old slashdot story only links to the qualifying of the games, the actual bracket is here.

The game takes a very tongue-in-cheek approach to the superhero genre. It's set in the 1960s and exhibits the designers' obvious love of Marvel's Stan Lee/Jack Kirby epics of the 1960s.

Personally, I loved the game. There's a sequel on the way in the near future, too.

Is that really a motto? Well, they don't always come. GameSpy had an interesting article, "The Top Ten Handhelds That Never Made It", which both Sony and Nintendo decision-makers may want to look over.

Is that really a motto? Well, they don't always come. GameSpy had an interesting article, "The Top Ten Handhelds That Never Made It", which both Sony and Nintendo decision-makers may want to look over.

That is 1,000% true. Women (or percieved women) always get special treatment in gaming situations, be it on a MUD, FPS, MMORPG, doesn't matter. People used to send my girlfriend RL Purchaseable items for her MUD, especially if they asked to see her picture. It's the same tendency that causes most men to do "chivalrous" things for women: somewhere deep down they think this is getting them one step closer to getting laid.
To quote the great Chris Rock, "Can I help you with that? Can I help you with some dick?"

And as to getting schooled, I'm sure most gamers wouldn't mind Stevie Case (AKA KillCreek) walking all over them in a game of Quake III. Hell, if she can take John Romero to the cleaners ...

Also don't forget to fix that ridiculous non-standard screen. What were they thinking?

I hate to break it to you, but 500 players is not very many. As a percentage of online games, MUDs have undoubtedly dropped in popularity in the past 10 years.

You've been playing for 7 years. How many of your fellow players have also been playing for 7 years? Do you have a stagnant playerbase that is not replenishing itself?

I don't see kids flocking to MUDs in droves. Eventually you'll stop playing due to old age. As will all your other current playmates. Last one out turn off the server...

Whaaa? Nethack is lumped in with Infocom games and Adventure...

Well, as for GameSpy: Marathon made it to one of their Hall of Fame articles, which reads very much like your post. :)

"Despite the fact that Xbox now trails behind the competition, Takahashi says that he is confident that Microsoft will release a second-generation Xbox. What has changed, however, is the notion that Xbox will be the center point of the livingroom. "I think that the idea that game consoles are going to take over all processing in the livingroom has been tested and has failed," says Takahashi, who continues to cover the games industry for the San Jose Mercury News."

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

Hard Light Productions is the primary source for anything Freespace. They're quite active, what with the FS Source Code Project, dozens of hosted projects, a couple of total conversions, and even an ever-developing Wiki-based Freespace Knowledge Base. The often-frantically active forums are, of course, the nerve center of activity at HLP.

Visitors are always welcomed in the traditionally warm HLP style, but beware! Once you join, forever may it guide your destiny!

call of duty.

This is exactly what you are looking for.

The game has amazing graphics and sound, it's fun, and overall i would say the average skill level you will find while playing online is low, when compared to bf1942 or cs.

But you don't have to take my word for it:
rottentomatoes.com 96%
gamerankings.com 92%
gamespy pc game of the year 2003
shacknews pc game of the year 2003
ign best pc action, best sound, best multiplayer game of the year, 2003
etc

Not to mention, killing russians never gets old ;)

call of duty.

This is exactly what you are looking for.

The game has amazing graphics and sound, it's fun, and overall i would say the average skill level you will find while playing online is low, when compared to bf1942 or cs.

But you don't have to take my word for it:
rottentomatoes.com 96%
gamerankings.com 92%
gamespy pc game of the year 2003
shacknews pc game of the year 2003
ign best pc action, best sound, best multiplayer game of the year, 2003
etc

Not to mention, killing russians never gets old ;)

Get Gamespy. It lists all the servers you could want, and you can generally tell what kind of game it is ahead of time by checking out who's playing and how many frags they've got.

And try not to whine too much. After playing years of quake, I can only recall a few instances where cheaters were a problem. And they got booted in a hurry. And as much as I hate PunkBuster, it seems to do the job. So make sure you've got it installed, and look for PB enabled servers.

And dialup is not too slow. Before I had high-speed cable, I was owning railgun-only Quake 2, because I learned to stay ahead of the lag. I kept up with all the LPBs, which was a lot of fun.

Don't forget about the ill-fated Fallout 3...
http://www.petitiononline.com/fallout3/petition.ht ml
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news_60856 20.html

and XCom, I don't know how many times this project has been canned and then resurected again 2 years later...
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x6x1.shtml
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x8x1.shtml

These are the two biggies for me...

