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Nintendo Game Cube On (Limited) Preview In 12 Cities
psxndc writes: "Nintendo has set up "Cube Clubs" at various US cities that allow you to go in and play (mainly first party) Game Cube games. Cube Clubs exist in Boston, San Francisco and Minneapolis, with plans to run in a total of 12 cities. I went to the Boston one today. Most games were disappointing, but Rogue Leader and suprisingly Luigi's Mansion were a lot of fun. More info on Cube.ign.com. A recap of the SF one is also there." Anyone else with first-hand reactions from this?
First Post! Seriously, the gamecube is a great litle system any of you ever seen inside one? And I hear there easily de-zoneable.
Hope the preview cubes don't crash like the xbox has!
i saw one today in target. i have to say, i wasn't all that impressed with it.
Let's see, in two years Nintendo will come up with another game prism [what shape is next?] that will not run previous console games and cost twice as much.
What a disappointment.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Too bad that MS run servers are screwed over at the taco bell registration site. I have yet to enter 3 tickets before midnight! Oh well.
Sig Return: 204 No Content
..backwards compatible is a fancy way to say obsolete. At least we can hope that nintendo is still around in two years. RIP Sega.
at least apple's ipod can play breakout. ipod 1, the cube 0.
WHAT GAMES?!?
I want details- if the guy who wrote that article is checking the replies, PLEASE elaborate!
Username taken, please choose another one.
There were people handing out tickets for this last week at the Flea at MIT. I snagged two of them. The address is:
275 Third St.
Cambridge, MA
Interesting note: The ticket says admit 2, first come, first serve. admission not guaranteed .
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
I always loved videogames. Hell, right now I'm chewing some "1-Up" mushrooms myself. I think I'm starting to grow bigger now...
At least, I think there was one in Phoenix. My friend won some sort of GameCube tournament here and won a T-shirt. Sounds a lot like what this is talking about... could be the same thing.
No experience with this, but, at least Nintendo is finally trying to do some decent advertising.
They did a simlar thing with Conkers Bad Fur Day, and there datadyne.com hoax thing, with there 'campus talent investigators'.
One thing that Nintendo shouldnt forget, is to market it in Australasia, there was practically, NO marketing in New Zealand, which really pissed me off.
However, when it comes to hi-quality, well designed games, Nin. consoles, are the consoles.
I can only hope that Nintendo will win back some much needed market share with the cube.
Lol, what are you smocking and where can I get some man.
I played a few of the games at the Mall of America on Friday night, and on the whole, it was impressive, if not mind-blowing.
Luigi's Mansion, the new Smash Bros. game, and Pikmin looked pretty decent, but far and away the most impressive game showing was Rogue Squadron. (There were a few games missing-- Zelda and Metroid aren't due out for awhile, so don't expect them in any of the other cities if you go.)
Unfortunately, even the ones there weren't marvelous. There's nothing on deck that I saw that would make me want to buy a GameCube come November 18th, even though it's a hundred bucks cheaper than Xbox or PS2. There's no flagship title yet-- it's missing a Metal Gear Solid 2 or a Halo.
Of course, Nintendo had everything running under the best possible conditions-- you have to wonder what the games will look like on regular televisions, instead of the HDTV screen they had up. The remarkable detail crammed into Rogue Squadron could easily get lost.
The controller was a bit less awkward than that of the N64, but it's not the kind of thing you'll get used to right away.
My affection for Nintendo left over from the original NES will probably lead me to pick up a Cube after the holidays. But even after an hour's worth of hands-on I'm not exactly dying to do so.
This guy I know got his game cube early, (Lucky bastard developers...) Anyways, at his birthday party everyone was playing Monkey Ball, and I guess it kicks ass. So I dug up some info a IGN to see what its like.
IGN has a review with some screenshots, and the tv commercial
What I've heard about those Xbox units crashing is that, at least with Halo (a Bungie employee said as much), it's because the demo discs were accidentally built with an older video library. When that library looks for things that aren't there in a shipping Xbox, it goes on the fritz. Microsoft may have a rep for things that don't quite work properly, but at least here it's a one-off that shouldn't carry over to the final product. Oh, and about the Gamecube - I'm interested in that as well, but I already have a Dreamcast and a PS2. Even a third console would be a bit much!
Anybody know of a place to pre-order a gamecube? Out of all the new systems I like this one the best. The games actually look fun instead of just being eye candy. I can't wait to see what nintendo can do with a mini-dvd instead of a stupid cartridge.
Interestingly, I was in a Target store in Las Vegas yesterday and they had a console set up for exhibiting all 3 systems side by side. Incidentally, they had an XBox running. For some reason, though, the PS2 next to it wasn't running. I think it may be because if you compare Xbox and PS2 side by side, Microsoft may not come out on top. They had only a few games for Xbox--some kind of preview CD. I played a little Oddworld. It wasn't very impressive..
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Shit, I am the reason the Dreamcast is no more....
I haven't been to one of the 'cube clubs' but I've had my cube (import) for over a month now, and I can assure everyone that it is a great (little) system. The visuals in all three of the japanese launch games (Luigi's Mansion, Waverace - bluestorm and Super Monkey Ball) are fantastic, Luigi's and Waverace are particularily impressive. From a hardware standpoint I'm pretty impressed, Nintendo, ATI and IBM have done a great job designing this system, the footprint is small, the graphics look sharp, from what I hear it is a dream to write for and the controllers are out of this world.
As far as the funfactor of the Games:
Luigi's:
Great fun, great visuals but kinda short, I beat it (without knowing any japanese) in a bit over 7 hours.
Waverace:
Really intense. Spectacular graphics, awesome wave physics and good difficulty. Split screened with friends on a bigscreen is really wild.
Monkey Ball:
This game alone justifies the purchase of the system. I don't think I've ever had as much fun playing a game (on a console) with friends as I have with this one. The premise is wierd, (you manuver a monkey trapped inside a plastic ball through courses) but insanely addicive. Buy the system and buy this game.
Anyway, just my two cents.
Andrew Murray
I am proud to say that I have played (for quite a little while) a Japanesse Cube that a friend of mine purchased. We played Luigi's Mansion, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Super Monkey Ball for quite some time. Any person that isn't impressed by any of these three titles needs to have their head examined. Luigi's Mansion is a great game to play. The controls are tight, the graphics are very nice and the level of interactivity with the world you are in is great. Wave Race: Blue Storm has the BEST water effects of any game to ever be seen. The only water that has even been better is what is really in the ocean :) The character models look great and are animated superbly...great title. Super Monkey Ball is wierd. Wierd = fun in this case. If you ever played the old game (not a video game) Labryinth then you will love Super Monkey Ball. Then there are the mini-games in SMB and they own too.
:)
All three of these games are stelire. I am very glad that I preordered mine already
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I had been checking my local Electronics Boutique for the past few weeks, asking if they were doing pre-orders. They weren't, claiming that they didn't have numbers on how many systems they'd be getting. Rumor has it that Microsoft and Sony were being bullyish, and trying to get retailers to not stock or do pre-orders on GameCubes, but that's another story.
