Slashdot Mirror

I'll see your laser, sir, and raise you this:
http://katamari.namco.com/

Besides what innovative gameplay are you experiencing?

(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

I guess this means no more Katamari???

Gravity Head, and the rest of the Experimental Gameplay Project
Dada: Stagnation in Blue
Cloud
Katamari Damacy
Facade
Flow
Orisinal

What I want is to be able to buy a game like Curious George for my daughter and have it work on my existing 3-year-old PC even after upgrading the video driver and installing DirectX 9. If somebody would come up with virtualization software to run newish games on older PCs they'd make a mint...

Katamari Damacy only has one sequel -- "We Love Katamari". Fun games, 'though.

It wasn't too hard to actually kill the guy, but it was a very strange boss battle.

The other battle that creeped me out was the one with The Fury. Somehow a guy in a spacesuit with a flamethrower and a rocket pack in a narrow, dark hallway is bit unnerving...

Of course GTA doesn't train you for anything beyond playing more GTA. Neither does Doom, UT, or CS

You'll find that hitting a 3 inch circle outside 30 yards takes a lot of practice with [the Desert Eagle], in real life.

This has a lot to do with the previous article about videogame aesthetics, in that a lot of independent developers have their own visual style. Once everything is made by the same guys, everything starts to look bad, and play worse. With indie developers, you don't have as much pressure, and a lot of games like Marathon and Katamari have a sort of quirkiness that I find appealing.

Personally I don't think I have enough indie games. Stubbs the Zombie is looking good, though. I might get it when it comes out.

If you want to frame the debate as style vs. realism (which is incorrect), give me style any day. If I wanted realism, I'd get a life.

Seriously though, the point of videogames is as escapist fare, like movies. Sure there are movies about ordinary people doing ordinary things, but they are only critically acclaimed, not popular. Some of the most fun video games are unrealistic or just flat out absurd. (see Katamari Damacy)

Besides, a good style is a form of visual branding. People don't forget the earliest Mario games, partly because everyone remembers what they looked like.

You are right, there have been no innovations in gaming in the last two years. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. Stop following the marketing hype crowd and look around for yourself.

In Asia, video games have a wider varieties in themes and controls. Over there, your choices are just FPS, RPG, 2D/3D Fighters, or Sports games. Games like Katamari Damacy http://www.namco.com/games/katamari_damacy/ are innovative and unique , just the type of thing that you'll never see from a North American publisher.

Sure, the DS may have TWO screens, one of them being a touch screen, allowing developers to get a bit creative, but it's just a matter of time for the novelty effect to wear off and for people to realize that these features do not actually enhance the gaming experience by much.

I dunno man, I own a DS and the touch screen is a real pleasure to use. When I go back and play GBA games, I almost feel out of place playing without using the touch screen. Try playing Pac-Pix and you'll understand.

Katamari Damacy kicks some ass. It's a seemingly innovative game with the option to play short rounds (a few minutes) up to much longer ones (30 minutes, although after meeting certain criteria some areas have a timeless option).

There are no complex controls to remember, and replay value has been there so far. It's not addictive, but remains genuinely fun. There's also the additional factor that females seem to be just as likely to love it, so if you're looking for a relatively cheap game with replay value that's not just another rehash of some 15-year-old game it's definitely worth a look.

The only problem is that it can be hard to find a copy, but since it's been out for a little while that's getting better. Some EB stores stock a copy, as does Best Buy.

There have been a number of other projects to drill deep into the Earth's crust, though none has succeeded in reaching the mantle, as this Japanese team is trying to do. Ah... But that's because none of them had Mr Driller on thier side.

On the other side of the coin, if I wanted to play Sonic 3 on my PSP (since it's one of my favourite games) I'd be quite happy to pay a few £ on eBay for an original cartridge so I'm then completely legit in downloading a ROM of that cartridge and running it under emulation.