Don't forget about the ill-fated Fallout 3...
http://www.petitiononline.com/fallout3/petition.ht ml
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/fallout3/news_60856 20.html

and XCom, I don't know how many times this project has been canned and then resurected again 2 years later...
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x6x1.shtml
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~xcom/x8x1.shtml

These are the two biggies for me...

...spherical semiconductor circuits. Ball Technologies

Heh heh... good one. And it got modded up as Informative instead of Funny -- I love it when that happens!

Or maybe I just didn't poke around the ballsemi.com site enough to find the pictures of their 3-D wafer fab. :)

my mistake, its #1 ... the slashdot submitter really should have mentioned it, at least...

I'm black, but I don't agree. "Whitey" didn't go to the moon. We all did--it was done with all the money of the USA's citizens. Just because James Brown didn't set foot on the moon first with a "Good God!" and a wail doesn't make the achievement any less important.

There are always problems that could use more attention. But don't mistake attention for money that you think should be flowing elsewhere. Our government didn't just meld billions of dollars into hardware to get us to the moon. That money was the cost to PAY for labor (jobs) to make the things and create the services that got us there.

In other words, space exploration, robots or no, create jobs. They just may not be the jobs you (and I speak generally) never pushed yourself to attain. That's another problem that's not the government's fault, but a self-attainment, supply-demand, and achievement thing.

At the same time, we can't all be rocket scientists. So, it would be nice to get our corporate sector in on the New Frontier to start the seed by sponsoring flights for new, future jobs. If the new Mars rover or the next flight to the moon is named the Verizon-Pepsi Moon Shuttle, and adds a few millon of non-tax dollars to get the ship there, then so be it.

If we can get Hilton Hotels, for instance, to put down some long-term funds to invest in a recreational/retirement resort on the moon, great. It would be the ultimate vacation, or even theraputic resort or hospise. Old folks with bad backs or arthritis will LOVE playing in 1/6th gravity, and also the funny sensation of going to Heaven before they die.

We will ALWAYS focus on matters on Earth. But exploration fosters new opportunities and jobs. I wish I could say that jobs are instantly created, but that is rarely true for any business. It takes time, but if individuals or governments or businesses aren't given reasons to consider investing, then jobs will never manifest. If we refused to move to space in the 1960s, imagine how tech-poor we all would be now because the space race wasn't around to create the technology we take for granted now, such as the computer I type on, the Internet (created from funding for our missile systems so no one nuke would stop our nukes from being set off during the Cold War) or the cell phone you speak on, or even the 911 system.

Remember that migration in the 17th Century that brought English settlers here to North America and launched a new economy, among other achievements that reciprocated around the world? Imagine how we can do that elsewhere, and what it can do to help make humanity that much more rich in resources that COULD attend to the usual needs of food, clothing and shelter that much more.

There's also the little matter of having a backup in case Earth gets hit by a large rock from space--it's happened before in all likelihood, and don't think that humanity is smart enough to survive it en masse. We need to all think like a Windows NT system admin--always have a backup plan.

So... somebody is paying "Andy" to do this. Who would want to attack SCO and Microsoft? Linux zealots? It could be this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, or this guy, but it's not this guy, his name's not Andy.

TeamSpeak
RogerWilco

Both work swimmingly with most MMORPGs (I play Shadowbane). Go with God.

you didn't mention the SCP the FS comunity's main open source expansion, forum located here. were getting close to makeing relese 3.6, wich will include full HT&L suport, spec mapping, glow mapping, 32bit texture suport, all of that for both DX8.1 and OGL, a whole bunch of new weapon options for modders. here is a good example of what it's capable of, with a start Trek conversion featureing 18,000 poly ships converted from the BC mod comunity here's some more

you didn't mention the SCP the FS comunity's main open source expansion, forum located here. were getting close to makeing relese 3.6, wich will include full HT&L suport, spec mapping, glow mapping, 32bit texture suport, all of that for both DX8.1 and OGL, a whole bunch of new weapon options for modders. here is a good example of what it's capable of, with a start Trek conversion featureing 18,000 poly ships converted from the BC mod comunity here's some more

you didn't mention the SCP the FS comunity's main open source expansion, forum located here. were getting close to makeing relese 3.6, wich will include full HT&L suport, spec mapping, glow mapping, 32bit texture suport, all of that for both DX8.1 and OGL, a whole bunch of new weapon options for modders. here is a good example of what it's capable of, with a start Trek conversion featureing 18,000 poly ships converted from the BC mod comunity here's some more

As others have said, there are tools such as TeakSpeak and Roger Wilco that will deal with the voice chat side of things.

