Unfortunately it looks like they took 'em offline, but the Clone Wars cartoons were terrific...the fanboys really took much better care of the franchise than Lucas. My only gripe was that while "jousters on speederbike" were corny but excusable as a new and interesting fighting technique, the fact that the good guys had their own legion of jousters on speederbike pushed it into the just plain silly.
I'm amazed Lucas let go of his iron grip enough to get those made. I hope they end up on DVD, not into the old memory hole...
Also, the "classic 3" felt BIG, like there was so much more going on behind the scenes. Now it's the incredible shrinking universe where every major character has a long history entwined with every other major character.
Lucas seems to think just because has the FX to show more of the Star Wars galaxy, he should try to show it all.
I have a lot of fun with that game, actually. The setup is a little more annoying than it needs to be, but overall it's an excellent fastpaced game, really kinetic and with great framerate, especially when compared to Unreal. I find the controller quite workable, but then again, I've never gotten into mouselook.
What other market segment does Nintendo have to fall back on? Do you think they could make massive losses year after year propped up by something else?
I'm not saying that they are, but they probably could take a wash in the *home* console market for a while riding on their domination of the *handheld* consoles.
There's a ton of other factors to. That's supposed to be "too" doesn't anyone know how to spell anymore?
I don't know, doesn't anyone know how to adequately indicate quoted text anymore?
Shut the hell up. Yes, I know how to spell. No, in a forum like Slashdot I don't always take the time to proofread to catch typos like that.
Sometimes I'm prone to other typos as well, like swapping m's and b's. It's a touch of a syndrome called synthenesia. So bite me. (Or, I guess in my case, 'mite be'.)
Yeah, trying to be more adult is a common behavior and it happens all thorughout childhood...young kids love Barnie and Mr. Rogers, but then it becomes really cool to hate both of them. And Nintendo gets it bad, with some stuff that is legitmately kid-friendly, as well as "japanese cute" which reads as kiddish to the american market. (But I saw how my younger cousins would really struggle to finish, like, Zelda:OoT, and it made me think these things aren't nearly as kiddie as some think.)
I have a theory. I think that, lacking these well-known franchise games, companies have to actually come up with new and original ideas rather than rehashing the same concept over and over again. Personally, I like Mario. But I'd like it even better if I could play whatever new concept that is going to become the next "Mario".
I don't think your theory applies in Sony's case, because really Sony isn't making that many games. They did themselves a big favor by opening up the PS1 (both in terms of devkits and cheap media) and then being first to market and backwards compatible made them untouchable this PS2 generation.
Microsoft is an interesting case. Halo and Crimson Skies are both pretty great...though again, MS isn't a developer.
Sega and the DC is another case, and they did come out with some great and original games. Wasn't enough to survive alas.
I sometimes think that breaking backward compatibility might be a good idea. I wonder how much cost per unit could be cut if they removed the ability of the GBA to play old GB and GB Color games
Given that the two dominant systems of the age, PS2 and GBA, both feature backwards compatability, I'm guessing its worth the cost, that it's more important to making a successful product than the "serious gamer" (who is willing to keep old hardware around to play old favorites) tends to realize.
This is a good point. One of the surprising things to me is how well PS2 has done w/o that many franchises.
One thing though; I think Nintendo better work on some NEW handheld games within their established franchises. GBA has really milked the NES/SNES Mario port to death.
"DS" does seem like a gimmick, alas. I would've rather seen a straightforward backwards-compatible successor to the GB line.
Backward compatibility isn't a big deal to me. I wonder how much a system sacrifices in order to be backward compatible.
As a gamer I agree with you but I'm not sure that the market does. It may be a bigger selling point than you or I would guess...I don't think it's coincidence that the 2 current best selling systems, the ones that totally crush their competition, are backwards compatible: PS2 and GBA.
And heck, with a chest of drawers holding a GC, Xbox, PS2, DC, N64, SNES, GBA, and a 2600 (for development work)...I can see the desire for fewer systems playing more games.
Uh, given how one gamer's "best" is another gamer's "complete waste of bits", this is a meaningless statement.
And if you think time-to-market and name brand recognition don't play a major role, you're nuts. There's a ton of other factors to. (In particular, I think certain genres make or break systems as much as particular games.)
I'd cite examples, but than my rampant fanboyism might show through.
This, I do not agree with. Many modern games are cookie-cutter crap with the same lack of attention to detail as ever. 3D models passing through walls and other 3D models is a good example. Production values were probably highest just before the Playstation was released.