Anyway, they finally started doing pre-orders/purchases. Thanks to the PS2, it looks like all future consoles will be available only bundled at launch. For $399, I got a GameCube (it comes in indigo and black), 3 games (I chose Luigi's Mansion, Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, and Super Monkey Ball (not all launch titles were available in the bundles)), one controller, and one memory card. A little pricey, but once I had one readily available in front of me, I had to have it. :-)
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
More specifically it's in Cambridge, right near Technology Square. It seems to be in some boiler-making company's building, very odd.
:)
:P)
:P)
Panasonic was there with Nintendo, and provided about 15 HDTVs. They looked amazing, and the following games were there:
Madden 2002
Luigi's Mansion
Star Wars game (The name escapes me at the moment)
Monkeyball
Super Smash Bros Melee
WaveRacer
NBA game (dunno the name of this either)
Pikmin
There were also 2 small booths with larger HDTVs and surround sound, to enhance the experience. The two games on display in those were Pikmin and Luigi's Mansion.
I would have taken pictures, but my camera was confiscated at the door
My favorite game is a tie - Super Smash Bros Melee and Pikmin both rocked my world. The graphics on all the games were amazing - Madden 2002 looked like an actual TV broadcast of an NFL game (But there were 2 guys hogging it the entire time, playing a full game. The bastards.
Loud music, even a coulple "Booth Babes", and loads of free junk (Nintendo Power, foam cubes, tattoos, contests to enter...)
It was pretty cool, but I wish they had had SSX there, or some more killer multiplayer games. I urge anyone that can to check it out, it's at 275 Third Street, in Cambridge. That's right near the Kendall Square stop on the T, and sandwiched in between MIT and Harvard (as is everything in that city
Any questions, just reply, I'll be keeping an eye out!
-Luke
On this site it asks the question "What would yo do for a Nintendo GameCube? Eat slugs? Dive into a pile of Yoshi doo?" Hmm, no thanks, I think I'd just pay $200. ;-)
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
It's like the "import tuner" mags promoting the notion that front-wheel drive (japanese only, of course) cars with 1.6L engines are great for drag racing while reverizing about the mythical (never existed) woebegone "japanese supercar" (primarily the toyota camry with turbos and different body known as Supra).
Be too smart for that shit. Realize that these people are trying to fool you into making them money.
Even the XBox, which is 1000x more powerful than the other consoles, is just a 2yr-old PIII with a GF3 and an interlaced, super-low-resolution monitor.
Okay, a standard television can do 640x480 interlaced (called 480i if you follow DTV specs). This is 60 fps interlaced, which is really 30 fps. Alternatively, you can do a 240p signal in the 480i system, which is what the original Nintendo system did. (IIRC)
:)
With a HDTV-ready system and a Gamecube, you can do 480p, which is 640x480 progressive, which can provide a true 60 fps signal.
Because of the size and shape of my living room, I have a standard size television, which is a 4:3 ratio. Some of the HDTVs are full-screen (4:3) and some are wide-screen (16:9). You can send a 16:9 signal to a 4:3 television and it letterboxes (or you swap the aspect ratio and get tall, thin people). You can send a 4:3 signal to a widescreen and reverse letterbox (on the sides) or stretch it and get short, fat people.
In supporting 480p, the Gamecube offers a true 60 fps, as the entire screen updates every frame. With a standard television, running at 480i, you will really only effectively get 30fps, as it takes 2 frames to draw a full image.
Interesting, the 1080i ration for HDTV (which can also carry a 540p signal) is interlaced. Interlaced is fine for things without that much movement, games and heavy movement systems benefit from progressive images. Computers have all but abandonned interlaced signals, and with HDTV, you'll have to find a TV/STB combo that does what you want. The 720p resolution will be amazing for HDTV and the "next" generation consoles after this crop.
Alex
Ordinary TV can't display 60 frames per second, only 60 fields. Interlacing means you see half of a frame for 1/60th, then the other half, then the first half of the next frame and so on. However, this doesn't preclude games rendering at 60Hz and using the output circuitry to downsample for anti-aliasing, and this is what the games do. They render to 640x448 at 60Hz and blend the scanlines together to give 640x224 at 60Hz which is the most the TV can handle. PS2 and XBox do exactly the same thing, by the way.
With HDTV you can output 640x480 progressive scan at 60Hz. It's identical to 60Hz VGA. It looks much nicer, but rest assured the games still look great on your ordinary TV set.
The nicest part of all of this is Nintendo are mandating all games to support HDTV. PS2 can't support this - Sony won't tell us how the VESA modes of the chip work. I don't know what XBox's capability and position is on this.
Graham
Who cares about the GameCube. Gamecube is an also-ran already. Xbox has won.
Geez, another kiddy-kiddy game box from the kiddy-kiddy game company. Pushing their PokeCrap on us. I know I dont want no kiddy games.
It's like this...Xbox has won already. They've been promoting heavily for the last 2 months. Nobody beats Microsoft. Games over when Bill says it's over. Everybody I know wants Xbox, all the mags have been saying that it's gonna smoke everybodys ass. How's PS2 gonna match it? It's got a 1 GHz P3 (vs a 200MHz proprietary chip), and Nvidia. Nvidia is the 3D king -- nobody beats them. It's over. Microsoft wanna eat your lunch they'll just take it -- nothing you can do about it.
I have just started Pikmin, which is also amazing, visually and as far as gameplay is concerned. It really seems to be a new genre of game. I can't think of anything else to compare it to, except in small small ways to C&C. Not only are the ideas and goals innovative, but the controls are absolutely an innovation in gaming.
I am a little worried that Pikmin will be short and sweet as well, though. I've only had a few days with it, but I think I've made pretty good progress so far.
I am also worried in general about Nintendo's catalog and release schedule...Even months after the initial release, the software release schedule does not seem very complete.
What's a contemporary gaming console without a good golf game?!?
One more plus...I think the new controller is great; a great improvement over the N64 controller, and much better thay playstation/PS2. Probably the 1st controller I've felt comfortable holding and using since the NES.
I mean, how can you can compete with the PS/2? The damn games are beautiful and I have never seen a PS/2 demo unit non functioning unless the store unplugged it cuz of some idiots hanging around too long! :) I saw the Oddworld game at a EB on the Xbox.....worst thing I have seen in years! It looked like a 16 bit unit to me. I mean, really, they have a full COMPUTER in the thing an no deballed thing like a PS/2 or Gamecube. The Pentium III 700 should resoundly kick butt. But, Oddworld looked ugly and the shots I have seen of that car game that are going around suck too. MS better have some better games then these two cuz SUCK! Granted, that doesn't mean the games suck. I have played the worst and the best over the years. Some of the best looking games suck when it comes to game play. The same token, some of the worst looking ones were damn fun.
Gorkman
I'd just like to point out that Nintendo of Canada is touring across Canada with a couple of GameCubes. Oddly enough, the only place I've seen it advertised is on their own website; on the plus side, it should make for some short lines.HJ Hornbeck
I was at the Club in Boston on Friday and all the games looked great. Only one seem kind of DOA, it looked like a Resident Evil clone but it might take a bit to get into. WaveRace was its usual great on all accounts. I liked the idea of Pikmin and its look but I didn't get into it, it does have great promise. I didn't get around to playing Luigi's Mansion or Rogue Squadron but those 2 titles really make the system shine. They actually where able to turn the lame N64 version of Courtside to a good cube game, Courtside 2002. Madden was like someone else said, looked like a broadcast. Smash Brothers was Smash Brothers but a better system made it better also. If you don't want a gamecube that's one thing but it is far from lame. I only played Monkey Ball battle a little, but the game comes highly rated.