But what game to play? I'd suggest A Tale In The Desert. It's nice because it has a very laid-back feel to it - there's no combat, and the emphasis is on long-term co-operation with your friends to further the development of your avatar (the web site, as well as the excellent fansites and wiki explain all this much better than I can).

It runs on Windows and Linux, and doesn't have to run full-screen, so it's great for leaving running in the background so that you can get some work done while your avatar is busy feeding the camels or waiting for papyrus to grow. The chat system is also pretty good, for those of is who don't want to inflict their irritating nasally voices on the rest of the world. :-)

Get some boom/headset mics for you and your SO and fire up one of the free voice engines, like TeamSpeak or Roger Wilco for voice chat (in or out of games). I've used TeamSpeak with excellent results while playing Unreal Tournament and other games, as well as just for conversing with distant family members on a semi-regular basis. (Free is good!)

For gaming, you have a chuckwagon full of choices. Unreal Tournament, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy and Need for Speed: Underground top my recent list of multi-player games for raw fun and enjoyment with minimal commitment level (and I sense a commitment issue from the OP anyway!). Then of course, there's the obligatory mentions of The Sims, Everquest, Age of Mythology and Civilization III (find your own URLs for those), if you're into that kind of gaming (these require a higher commitment level).

If you two are more cerebral in your gaming, go hunt down a board game called Settlers of Catan and its offspring (Seafarers of Catan, et. al.) and play that with some friends next time you two are together. Once you get hooked on the board game -- and you will -- start playing it online. There's a nefarious, somewhat-underground (not after /. gets wind of it!) online client called Sea3D that works pretty darn well (Win32 only, sorry -- but if this is a problem, use the Java client instead), and is terribly enjoyable for raw strategy and board game fun, although it can sometimes be difficult to get players to join hosted games (there doesn't seem to be a LARGE community of Sea3D users yet). If you host your own games and have people you know join in, this is a non-issue.

If you're side-stepping the guy-girl conversation thing, your best bet is probably one of the action games, like Unreal and its similar-engine spawn (anything based off the Quake2 or Quake3 engines). There's usually so much going on in a DeathMatch or Team DeathMatch, there isn't much time for deep chit-chat, but you can both probably come out feeling like you had a onversation.

[Note to Guys: this probably isn't going to lead to a long-term, deep relationship, mind you, but will suffice for temporary distance relationships. Chicks don't generally like games, and especially don't like the KINDS of games we guys like, so YMMV. Board games and strategy type stuff, though, are generally universally enjoyable, which is why I mentioned Catan (this is the original German site).]

Good luck!!

Pick a game that you two could enjoy. Fire up your favourite voice chat proggie (Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, Roger Wilco, etc.) and frag away.

The game doesn't necessarily need headset support or anything like that. So long as you have a third party proggie to handle the mess.

- shazow

Deus Ex: Invisible War wasn't actually a Warren Spector game - it was handled by Harvey Smith, one of the chief guys on DX1. Here's an interview from back in February in which Warren was kind of wondering about some of the choices Harvey had made, but didn't interfere. There's also some interesting quotes with regard to the supposed "dumbing down", and selling out, which are all pretty much things people accused Ion Storm of.

I haven't played DX:IW yet (I don't have a GF3 or better card), but from what I hear, maybe he should've stepped in more. (My understanding is that it's overall still a good game - it just doesn't achieve the same level of greatness of the first one, and is rather disappointing in some ways to fans of the original.)

Bachus may lend some credibility (although I'm not aware of anything CEG actually accomplished besides looking "cool"). However, the fact remains that the Phantom is targeting a mainstream audience, but it's going to require broadband, be more apprehensive to set up than a PS2, and it's going to have an indie games channel. Aren't all things generally associated with the traditionally hardcore? What's more is that Bachus can't give us a release date, but he's made his team promise to have it out by Christmas. According to Bachus, Infinium is targeting people who are too lazy to buy a DVD, go to the movie theater, or drive to EB to buy a game (because that takes "hours"), but while CEG was in dire straits due to the "as bad an environment for investment that has ever existed in this country -- including during the depression of the 1930s," DVD and movie theaters were booming, and I worked at EB for the last three years as an assistant manager, and EB and fellow video game retailers were apparently not at all even in the same country as CEG.

Will the Phantom succeed? Sure, if we're going by Bachus' definition of success, which consists of "raising capital," "raising enthusiasm," and "releasing products." Man, he's almost done! He's even been talking to Best Buy! Talking!

