I heard somewhere that when Shenmue was first made for the Dreamcast, it was intended to be a 16-part series! It was quite popular on the DC, but hasn't caught on elsewhere unfortunately. I wonder if they'll keep the other 14 episodes in Japan...
What's with all the Final Fantasy characters? Sheesh... as if they don't share the same personality anyways. This years lineup of characters is much worse, and I can't imagine this one being any better than last year where Sephiroth came in third (What the hell was that all about?)
At least characters like Conker, Shadow, and Zero were added. Here's hoping that Ness goes out in the first round! Earthbound sucked.
Boy, yet another nail in the coffin... is anything going right at all for this troubled system? The only thing I've heard about it that's even close to good news was John Romero working on a Red Faction port... and even that is rather mediocre.
Wasn't planning on buying one, but geez, we need some competition for the GBA.
The reason employers do this "kick them out quick" approach is not out of spite but, rather, to protect themselves from employees who might try to exact some revenge on their way out.
Really, if there is worry that ex-employees will try to sabotage things, shouldn't that be an indication that the company didn't treat them very well in the first place? I guess escorting them out is just a continuation of that...
Anyone who gets fired can be expected to be a little upset... but I think it takes a vested hatred of the company to start sabotaging things.
Personally, I could care less if a game uses all the fancy features of a graphics card... if the game isn't fun, all the graphics in the world won't help it. At least ATI has a card with ASCII accelleration, heheh.
Seriously though, I used to have an ATI a while back, and eventually bought a GeForce2 MX mostly because it was supported in Linux. I completely expect this card to still be in my system 4 years from now, since I hardly ever use 3D acceleration. If I want video games, I have my Dreamcast.
If you look all the way to the bottom, he takes that creepy warped skull image and wraps it on a 3D model to make something that almost looks like a 3D skull. It looks kind of crummy, but it's decent for a start, and much better than anything I've done in the same field (absolutely nothing).
He never explicitly says what his purpose in all this was (although he claims inspiration from the Matrix), but I guess he's wanting to use this to make it easier to get textures for 3D objects based on actual objects.
The scanner in no way reads depths though... the 3D model he uses in the end is NOT determined by the scanner. That would take a hell of a lot more work, and probably lots of those 2x1 blocks that always seem to run out.
I've gotta say that Carmageddon is the one game that, while fun to play, seriously affected my driving for hours afterwards.
I used to get this after playing lots of Crazy Taxi too... especially when an Offspring song came on the radio. Luckily I was driving a Metro at the time, so I probably couldn't have jumped a curb even if I tried.
Popeye had a POW block, but I don't remember if it was on the bottom floor or what...hitting it caused Brutus to fall over or something.
I don't think so... I own a bunch of different versions of this game (2600, ColecoVision, NES), and I've never seen a POW block. What you could do was pick up the spinach, and then pound him off the screen... maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Of course, I was never able to get past that stupid 3rd level with the ship, so maybe it showed up after that?
SMB2 definitely had the POW block in the ground, but I only remember getting like 2 of them in the entire game. I wonder if they just forgot to add it everywhere else?
I remember this too... I also only remember one 1-up mushroom that you didn't have to enter sub-space to get, and only one red shell that wasn't inside a vase. Perhaps they programmed it in, and then just forgot about it, or thought it would make things too easy if that stuff was everywhere?
Things aren't so hard & fast... by using tricky hardware, you could easily surpass any memory address limitations.
Take a look at the Atari 2600. It's memory space only allows for 4K cartridges, meanwhile there are many games that use 8K or 16K roms. Although the actual implementations by each company was slightly different, they all use "bankswitching". Basically, the cartridge reserves a special set of bytes that it listens on. If the Atari were to attempt to read these bytes, the cartridge could react to it by switching to a different bank. So, you could make a cartridge that had some graphics in one bank and some in another, and just switch between them on the fly.
For a better, and more in-depth explanation, you're probably better off reading this. It also explains many of the other neat tricks that programmers had to use to get around such restrictive hardware back in those days, like sticking RAM into cartridges.
In any case though, should the GBA become popular enough that 32MB cartridges limit the programmer, I can pretty much assure you that they'll find a way to get around it (Of course, the cartridges would have to be more complicated, possibly making them more expensive, or maybe even slightly larger). Cartridge limitations are no excuse for the lack of a Super Mario All-Stars port.
Remember when the SegaCD came out, and everyone kept saying how CD's were cheaper to make than big bulky cartridges, so moving to an all-CD platform would be cheaper! After all, it costs a few pennies to stamp a CD if you do a huge production run.