P.S. They gave out Nintendo Powers with a CD with demos of the first 10 games include an amazing demo of SSX. You could win one for just going so it is a win-win.
Euphemism, what is that a euphemism for something.
First, I definitely think XBox will be a 3rd place seller his Xmas. I personally think GameCube will get 50% of sales, PS2 will get 33%, and XBox will only get 17%.
However:
We need to also keep in mind Sony and Nintendo's weak spot: developers.
Developers are continuing to complain that PS2 is just too alien, and only a handful of developers are able to get the promised performance out of PS2.
Developers are also complaining that Nintendo's licensing and distribution is way too heavy.
In the long run, I think many developers will be woo'd by Xbox for the following reasons:
* They can make as much money due to higher margins.
* Microsoft understands developer relations far better than Sony and Nintendo.
* Half billion dollars of marketing muscle will definitely help.
* Also, NVidia's developer relations are a major asset.
* Microsoft will make it very cheap for PC game developers to port DirectX games to Xbox. Look for a proliferation of newly anointed "console" developers to expand the XBox library (albeit with a lot of crap, too)
Yes, XBox has a lot going against it too, but Microsoft's history of winning over the long haul (Browsers, handhelds, databases, etc) makes me really believe that Microsoft will win this battle, too.
I was at the LA Cube-club thingamaggiger. That must've been... a few weeks ago?
I think by far one of my biggest complaints is the huge speakers pumping out house grooves -- fine for a club, but even with headphones on (which you had to look hard to find), it was really difficult to get a sense of how the console sounded.
Looks nice through the HD-TVs, of course.
A lot of people I've talked to, especially people who really follow and love console gaming, say that they're less excited about the Cube release now than before, particularly because of all the flagship releases, nothing in mind-bogglingly stunning.
(That, and the new Zelda has a very kid-ish cartoony look, but that wasn't previewed at the Cube club.)
It would be more correct to say that a 240p signal can be trivially converted to a 480i signal. You cannot send a 240p signal directly to a NTSC-only display.
Because of the size and shape of my living room, I have a standard size television, which is a 4:3 ratio. Some of the HDTVs are full-screen (4:3) and some are wide-screen (16:9). You can
Some digital televisions are 4:3. All "HDTVs" are 16:9.
send a 16:9 signal to a 4:3 television and it letterboxes (or you swap the aspect ratio and get tall, thin people). You can send a 4:3 signal to a widescreen and reverse letterbox (on the sides) or stretch it and get short, fat people. :)
This is not letterboxing. Letterboxing for a 16:9 (actually most moves are have a wider aspect ration than 16:9) on a 4:3 screen is when you have the black bars on the top and bottem of the screen. Due to the analog nature of the signals to a TV there is no real horizontal resolution. Each horizontal line gets displayed on whatever the width of the screen is. So if you do NOT letterbox a widescreen signal, you get tall thin people.
In supporting 480p, the Gamecube offers a true 60 fps, as the entire screen updates every frame. With a standard television, running at 480i, you will really only effectively get 30fps, as it takes 2 frames to draw a full image.
Yep. You do get all 60 frames but you only see half the lines of each frame. However, as the previous set of lines are still visible you end up with an effective 30 fps, if you what to call it that.
Interesting, the 1080i ration for HDTV (which can also carry a 540p signal) is interlaced. Interlaced is fine for things without that much movement, games and heavy movement systems benefit from progressive images. Computers have all but abandonned interlaced signals, and with HDTV, you'll have to find a TV/STB combo that does what you want. The 720p resolution will be amazing for HDTV and the "next" generation consoles after this crop.
The 720p mode was included in HDTV only to support DVD movies. 720p is the highest-quality resolution/frame rate available in the DVD spec. All the other HDTV modes are interlaced. I would have been nice if we could have finally gotten rid of interlaced signals with the HDTV spec, but it didn't happen.
Whirl till you Hurl!
I think the Gamecube looks awesome, but has anyone seen the ads they've been running? They're confusing and pretentious, and they only feature about five seconds of actual gameplay. And when they do, it's filmed off a screen. Why not show us how good these games look, instead of these arty pieces of crap? They had the same problem with the ads for the GBA.
Someone needs to fire whoever they've got making ads for Nintendo.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I'd consider that more a harbinger - MS is now bringing "DLL hell" to your living room. Games are dynamically linked against system libraries in flash ROM on the system, so if they ever upgrade those libraries there's a very good change they'll break or introduce bugs to older games. Both Sony and Nintendo do 100% static linking of the OS and system libraries so they're immune to such hijinx.
I dunno, Man... My 486/66 wiped the floor with IBM's PS/2.
Oh, oh, wait... you mean Sony's PS2.
here in philly, the cube club is an excuse to sell drugs. i went down there earlier this week, and it's all drug dealers and dirtbags. pretty much a no-geek zone.
This isn't entirely true. The GameCube always renders 60 FPS no matter what its hooked up to. If you're using a HDTV you get the full picture. If you're using a regular TV, you still get something that's better than 30 FPS. Regular TVs display an interlaced signal which means that it shows all the odd lines of the picture first, then the even lines afterward. It traces across the screen at 60 Hz but you need two traces to get a full picture. What the GameCube does is send all the odd lines from one frame to the TV, and then it sends all the even lines from the next frame. So it is sort of like 60 FPS even though the TV is only displaying 30 full frames per second. This results in some interesting still-frames, but in motion it looks good.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
i heard that microsoft spent 12 million on x-box acvertising.. correct me if i'm wrong
And that's not counting the machines that pretended to have some use other than gaming, the "home computers".
What's one or two more? It's not like we can't shove them in milk crates and stack them in the back of a closet when we're not playing with them.
Bummer. I haven't gotten a look at the game cube yet, but I was really hopping that the controller wouldn't be all out wack. I can't tell you how much I despised the N64 controller. It seemed like most games had you hold the controller at a funny angle so you could use the high hat instead of the thumb pad. Dose anybody know why they set things up this way? As of yet, I've been unable to find a coherent answer...
What's a contemporary gaming console without a good golf game?!?
Fun?
Just look at this thing: http://130.126.66.30/gcopen.jpg
(provided by our good friends at lik-sang.com.
A very small footprint.
Only two main chips (CPU and Graphics) memory and the appropriate stuff to handle input.
Relatively cheap to manufacture when compared to, say, a Dreamcast that has dozens of small chips.
Concerning the processor,
I don't know about the relative speed of the PIII vs. that of the PPC chip in the Gamecube.
But consider this,
PIII is a general purpose chip, with a phat instruction set, made for PC's, with so-so floating point speed.
The GC's CPU is a custom RISC whose instruction set is relatively new and well thought out, with plenty of registers. Also, the floating point capability of RISC based chips has always surpassed that of Intel's offerings given similar clock speeds, by at least 2 times.