And Hotels? Bachus is excited about getting the Phantom in hotels? Hotels? Last time I checked, that streaming N64 with the generic controllers wasn't exactly cutting edge stuff Bachus.

from

this review of the CD-32 version: "You are a pirate (of course). The object of this game is to retire with high social standing, having amassed a large fortune. How do you do this? To acquire wealth, you sack towns and other ships, and search for buried treasure. To acquire social standing, you play the game of politics with the governments in the game (England, France, Holland, and Spain). This might involve getting married to a governor's daughter, doing missions for the government, and attacking that government's enemies."

2) Kid Icarus

"Immediately after Kid Icarus' debut alongside Metroid, the two games were about equally popular, but gradually Metroid began to pull ahead. NES players clamored for sequels to both games, but Nintendo strangely left both series stagnant for years, finally resurrecting them on the original Game Boy of all places. Kid Icarus: Of Myth and Monsters on the Game Boy was a respectable outing for Pit, but sadly it was to be his last. Metroid, of course, went on for further sequels on the SNES, GBA, and GameCube. Additional Kid Icarus installments have never appeared despite persistent rumors to the contrary. One wonders why Nintendo doesn't make another KI sequel in this age of remakes and rehashes. Certainly there are plenty of people who'd welcome a return to Angel Land. But until a new sequel emerges, we'll have to content ourselves with halcyon memories of this wacky place, forever filled with plucky angels and evil eggplants."

3) Blaster Master

"Jason had a pet frog named Fred. One morning Fred started to jump around in his fish bowl and was making a lot of noise. Jason woke up and took Fred out to see if he was ok, but when he did, Fred made a dash for the door. Jason chased after his pet. Fred was on the move, he was heading for the swamps, once out there he saw a huge radioactive chest. As Fred got closer and eventually jumped on it, he started to change, he was getting bigger. It didn't take long before Fred and the chest both fell through the earth. Jason, wanting to get his pet, jumped in after him. When Jason landed he found himself. alone, next to a huge armoured vehicle.

As Jason looked over the car-like-tank a girl stepped out with long red hair and a freckled face. She said her name was Yvtrkizj, her Earth name was Eve and that she was from a planet called Signar-el. Eve gave him a radioactive protection suit and invited him into the tank. She told him the name of the vehicle was SOPHIA The 3rd: NORA MA-01. She told him about the Plutonium Boss, and what he had done to her home planet.

He lived underground, growing more powerful with the peoples wastes. Once he had grown powerful enough, he attacked the people, and destroyed them, but with them gone, his source of food was decreasing. He set out from the planet in search of another, and found Earth. Eve had taken the last of her planets weapons, SOPHIA The 3rd, and came to try and destroy the Plutonium Boss before he could destroy Earth.

This wasn't just about getting his pet frog, Fred, back anymore, this was about saving the Earth. Jason set out on a journey to save Earth from certain doom."

4) Strider

"The Striders are a global organization of infiltration specialists who work to combat villainy and keep the world safe. From their orbital space station, the Blue Dragon, they are able to quickly reach anywhere in the world.

Hiryu is one of the top striders. He is given the task by Vice-Director Matic, of finding another captured strider, Kain. But rather than mount a rescue, Hiryu is told his assignment is to kill

Star Control 2 was, at the time, the greatest game ever written. Gameplay, depth, graphics, sound, in every part, the game was so far ahead of the competition that there could be no realistic challenger. Indeed, the ending left so many strings for a sequel that quite literally from the month it came out, there was anticipation for Star Control III.

Then came Star Control III. Ugh. Accolade took the game to new developers and it was clumbsy, uninteresting and not fun to play. The sub-plots were meaningless and the story was unengaging. Gameplay took a step backwards.

You can help!

Sign the Petition Ask Accolade to re-make Star Control III with the original developers at Toys for Bob.

"me: - Home desktop users want to play 3d video games.

you: No they don't..."

Uhh... yes, there are plenty of home users that want to do that, and there are over 100,000 of them playing online right now for just a single game. The fact that these people are smaller than the whole of windows users makes no difference. The majority of windows users will never switch to linux period (unles of course windows ends up dying in their lifetime).

"You entirely missed what I was saying. The number of people that use their computers for games are greatly outnumbered by the people who just use their computer for the web, email, and work related tasks."

