What's a game you can't find any other way? When you've got eBay, Amazon, USENET forsale newsgroups, and so forth? If you give yourself time to find it, put out a few searches, you can probably find what you need.
I think "can't find any other way" is probably a euphemism for "can't find for a price I'm willing to pay".
I'd knock that list down a bit, since Fight for Life was (a) the very last official Atari game released and (b) was 3D (so not like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter for most of the Jaguar's life).
How good the 3D was in Fight for Life is another discussion entirely.;^)
Still, I can't argue with your main point: more than 2 fighters.
The stuff about the Jaguar controller just smacks of ignorance. It's like a piece of videogame folklore that, true or not, people repeat over and over.
In particular: - Nothing wrong with a numeric keypad or overlays. They were actually helpful, for crying out loud, and allowed for truly complex games like Iron Soldier
- As a proud Jaguar owner, I never got the impression that Atari was fishing for the Mortal Kombat krowd. They only had *two* fighting games, for crying out loud, and three if you include the Jaguar CD (which came much later).
- The connectors were not loose. I own one that I stepped on, and even with some of the plastic cuff missing, it still stays in the controller port just fine. I've *never* had one fall out.
It's just idiotic bashing, and it displays the kind of ignorance that passes muster at places like IGN.
Remember how a notable movie (based on a notable novel) a few years ago had, as part of its plot, a plan to reset the credit card debt of the world? With the rate of security breaches we've seen, I have to wonder if the system won't lead to such a problem on its own, not through someone wanting to reset the debt but rather from a massive case of distributed fraud as the result of these kinds of security breaches.
I mean, what do you do when something like 40 million transactions could be legit... or could be bogus? There's no human way to know what's real and what's not if you have to check every one of them. I'm sure they have computerized methods, but I'd imagine that there is still a level of distributed low-level (i.e. not buying boats and plasma TVs) fraud that would disrupt the system in some critical way.
The biggest problem I had with Tomb Raider after the first one was the focus on gunning down every human in sight. Yes, there were disinterested monks in TR2. Other than that, it's always kill-or-be-killed with dozens of humans running into your superior firepower. Also, whenever a tomb raiding game makes a big deal about including a grenade launcher in the game, you know it's not good.
In the first game, you had encounters against a tiny number of humans. The rest were animals who were a hazard, and understandably dangerous most of the time. That made the human battles more important.
Not only that, it had exploration galore. The levels in the first one are still some of the best, with decent puzzles and great visuals. I'll always remember Palace Midas and The Great Pyramid and St. Francis' Folly and the Colosseum. Good stuff.
And starting with the second game they tried to cram her into urban environments, a fit that just never worked well. The whole Opera House in TR2 was just too contrived. Keep Lara in the tombs where at least I can suspend some disbelief over how things are arranged in a crazy way.
Finally, the problem with the last game, Angel of Darkness, was clearly just not enough time to finish it. They planned three full games, apparently had a full script for each one, and were trying to get things done as best they could. They might still have been incompetent programmers and designers, but what they had could have been decent. I enjoyed Angel of Darkness quite a bit more than TR3 and would have liked to have seen the next two games to see where the story was going.
Fortunately where I am from laws are made by the government, not by Sega. Here we are legally allowed to maintain backup images of software that we own so ROMs are perfectly legal so long as you own the actual cart/CD/etc.
That may be true, where you live. However, in some places the law may interpret software stored in chips (more akin to hardware) differently from software stored on a CD or magnetic medium like floppy disk.
I don't know enough of your specific situation, but simply cautioning that not only does the law vary from place to place, but it also varies in how it treats different media. And, as you say, YMMV.
Y'know there's nothing wrong with media-shifting games that you own.
There may be nothing wrong with it, in principle, but some newer games appear to have licenses that restrict this. For years games have been saying "Licensed for use only on YOUR FAVORITE CONSOLE HERE". Perhaps that just means that the console maker gave its approval to the software maker to put the software on their console, but I think it's more: you're only granted rights to play it on specific hardware.