What the neglected to mention is that the companies completely realized this, and took the "savings" for themselves, along with any extra profits they could take.
I can fully understand charging more because it takes more to make the game (I mean hell, Phantasy Star Online sure took a lot more to make than Pitfall or Super Mario I'm sure), but saying that price hikes will be due to piracy is just a red herring to throw people off of the fact that companies just want to make more money without having to make better games.
I'm sure there will be another breakthrough in the future to play pirated games on a GameCube
I sure hope not... the Gamecube is doing badly enough as it is. If piracy erupts, it could easily make the systems death even faster.
I'd love to see some good emulators on it, like the ones available on the Dreamcast, but if it comes at the cost of a shorter lifetime for the platform, then it's not worth it.
Hacked roms are generally lame. I mean, there's enough garbage NES roms out there without all these Super Mario hacks that give Mario an afro, or turn him into Luigi or other lame effects. And I can do without Ikari Warriors turned into some Afghanistan conflict.
If you really want to make a game, then make something new. If you lack coding abilities, then instead of just changing the graphics, use a level editor or something. I'd have a lot more fun playing a SMB hack that changed the levels instead of one where the Goomba's were turned into Saddam Husseins.
Is this true??? Have I been playing with kids toys all along?
Y'know, when I saw these accusations from Nokia and Sony and all, I thought many of the same sarcastic comments you just mentioned. I mean, I own a GBA, and I enjoy it, so how can it be a kiddie system? Circle of the Moon is hardly a kiddie game...
That was, until I went to EB today and looked at the GBA section. Bleh. Out of a whole wall of games, there were maybe two or three decent games out of the bunch that were worth buying. About a third of the games there were rehashed games that I already own on my SNES, and the other two thirds were awful, awful, crappy, awful kiddie games showcasing the Olsen twins, Rugrats, Hamtaro (whatever the hell Hamtaro is), and any variety of other cutesy characters invented to amuse 5 year old kids. In fact, the only games that I even remotely considered buying were Megaman & Bass, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and the Sega Arcade pack with Outrun, Space Harrier and others.
If it wasn't for gullible parents oblivious about video games, the GBA wouldn't be selling any of this shovelware.
I still think Sony and Nokia are relying too much on peer pressure, but I sure hope this convinces people to stop making crap for the GBA.
My point? The GBA, as it stood, ran for $99 when it was launched. It only takes two AA batteries and it lasts for ages on it.
I think battery life was (one of) Nintendo's main concern with the GBA. However, the technology for white LED's should have been well known to them, and I don't understand why they didn't end up using it... it would mean a relatively small increase in price, possibly a slightly larger product, and have maybe a few hours less battery life. I think that's a small price for a better screen. That being said, I actually prefer my normal GBA, since the SP is much too small for me... I have enough carpal tunnel worries as it is.
As for the buttons, I can't imagine what they were thinking... Adding two more buttons would have been trivial from a hardware standpoint, and would have opened so much more possibilities (imagine perfect SNES gameplay). Hell, I would have settled for just four face buttons and none of these stupid shoulder buttons. The only possible reason I can think of that they might decide not to do this was because they thought it would make the machine too complicated... Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot Nintendo.
After all, 10 or 15 years from now if you still have the machine, at least you won't be wondering why the hell you bought one that was practically devoted to a single game (which still hasn't proven itself mind you). I pity the fools who bought the Pikachu N64.
Not to say that the chosen games are particularly bad, but there are much better games than those to be found on the INTV... such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, AD&D Treasure of Tarmin (Which actually had a 3D perspective similar to Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder!), Burger Time, Lock 'n' Chase, Frog Bog, Dragonfire, and Demon Attack.
But I guess inclusion of most of those is unlikely due to licensing problems. They would need to pay to use the AD&D name... Dragonfire and Demon Attack were Imagic games, and I think Activision owns the rights to them now.
Maybe I'm wrong and they'll include these ones too... but I would imagine that Burger Time and Lock 'n' Chase would be much more attractive to customers than Space Armada, so why wouldn't they mention them? It's too bad really... because of these licensing problems, we'd be stuck with a device that could have been quite a bit better. At least I still have a real INTV.
1) The colecovision, better games and an atari emulator
The INTV did indeed have an "atari emulator" as well... look around on eBay and I'm sure you'll find a few of them.
And I completely agree about the controllers. I'd play my INTV much more often if it had normal joysticks. There's also the fact that the stupid spiral phone cords on them don't reach very far, so you almost have to hold the system in your lap. The only system with worse controllers in my opinion was the 5200... mostly because those things broke if you looked at them funny.
They're for two different systems, I fail to see any huge competition problem. Sure, there are a relatively small amount of people with both, but so what? They're two very different games for two different systems.
