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You mean like this?

Old news maybe?

I only ask, because the Gaming Intelligence Agency (GIA) closed it's site over a year ago... (The site was www.thegia.com) (The link in the story is just a mirror...)

No wonder I couldn't connect this morning! I hope /. did not hurt the new gameforms too badly. Finally after a month with out the GIA they get this site up, and then exprerience the ./ effect a few weeks after launching.

This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. Salon ran a story about it back in 1998. But as computer gaming becomes more and more mainstream, it's bound to become a bigger and bigger problem.

My take on the whole thing is that fan reviews are preferable to professional ones any day--someone who would play the game for free is obviously going to have more interest in the game itself, and probably has a closer perspective to the reader's than a commercial reviewer would. Luckily, there are plenty of excellent non-profit gaming sites out there. I highly recommend The Gaming Intelligence Agency for console games, although their coverage is limited to the RPG, adventure, puzzle and rhythm genres. Anyone else have any favorites?

just curious, but what publication releases these sorts of numbers? the G.I.A. just recently went under, and a source like that would probably be a good replacement

So they have so little money but ENOUGH to buy out a very popular franchise from another company
(one that they pretty much blatantly ripped off for their widely praised FFT).

I've been a fan of Square games for a loong time, but I get the sense they're developing more and more giant-corp mentality like Disney. Maybe it's a vision of things to come. I never believe a second that Square is doing this just because of their "financial" crisis.

The Gaming Intelligence Agency has a short write up on it.

Also, you can see a movie at rpg Gamer.

The CGI looks incredible. It is weird having Final Fantasy characters mixed in with Goofy and Tarzaan, though.

I wonder what inspired this?!? It looks cool (visually), and Square does tend to make great games, but what were they thinking? What is Disney up to? Why not just a Disney character RPG? This is an odd marriage. Then again, Street Fighter v. X-Men worked well. I saw some screen shots. The Alice in Wonderland parts look great.

The GIA has a great set of impressions up that I highly reccomend. Also a crapload of screenshots to peruse, but the impressions are top choice.

For those who are interested, there's an earlier story, samples, and an interview with Stephen Kennedy, the project's manager at the GIA:

http://www.thegia.com/features/f991030.html

I included in-depth info on the GP32 as part of my last story submission (originally titled, "Wireless Handheld Gaming"), but apparently Taco didn't think it was too interesting, so the whole GP32 section was snipped out. Somehow discussion about wireless GBA via add-on peripherals doesn't seem as interesting without a point of reference, such as a handheld that icludes such capabilities built-in from the start.

I'm personally watching Korea as far as Japanese-style games development goes. Nowadays it's not uncommon to see huge Japanese fan bases for Korean games, mostly RPGs and sim games. Not only is a Korean company now the home of SNK's venerated King of Fighters series, but original games like Tomak are coming out and impressing Japanese fans.

< tofuhead >

The truth is that your average codec is designed for video, which contains few colours and very few details.

Animation contains many colours with no correlation and arbitrary and fine details. The fine details change significantly from frame to frame, so you can't just calculate the difference between the two frames and get a 'good enough' approximation. Any sacrifice in colour fidelity or detail is noticeable. Any.

With video, you can often make the whole scene 50% of the original quality and not notice much difference, as long as you preserve the luminance values carefully enough. That trick doesn't work with animation.

With animation, the video is so sharp, that any degradation is noticeable. With video, you can easily wash out whole areas of the background, consisting of many colours but no definition, without noticing.

So using a video codec for animation doesn't work well. And it's hard to make a good animation codec because animation (quality animation, anyway) contains far more detail and defined colour than most video productions.

Really, if you want to compression animation, the only good way to go is to make the target medium computer graphics. Like Flash or 3D graphics. As anyone whose played the last disc of Shenmue 2 knows, we're pretty close to making full blown movies out of real time 3D graphics :)

Interesting article about how it took two weeks to cheat this Dreamcast RPG.

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 ?

I read a while back that Square was a confirmed developer for the XBox. Does anyone know if they are developing "unique" games for the XBox, or if are they going to release any FF games for it (the page says FFXI for XBox as well)?

Here is a link to some info regarding Final Fantasy XII, supposedly to be a return to single player format, not much info as it is still early in development, and I know some screen shots/promos that were presumed to be leaked were actually faked, so please take this info with a grain of salt. The GIA I wanted to link to Gamespot.com info, but that site is blocked from works proxy, dah, someone else please search and post :o)

Tsugunai has been released here. Here is a review of it at The GIA.

