Hmm. Mercenaries was pretty great, IMO, I haven't enjoyed a game that much in a long while...GTA: Wartorn Future North Korea, but with a less developed civillian sandbox, but with a lot more explosives...
Man, remember them going back to Lucasfilm Games...Ballblazer and Fractalus were jawdroppers.
Nintendo had a few oddball "2"s... I'm one of those oddball gamers who preders Legend of Zelda 2 to the original, I really dig SMB2 (it was the first game that made me think 'wow, THIS is a VIDEOGAME???', it looked that good).... and the way that Starfox 2 was never released is a serious tragedy, it really was poised to take the series in some interesting directions, N64 is just pedestrian eye-candy in comparison...
If memory serves, the 386-era was the pinnacle of difficult memory setups. I think things were a bit more stable by the time the 486s rolled in, and Wing Commander III was much easier to run than Wing Commander (assuming you had the CD-ROM player...)
I know I hightailed to console games after the realizing what an impact different PC types had on multiplayer games. I decided early on it was a treadmill race I didn't want to be on.
I'd say DS would be the ultimate platform for this. Go anywhere, double screens, touch screen, and the lack of analog control just not that important. There's already a bunch of clones and projects for this on PC, there would be a risk of being lost in the noise, and the DS represents a huge market, with a chance or breaking beyond the nostalgia crowd.
SC3 certainly lacked the flair and originality that a proper SC sequel, done by the previous core team, would have had, but I don't think it was all that bad. It kept me up til 5am in fact, and I enojoyed myself. The resource management was ok, the storyline was decent, the combat was acceptable... sometimes I wonder why people think of it as such an abomination.
Well, the difference between censoring and filtering might not be THAT clean cut if you're trying to take a completely fair stance about it.
Spammers are spammers because of their tactics, and the more they have to bend over backwards to ply their vile trade and included deceptive things to try to break through people who clearly don't want to listen to them, the easier the distinction is to make. The bulk nature of what they do is also a big signal.
And as you imply, filtering a specific message about yourself or someone you have a relaationship with is a big can of worms, and I think deserving of special attention from regulators.
Well, yeah, no kidding. Since when did the "public interest" pay AOL for anything? Unless there is a law which says AOL cannot filter its "own" servers, too bad. It is AOL's right to do anything like this it wants to.
I'm not a legal expert, but is there any "common carrier" issue here? An implication that if they start censoring to suit their own purposes, they might end up being responsible for illegal activities that might happen to use their mail servers?
I guess it's kind of thorny, because a logical extension of that would be that any server tha provides spam filtering could also then be expected to filter *everything*. But still, there's definately something kind of scary censorship wise when the mail server starts acting so partisan...
BoingBoing linked to the sorrowful tale of a guy who's a big pro-lockdown guy on the web who got screwed when his portless DVR ate all the carefully recorded Spanish lessons he had saved for his children. He would've been within his rights to do an external backup, but those rights got trampeled by the fear of casual piracy. Whoops, too bad! I mean.... !no es bueno senor!
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
Err, it's not that funny. I think for as much as they've "historically been known to work against individual rights" they've been more known to be working FOR individual rights, namely, that no one from "big government" to anyone else should dictate who they fall in love with or what kind of sex they choose to have and with whom.
Seriously, the person who complained about a guild listing itself as "GLBT-friendly" was being a total ass, and the complaint have been treated accordingly. These guys weren't looking to ban players who casually throw around term "that's so gay", just trying to politely and fairly discretely advertise their group in a coded language to other people who might feel likewise.
Samsung had a decent idea but the hardware had some relibility issues, and was a bit too thick despite that. And the phone/palm integration wsa pure crap...I would have preferred them be totally segregated functions, w/ the phone having its own phonebook, rather than the half-assed integration they tried.
So, back to my ancient(ish) Sony Clie and seperate phone. If I could code my own basic PDA functionality on the phone and have it at all integrated (w/o waiting for Java sandbox to initialize) I'd just use the phone...my PDA needs aren't huge, mostly TODOs, light memos, and datebook, but the UI makes *very* poor use of the already scarce A/V possibilities that the phone does offer.
