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"Would you like to stay for lunch? I think we're having MONEY!!!"

For those not in the know, ref: this PA comic.

Go *around* the RIAA quintopoly. Scott McCloud's cartoons "I Can't Stop Thinking" five and six have some ideas (which for some reason REALLY anger some folks). I have worked for tips before, it's not always the best living, but it pays the rent and tips of a reasonable size are a lot more palatable than overpriced CDs to consumers, and a lot better than nothing for musicians.

Anyway, lots of technology exists that could easily stop the bottleneck that limits feedback between consumers & the music business. I know, because I sell (some of) it for a living...
JMR

Quality merchandise.

Geekier than thou.

why not rejoice in the fact that you have an incentive to go outside and interact with the world, it's considerably less pixelated than even HDTV.

Agreed.

Wow, cold fusion is like the daikatana of slashdot.

Was I the only one that read the headline as "Penny Arcade Supreme Court"?

this isn't the first test... while i'm sure there are others, this one comes to mind:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-02 -17, which was right around valentine's day 3 years ago.

Better yet, can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Kathleen Fents?

I'm coming up on my ten year anniversary this June. Being married is better than being single. Really.

Congratulations.

P.S. - Taco's not the first to use his website to propose, see also Gabe

Not quite a weblog, but similar:

Gabe's Proposal

on a much smaller scale....

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=1999-02 -17&res=l

...you probably have no idea what the point is here.

For the uninitiated, the GameBoy Advance lacks the internal backlight present in the older non-advance GameBoys. This makes it very difficult for some people to play in some lighting conditions.

Such as, for instance, everyone, everywhere.

Visual Aid

--
Free the Pink Halfling!

For those philistines among us who don't regularly read Penny Arcade, the petition to import Japan is best explained here.

--
Damn the Emperor!

For those philistines among us who don't regularly read Penny Arcade, the petition to import Japan is best explained here.

--
Damn the Emperor!

doesn't it?
now of course, maybe that's why i won't be giving any presents this v-day :)

You could, you could..
Do you know the differences between theory and pratice?
In theory you're right, in pratice do you know a Java compiler which produce native code which is as fast as C++, without any memory increase?

No? Then your point means nothing.

Have you priced RAM lately? I'd gladly buy twice as much memory for my box if i could run programs that didn't suffer from buffer overflows and stupid memory management bugs.

The only thing that would make developing an FPS in java difficult is, afaik, the lack of a good 3d library.

Well, that and the lack of good java programmers.

--
Benjamin Coates

After it was mentioned a couple of times on Penny Arcade, I got into Bejewelled, first the Java version, and then the Windows one on my laptop. It has the same sort of evil 'one more go' deal that tetris and freecell have.

Other things that have had the same effect for shorter periods are: SSX, Wipeout (all three), Cannon Fodder, Mr Do!

like most things in the news today, this is complete bullshit. Blaming the companies for this kid's problem is not the solution. It's his OWN damn fault. He has MAJOR problems. Seven hours or more is HIS risk. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

Recently, there was a post on penny-arcade that addressed a certain story: a kid accidentally shot his brother while re-enacting a scene from time crisis 2. Not the games fault, more like "stupid parents raise stupid kids."

What kind of moron would keep his gun accessable to his kid?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-12 -31&res=l

Only Macs cost $3000. A high-powered PC is $2000, so there!

Oh, and the article on Slashdot reminded me of this.

why? She's so pretty!

theRomero was on the Quake team. Deus Ex, however, was done by the awesome, ever-so-talented Warren Specter. Deus Ex was also done at the ION Storm Dallas (or wherever it was -- not Austin, where theRomero was) office, which was not closed. Instead, it went for some name change, I don't remember what. That same studio is now working on Thief 3, as well as Deus Ex 2. ION Storm Austin is gone. Dead. Finito. Tom Hall (also an ex-id guy, sucked into ION Storm by theRomero, made the moderately successful yet still fun Anachronox) and theRomero started Monkeystone Games, where they make games for various handhelds. They already have one game out for the PocketPC, something about a delivery boy. Maybe theRomero is learning, since this game was done in a matter of months, rather than years.