My nephew bought an XBox despite my warnings and it litteraly caught on fire. It didn't just smolder and melt, we are talking flames. Anyway, after that happened I did a search on dejanews and I found a post that alleges an XBox caught on fire at the E3 demo. Does anyone know if this is some kind of real problem with these things?

I found this link regarding the E3 demo but it only talks about the stability of the XBox. It doesn't mention anything about it catching on fire.

Is this my imagination, or does slashdot take its anti-microsoft bias into everything they do?

Well, you had to say it, didn't you? I'm not going to defend Slashdot posters, other gaming platforms, or even myself. What I will tell you is that this isn't restricted to the Slashdot crowd.

Go on over to the The GIA and read their double-agent columns for a while. You'll get more than a few comments for and against the XBox. The one that really stood out to me though, was this one: YOU BIG BULLY!

There's the truth right there. Microsoft has had years to get into the game, and only does so now. Why now? Where were they back when I was 13, playing Zelda or Sonic? The problem is, company profiteering notwithstanding, they're making it obvious that's all they're interested in. "Oh look! The gaming industry has lots of money! We can get some of that!"

Not the best way to make friends.

Besides that, have you actually read what the general gaming community thinks about the XBox? I've talked to random people I meet in gaming stores, and I hear the same damn thing every time. "The Xbox is the size of a Buick," or "The controller could kill small children," and even a "Microsoft makes shit, and I won't buy it." These are the very people Microsoft is trying to target, here. What makes you think Slashdot is going to be more forgiving than your average gamer? The Slashdot bias is assumed.

But head on over to Penny Arcade if you think Salon is being harsh. Dear Sweet Merciful God, this thing is the laughing stock of the entire gaming community, and they seem completely blind to it.

I've been gaming since I was 5. Xbox is a me-too, and I'm not impressed. Go home, little Xbox, I don't want to play with arrogant bastards like you.

Is this my imagination, or does slashdot take its anti-microsoft bias into everything they do?

Well, you had to say it, didn't you? I'm not going to defend Slashdot posters, other gaming platforms, or even myself. What I will tell you is that this isn't restricted to the Slashdot crowd.

Go on over to the The GIA and read their double-agent columns for a while. You'll get more than a few comments for and against the XBox. The one that really stood out to me though, was this one: YOU BIG BULLY!

There's the truth right there. Microsoft has had years to get into the game, and only does so now. Why now? Where were they back when I was 13, playing Zelda or Sonic? The problem is, company profiteering notwithstanding, they're making it obvious that's all they're interested in. "Oh look! The gaming industry has lots of money! We can get some of that!"

Not the best way to make friends.

Besides that, have you actually read what the general gaming community thinks about the XBox? I've talked to random people I meet in gaming stores, and I hear the same damn thing every time. "The Xbox is the size of a Buick," or "The controller could kill small children," and even a "Microsoft makes shit, and I won't buy it." These are the very people Microsoft is trying to target, here. What makes you think Slashdot is going to be more forgiving than your average gamer? The Slashdot bias is assumed.

But head on over to Penny Arcade if you think Salon is being harsh. Dear Sweet Merciful God, this thing is the laughing stock of the entire gaming community, and they seem completely blind to it.

I've been gaming since I was 5. Xbox is a me-too, and I'm not impressed. Go home, little Xbox, I don't want to play with arrogant bastards like you.

As far as PSO goes - it has also been announced for Xbox, and possibly PS2. Among the broadband community, it looks like Xbox has the best online strategy. For those who want to use only modems, its a toss up between PS2 and GC.

Gee, I thought I was pretty in the loop. PSO for XBox? I'm rethinking my future purchase plans. I want to play the next Resident Evil game too, though...and I keep hearing such great things about ICO...Dammit! I want a universal console!

Here it is:

Nearly every important story scene, as well as many other scenes, will feature voice acting. Characters' facial expressions will also change as they speak, an FF first. Gamers with hearing disabilities can rest easy, though; not only will subtitles be included, the voices can be turned off entirely.

From: http://www.thegia.com/psx2/ff10/ff10.html

So maybe it's not FULL voice acting, but I get the impression that there's a LOT of it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Although I'm certain people will buy a console just for a Final Fantasy game, this is Japan we're talking about. The series that determines what console wins is Dragon Quest. Now, it hasn't been announced yet what system it will be on, but there's a bit of speculation at The GIA at http://www.thegia.com/news/0106/n21a.html.