Yeah, I know I'm making generalizations, but there are trends in CPU performace when it comes to RISC vs. CISC.
I went to the club at the Mall of America. The most notible thing I personaly noticed, is the feeling that nintendo I trying to change thier image to appeal to adult video gamers. (1) When I walked in, a staff member handed me a stack of magazines. Most video game, but on the top was a magazine called "Stuff for Men" featuring pages and pages of Bikini Women. (2) They had Eternal Darkness on demo. Basiclly a Resident Evil style game. (3) They must be advertising diffrently since Most everyone there was 18+ years old!
If I am right about ninendo trying to appeal to adult video gamers, they more than just bikini women magazines and Horror video games. They need bikini women in Horror video games.
clue: with every new console, Nintendo issued a Mario universe game that rocked (for the time). As people seem to be complaining about it being too short, it's probably one of the weaker ones.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
You're a little dim, aren't you? I pity your retarded ass.
Oh man this is great!! which xbox game is this???? i'm so getting this console. it sounds better than a holo-deck.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
1. No killer app. While most of the games seemed entertaining enough, none really struck me as a stand-out hit. Pikmin looks like it has potential, but strikes me as more of a sleeper-hit. Then again, as the games are clearly targeted at a young audience, they may appeal more to kids than me.
2. The controller feels great. As wierd as it looks, I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable it felt (I guess I have "average" adult-sized hands). Much better than the N64 controller, which allways felt somewhat awkward. All of the buttons are easily accessible, and the analog have better grip than the ps2 dualshock.
3. Graphics on par with PS2. In spite of specs that don't look as good on paper as ps2 ('cept RAM, I guess), the EA games (NBA and Madden) looked every bit as good as the ps2 versions.
Overall, I think nintendo stands a good chance in the long run based on it's core demographic and the strong titles in the pipe -- Mario Sunshine, Zelda, Metroid(yes!) -- and the pricepoint is good. However, I don't think that Christmas is gonna be that strong compared to their other launches.
Which is suprising because, you know, none of the other Super Mario Bros. games were fun or anythng.
:-)
Seriously, he was suprised a Super Mario Bros. game was fun? Um..... okaaaay.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
That's where I preordered mine. I got the black bundle (difference between black and indigo was that it had Madden 2002. I didn't particularly want it, but the indigos sold out faster. *shrug*). Then like the next day they had more up for sale, and, much to my chagrin, I found I could have easily gotten an indigo bundle and saved myself 50 bucks. Oh well. Anyway, here's the link to sign up for their mailing list. http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/ads/promos/gamecube_new sletter/ They'll e-mail you the day before a new batch gets put up and tell you approximately what time they'll go on sale. Hope this helps.
There is a much better version of this on newgrounds.com. The linked file is cut short.
Working at a developers has its perks, like other employees who are happy to import from Japan (to Australia :). We also get very picky about graphics - it's fun!
:)
GC: Mmm, small box, small disks, small disc boxes
Controller: very nice, weird triggers. "Normal" triggers rotate on an axis (DC, Xbox), these slide in like drawers, if I remember correctly.
Wave racer: eh. Shiny refractive water adds surprisingly little to the gameplay experience.
Luigi's Mansion: could really use some mipmaps. Lots of nice graphical touches (dust, curtains, ghosts) that make it feel more complete. Dunno if I'd really play it for more than 5 minutes though.
Monkey Ball: simple, very smooth, also feels solid but without having to resort to graphic distractions. There's a really weird advert theme though with big washing powder-style emblems showing up, and stickers on the bananas. It's the type of game that you obsess over, like Tetris, and like Tetris, you WILL dream Monkey Balls if you play it before sleep!
Slagh
Actually, as already explained by others, you get 60 fps with standard television also. The difference is that your display cannot show full resolution so you practically show 60 fps with half the resolution.
About what comes to interlacing I'm all for dumping it, but I have to say (as an owner of a CRT projector and a CRT monitor) that as long as your device is designed for interlaced signals (in my case CRT projector designed to be used as TV) they look pretty good. I mean playing GT3 with PS2 displayed on 80" screen via CRT projector looks good despite the fact that the image is interlaced. On the other hand the same image transferred through upscaler/deinterlacer to LCD projector ends up to look not so good because of interlacing.
Generally I'd say that with lower quality displays (like televisions) interlacing is better. If you have digital communication and fixed pixel display there's absolutely no reason to use interlaced image. Because in the future all our displays are probably fixed pixel I really hate the fact that HDTV uses so much interlaced modes.
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
You can run into trouble if your game links against debug or devel versions of system libraries and you run on a home unit -- but that executable would never pass certification. The linker is very noisy about this.
Yeah, yeah, but how many frames-per-second does she get in Quake?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well I think u r really ill but anyway pc gamers don't understand what consoles and espicially nintendo games r as all r claimin RL is great cz if its graphics I can only lough about it poor folks...(u r geeks ???)
Save the pity for someone who wants it.
You know, I'm always amazed at how quickly people resort to personal attacks. I attacked, if you even want to call it that, the GAME CUBE. Not you, your people, your tribe, or even your whore of a mother... oh wait, that would be a personal attack -- sorry about that.
It must have felt good calling me dim and retarded as an Anonymous Coward. I guess the AC title sort of fits you.
SIGNED... as a Non-AC.Kir (aka Michael Gauthier)
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
So does it crash as much as the Xbox? I'm guessing it doesn't...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
You should consider us poor PAL gamers, we don't appear to have any chance of seeing HDTV's any time soon and we only get 50Hz interlaced on normal teles so the full frame is only updated 25 times a second!
Interestingly, even though you sort of only get 30fps it's still worth game developers updating at 60 fps. In this case each field will be different. In standard television signals the image is only changed every frame so every two fields are two halves of the same image and you end up with 30fps. However a games console can change the image every field so even though it's an interlaced image you do get 60 updates per second.
This is part of the reason why the new generation of consoles look so much nicer than the last, they are powerful enough to complete the game loop 60 times every second instead of thirty and so everyhting is nice and smooth (in most games). This is extra good for us in Europe beacuse believe me, while 30fps games look shoddy, 25fps is even more jarring to the eye.
You guys across the water might not realise this but we get a real bum deal with our consoles, not only do we get a slower update we have more lines on our tv's, which is nice on tv pictures cos we get a higher res than you, hence the lower update speed. Unfortunately most games are written for NTSC and most companies either don't bother or can't optimise their games to draw the extra lines so we end up with nasty widescreen-like borders top and bottom. It's been this way forever, while you were enjoying full screen genesis games, our megadrive games had big old borders! AND because the update is slower and most companies don't write time independant games our games also run 17.5% slower! AND we have to wait ages for our consoles, Gamecube won't be launched here til march, xbox sometime after that. AND they nearly always cost the same number of pounds as dollars ie nearly twice as much as you pay.
It's a crying shame that SEGA have gone down the pan, the dreamcast is the only console that's ever really catered for us over here, most games were optimised to run full screen full speed, even the ps2 has nasty borders (althought there not as big as they used to be). Anyway I reckon I'll import my Gamecube and X-Box, don't know why I haven't done it before...
