When I lived in Japan, I had a cell phone I got e-mail on. I loved being so connected, but if I could help it I would use my computer to type (in Japanese or English); I ended up setting up Gmail to use my phone address as my reply to address, so I could send messages from my computer when I was near it and get the replies back to my phone (plus it saved me one yen;)).
The media personification of John Romero is not who John Romero is.
John Romero, like many washed-up has beens, likes to refer to John Romero in the third person.
Seriously, for a guy that's a laughingstock in the video game industry, he sure does still have an ego. Come on man, when are you making me your bitch?:P
Even if we wipe the slate clean, and a new American company comes out with a system in Japan, and it had some interesting games for that market, the mere fact that it's American causes some contempt among the Japanese.
That must be why the Sony MP3 player is trouncing Apple's iPod in Japan.
Wait a second, no it's not. I'm really sick of armchair cultural studies. The entire time I lived in Japan, people picked items based on their percieved quality and/or hipness. I was in Japan for the Xbox360 launch - there was no reaction in Den Den Town. The thing is considered un-hip and bulky. Not because it's American, but because it sucks. The iPod is stylish. The Xbox360 is a lame copy of Apple style. Any Japanese with enough disposable income to pick them up (and I know, my girlfriend bought a nano and helped me buy a couple of DS Lites) would probably pick up on that and base some of their purchasing desicion around it. That's based on all the 20-somethings I knew.
It wasn't that it wasn't American (do you think 10 year old kids care if the XBOX is American? They don't - they just know their favorite series is on the Nintendo DS or that all their friends have one).
That doesn't mean all American products are treated the same way. Dells tend to sell, as well as the iPod and Apple's computers. Sony's MP3 player, on the other hand, is doing nearly as badly there as it is here. American movies, American TV shows, American books are all popular. But any time some half-baked American product fails to make a splash in Japan, it's because the Japanese have "contempt" (read: racism) towards it.
Fat chance, Nintendo's not planning on getting bought out by anyone, especially an American company. Nintendo's not some 10 year old Internet start up. Nintendo's old and the ghost of Yamauchi would haunt anyone who tried anything so stupid.
The games which come out for the 360 will be pretty much the same as those for the PS3, they have been for the xbox and ps2.
I balked at the price of the PS3 and am considering getting an Xbox360 sooner or later instead of it (I'm getting the Wii for sure). But I have a PS2 and this is blatantly false.
Games that come to mind immediately (the stuff I bought a PS2 for):
Katamari Damashii / We Love Katamari
Disgaea / Phantom Brave / Makai Kingdom / Disgaea 2 / La Pucelle
Ico / Wanda and the Colassous
Vib Ribbon
Metal Gear Solid Trilogy
Resident Evil 4 (also on the GC, but not on the Xbox)
Final Fantasy series (X and XII)
Dragon Quest 8
Kingdom Hearts I/II
Suikoden
Front Mission
And that's what I can just think off of the top of my head. In fact, that list almost makes me think that once they've got a few revisions on the PS3 hardware and the price comes back to down to reality I might actually get one.
The DS Lite is an amazing little machine. It combines the sexiness of Apples machines along with the sturdiness of Nintendo's.
I have a white I bought here in Japan (it matches my cell phone, iBook, and iPod), but the Navy Blue seems to be far and away the most popular color. However, I keep the white one in a case and while it does get a little smudgy, it hasn't got really dirty by any stretch of the imagination. And while it sees far more physical use than my iPod (which is in a pretty sturdy case) or my iBook (which is not moved very often and hooked up to an external keyboard and mouse) it is scratch free.
Compared to the phat DS it's amazing (I had one of those before selling it on Yahoo Japan's auction site shortly before the Lite came out) and while the former felt like a hand abortion, this one is light and absouletely a blast to use.
I have no doubt that at least Navy Blue is coming out in the U.S.; it's far too popular not to. The only issue is that when the Lite launched here, the two blue models were delayed by a week or two, because of manufacturing errors, so they launched later than the white machine.