If DQ8 is announced for the GameCube, it's as good as a mandate from heaven saying that the GC will win.
--

• Gamers.com - Not too much info nowadays (they got bit too)
  
• The GIA - Fairly good coverage of major events. Very review and gameplay heavy, rather than industry news.
  
• Gamasutra - Industry news in a simple format, though more finance and 3rd party tools related
  
• FGN Online - Pretty good coverage. It's now an IGN affiliate.
  
• SegaDojo - Fairly good SEGA related coverage
  
• MS Xbox - For the people who can get past the fact that Microsoft might just have a kick ass gaming machine
  
• Final Fantasy Online - For any Final Fantasy freak. The site's down at the moment, though
  
• IGN Games - Coverage of anything and everything in gaming
  
• GameSpot - Okay, so it's GameSpot. At least they publish all their media in downloadable MPEGs
  
• Core Magazine - All the random things that other people don't cover, including interviews and stuff straight from Japan.
  
• US Famitsu - Currently down, with no plans of coming back up, but it's the US branch of the standard gaming press in Japan - Famitsu
  
• Stomped - Lots of coverage of gaming in general, with some focus on FPS.
  
• Blue's News - Blue keeps going, and it's always focused on FPS for the most part.
  
• OMM - And of course, Old Man Murray.
  

In Japan only, Final Fantasy 9 was sponsored by Coca-Cola, and they had a 15 and 30 second TV ad that showed the characters running through one of the major towns in the game chasing after a shining Coke bottle cap. TheGIA has the commercials, sorry, no direct links. (URL is www.thegia.com)

Also note that Final Fantasy IX and X have product deals with Coke in Japan. The IX OSTs have the songs from the commercials (instrumental at least), and you can get collectable figurines from X when you buy a coke right now in Japan. (More info here.)

In fact, many of the Japanese games, are non-zero sum. Karaoke, of course, where even tone-deaf people like me can have a great laugh, arcades with Dance Dance Revolution where a score is kept, but it's not really the point, to the newer versions based around Para-Para (think of John Travolta dancing in Saturday Night Fever!) which are just so much fun to do in groups.

The Dreamcast WILL stop production. Sega is in negotiation with Sony and Nintendo for production of games for the PS2 and GBA. Sega has released official statements on both of those.

Thegia stole it from Famitsu.com and has it here: http://www.thegia.com/news/0101/n24d.html

-- Dr. Eldarion --

• Another Kojima interview
• Gaming Intelligence Agency preview of MGS2
• Lots of game footage from preview disc
• Interview with MGS2 art director
• Konami's official MGS2 site

my hope is that square plays out all their movie-making fantasies with this project, so they can concentrate on making games, instead of movies diguised as games.

You're right, my bad. They didn't use Onyxes, they used Octanes. I can't find the original site I got that info off of, but here is a paragraph from www.thegia.com:

In development at Square Honolulu, dozens of the world's top graphic artists are slaving away on SGI's hottest machines, rendering what may very well be the future of entertainment. Square, in fact, is the world's largest consumer of SGI machines, outclassing even effects shop Industrial Light and Magic. Over a year was spent in research and development before work on the film itself began. Entire floors are filled with artists -- each with the greatest rendering weapon known to man, a Silicon Graphics Octane. Even so, rendering is proceeding at the horrendously slow rate of only a few seconds a day. The end result, however, should be well worth it.

The second-a-day part was right though :)

The dmoz category for the movie is here with a fair number of links to sites about the movie (like the GIA).

David E. Weekly

Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast and FF11 for the PSX2 are both planned MMRPGs coming relatively soon.

Being a MUD player, these excite me =)

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast and FF11 for the PSX2 are both planned MMRPGs coming relatively soon.

Being a MUD player, these excite me =)

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Crappy? I'd like to see you do better than this.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Squaresoft is doing it too.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

I didn't see much where the article was (mebbe I missed it, but I didn't see it :/)

The specs for the thing are here.

They also have info on the gamecube and screenshots from it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

I didn't see much where the article was (mebbe I missed it, but I didn't see it :/)

The specs for the thing are here.

They also have info on the gamecube and screenshots from it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

I didn't see much where the article was (mebbe I missed it, but I didn't see it :/)

The specs for the thing are here.