And remember, "Design is Law!" Oh, yeah, and theRomero has cut his hair. He's no longer sexy.

Nothing could ever make up for that.. but this comes close..

As a big fan of Penny Arcade (And who isn't?) I decided a while back to start my own webcomic. I thought that a sort of personal-diary thing to go along with it would be nice and all. I looked into blogger and some of the others but didn't find anything quite what I wanted. I think this news may make my search a little easier, since I can use slash (which I know and love) to take care of some of the gruntwork behind my site.

Like a lot of art forms it is only a relative few who sucessfully make large amounts of money from their chosen art form, the art form itself does not nesessarily guarrantee success even with a good business model. Giving the music industry as an example, a relative few number of musicians make it "big" or even make enough money to support themselves when compared with the large number of people who are musically talented or aspire to do such things. I myself run a web comic, Stars and Steel, which most likely will never even pay for itself, but I always hold out hope, and as stated in another post, is an enjoyable past time anyway. The relative few who do make a living from online comics, such as PVP and Penny-Arcade serve as a goal and reminder of what possibly could be achieved, and given the right business model we may even see the bar lowered, with the more successful comics becoming even more so, with the lower end of the spectrum ,insofar as webcomics are concerned, beginning to be able to pay their bills.

-M@

Penny Arcade had a similarly logical take on McCloud's ideas.

Penny Arcade had a comic on Scott McCloud's take on micropayment systems. Basically they said micropayments are a nice idea, but they don't work now, and that's when artists need them. Bandwidth isn't free, and most sites don't sell enough merchandise to make a profit. So now, it is confined mainly to people who have a passion about it or people for whom it is just a hobby.

Was that a Penny Arcade reference?

I'm 26, and I'll admit it. Between my unhealthy addiction to my PS2, and my 200+ days on Everquest before I finally woke the **** up, I am an obscessive compulsive gamer. I check Penny Arcade every day even if there is not a new strip out. I walk around in the gaming store for hours just reading the back of boxes, even if I have already read everything about the game on the best damn review site on the net

However outside games I use Gnucash, Gphoto, Kword, VI, The Gimp, and all the other great stuff I can find that is GPL. I also use a couple of proprietary programs under linux, but I won't advertise for them here.

I absolutely pine for the day that I can use my fastest machine with my best video card/mouse/processor/ram for linux instead of MS Windows and feed my gaming twitch at the same time!

Not one of my friends would NOT like to escape to Linux to play games. Just ask them the next time they are in DAOC or some other direct X game that doesn't play nice with the windows key, and end up getting booted out by a miskey. Gamers hate 2 things above all others. Lag and that GD windows key.


Kharma Martyrs ?

Apple's going to be out of business within 5 years

WTF? Last time I checked, all those fanatical mac zealots (working in graphics, publishing) that have kept Apple going all along have yet to see the light and get rid of their stinkin' systems that piss me off so much just because I can't seem to work on them ;)

Apple gained *new* converts in the Yuppies-who-want-a-cool-looking-computer department when they put out the iMac, and it would seem they're about to get a few new ones with their newly revealed revamped iMac. Even I myself admit to getting a hard on as soon as I saw that beast (see above for my objective and impartial assessment of Apple's merits). So, no, I don't think Apple is going out of business any time soon, they've discovered a completely new audience of gadget freaks to please and their hardcore supporters are kept more than happy by their technical prowess (OSX). It's a bit arrogant to claim that just because *you* (and me, once the infatuation wears off) may never own an Apple, the company will go out of business.

You should check out this article. It's about a 12-year-old who kills his brother while pretending to play a videogame. The article focuses on the danger of videogames and barely mentions that it might be a bad thing for a parent to leave a loaded handgun laying around where kids can find it.