Interesting, the 1080i ration for HDTV (which can also carry a 540p signal) is interlaced.
(Disclosure: the company I work for has a broadcast integration arm, so I'm always hearing people yak yak yak about the latest TV technology. And we also play with HDTV a lot in our lab.)
Interlacing provides one very imporant feature that you didn't mention: flicker reduction.
I don't have science to back this up, but it seems that a 60 Hz progressive display-- one in which every scan line is redrawn 60 times per second-- has a noticable flicker to most people. (Set your computer monitor to 60 Hz and see. No, really. Go ahead. I'll wait.)
A 60-Hz interlaced display, however, flickers less, because only *half* the scan lines are being redrawn at any given time. Your eye perceives a clean, flicker-free image, although admittedly this can result in some tearing or blurring when the scene moves quickly.
We've known for years and years that refresh rate is more important than frame rate for visually pleasing, flicker-free pictures. Analog film is projected at 24 frames per second, which is a really low frame rate by digital standards. We get away with it because the film projector gates (that is, projects on the screen) each frame twice, meaning the screen flashes 48 times per second. Less flicker for the same frame rate.
Interlacing uses the same principle but in a different way. Instead of refreshing the screen faster than we update it, we only update half the scan lines each time through the raster, leaving the other half lit. This works because phosphors on TV tubes continue to glow after they've been excited, so we basically get half of our scan lines for free every refresh.
My point here is that you might find a 60 Hz progressive scan display more pleasing than 60 Hz interlaced scan in some cases, but it's not universally true to say that progressive is always better than interlaced.
All the games there were not exactly mind blowing, but nothing was without merit.
;) and with good music. Its a shame it will probably never see the light of day as it was looking good. Try to find the demo if you can. IGN's got it somewheres. It's made by whoever was doing Ravenblade and Metroid (Retro?).
I wasn't immediatly sold on anything like I was when I first saw Devil May Cry, but most of the games were intruiging, beautiful, and fun. Here's my impressions:
Super Smash Bros 2: It seems basically the same but with a slew of new features and characters. I found it strange that you used the Z button (located above the R button) for grabbing. I had heard that Nintendo did not want to use it for in game use, but rather as an option button. It worked ok though. Priness Peach's kicks were great - really intense. It was a fun game but nothing all that new.
Rouge Leader 2: Very beautiful and exciting. This one's going to hurt my social life. They hooked it up to surround sound and you could hear where the TIEs wher eflying around you. I found the 3D radar confusing, but it probably takes some gettng used to.
Monkey Ball: Didn't play it that much but I know it will be fun. Its Sega's game after all.
Pikmin: What an odd game. The lush background were spectacular, looking almost photo realistic. The game play was totally crazy - you had like 4 minutes to traverse the land as do whatever is you need to do. That is, break walls; hunt enemies, and drag "pills" back to base to get more Pikmin. The longer you let Pikmin grow in the ground (thats not a typo), the stronger they become. The music was great.
Star Fox Adventures: By far the most beautiful game there. It's simply gorgeous. I thought Nintendo sliped some acid on the controller or something. The gameplay was also very immersive. One of my favorite parts was when I put my spear in a peg hole in the ground. The spear started to shake and glow as it charged up, then it blasted me into the air to reach the platform above. It was very cool. This will be Nintendo's first hit if Star Wars doesn't do it.
Luigi's Mansion: Waaaaay fun. The graphics are sweet and I loved the music. It's totally hip. If it weren't so short I'd buy it but that won't happen until it's price drops some. This is really a fun game, probably the best one player game out (with Rouge Leader at a very close 2nd. I just think this will be a funner game).
Madden and Courtside - didn't play them but they were popular amongst your non-gamer type. The rules appeared to be sport regulation, but Courtside was 2on2 I think. They looked good but the human animation and physics left more to be desired. It didn't have that spunk real people do, like they played off so well in Devil May Cry.
About Gamecube sport games. I'm disapointed Nintendo cancelled their in house football game. I saw a video demo of the cheerleaders in action and it was great. Very bouncy
Nintendo's launch blows Sony's out of the water and sky high. These are very fun games. If you are open to new types of gameplay and like fun vids, definitely consider Nintendo.
All they need is some strong 3rd party support and they've got it made in the shade. I can't wait to see what else Nintendo's got on the back burner.
This is practically flame bait (for Nintendo). While I was playing Smash Bros. the system froze and we had to reset. But every console seems to go through some growing pains during launch, so whatever.
Dude. It's a game. And a TV. Get a grip.
OK, first of all, as an avid Nintendo supporter and GameCube fan, I take offense to this:
Most games were disappointing, but Rogue Leader and suprisingly Luigi's Mansion were a lot of fun.
Luigi's Mansion? Please! Apparently the author must have not felt like standing in some of the longer lines to play the really cool games. I agree with his comment on Rogue Leader, it was most impressive.
Anyway, as to what I thought, I really enjoyed the preview. I have a cube on preorder along with a few games and I can't wait to get mine. The controller is really nice, unlike the N64 they really made a controller that "fits" your hand this time. The response of the controls is also very nice, unlike PS2 or Xbox, you really get a feel for the game, as soon as you move, it moves.
*My favorite game was Star Wars... I've been a big Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember and this game is about as close as you can get to actually flying around in futuristic space and fighting the evil empire.
*I also really liked Madden 2002, although I was a little dissapointed at the way it seemed to be just a carbon copy of the PS2 version. There were a few differences and I'm sure once my copy arrives I'll notice them better.
*Another really fun game was Super Smash Brothers. They had 4 controllers set up and it was a blast using Samus to whoop some teenager ass. That game is hilarious, all out fun and it's surprisingly cool to fight with all the classic Nintendo Characters.
*The new version of WaveRace was stunning. I really liked the N64 version but this new one delivers on every graphical aspect of the gamecube. You can actually see individual fish under the water as you're speeding by.
*There was also a basketball game there, I don't remember the title but it wasn't EA Sports, and it also wasn't very good. The graphics were nice but it seemed to me to move too slowly, but I'm not a big basketball fan anyway.
Well, that's what I thought about the games I played while I was there. I didn't play any others so I'm not going to talk about them, although I saw a long line for this Resident Evil type game. Anyway, only a few more weeks!
~ now you know
of course there are flagship titles - Luigi's Mansion, Zelda, and Pikmin are all flagship titles. The next Pokemon will be too.
It's just that the Gamecube's flagships are aimed at the Gamecube's audience - kids who play Pokemon. MGS2 and Halo are very nice, but not Nintendo's style at all...it's not a lack of a flagship, but rather a whole different gaming ethos to the 20-30 year old FPS fan demographic that MS and Sony would like to have.
Pikmin, for example, imho will be huuuuuuge. But huge in a Nintendo way - cartoon spinoffs, mechandising, the whole Pokemon lot...and with in this will be massively more succesful than MGS2. Whether as a game it sells more is irrelevent.
The GameCube is clearly a different market than the XBox or the PS2. The GameCube is clearly geared towards little kids. The games usually revolve around cartoon characters (Mario, etc.), and there aren't many truly violent, adult games for Nintendo. PS2, on the other hand, has things like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I think that mostly kids play the Nintendos, while the grown-ups play the PS2. I don't know who's going to play the XBox. I know I won't!