Moreover, the brighter screens are great. Games that I only played on the phat DS, like Kirby, Jump Superstars, and Dragonquest Slime look really vibrant on the new screen(s).
Anyone looking to get one should defintely invest in a semi-decent case and screen protectors (especially for the bottom touch screen).
It's a good thing Yoshida's at the helm. The Final Fantasy games since 6 have been terrible and while Yoshida's made some bold desicions, his work in FFT is a throwback to older games and he seems to bring a lot of that into FF12 (from what I've played here in Japan).
Feom what I read, this guy seems to regard creativity as this terrible call of duty. No kidding his games are going to suck in that case. From what I've experienced in my own life, and what I've read, creativity isn't simply "forced." It's a combination of vision and and practice.
Take for example, what I know of Shigeru Miyamoto. He gets his best games ideas from life - Nintendogs from the purchase of a new pet, Pikmin from gardening, Zelda from his childhood adventures in Japan's natural places. Sure, there are times when Miyamoto needs a good idea, I'm sure, but having a lifetime of experience behind you, in both life and gaming, allows him to come up with things.
But often the best creativity comes from inspiration, sometimes from hardship. Star Wars was made on a low budget. Katamari Damashii was made by Namco employees who were thought to be doing substandard work on more convential projects.
More over, for every creative game, there are plenty that suck. Even from Miyamoto and Nintendo, there are have been plenty of half baked ideas (Virtual Boy?). A lot of it takes innovating, throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks.
My advice is to go live life and let inspiration find you.
Yeah it does. My friend actually bought a Navy Blue with Mario 3 for the GBA.
Unlike the original, the GBA games stick out about half an inch, so when you're not playing them its better to have the GBA port covered (the Lite comes with a cover, with the original, Nintendo assumed you'd always have a GBA cart in there).
I live outside of Osaka and I got my DS Lite a few weeks after launch (by stumbiling across a late shipment at Tsutaya). I got mine on a Friday night at 10 p.m. or so and there was a shelf full of Lites and old DSes. By the next afternoon there was 1 old-model, silver left.
The machine is a marvel. It's sexy like an Apple machine (it matches my iBook and iPod) but far more durable. It's like Apple aesthetics combined with Nintendo's "make-sure-it-takes-a-beating" engineering (indeed, their machines have been amazingly resilient and the DS Lite is no exception.
The prices of Lites are coming down (you can get a used one for the same price as a new one these days) but they are still somewhat hard to find, especially in places like Akihabara (I was there on vacation a few weeks ago and every store said they were sold out) and Den-Den Town in Osaka. I live out in the boonies (compared to Osaka proper, anyway), so I was able to snag one.
The games are great - some great Japan only titles like Dragon Quest Slime 2 and Jump and stuff like Animal Crossing. People here love this machine. I am hoping the Revolution will have the same kind of success.
Where in Japan do you live? Go hang out in the big cities in Kinki, like Kobe or Kyoto, or Osaka. There's plenty of graffiti. It's not as wide spread as in say London or American cities, but its there (and some of it is quite good).
Jihad is a religious struggle. The main jihad is within a Muslim, to do the right thing, both spirtually and through good works. There's one hadith says that a young man came to the Prophet and asked to join the Muslim armies and join the jihad. The Prophet told him to go take care of his mother, as that was the greater jihad.
Jihad doesn't mean killing and your definition is wrong. JIhad is a struggle, and no matter how much Faux News pours it down your throat, it won't make it true. Shame on you and shame on the mods who modded you up.
The level of animosity in the comments modded up is astounding (though part of me shouldn't be surprised by the number of smug know it alls on/.). The cartoons were terribly offensive, both because they depicted the Prophet and because they depicted him as a terrorist.
Raised in the U.S., I think that Muslim countries were well within their rights to boycott Danish goods. They were well within their rights to protest. I think the violent protests went way too far, but (and for once I find my self in a vague uneasy agreement with the Bush admin); someone is using these cartoons for their own gain; more likely than not the Syrian and Iranian governments.