Moreover, there is at least one GameCube game that I own that has a funny clause in the license in the manual. It actually says that they won't permit you to make backup copies of the game, and further that this is does not impinge upon your rights as a consumer. That's pretty restrictive, no?
Is anyone from Sega going to come to your front door and try to stop you from putting Sonic 3 on another platform? No. But we should all be aware of what licenses say on today's software. To be totally paranoid, with these kinds of restrictions as a precedent, there may come a time when they don't have to physically visit you to make you stop: they just show the proper data to the government and they restrict your rights in other ways.
That said, I'm in the minority that (conservatively) interprets the law to mean that media-shifting is not obviously a right you have.
Re:Why would you assume the PS3 would spank the Xb
on
Inside the Xbox 360
·
· Score: 1
The PS2 will do Toy Story in real time!!". Riiiiight.
Without taking a position on the claims Sony's made about the PS2 or PS3, I'd like to note that my recollection is that NVIDIA was the one that originally said they would be rendering Toy Story in real-time, with one of the GeForce processors.
Did Sony ever mention Toy Story? Was it perhaps Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that Sony had mentioned?
Antigateway: Marble Madness
on
10 Gateway Games
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I thought a non-competitive, abstract game like Marble Madness would be a nice introduction for my wife. So I fired up the NES and let her try. She got through several levels, eventually, and suppertime was nearing. So I went to the store to get some food, and when I returned she was angrily swearing at the screen and shaking her dainty fist at the NES itself. She glared at me, tossed the controller down, and said "Never ask me to play a videogame again."
Oh well. At least she lets me go fishing in Animal Crossing with our son.
I am not sure who, in US, distributes trial version of MS Office. No one distributes full version for sure.
My wife's laptop, a just-discontinued Compaq with Windows XP, came with a trial version of Office installed that could be activated to be a full version.
For what it's worth, she did allow me to remove it and install OpenOffice.org instead. So far, so good, with a few hitches here and there.
...when it doesn't have Metal Gear Solid 3 anywhere on it. I'd have put it in any of Best Game, Character Design, Game Design, Visual Arts, or Writing. I'd say it's probably the best game I've played in two years, maybe more.
It's got a great story (which manages to tie in well with all the other games), some of the most memorable characters I've ever seen, great music, good sound, impressive voice acting, and at least one really, really impressive one-on-one battle (versus The End, who feels like battling a real human at times). Then there is the whole camouflage mechanic which, while mostly unrealisitic, is pretty unique and interesting. And cut scenes that are actually interactive in a limited way, one that I found really appealing.
To top it off, the game is actually fun to play, which is what we all wanted anyway.
I also appreciated the fact that I could complete the game without killing any enemy soldiers and was able to use tranquilizer darts and stun grenades to defeat all the bosses. This gave me a special ranking at the end for not killing any humans (which apparently excludes bosses, since they do actually die, but that's a quibble). This is indicative of what I feel is one of MGS3's strengths: the freedom to get from point A to point B using any of a variety of methods. Despite being a completely linear game in the large sense, most players will have unique experiences because they'll do the various small tasks using different strategies.
To get back on topic...list is flawed when it doesn't include MGS3. Sorry.
The exclusive Limited Collector's Edition also includes full versions of the original Ultimate DOOM(TM) and DOOM II(R) playable in single player, or split-screen co-op or deathmatch with 2-4 players on one Xbox.
I'd been hoping to see classic DooM action on the Xbox Live! service. I think it'd be especially suitable for one of the first online co-op/deathmatch games be available on what is (reportedly) the best unified online gaming service around, console or PC. Not that I'm going to play it anytime soon (I'm not buying an Xbox until it's a discontinued piece of hardware), but I was holding out hope they'd do something cool with it. Oh well.
And, yeah, DooM 3 on Xbox...hope they added something to make it interesting.:^|
Oh man, that's rich. "Pro-nintendo troll"? You couldn't be more wrong. I've many, many more PSOne and PS2 games than I have NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games combined. If anything, I want the PSP to succeed because it's pushing some really powerful hardware into the handheld market, the kind of hardware that could bring some real competition to that market the way the PSOne brought competition to the TV-based-console market.