Umm, I dunno. 3D engines are just difficult problems...it's much easier to consistent polished results in a 2D world than a 3D world.
I think the presentation is a big part of it. One interesting example is the GBA, which is a good way of comparing what happens these days with what happened in the early 90s without worrying about 3D graphics. "Advanced Wars 2" had much higher production values than I remember seeing on the SNES, but it was nothing that couldn't've been done at that system, it's just attention to detail. (Actually, one of the first games that really impressed me with production values was the first "You Don't Know Jack"...nothing tht couldn't be done w/ Flash, but it just seemed so polished...)
If you want to go back 20 years that might be the case, but I was playing Populous over a null-modem cable 15 years ago and it was just as fun as many multiplayer games are now
I see what he's saying though. Nintendo has been especially good, bringing back 4 controller ports to the console. A lot of today's multiplayer games have old school simplicity in a new school tasty graphical wrapper.
And obviously, true classics will always stand the test of time and individual standout titles will always seem "better than this crap out today". I haven't seen head to head action that rocked my world like Star Control 2 melee, for example.
Game Before The Game (a gamer from each Superbowl team going at it using their team's virtual representation in NFL Gameday) succesfully predicted the Superbowl winner for eight straight years. This year, it predicted "Panthers 29 Patriots 21". Whoops. Maybe that's why Sony canned 'em. (Probably because it's so hard to have enough AI to make a virtual Bill Belichick...)
"I don't understand why some people wash their bath towels. When I get out of the shower I'm the cleanest object in my house. In theory, those towels should be getting cleaner every time they touch me." "Maybe I could hug you every day so I don't need showers." "Are towels supposed to bend?" --Wally and Alice, this Dilbert cartoon
I know this might be a naive question, but how does the technology work? I mean usually wireless is the lower protocol level (ala TCP/IP) and ads are at a higher level (ala HTTP)...do requests for webpages serve up a dummy page that loads up the small and ad on the side and the forwards to the real thing, or what?
From my FAQ for it on GameFAQs: Bangai-O! What a great game! The level exploration and enemy generators of Gauntlet combined with the action of Smash TV, all in a veneer of Metroid with a touch of the control of Joust...sounds like a mess but it's brilliant. A 2D game where level design really really matters, that throws hoards and hoards of enemies at you and gives you the hardware you need to take it all on...plus, a huge heap of Japanese weirdness.
I think that one of the successes of the Zelda dynasty is that you can kind of identify with the characters and say, "I would like to have this adventure." How many people ever wanted to be a fat plumber battling mushrooms and turtles (by jumping on them no less)? Give me a sword.
And the green too-short tunic and tights and dorky hat? Forget it...
An interesting point, but one thing struck me as jarring: it doesn't escape from feeling like a contrived world, a world that was pretty much assembled just for my gaming pleasure. Almost no island existed just for it's own sake; it held some kind of treasure or dungeon or puzzle. There were no seafarers who were just sailing around for the heck of it. People in town felt like they were pretty much wandering around waiting to be interacted with it. And, just like Metroid, so much is arranged so that I won't run into it until I've sufficiently leveled up with certain gizmos.
The Grand Theft Auto series are the only games that I've played deeply that shake this. Their cities seem to exist for their own sake, not for the sake of the player--the adventures are overlaid on this (interesting enough to be fun just run around and do random stuff) persistent world. Sure there are some problems, like the way cars disappear when your back is turned, but overall it has a certain type of depth I haven't seen in any Nintendo game.
I think being set in a "real world" helps with that...it's easier than making a consistent universe from scratch, and then my own preconceptions help round out the missing details. I don't know if the "realism" of the graphics (i.e. straightforward and not particularly stylized or artsy) aids that as well.
Re:The reason MS won the word processor war...
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The War Of The Word
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· Score: 1
I think "Works" was more often bundled than Word. (despite the contradiction inherent in its name when you tried to put the files on a machine running Word...)
Re:So what changed regarding backwards readability
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The War Of The Word
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· Score: 1
Heh, yeah. Works was such a bastard stepchild. Microsoft really had to try to undo the fact that it came bundled on so many PCs, and was really adequate for so many things people wanted to do. Even easier than pirating Word:-)
WordPad was kind of interesting. Except for the lack of spellcheck, it also coulda been a bit of a Word "killer", and I think used RTF or something so compatability with Word was pretty high.