But you know it all Slashdotters are ready to jump all over all Muslims, or even all reigions, because a few uneducated people in third world countries are angry. I don't see why they would do more than protest (actually I do, but I think it's a stupid reason to protest when America's killing Iraqis left and right and stepping up the Iran rhetoric). But the Danish paper should have exercised more restraint (or not - I think the boycotts were what they deserved, I'm not sure if that's what they wanted). The cartoons don't offend me (or the idea of them, I toyed with the idea of googiling for them, but as a sunni, I don't care to look), but the callousness of the paper, of the Danish government, and of people like those commenting on Slashdot, really sicken me.
Pokemon's not dead in Japan. I'm here and Pikachu & Co. are well on their way to being the next iconic Japanese character (along with Doreamon, Totoro, and others). As I understand it, even the latest gen "main series" Pokemon titles did respectable numbers in the U.S., and I'm sure no matter how good or bad a DS Pokemon will be, it will sell a bajillion copies in Japan and the U.S.
Plus you forget the Legend of Zelda, which is at least as big hyped as any Mario game. I'm sure Twilight Princess is going to sell a bucket load of copies. Each Zelda is at least as different as each Mario game you cite.
Furthermore, Animal Crossing is a terrible example: the game, is at its core, the same game as it was when it originally came out for the Nintendo 54. Counting the Cube version(s) (there was at least one more GC game for Japan, that introduced SD card support) and the DS game, they've made a ton of money on what amounts to one game.
As another poster mentioned, Metroid too is a long lasting Nintendo franchinse. I can't speak for everyone, but before the GBA's Zero Mission title came out, emotions were at fever pitch on some forums I visit.
Are you a troll or just ignorant (I bet the former)? Global warming does have the word warm in it, but the idea is not that everywhere is going to get hotter; weather is going to get weird. That kind of weather is not normal in that part of India - it adds to the picture of the global climate in crisis, not detracts from it.
I "switched" in August of '05 and one of the things I've missed in Japan is watching Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. I thought that I would be able to watch the clips on their respective sites using my iBook.
Sadly no. WMP on Mac is a joke. It crashes or fails constantly. It simply did not work. So I stumbled across Flip4Mac before MS started distrbuting it and I thought my problems were all solved. Things seemed to begin loading...
But nothing ever plays. Not on ComedyCentral, not on Cartoon Network. Am I doing something wrong or, as I surmise, does it simply not work with streaming windows media files (and, thus since I can use VLC and mplayer to player any other kind of file) completely useless?
No, maybe I'm just a tired old crank, but in the old days the alternative was a game company would do right by its customer.
For example, way back when Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out, it caused a glitch on some revisions of the SNES. I only had this happen once or twice, but I called Capcom up. They explained the issue without and prodding, and Instead of replacing the game, they sent a fresh new SNES, with an envelope to send my original back.
After getting mine, Capcom was nice enough to send an (unannounced) set of Street Fighter coins, with the characters on each. The possibility of having a big recall keeps console manufacturers honest (they do have an easier time with a standard hardware).
Nintendo's very stand up about replacing carts and bad hardware too. I've called them about N64 controllers, broken Gameboys, and if anything has kept me a Nintendo fanboy, even during the drought of games during the N64, its that Nintendo almost always tends to put the customer first. Not like Sony or MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Trying to be funny without actually... being funny. You know...
:)
I know, like Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night!
Just kidding, I liked Sports Night
When I lived in Japan, I had a cell phone I got e-mail on. I loved being so connected, but if I could help it I would use my computer to type (in Japanese or English); I ended up setting up Gmail to use my phone address as my reply to address, so I could send messages from my computer when I was near it and get the replies back to my phone (plus it saved me one yen ;)).
WRONG!
I think we all know how the internet really works: tubes!