And as people have already pointed out, you don't have to buy both at once. Just because you like a game doesn't mean you have to buy it the nanosecond it becomes available, sheesh.
One thing I still have never really understood about the video game industry is why Japan is number one. Isn't the North American market MUCH larger? Wouldn't it make much more sense to cultivate this market, since there would be much more money to be made? Meanwhile developers seem content to not bother bringing some games over for what seem like arbitrary reasons (Where my Bonk on Gamecube?). I know these companies probably consider Japan very important since that's where the company started off, but when 75% (made up number) of your fan base is overseas, I would think you'd go with it.
Maybe it turns out the translations aren't actually bad at all... certain parts were just edited out for content! Turns out the Japanese enjoy censoring random verbs and nouns in order to protect our fragile North American minds.
Anyone else remember seeing games like Samurai Showdown spurt white blood from characters that got hit? It looked like you just cut open a milk carton or something! I'm glad people are gradually becoming less uptight so that we don't have children thinking milk is in their veins.
I think the NeoGeo hardware had a switch that let you choose what color the blood would be though, so I guess it was up to the arcade owner.
But I don't see much point in making the blood green... I'd rather see no blood at all than green blood, at least it would make more sense.
I cant imagine that many people would willingly play games that force you to flail your arms around like an upset chimp. At least, not while anyone is watching.
Hell, DDR seems to be popular enough while making people look like jackasses.
I don't understand the interest in this device. It just looks like a gimmicky device that you can't really make any real games around. I mean, is anyone really going to pay $60 to swat ninjas away with their hands? I sure wouldn't. It'll probably go over about as well as the Power Glove did...
Boy, I never was very interested in Counter Strike before... I mean, the game looked okay, and sounded fun and all, but it was just missing that certain something. And now I know what it was! An official knife license! If only Daikatana had this knife, maybe it would have been the success that CS is sure to be! This will obviously make the game much, much more fun, and sales are sure to go through the roof now!
Slashdot Mirror
I heard somewhere that when Shenmue was first made for the Dreamcast, it was intended to be a 16-part series! It was quite popular on the DC, but hasn't caught on elsewhere unfortunately. I wonder if they'll keep the other 14 episodes in Japan...
I think this has to be the single most Japanese game I have ever seen... It even beats out all the RPG's that I've seen.
I think I'll keep my mindlessly violent games thanks.
What's with all the Final Fantasy characters? Sheesh... as if they don't share the same personality anyways. This years lineup of characters is much worse, and I can't imagine this one being any better than last year where Sephiroth came in third (What the hell was that all about?)
At least characters like Conker, Shadow, and Zero were added. Here's hoping that Ness goes out in the first round! Earthbound sucked.
"Nokia's N-Gage won't be coming out in Japan"
Boy, yet another nail in the coffin... is anything going right at all for this troubled system? The only thing I've heard about it that's even close to good news was John Romero working on a Red Faction port... and even that is rather mediocre.
Wasn't planning on buying one, but geez, we need some competition for the GBA.
The reason employers do this "kick them out quick" approach is not out of spite but, rather, to protect themselves from employees who might try to exact some revenge on their way out.
Really, if there is worry that ex-employees will try to sabotage things, shouldn't that be an indication that the company didn't treat them very well in the first place? I guess escorting them out is just a continuation of that...
Anyone who gets fired can be expected to be a little upset... but I think it takes a vested hatred of the company to start sabotaging things.
Personally, I could care less if a game uses all the fancy features of a graphics card... if the game isn't fun, all the graphics in the world won't help it. At least ATI has a card with ASCII accelleration, heheh.
Seriously though, I used to have an ATI a while back, and eventually bought a GeForce2 MX mostly because it was supported in Linux. I completely expect this card to still be in my system 4 years from now, since I hardly ever use 3D acceleration. If I want video games, I have my Dreamcast.
Sorry, but I think I'll wait for Super Final Fantasy VII-2 Turbo Championship Edition.
--Zero
If you look all the way to the bottom, he takes that creepy warped skull image and wraps it on a 3D model to make something that almost looks like a 3D skull. It looks kind of crummy, but it's decent for a start, and much better than anything I've done in the same field (absolutely nothing).
He never explicitly says what his purpose in all this was (although he claims inspiration from the Matrix), but I guess he's wanting to use this to make it easier to get textures for 3D objects based on actual objects.
The scanner in no way reads depths though... the 3D model he uses in the end is NOT determined by the scanner. That would take a hell of a lot more work, and probably lots of those 2x1 blocks that always seem to run out.