Well, I just got it but with a bunch of games... Warioware Touched, Feel the Magic XX/XY, Mario Kart, Nintendogs, PacPix, Advanced Wars 2, Electroplankton...
Warioware probably has the most fun with it, but even it switches pretending the two screens are "supposed" to be touching, vs the two screens have space between 'em. I think only one screen being sensitive is kind of odd as well.
So, for my money, 2 screens = gimmick, touchscreen = brilliant, analog control = sadly lacking.
It's not bad, but I still like the form factor of the GBA SP better (even relative to the lite version)
I think the dual screens aren't utilized very well. Assuming DS isn't the way of the future, more of a sidestory, then I'd love to see a device with the touch screen included, 4 buttons, and an analog nub instead of a crosspad, but the dual screen dropped...
Yeah, I guess you have to credit Sony for the second analog stick, though in most other ways they lead, not follow Nintendo in terms of controllers...the original PSX dogbone was just the SNES pad w/ 2 extra shoulder buttons and extended grips, w/ the dual shock they took the N64's rumble pack and analog stick and made both a bit better.
You'd think the PSP would have room for a 2nd analog stick. It's like they're purposefully trying to keep things stripped down.
You know, you could make a decent PDA out of a DS.
True. And I asked for a DS over a PSP because of the interesting stuff going on with it...though I still think it could REALLY use an analog nub type controller ala the PSP...it's funny how the Nintendo handhelds always lag one generation behind the systems games they could otherwise play, GBA could have used SNES' 4 buttons, DS could have used a N64-ish analog stick.
When I get into a game, I'll play it for maybe 8 hours a day every day for a week or whatever it takes to finish it.
Haven't gone on a homocidal rampage yet.
Seriously, what's obsessive for someone who enjoys games might not apply to other pursuits...games often encourage certain time commitments regardless of content.
I think people have mixed feelings about sitting through the credits, unless there's reason to suspect some "easter-eggy" type stuff or outtakes there.
Maybe that's the way it was once upon a time, but now...
a better bet would be to publish the trailer time and the movie start time. I think people still actually really dig on trailers, they're nice, condensed "best of" teasers.
Yeah, take a look at these (RealPlayer, bleh) videos... this stuff was being done in 1975, and what EyeToy might do better...showing the whole image not a shadow, being a little smoother, not needing a blank background...adds that much more to the difficulty of what's being done.
Also, lets not forget that to be inovative in way such as the EyeToy, you need processing power. I bet the EyeToy people can do amazing things with the PS3 that the Revolution just won't handle. How EyeToy manages what it does on the PS2 is amazing to me.
It might not be as amazing as you think. I only have the original EyeToy game set, but it seems like it's almost all "sihlouette" based...they show you your whole body, but it's not even, say, recognizing your head from your hands from legs for the most part... and Myron Krueger was doing that like 30 years ago.
I do admit there are somethings, especially like world-modeling and using aspects of artifical life to populate a universe, that might be more feasible with sheer raw processing power. (In fact I resent that with the current generation of GTA games, even the ports are based around some of PS2's limitations, the way cars at an intersection will disappear when you do a 360)
Also, I think Eye Toy was *exactly* the sort of thing Nintendo should have been doing, much cooler than the drums, microphone, or even GBA-as-miniscreen that GC had this time around. The sheer installed base of PS2 attracts some interesting projects...Katamari being the most blatant example (in fact I think its very earliest prototyping was on GC), but stuff like Magic Pengel and what not as well.
Agreed on all counts..I own all 3 as well and have about the same sentiment. The GC is the system that travels, both for the quality and quantity of its multiplayer games, and for its lovely compact design. Only the MacMini out shines it in the "things I wish I could use as a PC case" department. Sony has nice compact remakes (psone and pstwo) but Nitendo got it so right from the get go...