It's tough to remember that Win3.1 was, even for many users, still just a big program that ran on DOS. Some people and settings would put it in the autoexec.bat, but still, it was more of a metaprogram than an OS. (and there's technical reasons for that).
But Windows made things more accesible. The fonts was huge...it was just so much prettier than a constant drone of 80*24...but also, the Program Manager made it easier to figure out what all was on the PC you were on, hunting in a DOS prompt through directories structure, or using ad hoc.bat file based menus and what not...bleh.
Those things, plus affordable PCs that could run Win3.1 at a reasonable clip, are what led to its assendence at that time.
In answer to the folks who claim WP was a lousy product, I have two words: Reveal Codes.
Something lke reveal codes would be great in Word, but I think it's such a binary mess that it wouldn't be as useful.
Here's why WP was a lousy product: a strip of paper, designed to fit above the function keys on a standard 101-key keyboard, to show you what all the damn non-intuitive key commands were. Word's dominance went in hand in hand with PCs that could handle Win3.1 and its (fairly) standardized menu paradigm.
take it from a Gamer thats been Gaming since the Atari 2600(a lifetime of gaming as i'm only 23) Take it from a gamer who has JoustPongwritten a published homebrew game for the Atari 2600....the PS2 controller sucks.
I mean, it is a subjective opinion. Apparently some people like the thumbsticks' position, but other people think it SUCKS. I always thought the shoulder buttons were too difficult to insitinctively tell apart as well.
I find GC and Xbox as totally ergonomic. And the dualshock always seemed reasonably sturdy. Though maybe not hurlworthy, I dunno.
For what it's worth, (not much), I find the PS2's thumbsticks to be the in the crappiest and crampiest possible place, and the DualShock2's "let's make every button 'analog' so you're never quite sure if it's fully pressed or not" to be the least well conceived idea in controllers since the Amiga joyboard, the GC is comfortable but a bit flimsy, and the Xbox S-type is pretty much the ideal balance of sturdiness and comfort. With long cords to boot.
Wavebird is pretty nifty as well but I miss the rumble in a few games.
What does he want? A butch dyke chewing on a cigar, wearing camo and a black tank top and with one combat boot-clad foot propped up on a dead Ridley's head?
That'd be pretty cool, actually. Well, maybe not the camo, since it'd be under her suit anyway.
Overall it was a pretty good game, some great minigames, and I really appreciated the chapter system allowing people to come back and get right to the cool stuff. I wasn't looking for intellectual so much as just decent in the acting and funnier in the writing. For a game that figured out how to pack SO much audio dialog into the game, it was kind of a waste...
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately it looks like they took 'em offline, but the Clone Wars cartoons were terrific...the fanboys really took much better care of the franchise than Lucas. My only gripe was that while "jousters on speederbike" were corny but excusable as a new and interesting fighting technique, the fact that the good guys had their own legion of jousters on speederbike pushed it into the just plain silly.
I'm amazed Lucas let go of his iron grip enough to get those made. I hope they end up on DVD, not into the old memory hole...
Also, the "classic 3" felt BIG, like there was so much more going on behind the scenes. Now it's the incredible shrinking universe where every major character has a long history entwined with every other major character.
Lucas seems to think just because has the FX to show more of the Star Wars galaxy, he should try to show it all.
quake 3 on dreamcast anyone?
I have a lot of fun with that game, actually. The setup is a little more annoying than it needs to be, but overall it's an excellent fastpaced game, really kinetic and with great framerate, especially when compared to Unreal. I find the controller quite workable, but then again, I've never gotten into mouselook.
What other market segment does Nintendo have to fall back on? Do you think they could make massive losses year after year propped up by something else?
I'm not saying that they are, but they probably could take a wash in the *home* console market for a while riding on their domination of the *handheld* consoles.
There's a ton of other factors to. That's supposed to be "too" doesn't anyone know how to spell anymore?
I don't know, doesn't anyone know how to adequately indicate quoted text anymore?
Shut the hell up. Yes, I know how to spell. No, in a forum like Slashdot I don't always take the time to proofread to catch typos like that.
Sometimes I'm prone to other typos as well, like swapping m's and b's. It's a touch of a syndrome called synthenesia. So bite me. (Or, I guess in my case, 'mite be'.)
Yeah, trying to be more adult is a common behavior and it happens all thorughout childhood...young kids love Barnie and Mr. Rogers, but then it becomes really cool to hate both of them. And Nintendo gets it bad, with some stuff that is legitmately kid-friendly, as well as "japanese cute" which reads as kiddish to the american market. (But I saw how my younger cousins would really struggle to finish, like, Zelda:OoT, and it made me think these things aren't nearly as kiddie as some think.)