But these are not enticing prices, and bundles that jack the prices up higher are even less appetizing. Yes, I know all about waiting, thanks. I've done it before, and I'm doing it still.
These prices are a bucket of cold water on an otherwise hot piece of gaming news. It has nothing to do with bias.
Minimum of $250 for system with memory stick, headphones
with remote control, battery, ac adaptor, soft case, cleaning cloth,
and a demo disc.
First 1,000,000 buyers also get a Spider-Man 2 movie that plays on the PSP.
Launch titles that are mostly franchises and remakes, including a whole pile of EA Sports games.
Low-end games cost $40, with others presumably costing more. (Wal-mart's online store shows $49.92 for many games.)
That prices me right out of the market at $250, even with all that
bonus crud thrown into the box. But that's not the worst of it, since
the big stores, the ones most likely to have anything to sell, will be
selling bundles that include two or more games and other needless crud.
As of right now, EB Games has one way to buy the PSP and it's a bundle
that costs $400. GameStop's got bundles that range from $380 to $480.
Look, all I want is basic system with a charger, a (small) memory
stick, and one game. I don't need headphones or a remote control or a
soft case or a cleaning cloth or a demo disc. I don't have any desire
to tote around Spider-Man 2 to show off to friends. I don't doubt that
the folks who can afford the PSP will think it's the bee's knees, and
I'll even envy them their new toy, but I've got better uses for my
gaming cash. With the robust used GBA game market, I'm going to get a
much better fun-for-dollar return sticking with my 'burning GBA.
I don't see how Apple could make both iBook and PowerBooks based on the G5 at the same time. The processor speed and type have traditionally separated the upper and lower end Apple hardware products, right, with the lower end product always lagging to give the upper end the premium (and margin) that Apple wants?
What could they add to a PowerBook, other than a processor speed bump, that would make it worth the premium price if the iBook has the same class of processor in it?
That's fine if they want to send traffic to Blue's News, but these are the Slashdot editors who have some responsibility to edit the submissions, especially if they're deficient. When I've seen things like "Thanks to FooSite for their story on..." I've been under the impression that the editor READ the story on that site and decided to post about it on Slashdot. Maybe not...maybe there is a give-and-take between the larger sites, like when a GameSpot story gets posted on Slashdot. Regardless of the source, however, it was TRIVIAL to provide links to the primary source and in fact I believe that the quote from Blue's News used here on Slashdot originally DID have some links in it but because of a straight copy-and-paste job they were lost.
I heartily recommend twm-gl for your desktop. It has all the lightness of the original twm window manager but some of the best use of OpenGL acceleration on the desktop you've ever seen.
What's really amazing is that you can eke out a boost in 3D game performance by using it. Really, one of the best, but lesser known, free software projects. (And since it's free software, I hear that a Windows and MacOS X version is in the works. Awesome!)
I didn't see mention of Star Wars Arcade for the Sega Genesis 32X or Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, the Sega arcade game. The former was pretty forgettable, but I recall seeing someone playing the latter almost every time I saw it in an arcade. May not have been any good, but people were interested in it, if simply because it had a huge 50" screen and Star Wars music.
I tried to read through this, but it is awfully dense. It'll have to wait for later. But, one thing that I'd like to see clarified is this, and I believe the paper refers to it somewhat, but not in these direct terms.
Under certain situations you may make a copy of software you own. The copy is a backup copy, for use when the original fails.
Now, there are two problems here. If I go to a ROM site and download a ROM of a game I own, then I didn't make the backup copy. Is it necessary that I make the backup copy myself?
Second point is that the copy I made is for backup purposes. Even if you allow me that getting a backup copy from a ROM site is ok, then I cannot use it until my original fails. So emulation, while I still have an original working copy, appears to be prohibited.
Furthermore, it isn't clear how I am permitted to use the copy if and when the original fails. Should I use the image to create a new ROM to use on the original hardware? Or can I use it with an emulator?