No, I saw what you were saying, but that doesn't make your argument sound. MY point is that most 3D online gamers are computer savvy people. They know how to install graphics cards, drivers, programs, etc.. MOST windows users will NEVER know any of this information about any of these tasks on ANY operating system. Therefore, which audience would you think would be able to switch to Linux on the desktop first if given the chance? My point is that the people that are technically inclined to switch are forced to not switch, and the people that aren't technically inclined will never switch anyway. (at least for the forseeable future)

"I've been using nVidia's drivers since they first came out. I've never had any problems with them, and ever since the XFree 4.x drivers came out, I've gotten better performance in Linux than in Windows"

Well, I'm happy for you, I'm glad you have no problems with nVidia's 1.0 release of beta drivers. Just remember that you aren't the only one using them without problems, but a huge number of people are having X lock up on them randomly during games and during normal 2D usage. I'm pretty sure everyone knows it is bugs in the driver when it comes to different motherboard chipsets. But the facts are that not everyone runs the same motherboard chipset you have, and therefore, a significant number of people running chipsets different than yours are having serious issues.

Besides, nVidia isn't the only graphics chip manufacturer out there, and theirs is the only modern chip that works at all in accelerated 3D mode. So you can't claim that its not 3D cards holding everyone back. 3D hardware support problems is just as bad as game support.

"a very low percentage of computer users use their computer for 3D games. Just because the Slashdot crowd does doesn't mean that everyone else does. Besides, despite all the whining on Slashdot about no games for Linux, it doesn't seem to stop people here from using Linux."

That very low percentage isn't as low as you might think. It is significant enough. And I can guarantee you that there are people being held back from linux because of the state of 3D hardware and games. I'm not saying this is linux communitie's fault, but the fact that there isn't any reasonable hardware available except for nvidia's in certain configurations, and because of this of course nobody is going to make games for it, then it forces EVERY would be free desktop gamer out there to stay on windows or macos. Please don't underestimate these numbers. You said yourself ppl are complaining about it all the time. And nobody who enjoys playing their favorite games will switch to linux and live through dual boot hell just to play games. Even though they could in a heartbeat.

I guess overall, there are many things holding free desktops back from usage in mass. For gamers, its 3D hardware support and games. For everyday home users who don't want 3D, it is programs like Quicken, MS Office, Internet Explorer (online banking requires explorer in many circumstances), being able to plug in their USB inkjet printer and have it print photos using photo quality paper and ink without having to drop to command line and manually edit config files. There are many other things that are holding many many people back. Most of it boils down to lack of hardwar

So what if the most common games on computers are things like solitare? That wasn't the argument. Here are some general points you failed to address.

- Home desktop users want to play 3d video games.
- There is no 3D hardware drivers available for the Linux kernel or for XFree86 that performs within a marginal distance from windows/MacOS 3D hardware (except pre-beta quality nVidia drivers).
- idsoftware FPS games + UT/UT2k3 is NOT by any means remotely close to any significant fraction of FPS games. Even id based games aren't ported to linux.
- games "like solitare" aren't even playable on linux. Just check out Yahoo online multiplayer card games, or any other online gaming community similar. You won't find it to work on Linux's web brosers.
- When we talk about games, we don't mean single player i want to blow time while I wait for my 4:00 appointment game. We are talking about online multiplayer games, which are virtually non-extant on linux and the consol.

Your statements that "most people play games on a consol" are baseless, and no evidence exists which agrees with anything your are saying. On the other hand, there are plenty of online PC gamers, and those games just ARE NOT available on any other platforms than OS X and Windows.

Just to make some SPECULATION (not facts or claims) I'll bet there are currently more online gamers playing a game RIGHT NOW than there are home users running linux on the desktop period. (at least in the US). Check out Gamespy Stats. And these are just the gamespy supported games, which is very far from a complete list.

Also from that list you can see that the games supported on linux are a very very small minority of the overall games listed. (Quake 1/2/3, RTCW, UT, UT2k3, ET)

None of my post proves that what is holding back linux on the home deskto is true, but if you stop to consider the enthusiasts are going to be the first to switch to linux, and the enthusiast/competant windows users have a significant portion of 3d gamers using ATI or nVidia 3d video cards playing online multiplayer games, its hard to argue that the HUGE 3D MP gamer community is an untapped audience that would switch to linux in a heartbeat if 3d video hardware were available for it and most popular games ram on linux.

Don't point to the failure of Loki. They faild on their own. Their business model was based on existing linux users feeling sorry for them. They had absoulutely no chance with their strategy. No game they published came out for linux remotely CLOSE to the same time it came out for windows. Forcing anybody who was interested in such titles to buy the windows release and dual boot.