The media personification of John Romero is not who John Romero is.
:P
John Romero, like many washed-up has beens, likes to refer to John Romero in the third person.
Seriously, for a guy that's a laughingstock in the video game industry, he sure does still have an ego. Come on man, when are you making me your bitch?
Even if we wipe the slate clean, and a new American company comes out with a system in Japan, and it had some interesting games for that market, the mere fact that it's American causes some contempt among the Japanese.
That must be why the Sony MP3 player is trouncing Apple's iPod in Japan.
Wait a second, no it's not. I'm really sick of armchair cultural studies. The entire time I lived in Japan, people picked items based on their percieved quality and/or hipness. I was in Japan for the Xbox360 launch - there was no reaction in Den Den Town. The thing is considered un-hip and bulky. Not because it's American, but because it sucks. The iPod is stylish. The Xbox360 is a lame copy of Apple style. Any Japanese with enough disposable income to pick them up (and I know, my girlfriend bought a nano and helped me buy a couple of DS Lites) would probably pick up on that and base some of their purchasing desicion around it. That's based on all the 20-somethings I knew.
It wasn't that it wasn't American (do you think 10 year old kids care if the XBOX is American? They don't - they just know their favorite series is on the Nintendo DS or that all their friends have one).
That doesn't mean all American products are treated the same way. Dells tend to sell, as well as the iPod and Apple's computers. Sony's MP3 player, on the other hand, is doing nearly as badly there as it is here. American movies, American TV shows, American books are all popular. But any time some half-baked American product fails to make a splash in Japan, it's because the Japanese have "contempt" (read: racism) towards it.
nor can everyone be Crichton.
God I hope not.
360 looks pretty cool, we know that, too.
Not if you're MS and not if the division is losing cash hand over fist.
Though if Sony is going to screw up as badly as it looks, the 360 might be able to pull of a coup, despite MS's own (now minor looking) blunders.
...get Sony out of the picture, buy Nintendo.
Fat chance, Nintendo's not planning on getting bought out by anyone, especially an American company. Nintendo's not some 10 year old Internet start up. Nintendo's old and the ghost of Yamauchi would haunt anyone who tried anything so stupid.
I balked at the price of the PS3 and am considering getting an Xbox360 sooner or later instead of it (I'm getting the Wii for sure). But I have a PS2 and this is blatantly false.
Games that come to mind immediately (the stuff I bought a PS2 for):
Katamari Damashii / We Love Katamari
Disgaea / Phantom Brave / Makai Kingdom / Disgaea 2 / La Pucelle
Ico / Wanda and the Colassous
Vib Ribbon
Metal Gear Solid Trilogy
Resident Evil 4 (also on the GC, but not on the Xbox)
Final Fantasy series (X and XII)
Dragon Quest 8
Kingdom Hearts I/II
Suikoden
Front Mission
And that's what I can just think off of the top of my head. In fact, that list almost makes me think that once they've got a few revisions on the PS3 hardware and the price comes back to down to reality I might actually get one.
The DS Lite is an amazing little machine. It combines the sexiness of Apples machines along with the sturdiness of Nintendo's.
I have a white I bought here in Japan (it matches my cell phone, iBook, and iPod), but the Navy Blue seems to be far and away the most popular color. However, I keep the white one in a case and while it does get a little smudgy, it hasn't got really dirty by any stretch of the imagination. And while it sees far more physical use than my iPod (which is in a pretty sturdy case) or my iBook (which is not moved very often and hooked up to an external keyboard and mouse) it is scratch free.
Compared to the phat DS it's amazing (I had one of those before selling it on Yahoo Japan's auction site shortly before the Lite came out) and while the former felt like a hand abortion, this one is light and absouletely a blast to use.
I have no doubt that at least Navy Blue is coming out in the U.S.; it's far too popular not to. The only issue is that when the Lite launched here, the two blue models were delayed by a week or two, because of manufacturing errors, so they launched later than the white machine.