I have a theory. I think that, lacking these well-known franchise games, companies have to actually come up with new and original ideas rather than rehashing the same concept over and over again. Personally, I like Mario. But I'd like it even better if I could play whatever new concept that is going to become the next "Mario".
I don't think your theory applies in Sony's case, because really Sony isn't making that many games. They did themselves a big favor by opening up the PS1 (both in terms of devkits and cheap media) and then being first to market and backwards compatible made them untouchable this PS2 generation.
Microsoft is an interesting case. Halo and Crimson Skies are both pretty great...though again, MS isn't a developer.
Sega and the DC is another case, and they did come out with some great and original games. Wasn't enough to survive alas.
I sometimes think that breaking backward compatibility might be a good idea. I wonder how much cost per unit could be cut if they removed the ability of the GBA to play old GB and GB Color games
Given that the two dominant systems of the age, PS2 and GBA, both feature backwards compatability, I'm guessing its worth the cost, that it's more important to making a successful product than the "serious gamer" (who is willing to keep old hardware around to play old favorites) tends to realize.
This is a good point. One of the surprising things to me is how well PS2 has done w/o that many franchises.
One thing though; I think Nintendo better work on some NEW handheld games within their established franchises. GBA has really milked the NES/SNES Mario port to death.
"DS" does seem like a gimmick, alas. I would've rather seen a straightforward backwards-compatible successor to the GB line.
Backward compatibility isn't a big deal to me. I wonder how much a system sacrifices in order to be backward compatible.
As a gamer I agree with you but I'm not sure that the market does. It may be a bigger selling point than you or I would guess...I don't think it's coincidence that the 2 current best selling systems, the ones that totally crush their competition, are backwards compatible: PS2 and GBA.
And heck, with a chest of drawers holding a GC, Xbox, PS2, DC, N64, SNES, GBA, and a 2600 (for development work)...I can see the desire for fewer systems playing more games.
The system with the best games will win.
Uh, given how one gamer's "best" is another gamer's "complete waste of bits", this is a meaningless statement.
And if you think time-to-market and name brand recognition don't play a major role, you're nuts. There's a ton of other factors to. (In particular, I think certain genres make or break systems as much as particular games.)
I'd cite examples, but than my rampant fanboyism might show through.
This, I do not agree with. Many modern games are cookie-cutter crap with the same lack of attention to detail as ever. 3D models passing through walls and other 3D models is a good example. Production values were probably highest just before the Playstation was released.
Umm, I dunno. 3D engines are just difficult problems...it's much easier to consistent polished results in a 2D world than a 3D world.
I think the presentation is a big part of it. One interesting example is the GBA, which is a good way of comparing what happens these days with what happened in the early 90s without worrying about 3D graphics. "Advanced Wars 2" had much higher production values than I remember seeing on the SNES, but it was nothing that couldn't've been done at that system, it's just attention to detail. (Actually, one of the first games that really impressed me with production values was the first "You Don't Know Jack"...nothing tht couldn't be done w/ Flash, but it just seemed so polished...)
If you want to go back 20 years that might be the case, but I was playing Populous over a null-modem cable 15 years ago and it was just as fun as many multiplayer games are now
I see what he's saying though. Nintendo has been especially good, bringing back 4 controller ports to the console. A lot of today's multiplayer games have old school simplicity in a new school tasty graphical wrapper.
And obviously, true classics will always stand the test of time and individual standout titles will always seem "better than this crap out today". I haven't seen head to head action that rocked my world like Star Control 2 melee, for example.
Game Before The Game (a gamer from each Superbowl team going at it using their team's virtual representation in NFL Gameday) succesfully predicted the Superbowl winner for eight straight years. This year, it predicted "Panthers 29 Patriots 21". Whoops. Maybe that's why Sony canned 'em. (Probably because it's so hard to have enough AI to make a virtual Bill Belichick...)
"I don't understand why some people wash their bath towels. When I get out of the shower I'm the cleanest object in my house. In theory, those towels should be getting cleaner every time they touch me."
"Maybe I could hug you every day so I don't need showers."
"Are towels supposed to bend?"
--Wally and Alice, this Dilbert cartoon
I know this might be a naive question, but how does the technology work? I mean usually wireless is the lower protocol level (ala TCP/IP) and ads are at a higher level (ala HTTP)...do requests for webpages serve up a dummy page that loads up the small and ad on the side and the forwards to the real thing, or what?