Man-Cubes(TM) ?







Man-cube is an officially registered TradeMark of H.A.R.M. Any use or implication specifically reserved and is protected by trade dress, copyright, patent and trademark laws, and various other intellectual property rights and unfair competition laws. Any violation of this policy will result in horrible, tortured, and excrutiatingly slow death. By Man-Cube (TM). Or Mime. Probably Man-Cube (TM) though, since they're cheaper to hire on a per hour basis than the French. Either way, it'll be a death that'll make you wish you hadn't violated the trademark of Man-Cube (TM).

A big reason it is criticised and derided so much is because some Westerners, especially Americans, cannot reasonably handle anything above mild sexuality in their videogames. Just basic everyday ethnocentrism, like people complaining that the relationship-sim DOAXBV doesn't feature deep enough gameplay (which is, incidentally, worlds deeper than most similar games). It is like complaining that Super Mario Bros. doesn't adequetely simulate real plumbing techniques - you missed the point of the game, and its genre.

But the jist of it is this: if the game contains high sexuality (by Western standards, as M-rated games like DOA3 are pretty freaking tame), then it follows that it is only being sold with sexuality, right? Intuitive play-control (easier to learn the game), playable by up to 4 people (better for parties), appealing character designs, a real (if convoluted) storyline, gorgeous art, beautiful animation with varied martial arts styles, fun music (complete with that awesome Ninja Gaiden 2 intro music remix), play mechanics that discourage the poke games that other 3D fighters always degenerate into, and plenty of depth if you look for it aren't reasons to buy a game for, of course! And like the article points out, just being fun isn't enough of a reason to play a game for many gamers. What would our peers think??!

Also importantly, most US 'hardcore' fighting fans and reviewers think DOA is shallow and merely a button-masher, so it must be so. I am reminded of the hilarious Gamespy review for DOA3, where they complain that it is too shallow, etc. Then it is revealed (via an update) that they didn't even realize you could use multiple buttons together to utilize some different moves! How can someone comment on the depth of a game they barely understand? How can a reviewer truly comment period on a fighting game's depth when it can take years before people stop learning new tricks?

Maybe DOA Online (or whatever is the new crazy name they are using) will finally reveal to the 'hardcore gamers' the depth of the series. The masses don't seem to care, as DOA3 sold more copies worldwide than either Tekken4 or VF4 (non-Evo, AFAIK). :D

(And your sense of history is bizarre - DOA1 was hardly sold based on its graphics alone, as the original ran on the relatively aging Model 2 hardware that Virtua Fighter 2 had already popularized. It really looked only a tad better than VF2, and the various home versions looked worse than the arcade release. Especially the PSX one. Regardless, I don't understand what Tecmo USA's marketing department has to do with Team Ninja's design process. I remember most hype focusing on its unique counter system, for the record, just as most of the hype for the second game was for the huge play areas that affected gameplay so massively.)

Dev: It wasn't a moment too soon, man. See, for a while we had been using the Internet from the spaceship, but the farther we got from the Earth the harder and harder it got to find a good server. Once we got to Mars, it took a good seven minutes for a signal to reach the Earth and seven minutes to get back to us. That's a 14 minute lag. I tried to play Quake 3 Rocket Arena like that. Ever play a game with a 14 minute lag? You shoot a rocket, then the map changes before you find out if it hit. It's whack.

As the guy who submitted the story in the first place, I'll take the blame here. Gamespy is currently running a link to the NetHack story on their front page under the "Recent Highlights" category, and I didn't look into its background quite as thoroughly as I should have. I guess Gamespy is just recycling content onto its front page. Oops!

According to the Hall of fame link (see near the bottom), NetHack was inducted in June 2000.

So this isn't exactly recent news...

This article is over three years old. It was published in June 2000.

As much as I like Nethack, this isn't exactly a new story.

Deus Ex: the only game with theme music this good.

Top Ten Shameful Games
Virtual Boy, I liked the console, though :S
Post 16-bit Nintendo Failures
Atari Jaguar
Screwed up atari/nintendo agreement. My favourite.

Top Ten Shameful Games
Virtual Boy, I liked the console, though :S
Post 16-bit Nintendo Failures
Atari Jaguar
Screwed up atari/nintendo agreement. My favourite.

Top Ten Shameful Games
Virtual Boy, I liked the console, though :S
Post 16-bit Nintendo Failures
Atari Jaguar
Screwed up atari/nintendo agreement. My favourite.