Moreover, the brighter screens are great. Games that I only played on the phat DS, like Kirby, Jump Superstars, and Dragonquest Slime look really vibrant on the new screen(s).
Anyone looking to get one should defintely invest in a semi-decent case and screen protectors (especially for the bottom touch screen).
It's a good thing Yoshida's at the helm. The Final Fantasy games since 6 have been terrible and while Yoshida's made some bold desicions, his work in FFT is a throwback to older games and he seems to bring a lot of that into FF12 (from what I've played here in Japan).
Feom what I read, this guy seems to regard creativity as this terrible call of duty. No kidding his games are going to suck in that case. From what I've experienced in my own life, and what I've read, creativity isn't simply "forced." It's a combination of vision and and practice.
Take for example, what I know of Shigeru Miyamoto. He gets his best games ideas from life - Nintendogs from the purchase of a new pet, Pikmin from gardening, Zelda from his childhood adventures in Japan's natural places. Sure, there are times when Miyamoto needs a good idea, I'm sure, but having a lifetime of experience behind you, in both life and gaming, allows him to come up with things.
But often the best creativity comes from inspiration, sometimes from hardship. Star Wars was made on a low budget. Katamari Damashii was made by Namco employees who were thought to be doing substandard work on more convential projects.
More over, for every creative game, there are plenty that suck. Even from Miyamoto and Nintendo, there are have been plenty of half baked ideas (Virtual Boy?). A lot of it takes innovating, throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks.
My advice is to go live life and let inspiration find you.
Yeah it does. My friend actually bought a Navy Blue with Mario 3 for the GBA.
Unlike the original, the GBA games stick out about half an inch, so when you're not playing them its better to have the GBA port covered (the Lite comes with a cover, with the original, Nintendo assumed you'd always have a GBA cart in there).
I don't remember Windows being on my last laptop purchase.
I live outside of Osaka and I got my DS Lite a few weeks after launch (by stumbiling across a late shipment at Tsutaya). I got mine on a Friday night at 10 p.m. or so and there was a shelf full of Lites and old DSes. By the next afternoon there was 1 old-model, silver left.
The machine is a marvel. It's sexy like an Apple machine (it matches my iBook and iPod) but far more durable. It's like Apple aesthetics combined with Nintendo's "make-sure-it-takes-a-beating" engineering (indeed, their machines have been amazingly resilient and the DS Lite is no exception.
The prices of Lites are coming down (you can get a used one for the same price as a new one these days) but they are still somewhat hard to find, especially in places like Akihabara (I was there on vacation a few weeks ago and every store said they were sold out) and Den-Den Town in Osaka. I live out in the boonies (compared to Osaka proper, anyway), so I was able to snag one.
The games are great - some great Japan only titles like Dragon Quest Slime 2 and Jump and stuff like Animal Crossing. People here love this machine. I am hoping the Revolution will have the same kind of success.
And they wonder why they're alienating their fans and making indie movies more popular.
What you're saying is that...indie movies are the last bastions of heterosexuality?
I think my head just exploded.
next to no graffiti
Where in Japan do you live? Go hang out in the big cities in Kinki, like Kobe or Kyoto, or Osaka. There's plenty of graffiti. It's not as wide spread as in say London or American cities, but its there (and some of it is quite good).
Put away the Bill O'Reiley book of big words.
Jihad is a religious struggle. The main jihad is within a Muslim, to do the right thing, both spirtually and through good works. There's one hadith says that a young man came to the Prophet and asked to join the Muslim armies and join the jihad. The Prophet told him to go take care of his mother, as that was the greater jihad.
Jihad doesn't mean killing and your definition is wrong. JIhad is a struggle, and no matter how much Faux News pours it down your throat, it won't make it true. Shame on you and shame on the mods who modded you up.
The level of animosity in the comments modded up is astounding (though part of me shouldn't be surprised by the number of smug know it alls on /.). The cartoons were terribly offensive, both because they depicted the Prophet and because they depicted him as a terrorist.