Actually the thumbpad on the GC congtroller is a bit tough to use...I think it's exactly the same size as the GBA SP's, but because of the way you're holding the controller, it's tough to use. It always takes me and my friends a bit to get into Puzzle Collection games like Dr. Mario and Panel de Pon...
Actually there hasn't been a decent mutiplayer home "tank game" since BattleTanx Global Assault (WDL: Thundertanks on PS2 stunk for some reason) "Alien Front Online" for DC came close, but was only online multiplayer.
Anyway, I know the late-90s Battlezones were doing some other stuff, but still...I miss Tank games, like Tokyo Wars and what not...
I'm bummed that SimTunes, a game that depends on realtime synching of sounds, doesn't work well under the compatability mode, it seems like sounds are played whenever the system gets around to it rather than when requested.
I think you're more or less right. I found that out when we were forced to rent LotR on VHS; in full motion, I wouldn't have noticed the difference on the 36" TV I had then.
Pausing was a different matter of course, and it's not just random access to the movie, but making "bonus features" more accesible. That's what DVDs offered, with no similar upgrade for the nextgen, except what the studios decide to force. It's an uphill battle.
I'm sure an A/B test could tell the difference between DVD and VHS (if not next gen and DVD), or even if you were just looking for the sake of it, but the raw truth is, it *just doesn't matter that much*. It's less prissy to want good image quality than, say, invest in highend DVD-audio, but I think a lot of people just like a nice big picture over being able to see the pixels.
I'll start worrying about highdef when it's cheap and easy to do so. 'Til then, I'll enjoy the giant image from my non-HD video projector and not sweat that I can't make out the blades of grass beneath the Patriots' feet on NFL Sundays.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. Mercenaries was pretty great, IMO, I haven't enjoyed a game that much in a long while...GTA: Wartorn Future North Korea, but with a less developed civillian sandbox, but with a lot more explosives...
Man, remember them going back to Lucasfilm Games...Ballblazer and Fractalus were jawdroppers.
The Mushroom Kingdom is the best site I've seen for the Marioverse... they have a very good Doki Doki and SMB2 comparison.
Nintendo had a few oddball "2"s... I'm one of those oddball gamers who preders Legend of Zelda 2 to the original, I really dig SMB2 (it was the first game that made me think 'wow, THIS is a VIDEOGAME???', it looked that good).... and the way that Starfox 2 was never released is a serious tragedy, it really was poised to take the series in some interesting directions, N64 is just pedestrian eye-candy in comparison...
If memory serves, the 386-era was the pinnacle of difficult memory setups. I think things were a bit more stable by the time the 486s rolled in, and Wing Commander III was much easier to run than Wing Commander (assuming you had the CD-ROM player...)
I know I hightailed to console games after the realizing what an impact different PC types had on multiplayer games. I decided early on it was a treadmill race I didn't want to be on.
I'd say DS would be the ultimate platform for this. Go anywhere, double screens, touch screen, and the lack of analog control just not that important. There's already a bunch of clones and projects for this on PC, there would be a risk of being lost in the noise, and the DS represents a huge market, with a chance or breaking beyond the nostalgia crowd.
SC3 certainly lacked the flair and originality that a proper SC sequel, done by the previous core team, would have had, but I don't think it was all that bad. It kept me up til 5am in fact, and I enojoyed myself. The resource management was ok, the storyline was decent, the combat was acceptable... sometimes I wonder why people think of it as such an abomination.
Well, the difference between censoring and filtering might not be THAT clean cut if you're trying to take a completely fair stance about it.
Spammers are spammers because of their tactics, and the more they have to bend over backwards to ply their vile trade and included deceptive things to try to break through people who clearly don't want to listen to them, the easier the distinction is to make. The bulk nature of what they do is also a big signal.
And as you imply, filtering a specific message about yourself or someone you have a relaationship with is a big can of worms, and I think deserving of special attention from regulators.
Well, yeah, no kidding. Since when did the "public interest" pay AOL for anything? Unless there is a law which says AOL cannot filter its "own" servers, too bad. It is AOL's right to do anything like this it wants to.