*looks around* Ummm...did you by any chance realize where you were when you said that? Forget playing it - just knowing what Majestic is (the game, or otherwise) pretty much puts you firmly in the "dork" category right off. Even if you're not being paged by a computer during dinner, you know that you're going to eventually let something about your Quake clan or your Everquest guild (or whatever they are) accidentally slip in conversation, and that's it. Your scam is up. Best to face the truth head on, and count on your date being cool enough to be interested... in you, at least, if not the game.

Like the kids at Penny Arcade say, "You play videogames? Welcome to Dorksville. You want to know how cool your videogames are? Ask your fucking girlfriend how cool. And if you don't have a girlfriend? That's part of the test."

gamgee5273: Hell, I don't think I would let a kid under 11 or 12 play Shenmue, even, because Ryo is dealing with things that even teenagers are just beginning to understand.

Nice try, John. No game, no weiner.

...the penny arcade strip that will surely touch on this.

What's being done to STOP spam? I for one am tired of sorting through my mail looking for valid messages (spam to real mail ration of about 100 to 1). What's more as the years go on (same mail box for five years) my spam gets stranger and stranger I get more messages in Japanese, Korean, German, Russian and Taiwanese then I do in English.

S.Monkey Ball and Smash Bros. are why I had to buy extra controllers. :)

No wonder the GC can lay claim to the "best reason to have friends" award. :)

(Don't count out the PS2, though. There are a few PS2 exclusive titles that you really should play.)

I think you may need to spend a bit more time absorbing the wisdom of Penny Arcade.

But you're right. If you're looking for bland photorealism, Gamecube is the wrong place for you. I've seen it mentioned elsewhere, and I think its true, that 3d graphics rendering is similar to oil pantings from one to two hundred years ago, where photorealism is quickly developing, and surrealism develops.

The MTV model is precisely why this SHOULDN'T be done... A television channel will only promote those games represented by the producers willing to pay the most for ad space, and all the best games will go unnoticed, much like today's music industry. Additionally, if game developers are handled by their producers the way "artists"(most of the popular ones aren't) are handled by record companies, we'll certainly see a decline in the quality of games out there, since anything experimental is viewed as being too risky for the funding company. We'll also see more of this(penny-arcade.com)

"Like my hat? It's made of MONEY!"

With apologies to the good folks at Penny Arcade, of course. If their archive search wasn't a Windows-only executable (whatever happened to web-based searching, guys?) then I'd even link to the right comic. But alas, it was not meant to be.

Now EQ fans can afford the upgrade they're gonna need to play the latest expansion on their P4s.

It's not the games. It's not the action figures. It's not the toys with "super-duper killer-missle launching action". It's parents who don't know how to teach a kid what's right, what's wrong, and how to tell the difference. Reminds me of a recent Penny Arcade strip

End of Story

Actually, the first panel pretty much says it all.

Brought to you by the partnership for a gamer-friendly workplace:

Gamers have two jobs

One cannot mention Ico and Penny Arcade without mentioning another link to Penny Arcade.

Ico is kinda interesting, but very damned annoying at a couple points. Zero replayability gets in it's way too. Frankly, I rented it from Blockbuster and *finished* it, playing only an hour or two each night.

In other words, a very good rental, but a bad purchase.

Pros:
- the visuals and environmental sounds are simply stunning, you'll find yourself running around just taking it all in
- the puzzles aren't TOO hard, but contain enough variety to keep you interested
- did I mention how amazing the visuals were?
- game design that uses the absolute minimum amount of characters, music and speech to tell a completely engrossing story

Cons:
- the game is very short, maybe 9 hours for my first run through and definitely less than 4 hours from start to finish once you know what you're doing
- almost zero replayability, all of the puzzle locations and solutions are the same, every time through (although, I still feel that I got my money's worth)

Links to two different reviews:
- IGN
- Penny Arcade

More reviews from the amazing Google.

See Penny-Arcade's take on this tragic event.

There are actually two DDR games for the Dreamcast - There's DDR 2nd Mix, which is essentially a compilation of 2nd Mix and 3rd Mix arcade. Then there's DDR Club Version.

