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Check out the box scans (scams?) here: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/media/boxscans.php#1

Note that almost every sentence in the description ends in an exclamation! Exciting! Thrilling! Death-defying!

Uh... Not so much.

And to think, my family paid $49.99 for some of these games back in the 70's! Now that IS worth an exclamation point!

Good joysticks are expensive, but when you get one they are amazing.

A sex non-bombshell with big tits and a belly shirt? Gamers really have insane standards.

How about some Steel Battalion? But the game is best played with their special 40-button controller, which includes foot pedals. But you can't use them DDR.

Sorry, but this photograph would be the best ever.

Graphics memory bound.

And yes, I agree about the quality sentiment. Compare that to:
Half-Life 2
Far Cry
Doom 3
Battlefield 2
etc.
Most of those are at least a year old now, too.

There are the old witches in Zelda 64, all those strange round headed middle-aged women in Wind Waker, tiny wisps of anime girls in RPGs, Princess Peach's strangely bell-shaped body...

You're right about the Zelda games, the females are pretty diverse there. In most anime RPGs, the girls are sexy, though. And you're wrong about Peach: Her skirt is bell-shaped, but she's definietly hot. You'd know if you'd played a Mario Party game or NBA Street 3 :-)

There's Samus. Hot, but completely hidden from view.

Yeah, but still hot.

It's really a pretty decent variety. I'd say it compares favourably to movies.

Sure, movies are even worse, but that doesn't make games better.

There's also a purely anatomical problem. Women do have breasts. Breasts are fairly obvious things. Even when they're tastefully hidden in a game like Beyond Good and Evil, they're pretty obvious. Women also have hips, and you certainly can't hide those when you've got a character jumping all over the place in a third-person view.

Aw, come on, I hardly ever see a girl with breasts as big as Jade's. Most girls aren't slender like Jade (even sportive ones), either, and BG&E is one of the better games in that regard.

The issue there is that a woman's anatomy is inherently considered a symbol of sex in our culture. There isn't an equivalent thing to do for men. If you try to imagine some way that you could create a game that equally exploited the visual sexual possibilities of men, I think you'll find that the only images that come to mind have a certain flavour of homoeroticism.

So you're saying that sexism is Okay because games are aimed at males, anyway?

The question to consider are these: How would you create a game in which none of the women ended up being accidental sex symbols?

That's not necessary. It would be a good start to not have almost all of them being sex symbols.

You'll find that with women it's very hard. It would have to be the primary goal, the goal of a zealot. With men it's a piece of cake, practically automatic. This is clearly a bad thing, but it's not a problem with games specifically. I highly doubt the solution will come primarily from the world of games. We aren't sticking to stereotypes, we're lacking in archetypes.

You're right, of course. Most game designers don't start out by saying "let's make a sexist game". And you're right, it's not only in games, it's everywhere. But that doesn't mean we can just pretend it's not there.

Contrast this with games and xenophobia. Movies are sometimes xenophobic. Independence Day, War of the Worlds, the Hunt for Red October. Games are xenophobic almost without exception. There's generally some group of sentient beings which is by definition abominable, and of whom you must kill as many as you can.

True, that's another problem, and possibly a worse one than the sexism, but the article was about sexism, and that's why I wrote about sexism, not xenophobia.

Give it fifty years. If games are lagging behind society then, we'll have something to address. In the meantime, let's not sit around navel-gazing and trying to force a visual equality where none yet exists.

Nobody wants to force a visual equality where none exists. I would like to see a conceptual equality: Male and

The Dual Analog controller predates the dual shock anyway, and in Japan it had a (single) vibrator in it.

I can't see how this infringes anyway. Immersion does real force feedback, this just shakes.

For that matter, I think Immersion sucks as a company and I cannot see how the idea of providing force feedback is patentable.

On top of that, real force feedback sucks too. A real plane stick doesn't move when you fire the guns anyway!

Immersion is just bummed their technology failed in the marketplace. Now they want to horn in on what Sony did.