From a hacker's standpoint, the systems breakdown in "potential hackability":
- XBox
- Playstation 2
- GameCube
XBox is actually looking suprisingly promising. I mean, com'on: built-in hard drive, DVD drive, ethernet, digital out, NVidia components. This is a hacker's wet dream. While the GameCube has proprietary components that, at best, will be as difficult to port Linux to as has been the PlayStation 2 (which many Sony fanboys continue to deny).
Personally, if I have the extra money, I'm going to purchase an XBox. Whether or not it's going to stay an XBox for long is debatable. I would say that "the system with the best games will win the war", but as we saw with Sega, even having really cool, innovative games is sometimes not enough to beat established marketing machines.
Thanks a pantload guys. The Detroit one ended a week ago. I'm not sure why they held it downtown tho, I wonder how many homeless were scalping tickets.
I would have been nice if we could have finally gotten rid of interlaced signals with the HDTV spec, but it didn't happen.
There's nothing (but cost) stopping manufacturers from building TV's which can handle 1080p, and upconverting everything else. Then, in the future a 1080p source could take advantage of the capability. Some high-end CRT projectors can handle the scan rates required, but I haven't seen an RPTV that could do it yet.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I spent months trying to understand the tech before making a purchase. I then spent months trying to understand how to best use it after I made a purchase.
:) Hell, anyone, regardless of background, should be able to find information if they dig deep enough.
I appreciate that I don't fully understand it, but I won't apologize. You guys that work with the technology would be really helpful if you provided information (like this post did) instead of just telling us that we are wrong.
Sit on some of the home theatre boards. The HDTV engineers on them disdain people that don't understand things as well.
It shouldn't require 4 years as an engineer at an HDTV firm to understand what you are buying... My four year MIT EECS degree should be fine...
I find your arguement that interlaced is more pleasing fascinating. However, I would still rather the information be transmitted at 480p. 480p is twice the data as 480i.
The reason that I find 1080i interesting is that it is quoted as an interlaced spec. Many people think that 1080i is better than 720p for this reason. This is blatantly false. A 720p image has more data.
Ideally, you want to get as much data as possible into your system. Once it is in your system, you want to be able to customize how it displays based upon your preferences...
For example, I may want everything to display at NTSC levels through my VCR, but I still want the most data reaching my house. I (through my equipment) should be able to do what I want to display it best, but I still want the most data in.
My output is at best what I get in. GIGO...
Alex
I went to one of these in Philadelphia about two weeks back. A brief write-up of it is available at www.arrogancy.net, scroll down a bit until you find the article.
Does anybody have any info on how the broadband connection is going to be implemented? Can I plus my cube into my home lan, or would I have to purchase a dedicated connection package through Nintendo? I don't see much info here http://cube.ign.com/hardware/232.html at ign, can anybody point me in the direction of some better info?
Thanks.
"The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?" -Offspring
fuck I hate it when I forget to close my html tags... perhaps someday I'll hit the "preview" button (but I doubt it).
In all seriousness I see history about to repeat itself. When the N64 first came out you had the Mario, Zelda, and Starfox remakes. After a few months a few good games came out like GoldenEye but it goes straight for the Pokemon Stadium, Barbie, Olsen Twins and other childrens games.
I mean really, the quality of what you guys think is a troll has slid down the shithole lately. Now it's not even pretending to be clever, it's just fucking stupid.
Q: What happened to the Apple Cube?
A: Nintendo bought it from Apple!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Ok, i know this guy is a troll who obviously doesn't quite get it, and he has been responded to. But this provides a great way to put in my two cents.
HARDWARE. DOESN'T. MATTER.
Got it? Hardware doesn't matter. Remember the PSX vs. N64? who won it? PSX. hands down. But it didn't really have the balls-out hardware compared to N64. Exact stats don't matter, but it's obvious that the N64 didn't win, with better hardware. Other things are more important.
Like: Games to be had. Hardware reliability. Company loyalty. Price. GAMES.
Games are what make a system. Always. Hardware is nice, yah, but it doesn't make great games to play. And you can take a lesser-powered system and crank out great games, because of many things.
For me, i'm waiting for a GCN.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
You obviously haven't played, or enjoyed, Mario Golf for the N64 - that is the single best golf game I have ever played, and it had me hooked for months. Me and my friends still bring it out every now and then, since it is so amazingly fun.
Mind you, I'm not especially into sports games, or golf in particular, but this game just pure rocks. It is not exactly a simulation, since it is more of an action-golf-variant, but with great physics and correct rules and all nevertheless. Don't judge out a game category beforehand just because it doesn't sound fun...
"If you go to the next town, going across a desert is a shorter way." - Pu-Li-Ru-La (Taito)
With a standard television, running at 480i, you will really only effectively get 30fps, as it takes 2 frames to draw a full image.
Well, the game is still running at 60fps and you "see" motion occuring at 60fps. It's just that with interlacing you will see tearing at along the edges of moving polygons - which isn't very noticable unless you have a good TV. What is happening in the game is that the game renders 1/2 (even/odd scan lines) the frame buffer size ever 1/60th of a second. So it's running 640x240 at 60fps - there is nothing 30fps about it.
I've never had as much fun with friends as I did playing Golden Eye, Tetris, and MarioCart on N64. That is what I want from a console, great games I can play with my friends. Add in a couple of great single player titles and you got a great system. PSX2 has 2 controller ports. Why? I have no idea, and I haven't seen a title on Xbox that makes me want to buy 3 extra controllers. I have a computer to play single player games on. I want something I can truely enjoy with friends (and maybe a couple of beers). ::) Good bye 4.0 GPA for this semester.
OH and Tony Hawk 3 for GC helps a damn lot in my decsion.
The 485 MHz PPC chip in the GameCube is significantly higher clocked than the PS2's ~300 MHz chip, and it probably has an edge in overall performance, but it's hardly a custom gaming chip. It's a variant of the very good Power PC chip family, which can be found in everything from automobiles to high-end UNIX boxes (and I don't mean Macs with OS X, though it's in there too).
I live in the Vancouver, Canada area, and the local mall had a little GameCube setup this weekend. It consisted of a GameCube-tent just big enough for a GameCube, tv, and four stools for the players. I got to try Waverace, and while the graphics were certainly good, they were not obviously better than those of the PS2.
The controller seems pretty good; it is a complete departure from the N64 design, and now resembles an evolution of the Sony Dual Shock design. The odd 3-around-1 button arrangement is good enough that I would be interested in a PS2 controller that aped this button layout.
The GC's killer app this Christmas will be its US$100-less-than-the-competition price. It looks like a lot of toy for the money.
I'm betting that we'll be looking at a Pokemon Special Edition of Game Cube (Pikachu Yellow) and maybe a Pimkin version.
How's the play balance on Pimkin, by the way? This is the main reason I want to get one of these hot numbers - glad to hear the controllers are easy to use - hate the awkward feel of the other boxen.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
The game cube will render everything at >30 frames per second, given the developer isn't dumb.
No matter what you render at, the standard tv draws it at 60 fields per second. A field is half a screenful of information, going down every other line. So, 60 fields per second is 30 frames per second, cumulative, interlaced.