I've gotta say that Carmageddon is the one game that, while fun to play, seriously affected my driving for hours afterwards.
I used to get this after playing lots of Crazy Taxi too... especially when an Offspring song came on the radio. Luckily I was driving a Metro at the time, so I probably couldn't have jumped a curb even if I tried.
Popeye had a POW block, but I don't remember if it was on the bottom floor or what...hitting it caused Brutus to fall over or something.
I don't think so... I own a bunch of different versions of this game (2600, ColecoVision, NES), and I've never seen a POW block. What you could do was pick up the spinach, and then pound him off the screen... maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Of course, I was never able to get past that stupid 3rd level with the ship, so maybe it showed up after that?
SMB2 definitely had the POW block in the ground, but I only remember getting like 2 of them in the entire game. I wonder if they just forgot to add it everywhere else?
I remember this too... I also only remember one 1-up mushroom that you didn't have to enter sub-space to get, and only one red shell that wasn't inside a vase. Perhaps they programmed it in, and then just forgot about it, or thought it would make things too easy if that stuff was everywhere?
no single game could exceede a hard 32MB limit.
Things aren't so hard & fast... by using tricky hardware, you could easily surpass any memory address limitations.
Take a look at the Atari 2600. It's memory space only allows for 4K cartridges, meanwhile there are many games that use 8K or 16K roms. Although the actual implementations by each company was slightly different, they all use "bankswitching". Basically, the cartridge reserves a special set of bytes that it listens on. If the Atari were to attempt to read these bytes, the cartridge could react to it by switching to a different bank. So, you could make a cartridge that had some graphics in one bank and some in another, and just switch between them on the fly.
For a better, and more in-depth explanation, you're probably better off reading this. It also explains many of the other neat tricks that programmers had to use to get around such restrictive hardware back in those days, like sticking RAM into cartridges.
In any case though, should the GBA become popular enough that 32MB cartridges limit the programmer, I can pretty much assure you that they'll find a way to get around it (Of course, the cartridges would have to be more complicated, possibly making them more expensive, or maybe even slightly larger). Cartridge limitations are no excuse for the lack of a Super Mario All-Stars port.
Remember when the SegaCD came out, and everyone kept saying how CD's were cheaper to make than big bulky cartridges, so moving to an all-CD platform would be cheaper! After all, it costs a few pennies to stamp a CD if you do a huge production run.
What the neglected to mention is that the companies completely realized this, and took the "savings" for themselves, along with any extra profits they could take.
I can fully understand charging more because it takes more to make the game (I mean hell, Phantasy Star Online sure took a lot more to make than Pitfall or Super Mario I'm sure), but saying that price hikes will be due to piracy is just a red herring to throw people off of the fact that companies just want to make more money without having to make better games.
I'm surprised the RIAA hasn't tried this yet.
I'm sure there will be another breakthrough in the future to play pirated games on a GameCube
I sure hope not... the Gamecube is doing badly enough as it is. If piracy erupts, it could easily make the systems death even faster.
I'd love to see some good emulators on it, like the ones available on the Dreamcast, but if it comes at the cost of a shorter lifetime for the platform, then it's not worth it.
Hacked roms are generally lame. I mean, there's enough garbage NES roms out there without all these Super Mario hacks that give Mario an afro, or turn him into Luigi or other lame effects. And I can do without Ikari Warriors turned into some Afghanistan conflict.
If you really want to make a game, then make something new. If you lack coding abilities, then instead of just changing the graphics, use a level editor or something. I'd have a lot more fun playing a SMB hack that changed the levels instead of one where the Goomba's were turned into Saddam Husseins.
Is this true??? Have I been playing with kids toys all along?
Y'know, when I saw these accusations from Nokia and Sony and all, I thought many of the same sarcastic comments you just mentioned. I mean, I own a GBA, and I enjoy it, so how can it be a kiddie system? Circle of the Moon is hardly a kiddie game...
That was, until I went to EB today and looked at the GBA section. Bleh. Out of a whole wall of games, there were maybe two or three decent games out of the bunch that were worth buying. About a third of the games there were rehashed games that I already own on my SNES, and the other two thirds were awful, awful, crappy, awful kiddie games showcasing the Olsen twins, Rugrats, Hamtaro (whatever the hell Hamtaro is), and any variety of other cutesy characters invented to amuse 5 year old kids. In fact, the only games that I even remotely considered buying were Megaman & Bass, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and the Sega Arcade pack with Outrun, Space Harrier and others.
If it wasn't for gullible parents oblivious about video games, the GBA wouldn't be selling any of this shovelware.