Raised in the U.S., I think that Muslim countries were well within their rights to boycott Danish goods. They were well within their rights to protest. I think the violent protests went way too far, but (and for once I find my self in a vague uneasy agreement with the Bush admin); someone is using these cartoons for their own gain; more likely than not the Syrian and Iranian governments.
But you know it all Slashdotters are ready to jump all over all Muslims, or even all reigions, because a few uneducated people in third world countries are angry. I don't see why they would do more than protest (actually I do, but I think it's a stupid reason to protest when America's killing Iraqis left and right and stepping up the Iran rhetoric). But the Danish paper should have exercised more restraint (or not - I think the boycotts were what they deserved, I'm not sure if that's what they wanted). The cartoons don't offend me (or the idea of them, I toyed with the idea of googiling for them, but as a sunni, I don't care to look), but the callousness of the paper, of the Danish government, and of people like those commenting on Slashdot, really sicken me.
Pokemon's not dead in Japan. I'm here and Pikachu & Co. are well on their way to being the next iconic Japanese character (along with Doreamon, Totoro, and others). As I understand it, even the latest gen "main series" Pokemon titles did respectable numbers in the U.S., and I'm sure no matter how good or bad a DS Pokemon will be, it will sell a bajillion copies in Japan and the U.S.
Plus you forget the Legend of Zelda, which is at least as big hyped as any Mario game. I'm sure Twilight Princess is going to sell a bucket load of copies. Each Zelda is at least as different as each Mario game you cite.
Furthermore, Animal Crossing is a terrible example: the game, is at its core, the same game as it was when it originally came out for the Nintendo 54. Counting the Cube version(s) (there was at least one more GC game for Japan, that introduced SD card support) and the DS game, they've made a ton of money on what amounts to one game.
As another poster mentioned, Metroid too is a long lasting Nintendo franchinse. I can't speak for everyone, but before the GBA's Zero Mission title came out, emotions were at fever pitch on some forums I visit.
Are you a troll or just ignorant (I bet the former)? Global warming does have the word warm in it, but the idea is not that everywhere is going to get hotter; weather is going to get weird. That kind of weather is not normal in that part of India - it adds to the picture of the global climate in crisis, not detracts from it.
nifty as it is, is last year's code and can't handle the latest 'n greatest WMP 10 codes from MS
If Comedycentral.com and cartoonnetwork.com are any indication, your friend is quite right.
I "switched" in August of '05 and one of the things I've missed in Japan is watching Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. I thought that I would be able to watch the clips on their respective sites using my iBook.
Sadly no. WMP on Mac is a joke. It crashes or fails constantly. It simply did not work. So I stumbled across Flip4Mac before MS started distrbuting it and I thought my problems were all solved. Things seemed to begin loading...
But nothing ever plays. Not on ComedyCentral, not on Cartoon Network. Am I doing something wrong or, as I surmise, does it simply not work with streaming windows media files (and, thus since I can use VLC and mplayer to player any other kind of file) completely useless?
No, maybe I'm just a tired old crank, but in the old days the alternative was a game company would do right by its customer.
For example, way back when Super Street Fighter II Turbo came out, it caused a glitch on some revisions of the SNES. I only had this happen once or twice, but I called Capcom up. They explained the issue without and prodding, and Instead of replacing the game, they sent a fresh new SNES, with an envelope to send my original back.
After getting mine, Capcom was nice enough to send an (unannounced) set of Street Fighter coins, with the characters on each. The possibility of having a big recall keeps console manufacturers honest (they do have an easier time with a standard hardware).
Nintendo's very stand up about replacing carts and bad hardware too. I've called them about N64 controllers, broken Gameboys, and if anything has kept me a Nintendo fanboy, even during the drought of games during the N64, its that Nintendo almost always tends to put the customer first. Not like Sony or MS.
I should clarify, that I got mine for approx. $125, the shortages started before New Year's.