Finally, suppose my original really does fail and that it is legal for me to use an emulator with the copy I made. Can I make a copy of the copy as a backup? That is, do all the rights granted to me with the original then get inherited by the backup? Or is the backup somehow a second-class copy, with limited permissions granted to me on how I use it?
This doesn't just extend to cartridges, by the way. Think about copying your old Commodore 64 games off of 5.25" floppy into D64 format. Yes, it's a backup, but can you legally use it with an emulator?
Lots of questions, and ones that I'd like to see cleared up.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Four digits.
I feel lame with my low-ish six-digits.
Zonk, thanks for the link to Curmudgeon Gamer. Could you please fix it?
Correct link
The PSP version is $20. I've seen it for $17 used.
Not so fast, there...turns out Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for PlayStation 2 does have a nasty EULA.
What's a game you can't find any other way? When you've got eBay, Amazon, USENET forsale newsgroups, and so forth? If you give yourself time to find it, put out a few searches, you can probably find what you need.
I think "can't find any other way" is probably a euphemism for "can't find for a price I'm willing to pay".
I'd knock that list down a bit, since Fight for Life was (a) the very last official Atari game released and (b) was 3D (so not like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter for most of the Jaguar's life).
;^)
How good the 3D was in Fight for Life is another discussion entirely.
Still, I can't argue with your main point: more than 2 fighters.
The stuff about the Jaguar controller just smacks of ignorance. It's like a piece of videogame folklore that, true or not, people repeat over and over.
In particular:
- Nothing wrong with a numeric keypad or overlays. They were actually helpful, for crying out loud, and allowed for truly complex games like Iron Soldier
- As a proud Jaguar owner, I never got the impression that Atari was fishing for the Mortal Kombat krowd. They only had *two* fighting games, for crying out loud, and three if you include the Jaguar CD (which came much later).
- The connectors were not loose. I own one that I stepped on, and even with some of the plastic cuff missing, it still stays in the controller port just fine. I've *never* had one fall out.
It's just idiotic bashing, and it displays the kind of ignorance that passes muster at places like IGN.
Please submit any source ports to Liberated Games ( http://liberatedgames.org/ ). Thanks.
Remember how a notable movie (based on a notable novel) a few years ago had, as part of its plot, a plan to reset the credit card debt of the world? With the rate of security breaches we've seen, I have to wonder if the system won't lead to such a problem on its own, not through someone wanting to reset the debt but rather from a massive case of distributed fraud as the result of these kinds of security breaches.
... or could be bogus? There's no human way to know what's real and what's not if you have to check every one of them. I'm sure they have computerized methods, but I'd imagine that there is still a level of distributed low-level (i.e. not buying boats and plasma TVs) fraud that would disrupt the system in some critical way.
I mean, what do you do when something like 40 million transactions could be legit
The biggest problem I had with Tomb Raider after the first one was the focus on gunning down every human in sight. Yes, there were disinterested monks in TR2. Other than that, it's always kill-or-be-killed with dozens of humans running into your superior firepower. Also, whenever a tomb raiding game makes a big deal about including a grenade launcher in the game, you know it's not good.
In the first game, you had encounters against a tiny number of humans. The rest were animals who were a hazard, and understandably dangerous most of the time. That made the human battles more important.
Not only that, it had exploration galore. The levels in the first one are still some of the best, with decent puzzles and great visuals. I'll always remember Palace Midas and The Great Pyramid and St. Francis' Folly and the Colosseum. Good stuff.
And starting with the second game they tried to cram her into urban environments, a fit that just never worked well. The whole Opera House in TR2 was just too contrived. Keep Lara in the tombs where at least I can suspend some disbelief over how things are arranged in a crazy way.
Finally, the problem with the last game, Angel of Darkness, was clearly just not enough time to finish it. They planned three full games, apparently had a full script for each one, and were trying to get things done as best they could. They might still have been incompetent programmers and designers, but what they had could have been decent. I enjoyed Angel of Darkness quite a bit more than TR3 and would have liked to have seen the next two games to see where the story was going.