I still think Sony and Nokia are relying too much on peer pressure, but I sure hope this convinces people to stop making crap for the GBA.
My point? The GBA, as it stood, ran for $99 when it was launched. It only takes two AA batteries and it lasts for ages on it.
I think battery life was (one of) Nintendo's main concern with the GBA. However, the technology for white LED's should have been well known to them, and I don't understand why they didn't end up using it... it would mean a relatively small increase in price, possibly a slightly larger product, and have maybe a few hours less battery life. I think that's a small price for a better screen. That being said, I actually prefer my normal GBA, since the SP is much too small for me... I have enough carpal tunnel worries as it is.
As for the buttons, I can't imagine what they were thinking... Adding two more buttons would have been trivial from a hardware standpoint, and would have opened so much more possibilities (imagine perfect SNES gameplay). Hell, I would have settled for just four face buttons and none of these stupid shoulder buttons. The only possible reason I can think of that they might decide not to do this was because they thought it would make the machine too complicated... Thanks for assuming I'm an idiot Nintendo.
--Zero
After all, 10 or 15 years from now if you still have the machine, at least you won't be wondering why the hell you bought one that was practically devoted to a single game (which still hasn't proven itself mind you). I pity the fools who bought the Pikachu N64.
The coffin case is another matter entirely...
--Zero
Not to say that the chosen games are particularly bad, but there are much better games than those to be found on the INTV... such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, AD&D Treasure of Tarmin (Which actually had a 3D perspective similar to Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder!), Burger Time, Lock 'n' Chase, Frog Bog, Dragonfire, and Demon Attack.
But I guess inclusion of most of those is unlikely due to licensing problems. They would need to pay to use the AD&D name... Dragonfire and Demon Attack were Imagic games, and I think Activision owns the rights to them now.
Maybe I'm wrong and they'll include these ones too... but I would imagine that Burger Time and Lock 'n' Chase would be much more attractive to customers than Space Armada, so why wouldn't they mention them? It's too bad really... because of these licensing problems, we'd be stuck with a device that could have been quite a bit better. At least I still have a real INTV.
1) The colecovision, better games and an atari emulator
The INTV did indeed have an "atari emulator" as well... look around on eBay and I'm sure you'll find a few of them.
And I completely agree about the controllers. I'd play my INTV much more often if it had normal joysticks. There's also the fact that the stupid spiral phone cords on them don't reach very far, so you almost have to hold the system in your lap. The only system with worse controllers in my opinion was the 5200... mostly because those things broke if you looked at them funny.
They're for two different systems, I fail to see any huge competition problem. Sure, there are a relatively small amount of people with both, but so what? They're two very different games for two different systems.
And as people have already pointed out, you don't have to buy both at once. Just because you like a game doesn't mean you have to buy it the nanosecond it becomes available, sheesh.
or.. cultivating markets overseas.
One thing I still have never really understood about the video game industry is why Japan is number one. Isn't the North American market MUCH larger? Wouldn't it make much more sense to cultivate this market, since there would be much more money to be made? Meanwhile developers seem content to not bother bringing some games over for what seem like arbitrary reasons (Where my Bonk on Gamecube?). I know these companies probably consider Japan very important since that's where the company started off, but when 75% (made up number) of your fan base is overseas, I would think you'd go with it.
In a similar vein, Europe is all but ignored...
Maybe it turns out the translations aren't actually bad at all... certain parts were just edited out for content! Turns out the Japanese enjoy censoring random verbs and nouns in order to protect our fragile North American minds.
Anyone else remember seeing games like Samurai Showdown spurt white blood from characters that got hit? It looked like you just cut open a milk carton or something! I'm glad people are gradually becoming less uptight so that we don't have children thinking milk is in their veins.
I think the NeoGeo hardware had a switch that let you choose what color the blood would be though, so I guess it was up to the arcade owner.
But I don't see much point in making the blood green... I'd rather see no blood at all than green blood, at least it would make more sense.
I cant imagine that many people would willingly play games that force you to flail your arms around like an upset chimp. At least, not while anyone is watching.
Hell, DDR seems to be popular enough while making people look like jackasses.
I don't understand the interest in this device. It just looks like a gimmicky device that you can't really make any real games around. I mean, is anyone really going to pay $60 to swat ninjas away with their hands? I sure wouldn't. It'll probably go over about as well as the Power Glove did...
Boy, I never was very interested in Counter Strike before... I mean, the game looked okay, and sounded fun and all, but it was just missing that certain something. And now I know what it was! An official knife license! If only Daikatana had this knife, maybe it would have been the success that CS is sure to be! This will obviously make the game much, much more fun, and sales are sure to go through the roof now!