The reason you want a high frame rate from the source is so that the games are smooth and truly interactive, ie., you push a button and your character reacts as if the controller is wired into him.
Just because its running on an hdtv doesn't make it look better. There are different formats of hdtv, and it depends on
1) your tv... doesn't matter what resolution it displays if it can'd do color well....
2) video cables, if your cables are crap, you won't see vivid colors or, more importantly, detail in shadows,
3) type of video cables, you're not gonna convey a whole lot of picture information undisturbed over your standard rca composite video cable, you'll need a wide band component video cable set for it to look best, which is available from nintendo, 4) how the games look. If you want to see flicker, set your monitor to 60 frames/sec refresh and look at a white page... hurts and flickers, right? Well try it again with something with color, less noticable flicker. Anyhoo, anyway you look at it, 480p (progresssive, meaning full 60 frames per second) looks better than 480i.
But, in the end, its the gameplay!
Pikmin will rock as will the starwars game and super smash brothers melee... i'm into multiplayer stuff...
I live in Provo Utah, and when wandering though one of the local malls on saturday, I saw that the used game store had a game cube you could play. I walked in, and sitting in front of the computer was said game cube! And the silly thing is there were some people playing the N64 next to it! Not being a hard core console gamer I shruged and walked off (past the giant sega, with CD add on and that huge 32 bit add on, which all together was roughly the same size as the X-Box we saw later that day). So, is this an odd occurance?
, I went to club cube detroit like 2 weeks ago
It was decent but it was held in a small area, so it was crowded for the few there.
The Most ingenius game, and just well..good
was Pikmin.
Monkeyball Comes in second, because it has un comparable multiplayer. It was fun as hell.
To Be honest, I though Luigis Mansion was horrible, the controls were awful, and it was Jaggierific
Star Fox Dinosaur planet was cool looking..one of the best looking games, but i dint get around to playing it much..
Im sticking with a Powerbeast with a Launch List that will beat over any consol..
God Bless Xbox..
-Xero
------
For More info on Xbox visit
teamxbox.com by far the best fan based xbox site ever.
There were two demo machines set up at a comic convention yesterday near Baltimore. I played only briefly because I had to help my friend set up his table, but the controller felt pretty good in my hands and the graphics were pretty impressive, I thought. Very smooth. I'd consider buying one. It really depends on what games come out for it. I don't have a PS2 yet, and I really can't see myself getting an Xbox, so maybe I will get a Gamecube.
[Here's a cut'n'paste of a post I made to another forum about my visit to the LA Cube Club]
:) Lots of couches though, which was cool. And lights, etc.
Just thought I'd post a quick post-mortem of the LA "Cube Club" Game Cube launch promo.
We drove down to Hollywood last night to check it out. Basically it was a room full of cubes in cabinets (you know the type -- console behind perspex with controller hanging out... big tv). There were probably 40 or 50 of these. There were also a bunch of "private rooms" (maybe six of these) set up with home theatre setups.
Then there was a (really good) PA and a (OK) DJ spinning thumping techno. They were going for a rave vibe... but it was a like a drug and alcohol free rave with no girls
Free stuff was thin on the ground. Got a little foam cube thing that you have to put together like a jigsaw, a Gameboy Advance sticker, some cube fake tattoos a cool little demo CD (PC-format movies, but GC size). A lame comic that I can't be bothered reading. Oh wait I checked it's DC "Young Justice". No idea why we got that, but my friend got "Sport Illustrated for Kids" so I guess it could've been worse.
So, games!
There were heaps of peeps (line outside) so the only games I actually played were Pikmin (my main interest in going was to see this game in action) and Monkey Ball. Both were excellent. Pikmin is a really quite novel gameplay concept, and surprised me by being pretty friendly to pick up 'n play.
If you haven't heard about Pikmin, you're a tiny space dude who has crashed in a garden (? - that's what it looks like). You've got to repair your craft, but to that you need to recruit a squad of Pikmin. These are little chaps who grow in the ground. You uproot them with your glowing circle thingie and they follow you around and doing your bidding. By the end of my turns I had like 40 Pikmin, but I believe you can get way more.
The squad AI and pathfinding is top notch, and the animation and effects are cool (watching the Pikmin attack things is both cute and cool).
Monkey Ball was awesome fun. Go Sega! Looks cool, plays great. I played with three complete strangers. We took turns rolling down a kind of ski-ramp and launching into the air. You then split open your ball (like the name suggests in Monkey Ball you play a monkey in a ball) and use it as a glider. You glide down and attempt to land on a target for points. It's tricky and fun, and reminds me of landing in Pilot Wings. No bad thing.
Star Wars looked great. There was a basketball game (NBA Courtside?... can't be bothered checking names) that looked nice, but a bit slow and mannered. Nice looking NFL game.
Wace Race looked good but very first-gen, if you know what I mean. Not as impressive as some of the other titles. I didn't get a hands on, but I imagine it plays like the N64 version. If so, cool, 'coz that was a fun game.
There was a decent looking RPG called "Eternal Dark" (or Darkness, or something). Didn't spend a lot of time looking, and it's not really an RPG (it reminded me of Soul Reaver a little).
Luigi's Mansion looked lower-res than I expected. Also first-gen, I guess. Still there was some nice detail in the environments. The use of a flashlight as a key gameplay element really shows off the power of the cube. The real time shadows and everything look really nice. The game seems to be based on the Ghostbusters vibe of sucking up ghosts. Again I didn't play this hands on so I wasn't 100% sure how it worked. But it looked fun. I've heard it's very short... a sugar rush to hold us over until Mario Sunshine I guess.
Star Fox: Dino Planet (or whatever) was there. The character models were cool and detailed, but the world really showed it's N-64 origins. Low detail geometry, high detail textures. The gameplay resembled Zelda (Ocarina) as much as anything (but I'm sure I'm wrong about that).
Oh, like everyone says, the controller rules -- I like the dual-shock style built in rumble.
Anyway, it was a fun night, and I think anyone would have come away with a favourable impression of the cube.
gribbly
maybe
Remember, however, a cartridge means instantly playing -- no load screens
Not necessarily. You could have compressed data, which takes time (that feels like "loading") to decompress. You could have coprocessors that cannot read the cartridge but instead interact over a slow bus with the CPU; this caused the 1-second loading pauses on Super NES games whenever a game changed the background music. However, given the speed of the disc drive (130 ms access time, transfer rates equivalent to at least a 15x CD) (source), most of the loading will occur before the game begins, behind legal screens that they have to put up anyway; in-game loading shouldn't take more than 2 seconds (like FFVII room-change) if developers write their disc code carefully. Did Half-Life's loading really bother you?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I really am not all that impressed with the Gamecube either, but it looks like it may be better then the X-box because of the franchises they have.
Here, Nintendo may be stepping on its own toes, as the name "Pikmin" is confusingly similar to the name of Nintendo's rooster sports[1] simulation "Pokemon".
What compelling reason would I want to spend 300 dollars on what is pretty much a PC customized to play games when I can buy a 1-2 GHz computer for 200 more?