And something else you probably didn't know - There's a DDR game for the N64 - Konami released Disney's Rave for the N64 in Japan, further pigeonholing the N64 as a kiddie machine, unfortunately. Of course, given the news blurb on Penny Arcade today, Winback was a N64-only title for a while, and it clearly was a bit more grown up than it maybe should have been. :)

Since us gamers just got the early Christmas of a lifetime with the release of the Xbox (hush your mouth) and Gamecube, not to mention the amazing games that are flooding the market for the PS2, it's going to be hard NOT to buy a good game/system for Christmas. Anywhoo... here are some suggestions on games to get (or avoid) for Christmas.

Playstation 2
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Metal Gear Solid 2: Yes, it's as bad assed as it wants to be. The intro looks like something from Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer's wildest imaginations. The game itself is pretty dang fun even if I do keep getting confused on which button does what (play it, you'll see what I mean). I want to play this game some more, but there's so much more to see!

NFL 2K2: This game is hands down the best looking football game I've ever seen. If you can handle the slightly more arcade type feel to the game, it has it all over Madden 2002. It sure would be nice to have some equivalent of the Madden Cards but even without it - this is one helluva football game. You can't coach that.

Gran Turismo 3: Okay, yes this game has been out for six months now, but I had to put some more time into it after playing Metropolis Street Racer for the Xbox. This game is damn near flawless. Well, with the exception of a lack of skid marks (almost unforgivable), crash modeling, and complete lack of ability to turn up the volume on the background music (really). Outside of that, the cars handle just like you think they would - and this game is deep enough to keep you busy for months. Literally. If you're going to own one driving game, this is it.

Grand Theft Auto III: I don't mean to rain on anybody's parade but please, give me a friggin' break. The way people were talking about this game, you'd of thought that it'd be fun. Marketed as a 'mature' game, I guess a large part of the fun of this game is suppoed to come from all the bad things you can do. Hmm... maybe I haven't gotten far enough in this game (roughly 6-7 hours into it) but picking up a hooker (read: woman with fishnet stockings) to take her to a policeman's ball isn't criminal - it's a taxi service. I was thinking this would be a criminal Shenmue type game, but it's just not there. The palatte of colors used in the game is muted, the storyline isn't that engaging, in short - I don't get the appeal of this game. I'm sure some of you will LOVE it, but if I'm going to spend several hours driving around, I'd just as soon drive in a game with realistic handling. Skip it.

Xbox
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Halo: I'm not the biggest fan of first person shooters. Personally, the last time I spent a lot of time on one was when 007's Goldeneye came out for the N64. But Halo pretty much rocks. It's the best looking FPS I've seen, and it has a high nervous quotient to it in the beginning because you just get dropped into the action - so you have to learn everything on the fly. I've only spent an hour with this game, but it deserves some more time.

Oh, and Penny Arcade has a great comic about it.

NASCAR Thunder 2002: I know what you're thinking... it's NASCAR. And you're right. But it's also one fun racing game. They've crammed 43 cars onto one track, built in a nice drafting system and they put you on the NASCAR tracks and let you go to it. It's pretty fun to start a race in the middle of the pack and to be passing cars the entire race. If you like to race, this is a great game.

Project Gotham Racing: Do you remember Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast? No? Shame on you. Yes? Well, this is like MSR 2. It's really good. It looks good, the sound is awesome and there are enough tracks and cars to keep you busy for the next 3 months. It has a kudos system to reward good driving, and the game demands expertice to beat it. It's a really fun title.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2x: I'm a Tony Hawk freak. Ever since THPS1 on the Dreamcast, I've logged more hours on THPS games than any other game I can remember playing with the exception of some Final Fantasy games - or maybe some game for the NES back in the day when I didn't have anything better to do. I own a bunch of them, THPS 1 and 2 on the Dreamcast, THPS3 on the PS2, THPS2x on the Xbox and THPS3 on the Gamecube. So I feel TOTALLY qualified to say what's right and wrong with this game. And this game has an issue - it's the controller. The Xbox controller is about the size of New Hampshire. It's friggin' huge. I just haven't gotten used to the controls on this game yet. Otherwise, this is THPS 2 on the DC with marginally better graphics, a few new areas on existing levels to explore, a new menu system, supposedly THPS 1 is in the game somewhere - so you can now manual throughout that game (they added the manual after THPS 1) and there are six new levels. It's fun, but if you have THPS 1 and 2 for the Playstation or Dreamcast already... you can pretty much pass this title up.