Can anyone explain to me why this would make it ok to copy/download the game? The original creators do not get any of the money you spent on the used cartridge, so why bother buying a used cart? It would make more sense to me to mail a check for $5 to sega and say, "I'm using sonic on my psp, thanks." That way at least the creators (if sega actually made that inhouse, don't know and it doesn't matter for my point, lets just assume that is the case) get some money out of you. Buying a used cart they get none. Sure the original owner can not play the game so you are "transfering" the right to play the game, but come on, you are paying next to nothing for it and not actually using it at all, so why own it? Whether you buy it or not the orignal company has gotten all the money they can out of it, unless they are remarketing it (see further)

I myself have no problem morally with using roms that aren't available for current systems, it's their fault for not capitalizing on it. Look at midway, they've created some great collections for new systems which I have purchased. Some examples here here and (as you guessed) here. Oh and I shouldn't forget Namco .

Until more companies start doing this people will just download the games, not only is it easier but it makes a lot more sense than tracking down an old cart so you can feel good about downloading the roms. If people want to play old games on the psp the marketing groups of the companies that have all these great legacy games should be taking notice and doing something about it.

http://acecombat5.namco.com/

Katamari Damacy http://www.namco.com/games/katamari_damacy/

But anyway, you shouldn't complain so much. Just like the great stories have already been told, the game ideas have already been done. They can be improved upon or redone, however, just like movies can be remade or stories can be retold with new novel twists on the characters, situations, or events. Games will continue to improve or maybe just change. But that's okay.

Hollywoodization is not going to hurt developers that much. Even today, you've got big budget games like Halo 2 or Final Fantasy X coming out, that cost tens of millions of dollars to make. Sure, big budget games will probably always sell more copies, and have better graphics, sound and production values. However, that doesn't stop cheap, innovative, fun games from doing very well.

If Hollywoodization is the future, it won't be such a bad thing. There is room enough in the market for both Sideways and Spiderman 2. Everyone benefits.

Merge my ass, Namco just rolled them up.

m-

What Microsoft and Bungie should do is just make the movie themselves. Make the movie a 90 minute cutscene using the Halo 2 engine. It would cost a fraction of the cost and it would be on the same level as all the other movies made from games. While we're at it, Namco should have done this too for Tekken instead of allowing this piece of shit to be made. It shouldn't be that hard. If the Red Vs. Blue guys did it with next to nothing for a budge someone with a serious budget should be able to make some good, right?

it's been done before, on a console even:
Katamari Damacy

There were some good points. Katamari Damacy was nominated and shown, which was a nice surprise, seeing as all the other games were very mainstream. Samuel L. Jackson, upon receiving Best Male Performance for his voice in GTA:SA, told Rockstar that he wanted to do his own motion capture next year. Here's an actor who can pick and choose his work, and he sees clearly the value of gaming.

And seeing Motley Crue pull an Ashlee Simpson lip-sync screwup was hilarious, and nicely summed up how artificial and shallow the whole show was.

yo.

For anyone who wondered what Katamari Damacy was

There are so many things that are likely to go wrong long before dust on the solar panels disables the rover that the mission planners probably decided it wasn't worth the added cost, weight, or complexity.

After all, it's a space mission, Katamari Damacy.

Of the games that I have enjoyed most lately, the following top the list:

Neverwinter Nights
Morrowind
Chromatron
Tales of Symphonia
E.V. Nova
Advance Wars 2

Of these, Neverwinter Nights is probably the most graphically advanced. None of them hold a candle to Doom 3, or Far Cry, or any of the other engines you mentioned.

I dunno about you, but for me gameplay comes first. If I really want eye candy, I'll go look at 3D Renderings. Yes, the masses can indeed enjoy games with weak graphics, and it does open your game to a wider audience. If you need any convincing of that, I implore you to check out the sales figures for any of the Sims games.

If EV Nova had been 3D rendered with dynamic lighting and reflections and all the other goodies, it would not have played on my laptop very well, and I never would've purchased it.