I don't know enough of your specific situation, but simply cautioning that not only does the law vary from place to place, but it also varies in how it treats different media. And, as you say, YMMV.
Moreover, there is at least one GameCube game that I own that has a funny clause in the license in the manual. It actually says that they won't permit you to make backup copies of the game, and further that this is does not impinge upon your rights as a consumer. That's pretty restrictive, no?
Is anyone from Sega going to come to your front door and try to stop you from putting Sonic 3 on another platform? No. But we should all be aware of what licenses say on today's software. To be totally paranoid, with these kinds of restrictions as a precedent, there may come a time when they don't have to physically visit you to make you stop: they just show the proper data to the government and they restrict your rights in other ways.
That said, I'm in the minority that (conservatively) interprets the law to mean that media-shifting is not obviously a right you have.
Did Sony ever mention Toy Story? Was it perhaps Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within that Sony had mentioned?
I thought a non-competitive, abstract game like Marble Madness would be a nice introduction for my wife. So I fired up the NES and let her try. She got through several levels, eventually, and suppertime was nearing. So I went to the store to get some food, and when I returned she was angrily swearing at the screen and shaking her dainty fist at the NES itself. She glared at me, tossed the controller down, and said "Never ask me to play a videogame again."
Oh well. At least she lets me go fishing in Animal Crossing with our son.
For what it's worth, she did allow me to remove it and install OpenOffice.org instead. So far, so good, with a few hitches here and there.
...when it doesn't have Metal Gear Solid 3 anywhere on it. I'd have put it in any of Best Game, Character Design, Game Design, Visual Arts, or Writing. I'd say it's probably the best game I've played in two years, maybe more.
It's got a great story (which manages to tie in well with all the other games), some of the most memorable characters I've ever seen, great music, good sound, impressive voice acting, and at least one really, really impressive one-on-one battle (versus The End, who feels like battling a real human at times). Then there is the whole camouflage mechanic which, while mostly unrealisitic, is pretty unique and interesting. And cut scenes that are actually interactive in a limited way, one that I found really appealing.
To top it off, the game is actually fun to play, which is what we all wanted anyway.
I also appreciated the fact that I could complete the game without killing any enemy soldiers and was able to use tranquilizer darts and stun grenades to defeat all the bosses. This gave me a special ranking at the end for not killing any humans (which apparently excludes bosses, since they do actually die, but that's a quibble). This is indicative of what I feel is one of MGS3's strengths: the freedom to get from point A to point B using any of a variety of methods. Despite being a completely linear game in the large sense, most players will have unique experiences because they'll do the various small tasks using different strategies.
To get back on topic...list is flawed when it doesn't include MGS3. Sorry.
I'd been hoping to see classic DooM action on the Xbox Live! service. I think it'd be especially suitable for one of the first online co-op/deathmatch games be available on what is (reportedly) the best unified online gaming service around, console or PC. Not that I'm going to play it anytime soon (I'm not buying an Xbox until it's a discontinued piece of hardware), but I was holding out hope they'd do something cool with it. Oh well.
And, yeah, DooM 3 on Xbox...hope they added something to make it interesting.
Oh man, that's rich. "Pro-nintendo troll"? You couldn't be more wrong. I've many, many more PSOne and PS2 games than I have NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games combined. If anything, I want the PSP to succeed because it's pushing some really powerful hardware into the handheld market, the kind of hardware that could bring some real competition to that market the way the PSOne brought competition to the TV-based-console market.
But these are not enticing prices, and bundles that jack the prices up higher are even less appetizing. Yes, I know all about waiting, thanks. I've done it before, and I'm doing it still.
These prices are a bucket of cold water on an otherwise hot piece of gaming news. It has nothing to do with bias.
- Minimum of $250 for system with memory stick, headphones
with remote control, battery, ac adaptor, soft case, cleaning cloth,
and a demo disc.
- First 1,000,000 buyers also get a Spider-Man 2 movie that plays on the PSP.
- Launch titles that are mostly franchises and remakes, including a whole pile of EA Sports games.
- Low-end games cost $40, with others presumably costing more. (Wal-mart's online store shows $49.92 for many games.)