One Xbox can split-screen four players for $600 ($300 plus the price of a sufficiently large TV set), as opposed for $2000 for four PCs.
like the GBA....can ANYONE see ANYTHING on this thing?
A Pelican cover-light helps greatly and costs what? 10 USD?
Still, I think Nintendo has made some mistakes with the Gamecube because it decided to go with the proprietary disc.
DVDs are also proprietary discs under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and foreign counterparts. Rumor has it that the "proprietary discs" are physically DVDs but formatted a different way (i.e. not udf).
On a side note, why do we need to many freakin buttons on a game controller now when the Atari only had one and NES only needed two?
Can you give me a control map with only six keys (Up, Down, Left, Right, B, and A) that would let me excel at Descent or any other first-person shooter?
My ideal console would minimize the button mashing and maxmise the fun.
But weren't the 8-bit sports games (especially wrestling and TnF) mostly just button mashing?
[1] "Rooster sports" is a euphemism for cockfighting.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Of the upcoming machines left in the console wars (Playstation 2, XBox, and GameCube), GameCube appears to be the "least hackable",
The Game Boy Advance, on the other hand, is the most hackable. All you need is GCC and a $50 cable, and you can connect your PC (running Linux or Windows) to a GBA through the parallel port and send short programs to the GBA's 256 KB of RAM. You can even program flash cartridges through the cable if you develop a larger program that you have tested on an emulator such as VisualBoy Advance.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Geez guys, this is Slashdot news for nerds, stuff that matters, not stuff that mattered! This is about a month old. I went to the Cube club in Atlanta, by the Olympic Centennial Park.
The show club had a lot of tv's, around 60 by my count, with all sorts of games. Also, there were these "Cubistically correct" zones that featured Gamecubes hooked to slightly larger tvs, enclosed with full surround sound systems.
There was a lot of loud music blaring, so I didn't get to hear the games much but I did play every single one.
Rogue Leader was definately the most impressive title of the show. It had excellent graphics, and neato surround sound. The controls were neat, with the analog buttons doing having it where you could vary speed and go into hyper space. I liked the controller, but I felt the n64 controller was just more versatile.
Next, I played eternal Darkness, which was really nice. One of the cube counselors told me it was an early demo left over from E3, and it showed. It locked up on occasion, but was overall pretty stable. While the game is projected to have over 13 characters interacting from different times, this demo only had three characters with three separate levels. I played all three, and my favorite was the chick with the shotgun. It had a neat way of aiming, by turning the area of the zombie that you wanna shoot white. Also, the game had a really neat meter, called the insanity meter. Once it went all the way down, the game started to hallucinate. The walls started to bleed and my character started to come apart. First, my head fell off, then my arms, then my torso, until I was a pair of legs.... Very freaky.
Next, I played Smash Bros Melee. It was a lot of fun, but it was sooo crowded, so I could only play it once. It was a lot of fun, but I got my butt whooped, because apparently they took away Kirby's ability to assimilate other characters powers. THe graphics on that title were outstanding, with absolutely no slowdown. The one player mode was nice too, because it had 2D style levels ala megaman, before fighting a boss at the end of a stage.
Madden was nice, but I'm not overly into sports titles. Its graphics were very impressive, looking like a carbon copy of the PS2 only a little more crisp.
Wave Race was my favorite of the show, and it wasn't that crowded. The gameplay was very nice, and the multiplayer was very fluid but seemed to cut down on the detail a bit. There were new tricks there too, which I played around with. The loading was very quick, but apparent. Oh well, optical media dosn't have all the benefits.
Pikmin was very kewl, but I was a little pissed that it only had 3 days to play. The graphics were very nice, with no slowdown, but it just wasn't the type of game that you would play at a trade show.
The second other game that seemed to be an early demo was Kobe Bryant Courtside 2002. The graphics didn't seem all that impressive, and the AI was waaaay off. I still managed to get my butt kicked, because I hate sports titles, but I still know an early demo when I see one. The characters seemed to move acquardly and the face mapping was bad. HOwever, they did a good job with some of the textures, as you could easily make out tattoos and other things.
Monkey Ball was easily the most addictive game of the show. WHile most of the "adults" were too stuck up to play what looked like a kiddie game, I ran over to play it. The concept is really wierd. It features a monkey trapped in a clear ball, who has to do various games. I won the four player monkey parachute game.
Starfox was fun too, with a great upgrade to the original N64 engine. While I could still spot some of its N64 roots, the graphics were very detailed. The framerate stayed fairly high, except when a lot of enemies would populate the screen or when you would change from an inside to an outside area. The most fun section to me was the arwing level and the morphing sequence, where fox could morph into an enemy dinosaur. The arwing level was really full of meteors and such, but there seemed be no enemy fighters!
Overall, the gamecube club was a lot of fun. Becuase we were one of the first, things like the cube girls, and stuff for men magazines were not present. There was however, a stuff for men poster. There was a lot of loud techno music there, so I couldn't really hear the games, but they were giving out headphones so that was nice. Another thing that was conspicuously missing from the show were drinks. I got very thirsty there, but pressed on and stayed from about 7:00 to midnight.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
I played it and Monkey Ball is the only thing I would buy out of all the launch titles, but with that horrid controller it may be a looong time before I ever touch the system. That's one of the reasons why I hated the N64 so much. I preferred emulation on the keyboard than their horrid pad...and the emulators made the N64 games look not as much like poo. Why do these guys put out alternate controller designs? I want a controller a little more Capcom fighter friendly like the psx pads are. Oh well I guess I will be waiting for a psx to gc adapter before I can even stand to look at it again. My psx to dc adapter rocks.
I wasn't completely impressed, but it was kind of cool to play it before a lot of other people did...Of course, I did this about a month ago...
Anyway, Super Smash Brothers still rocks. The basketball game I played still needed work, especially in terms of AI and graphics (the balloons during the free throws clashed terribly).
I plan on getting a GameCube but I am not in a big hurry. I used to be a really big fan of Nintendo's, but then I got a PC and started to like the feel of a keyboard and mouse. I still play NES and SNES and N64 though. Just not as much.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
http://www.gaming-xtreme.com/site/systems/gamecube .asp
~ now you know
Actually, the reverse is true. Interlaced images almost always flicker MORE than progressive images.
While it's true that a VGA monitor at 60 Hz does flicker a little, 72+ Hz refresh eliminates this for most people. Video is transmitted at 60 fields per second, but each scanline in the full frame is transmitted at only 30 frames per second.
The result of this is more flicker, not less. Especially if you have sharp horizontal lines in your image, the interlacing flicker can be appalling. This can be reduced by reducing contrast between scanlines - softening the picture will help, but decreases detail. Long persistance phosphors will help too, but cause streaking and trails on moving objects.
For a still image with comparable detail and phosphors, progressive will always look better than interlaced.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Full 1080i output is also possible, though I don't know if MS are mandating games to support this or not. This will work on an HDTV or (AFAIK) a large VGA monitor too.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Note: The flicker apparent at 60Hz on computer monitors is due to to it's lack of synch whith the 60Hz flicker of the flourescent lights in the room. Change the lights(preferably to something not so green), or change the refresh rate slightly and the problem goes away. Even going down slightly will improve it, but of course changing it up is better.
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.