They also have info on the gamecube and screenshots from it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

People who still buy high end SGIs?
How about these people:
FF Movie Info
Watch the newest trailer.

Hooking it up to a cell phone may seem strange to us, but according to TheGIA:

Concurrent with the PS one confirmation, Sony announced a special adapter cable that connects to PlayStation products (PlayStation, PS one, and PlayStation 2) and lets users go online via a mobile phone. The cable will be available this winter and, according to Sony, permit users to "download information, entertainment content and software programs in addition to exchanging data with other users." While this may seem odd, more people in Japan go online via their cell phones than any other communications medium, so cell phone compatibility is a feature many new consoles are eager to implement.

They also have an interesting article on the PSX2's hard drive...

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Well, to think that games are not being taken seriously you'd have to ignore sites like thegia and mags like nextgen. they are well written sites made for hardcore gamers. i have never heard about myvideogames.com, and when i went there today it looked like a bunch of stupid editorials.

you might want to consider that games have been taken seriously by the mainstream ever since a little company called sony jumped into the game. now genres that used to be niche like rpg's are becoming mainstream,, well, some crappy rpgs coughfinalfantasy7and8cough, but there will always being the niche games like lunar, legend of mana, threads of fate, etc.

if games haven't been taken seriously till now, and some late-in-the-game site called myvideogames.com suddenly changed everything, well, i'll give you the 40 or so games i am buying this year. so in retrospect, don't write shitty editorials about things you have no idea about jonkatz, and we won't write remarks correcting everything.

Or Kessen, which is AFAIK not destined to even get a translation from Japanese

I believe that Kessen is scheduled for a fall 2000 release on the PSX2, acutally.

The GIA is reporting that it has been confirmed for a North American release.

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Or Kessen, which is AFAIK not destined to even get a translation from Japanese

I believe that Kessen is scheduled for a fall 2000 release on the PSX2, acutally.

The GIA is reporting that it has been confirmed for a North American release.

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm buying a PS2 before this time next year... there's no way I can miss out on Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty

But, I must admit, the PSX2 shipping with a modem and a hard disk certainly looks to good to be true, so it probably is a rumor...
---------------------------------------- -------------------

But, I must admit, the PSX2 shipping with a modem and a hard disk certainly looks to good to be true, so it probably is a rumor...
---------------------------------------- -------------------

One of the best features of Dreamcast online gaming is the way you communicate. ChuChu Rocket, and other future games, give you a standardized set of phrases and messages you can activate from the controller. The cool part is that these messages appear to other users in whatever language they're playing in. In other words, if I'm playing against someone in Japan, I can select English phrases on my screen and they'll appear in Japanese to the person on the other end. CCR just offers a few taunts and gripes, but the multiplayer online RPG Phantasy Star Online (coming out worldwide this summer) lets you construct entire translatable sentences out of stock words.

The biggest problem right now, of course, is game selection ;). Right now, there's only one game supported, ChuChu Rocket, which is basically Hungry Hungry Hippos on speed and is entertaining beyond belief. (If you haven't seen the infamous CCR commercial, you must download it now :P). Unfortunately, it gets old pretty quickly, and even in the month since it came out it's losing its appeal. There's a slew of online games coming up, though, including big names like Quake III and Half-Life.

As a diehard console gamer, I'm psyched that we're finally getting all the online features that our PC counterparts have been enjoying for years ;). If you've been playing Quake for years, DC netplay is nothing special, but IMO it's a big step in the right direction for console gaming.

A VGA cable is supposed to be released...

As for the FF's...

FFX Info

FFXI Info

-- Dr. Eldarion --

A VGA cable is supposed to be released...

As for the FF's...

FFX Info

FFXI Info

-- Dr. Eldarion --

I believe they are for dreamcast, because that is what the game shows.. uhm ok. Some guy took a camcorder into a DC Final Fantasy closed doors deal and taped this little presentation, its awesome.

And I believe that you must be smoking SOMETHING ;) FF9 will be for the first playstation. It has been in development for some time now (it was paralleling FF8's development for a while there). If I'm not mistaken, it will be released this March in Japan and this October in America.

As for 10 and 11, they were announced at Square Millenium for being on the PSX2. According to Square, they will both use the online capabilities of the PSX2. More info can be found here:

http://www.thegia.com/news/0001/n29a.html

-- Dr. E --