That prices me right out of the market at $250, even with all that bonus crud thrown into the box. But that's not the worst of it, since the big stores, the ones most likely to have anything to sell, will be selling bundles that include two or more games and other needless crud. As of right now, EB Games has one way to buy the PSP and it's a bundle that costs $400. GameStop's got bundles that range from $380 to $480.Look, all I want is basic system with a charger, a (small) memory stick, and one game. I don't need headphones or a remote control or a soft case or a cleaning cloth or a demo disc. I don't have any desire to tote around Spider-Man 2 to show off to friends. I don't doubt that the folks who can afford the PSP will think it's the bee's knees, and I'll even envy them their new toy, but I've got better uses for my gaming cash. With the robust used GBA game market, I'm going to get a much better fun-for-dollar return sticking with my 'burning GBA.
Sorry, Sony, you lost me on this one.
I don't see how Apple could make both iBook and PowerBooks based on the G5 at the same time. The processor speed and type have traditionally separated the upper and lower end Apple hardware products, right, with the lower end product always lagging to give the upper end the premium (and margin) that Apple wants?
What could they add to a PowerBook, other than a processor speed bump, that would make it worth the premium price if the iBook has the same class of processor in it?
That's fine if they want to send traffic to Blue's News, but these are the Slashdot editors who have some responsibility to edit the submissions, especially if they're deficient. When I've seen things like "Thanks to FooSite for their story on..." I've been under the impression that the editor READ the story on that site and decided to post about it on Slashdot. Maybe not...maybe there is a give-and-take between the larger sites, like when a GameSpot story gets posted on Slashdot. Regardless of the source, however, it was TRIVIAL to provide links to the primary source and in fact I believe that the quote from Blue's News used here on Slashdot originally DID have some links in it but because of a straight copy-and-paste job they were lost.
These really should be in the story posted on Slashdot itself. No good reason to link to another site first...
Marathon Trilogy Website with the downloads of the games and the tools. Also the FAQ.
Aleph One website with the Free software client which will hopefully be compatible with all three of the released games.
I heartily recommend twm-gl for your desktop. It has all the lightness of the original twm window manager but some of the best use of OpenGL acceleration on the desktop you've ever seen.
What's really amazing is that you can eke out a boost in 3D game performance by using it. Really, one of the best, but lesser known, free software projects. (And since it's free software, I hear that a Windows and MacOS X version is in the works. Awesome!)
Give it a try.
I didn't see mention of Star Wars Arcade for the Sega Genesis 32X or Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, the Sega arcade game. The former was pretty forgettable, but I recall seeing someone playing the latter almost every time I saw it in an arcade. May not have been any good, but people were interested in it, if simply because it had a huge 50" screen and Star Wars music.
I tried to read through this, but it is awfully dense. It'll have to wait for later. But, one thing that I'd like to see clarified is this, and I believe the paper refers to it somewhat, but not in these direct terms.
Under certain situations you may make a copy of software you own. The copy is a backup copy, for use when the original fails.
Now, there are two problems here. If I go to a ROM site and download a ROM of a game I own, then I didn't make the backup copy. Is it necessary that I make the backup copy myself?
Second point is that the copy I made is for backup purposes. Even if you allow me that getting a backup copy from a ROM site is ok, then I cannot use it until my original fails. So emulation, while I still have an original working copy, appears to be prohibited.
Furthermore, it isn't clear how I am permitted to use the copy if and when the original fails. Should I use the image to create a new ROM to use on the original hardware? Or can I use it with an emulator?
Finally, suppose my original really does fail and that it is legal for me to use an emulator with the copy I made. Can I make a copy of the copy as a backup? That is, do all the rights granted to me with the original then get inherited by the backup? Or is the backup somehow a second-class copy, with limited permissions granted to me on how I use it?
This doesn't just extend to cartridges, by the way. Think about copying your old Commodore 64 games off of 5.25" floppy into D64 format. Yes, it's a backup, but can you legally use it with an emulator?
Lots of questions, and ones that I'd like to see cleared up.