I'm not a legal expert, but is there any "common carrier" issue here? An implication that if they start censoring to suit their own purposes, they might end up being responsible for illegal activities that might happen to use their mail servers?
I guess it's kind of thorny, because a logical extension of that would be that any server tha provides spam filtering could also then be expected to filter *everything*. But still, there's definately something kind of scary censorship wise when the mail server starts acting so partisan...
BoingBoing linked to the sorrowful tale of a guy who's a big pro-lockdown guy on the web who got screwed when his portless DVR ate all the carefully recorded Spanish lessons he had saved for his children. He would've been within his rights to do an external backup, but those rights got trampeled by the fear of casual piracy. Whoops, too bad! I mean.... !no es bueno senor!
Now the GLBT folks are mad because they created their own private property, and the "big government" in the game said NO. This is even funnier now because the group that has historically been known to work against individual rights is now being hampered by their own policies.
Err, it's not that funny. I think for as much as they've "historically been known to work against individual rights" they've been more known to be working FOR individual rights, namely, that no one from "big government" to anyone else should dictate who they fall in love with or what kind of sex they choose to have and with whom.
Seriously, the person who complained about a guild listing itself as "GLBT-friendly" was being a total ass, and the complaint have been treated accordingly. These guys weren't looking to ban players who casually throw around term "that's so gay", just trying to politely and fairly discretely advertise their group in a coded language to other people who might feel likewise.
My beef w/ the treo is it's not clamshell.
I don't NEED a frickin' thumboard.
Samsung had a decent idea but the hardware had some relibility issues, and was a bit too thick despite that. And the phone/palm integration wsa pure crap...I would have preferred them be totally segregated functions, w/ the phone having its own phonebook, rather than the half-assed integration they tried.
So, back to my ancient(ish) Sony Clie and seperate phone. If I could code my own basic PDA functionality on the phone and have it at all integrated (w/o waiting for Java sandbox to initialize) I'd just use the phone...my PDA needs aren't huge, mostly TODOs, light memos, and datebook, but the UI makes *very* poor use of the already scarce A/V possibilities that the phone does offer.
with this administration, you'd be blind!
</political-jab>
Well, I just got it but with a bunch of games...
Warioware Touched, Feel the Magic XX/XY, Mario Kart, Nintendogs, PacPix, Advanced Wars 2, Electroplankton...
Warioware probably has the most fun with it, but even it switches pretending the two screens are "supposed" to be touching, vs the two screens have space between 'em. I think only one screen being sensitive is kind of odd as well.
So, for my money, 2 screens = gimmick, touchscreen = brilliant, analog control = sadly lacking.
I just got a DS as a requested birthday present.
It's not bad, but I still like the form factor of the GBA SP better (even relative to the lite version)
I think the dual screens aren't utilized very well. Assuming DS isn't the way of the future, more of a sidestory, then I'd love to see a device with the touch screen included, 4 buttons, and an analog nub instead of a crosspad, but the dual screen dropped...
Yeah, I guess you have to credit Sony for the second analog stick, though in most other ways they lead, not follow Nintendo in terms of controllers...the original PSX dogbone was just the SNES pad w/ 2 extra shoulder buttons and extended grips, w/ the dual shock they took the N64's rumble pack and analog stick and made both a bit better.
You'd think the PSP would have room for a 2nd analog stick. It's like they're purposefully trying to keep things stripped down.
You know, you could make a decent PDA out of a DS.
Well it doesn have to be a full N64 stick, but I think some kind of nub should fit...
True. And I asked for a DS over a PSP because of the interesting stuff going on with it...though I still think it could REALLY use an analog nub type controller ala the PSP...it's funny how the Nintendo handhelds always lag one generation behind the systems games they could otherwise play, GBA could have used SNES' 4 buttons, DS could have used a N64-ish analog stick.
I just got a DS for my birthday.
It seems like this might be one of those cases where havinly one of the 2 screens being touch sensitive might be a serious pain in the butt.
I wonder what "obsessively?" means in this case.