I've seen reports that the PStwo shortages were either almost only at EB Games, or were otherwise just shortages at individual brick-and-mortar stores, not widespread shortages. A lot of folks seem to think it's just a phony shortage to create hype around the PStwo.

"Square generally does inject originality into each installment of the Final Fantasy series"
Exactly in the same fashion that Nintendo. If you say that, then you haven't played any Nintendo game lately. Saying that the games are the same because they are the same franchise maybe is true for another developers, not for Nintendo (a common uneducated guess).

"What Nintendo has, basically, promised at this point are rehashes."
I think that I've never seen (nor you) a rehash that is controlled with a touch panel and two screens. Go play hte SAME games that you have in PSP in the same form that you have played before in your PS2 and come back to tell us about rehashes.

"...another Mario Kart game (a series which hasn't really changed since the SNES games)"
You don't know anything about Mario Kart, or Nintendo. Stop pretending. What about dual pilot karts? What about two player controlled karts? Name another game that has that.

"Then again, I don't blame Nintendo, really. Super Mario Sunshine tried some new things with the Mario series, and that game was greeted with overwhelming antipathy from a public that seemed, basically, to want a clone of Mario 64"
I think that you don't catch the picture. Nintendo fans were expecting a revolution , not an evolution and therefore the dissapointment. The new promises a revolution in the series.
You are thinking with the typical mainstream Sony mind and thinking that others are the same.

I like Square and Sony like everyone under the sun, but you should speak with knowledge.

The Next Level.

This is primarily a console gaming site. There are computer gamers, and you will find some intelligent computer gaming discourse, but just be aware that the majority of games covered are console-based.

Although they might not report on gaming news as often, they usually hit the big stuff and their reviews are pretty good. Their biggest strength is the forum -- you will find lots of people that enjoy the newer games, yet take the time to remember the older games that paved the way. Drop on by and take a look.

TNL just posted 25 new screens of the game.

http://the-nextlevel.com/previews/ps2/mgs2/index.s html

TNL - The Next Level

CPU: IBM Gekko Processor (an extension of the IBM
Power PC architecture)
System Clock: 400 MHz
System Memory: High-speed DRAM technology
Memory Bus Bandwidth: 3.2 GB/second
Semiconductor Process 0.18 Micron Copper Technology

Graphics: Custom Chip designed by ArtX, Inc. of Palo Alto, CA
Clock Speed: 200MHz
Semiconductor Processor 0.18 Micron embedded
DRAM technology
Maximum Polygon Rate: N/A

Software Medium: Proprietary DVD
Enhanced counterfeit protection
Maximum capacity: 4.7 GB

Every 3 months another 3D accellerator card come out that's twice as powerful as the one before it. I'm doing fine with a Matrox Mystique 220. (But, then again, I don't play PC games.)

It appals me that another needless Tomb Raider can sell so many copies.

Everyone says Final Fantasy VIII is such a great game... it's crap. Compare it to FFVI (FFIII in the US) on SNES, and it pales in comparison. (Of course, all these stupid kids will hate FFVI because the graphics "suck".)

Even the brand-new Dreamcast suffered a bit because of spec-monkeys, who would rather wait an extra year and pay $500 for a PS2 with only marginally better performance.

All these idiots want more than the industry can offer them. The kiddies with deep pockets ruin it for those with little cash. The masses who eat up all fancy-looking crap ruin it for those who like a well-done game.

We could do anything possible to reform the game industry, but it wouldn't make any difference: the mass of the consumers are stupid tards.

Long live the hardcore gamer, for he/she will still be there when the industry falls.

(Sorry for the rambling, but I just got up. Spent a while last night playing a game from "way back" in 1991.)

The Next Level, Daily Videogame News and Info.
http://the-nextlevel.com

I've written up a news story about the announcement on my site, The Next Level, so go take a look at it.

Jacob Rens
Daily Videogame News and Info: http://www.the-nextlevel.com

- Jacob Rens, Deviant and proud of it
The Next Level, Videogame News and Info