Dead or Alive 3: This game is basically Dead or Alive 2 with better graphics. I've never been a huge fan of this series because I personally like to beat the crap outta people without having to be graceful about it. And best I can tell, DoA3 asks for grace. You have to know just when to block, just when to counter and just when to attack. There's no run-away command to back up quickly, so everything is pretty much hand to hand short distance combat all the time. It's fun for about 10 minutes, but then I just want to play Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast - if I'm going to play a fighter.

Gamecube
--------

Luigi's Mansion: Okay, I thought this was a dumb as hell idea for a game. Give Luigi a vacuum cleaner and a flashlight and let him run thru some mansion stunning ghosts so he can suck them up in his vacuum cleaner. But I have to admit, this game is fun. It brings back some of that original Mario feel to a 3D game. It's silly, and ultimately, pretty stupid, but give it up for the game and the system. I woke up this morning wanting to play it some more. And now that I've finished it - I have to admit - it's one of the best looking games I've ever seen. Seeing Bowser rendered in all his 3D splendor alone was worth the purchase.

Rogue Squadron II: This is supposed to be the game that got everybody's juices flowing when they saw it. And it comes pretty damn close to the hype that preceeded it. The original Rogue Squadron came out for the N64, and that game was bad ass. This game is just as cool. It looks at times just as good or better than the Star Wars movies. This isn't like Star Wars Starfighter on the PS2 where you can do barrel rolls while flying your craft. Starfighter feels a bit more like a sim game, where you really have to have skills to blow stuff up. This game is all about recreating the fun of the dogfights from the movies. The explosions are amazing. And when you fire a missle down a shaft, you see the light from the missle light up the shaft as it flys down it... majorly cool. This game is way fun. And the sound is amazing. Add to that, this is the first game I know of that has a making of documentary built in, and you've got a title that you pretty much need to own if you have a GameCube.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3: Like I said above, I rock these games. Off the bat, I like this game better than the PS2 version. Mostly because I could pick up the game without looking at the manual and I could trick all day long, so the controls are really good. There are a few issues with the game being too forgiving with landings or how you do tricks - but I almost prefer it to the PS2 version where everything has to be perfect. I guess maybe I'm just somewhat of a sloppy skater. But the game is super fun. If you're a THPS fan and have a Gamecube... consider this a must buy.

Wave Race: I wasn't so sure about this game. I've never really liked any other wave race type games (the one for the N64 comes to mind) bascially because I was bad at it. The waves frustrated me, and there was nothing compelling enough about the title to make me put serious time into it. But this game changes all of that. The water is hands down the best, most amazing beautiful water in any game you've ever seen period stop end of discussion. It's that good. It looks great in all conditions. But when it's raining outside, it especially looks cool. The water will splash up on the camera and leave water marks. The graphics are gorgeous. Once I got the hang of the controls (not hard to master), this game totally rocked. This was the big surprise game for me. With tons of tracks, and tons of characters to choose from - I can already tell that this game will get some good play for weeks to come.

Lastly, if you're on a budget, but you want to be happy-happy on Dec. 25th, go buy a Dreamcast and a bunch of used games. Systems run $80, and your typical used game goes for around $20. Try Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, NFL 2K2, Samba de Amigo, Shenmue, Sonic I & II, Virtua Tennis, Skies of Arcadia, THPS 1 & 2, Metropolis Street Racing, Ferrari 355 Challenge, and, Test Drive LeMans among the many other great games for this underappreciated system.

Well, that's the wrap-up. Happy gaming.

Penny Arcade pretty much sums up the plot here. Best to not think about it.