When I get into a game, I'll play it for maybe 8 hours a day every day for a week or whatever it takes to finish it.
Haven't gone on a homocidal rampage yet.
Seriously, what's obsessive for someone who enjoys games might not apply to other pursuits...games often encourage certain time commitments regardless of content.
Trailers *after* a movie?
I think people have mixed feelings about sitting through the credits, unless there's reason to suspect some "easter-eggy" type stuff or outtakes there.
Maybe that's the way it was once upon a time, but now...
a better bet would be to publish the trailer time and the movie start time. I think people still actually really dig on trailers, they're nice, condensed "best of" teasers.
Yeah, take a look at these (RealPlayer, bleh) videos... this stuff was being done in 1975, and what EyeToy might do better...showing the whole image not a shadow, being a little smoother, not needing a blank background...adds that much more to the difficulty of what's being done.
Also, lets not forget that to be inovative in way such as the EyeToy, you need processing power. I bet the EyeToy people can do amazing things with the PS3 that the Revolution just won't handle. How EyeToy manages what it does on the PS2 is amazing to me.
It might not be as amazing as you think. I only have the original EyeToy game set, but it seems like it's almost all "sihlouette" based...they show you your whole body, but it's not even, say, recognizing your head from your hands from legs for the most part... and Myron Krueger was doing that like 30 years ago.
I do admit there are somethings, especially like world-modeling and using aspects of artifical life to populate a universe, that might be more feasible with sheer raw processing power. (In fact I resent that with the current generation of GTA games, even the ports are based around some of PS2's limitations, the way cars at an intersection will disappear when you do a 360)
Also, I think Eye Toy was *exactly* the sort of thing Nintendo should have been doing, much cooler than the drums, microphone, or even GBA-as-miniscreen that GC had this time around. The sheer installed base of PS2 attracts some interesting projects...Katamari being the most blatant example (in fact I think its very earliest prototyping was on GC), but stuff like Magic Pengel and what not as well.
Agreed on all counts..I own all 3 as well and have about the same sentiment. The GC is the system that travels, both for the quality and quantity of its multiplayer games, and for its lovely compact design. Only the MacMini out shines it in the "things I wish I could use as a PC case" department. Sony has nice compact remakes (psone and pstwo) but Nitendo got it so right from the get go...
Actually the thumbpad on the GC congtroller is a bit tough to use...I think it's exactly the same size as the GBA SP's, but because of the way you're holding the controller, it's tough to use. It always takes me and my friends a bit to get into Puzzle Collection games like Dr. Mario and Panel de Pon...
What, the old Wireframe game?
Great 2600 port of that.
Actually there hasn't been a decent mutiplayer home "tank game" since BattleTanx Global Assault (WDL: Thundertanks on PS2 stunk for some reason) "Alien Front Online" for DC came close, but was only online multiplayer.
Anyway, I know the late-90s Battlezones were doing some other stuff, but still...I miss Tank games, like Tokyo Wars and what not...
I'm bummed that SimTunes, a game that depends on realtime synching of sounds, doesn't work well under the compatability mode, it seems like sounds are played whenever the system gets around to it rather than when requested.
I think you're more or less right. I found that out when we were forced to rent LotR on VHS; in full motion, I wouldn't have noticed the difference on the 36" TV I had then.
Pausing was a different matter of course, and it's not just random access to the movie, but making "bonus features" more accesible. That's what DVDs offered, with no similar upgrade for the nextgen, except what the studios decide to force. It's an uphill battle.
I'm sure an A/B test could tell the difference between DVD and VHS (if not next gen and DVD), or even if you were just looking for the sake of it, but the raw truth is, it *just doesn't matter that much*. It's less prissy to want good image quality than, say, invest in highend DVD-audio, but I think a lot of people just like a nice big picture over being able to see the pixels.
I'll start worrying about highdef when it's cheap and easy to do so. 'Til then, I'll enjoy the giant image from my non-HD video projector and not sweat that I can't make out the blades of grass beneath the Patriots' feet on NFL Sundays.