There are still a lot of PS2 games that I have missed out on though, being a huge RPG fan

Well, if you're looking for your RPG fix on the Gamecube, I would suggest you check out Tales of Symphonia. I recently rented it from GameFly, and I've been hooked since. I'm about 16 hours into it, and apparently haven't scratched the surface.

I'm not a big fan of Cel-shading, but ToS has probably the best usage of the technique that I have ever seen. At my first glance at screenshots in magazines, I thought it was sprite-based because it looked so good.

The battle system is another one of my favorite features, opting for a real-time battle system with linkable combos and spells, as well as the ability for your friends to plug in extra controllers to control your party members and join in the fight at any time.

So seriously, if you're a big RPG fan stuck with a Gamecube, it's definitely worth checking out.

The article mentions that First Person Shooters (FPS) are not popular in Japan. Neither is the XBox. Oddly enough, one of the best games in that category right now is Namco's Breakdown, on the XBox. They took a tired genre and injected new life into it. It will be interesting to see how its sales in Japan compare to sales in the US.

Unless my memory is failing me, isn't it Namco's [1] [2] Ridge Racer (or it's sequent title Revolution) which boasts a game of Galaxian while the game loads? And as a little bonus, killing all the invaders before the timer runs out gives the player a choice of nine cars, instead of four, when comes the vehicule selection. Ah, the old times -- you couldn't even save your game, I think. That was truely an arcade game.

I think that what was a pretty good idea back then could even be welcome nowadays; after all, in most games we are presented with a boring and frustrating loading screen which simply presents the player with a loading progress bar. Instead of this, game developers could get the main game to load a small, light mini-game which could serve as an intermediate screen to avoid a sudden break from interactivity (for example, in a football game, one could imagine a Pong-like mini-game to avoid long pauses during the loading times which just bore the player, long loading times which are recurrent in the FIFA series which comes to mind). The subsequent problem is, such mini-games would be a good way to occupy the player in out-of-game loading screens, but what about in-game transitions? A good method which avoids in-game loading times -- and perhaps also laterally reduces out-of-game loading times -- is to load the upcoming in-game elements, such as maps and FMVs, during the more inactive in-game moments. This has several advantages, first of all being that the player does not notice a slowdown in play since the loading should take place when the game is more inactive. Then, the said elements already loaded into memory appear instantly and there is no break in in-game playing whatsoever. And I shall also develop what I have minimally said, about the out-of-game loading times being shorter since the loading is done in-game. I am not a game developer (being only 14 that would be a mean feat) so I do not know if this could be accomplished but perhaps the "inactivity loading" concept could be taken even further, with the in-game content being loaded while the player goes through the starting menus, or even when the introducing FMV is being played.

Pac Man and Dig Dug both appear on the Namco Museum compilation (along with Galaga and Pole Position).

You can buy a new copy right here.

There. That's why you don't have to use mame. Sometimes companies DO want to port their old code to new machines. And emmulation dilutes the value of that.

Just like piracy dilutes the value of retail software.

Emmulation people like to pretend that emmulation is somehow diffrent than regular software piracy because "it's only old / out of print games!"

Well, sometimes a company can stop selling one product to sell another. Not to mention that it wouldn't be profitable for say, Atari to still sell Ms. Pacman for the 2600. Not enough people would be buying it to justify production costs these days. But they can (and if the demand is there, they often do) rerelease classic games to new consoles.

I was hoping for something that mentioned the Packer/Pac-man connection. The closest I could come was this page, which says that Pac-Man creators Namco had a role in funding Troma's Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. Fascinating, but going from there to Packer/Pac-Man is quite a leap, especially since Kabukiman was made before Cannibal.

"Point and shoot" seems vague to me. Does this mean galaga would be taboo, but games like street fighter are ok? The answer is that they will blacklist whatever THEY want.

(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)

Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.

Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.

Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).

Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.

Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.

Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?

While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.

So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.

MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.

I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.

Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.

-- Kevin

(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)

Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.

Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.

Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).

Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.

Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.

Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?

While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.

So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.

MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.

I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.

Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.

-- Kevin

(Disclosure: I'm a former video game developer for one of the companies mentioned below)

Classic video games are still profitable. While we may look back at some of the old games and say they're worthless now, they're still being sold in many cases.

Activision is selling 30 Intellivision games on one PSX CD for $29.

Midway is selling their "Greatest Hits" Volume 1 and Volume 2(no longer on their site).

Atary (admittedly part of Midway now) is also selling a Greatest Hits cd.

Namco has a Museum 1, Museum 3, and Museum 64 collection out now.

Also, making the games GPL'ed is really silly. Lots of old games get remakes, why would manufacturers want the market filled with 500 versions of a past title when they want to make a new one?

While this is surely going to be considered flamebait by many... The same copyright law that allows the creators of video games to set their own terms of distribution is the SAME LAW that allows GPL developers to set which restrictions there are on distributing GPL'ed code.

So many people say that copyright laws need to be thrown out or changed... Want copyright laws reduced to 5 years? That means a 5 year old Linux kernel would be free for anyone to do as they wish with, without GPL'ed restrictions. All the old GNU binutils would have no protection at all. While I agree that insanely long copyrights don't do a lot of good for society, people are trading ROMS for some rather recent games.

MAME now supports Rampage World Tour, a Midway game released in 1999. A quick check of a few big ROM sites turn up the ROMs for this game. This game is STILL ON THE SHELVES for consoles, and the ROMs are being traded. Any half-way excuse of "preservation of classics" is out the window at this point.

I like classic games more than most. I've got an extensive library of old game boards in my basement. I also like having the games on my PC, but I buy the classics CD's when they come out.

Remember, just because something isn't for sale anymore doesn't mean it's free, or even should be.

-- Kevin

Even so, there's a lot of originality on display at the arcade, and it's essentially all imported. The last two times I went to the arcade, I played Crazy Taxi (love that game), Mr. Driller (a Namco puzzler), Jambo! Safari (another Sega gem), Guitar Freaks ("Play the guitar rhythmically!"), some Megatouch games (come on, they're cool), Virtua Tennis (yes, arcade tennis, and it's great!) and the incomparable Dance Dance Revolution. All quite original and almost all Japanese, because their arcade market is still doing well and they just tend to be more goofy, original, risk-taking developers. Unfortunately, only the big entertainment centers will ever have these wonderful games because they tend to be heinously expensive (another reason why so many arcades have died).

Now, certainly, there was a fair share of fighting/gun/driving games like Tekken Tag Tournament, Dead or Alive 2, Silent Scope, Crisis Zone, Rush 2049, Ferrari F355, and Off-Road Thunder being played too. But let's not forget that there was a glut of maze games, space shooters and driving games in the classic era too -- there will always be popular genres.

Even so, there's a lot of originality on display at the arcade, and it's essentially all imported. The last two times I went to the arcade, I played Crazy Taxi (love that game), Mr. Driller (a Namco puzzler), Jambo! Safari (another Sega gem), Guitar Freaks ("Play the guitar rhythmically!"), some Megatouch games (come on, they're cool), Virtua Tennis (yes, arcade tennis, and it's great!) and the incomparable Dance Dance Revolution. All quite original and almost all Japanese, because their arcade market is still doing well and they just tend to be more goofy, original, risk-taking developers. Unfortunately, only the big entertainment centers will ever have these wonderful games because they tend to be heinously expensive (another reason why so many arcades have died).

Now, certainly, there was a fair share of fighting/gun/driving games like Tekken Tag Tournament, Dead or Alive 2, Silent Scope, Crisis Zone, Rush 2049, Ferrari F355, and Off-Road Thunder being played too. But let's not forget that there was a glut of maze games, space shooters and driving games in the classic era too -- there will always be popular genres.