Bangai-O.
Now THAT is a GAME.
From my FAQ for it on GameFAQs:
Bangai-O! What a great game! The level exploration and enemy generators
of Gauntlet combined with the action of Smash TV, all in a veneer of
Metroid with a touch of the control of Joust...sounds like a mess but
it's brilliant. A 2D game where level design really really matters,
that throws hoards and hoards of enemies at you and gives you the
hardware you need to take it all on...plus, a huge heap of Japanese
weirdness.
I think that one of the successes of the Zelda dynasty is that you can kind of identify with the characters and say, "I would like to have this adventure." How many people ever wanted to be a fat plumber battling mushrooms and turtles (by jumping on them no less)? Give me a sword.
And the green too-short tunic and tights and dorky hat? Forget it...
An interesting point, but one thing struck me as jarring: it doesn't escape from feeling like a contrived world, a world that was pretty much assembled just for my gaming pleasure. Almost no island existed just for it's own sake; it held some kind of treasure or dungeon or puzzle. There were no seafarers who were just sailing around for the heck of it. People in town felt like they were pretty much wandering around waiting to be interacted with it. And, just like Metroid, so much is arranged so that I won't run into it until I've sufficiently leveled up with certain gizmos.
The Grand Theft Auto series are the only games that I've played deeply that shake this. Their cities seem to exist for their own sake, not for the sake of the player--the adventures are overlaid on this (interesting enough to be fun just run around and do random stuff) persistent world. Sure there are some problems, like the way cars disappear when your back is turned, but overall it has a certain type of depth I haven't seen in any Nintendo game.
I think being set in a "real world" helps with that...it's easier than making a consistent universe from scratch, and then my own preconceptions help round out the missing details. I don't know if the "realism" of the graphics (i.e. straightforward and not particularly stylized or artsy) aids that as well.
I think "Works" was more often bundled than Word. (despite the contradiction inherent in its name when you tried to put the files on a machine running Word...)
Heh, yeah. Works was such a bastard stepchild. Microsoft really had to try to undo the fact that it came bundled on so many PCs, and was really adequate for so many things people wanted to do. Even easier than pirating Word :-)
WordPad was kind of interesting. Except for the lack of spellcheck, it also coulda been a bit of a Word "killer", and I think used RTF or something so compatability with Word was pretty high.
It's tough to remember that Win3.1 was, even for many users, still just a big program that ran on DOS. Some people and settings would put it in the autoexec.bat, but still, it was more of a metaprogram than an OS. (and there's technical reasons for that).
.bat file based menus and what not...bleh.
But Windows made things more accesible. The fonts was huge...it was just so much prettier than a constant drone of 80*24...but also, the Program Manager made it easier to figure out what all was on the PC you were on, hunting in a DOS prompt through directories structure, or using ad hoc
Those things, plus affordable PCs that could run Win3.1 at a reasonable clip, are what led to its assendence at that time.
In answer to the folks who claim WP was a lousy product, I have two words: Reveal Codes.
Something lke reveal codes would be great in Word, but I think it's such a binary mess that it wouldn't be as useful.
Here's why WP was a lousy product: a strip of paper, designed to fit above the function keys on a standard 101-key keyboard, to show you what all the damn non-intuitive key commands were. Word's dominance went in hand in hand with PCs that could handle Win3.1 and its (fairly) standardized menu paradigm.
take it from a Gamer thats been Gaming since the Atari 2600(a lifetime of gaming as i'm only 23)
Take it from a gamer who has JoustPongwritten a published homebrew game for the Atari 2600....the PS2 controller sucks.
I mean, it is a subjective opinion. Apparently some people like the thumbsticks' position, but other people think it SUCKS. I always thought the shoulder buttons were too difficult to insitinctively tell apart as well.
I find GC and Xbox as totally ergonomic. And the dualshock always seemed reasonably sturdy. Though maybe not hurlworthy, I dunno.
For what it's worth, (not much),
I find the PS2's thumbsticks to be the in the crappiest and crampiest possible place, and the DualShock2's "let's make every button 'analog' so you're never quite sure if it's fully pressed or not" to be the least well conceived idea in controllers since the Amiga joyboard,
the GC is comfortable but a bit flimsy,
and the Xbox S-type is pretty much the ideal balance of sturdiness and comfort. With long cords to boot.
Wavebird is pretty nifty as well but I miss the rumble in a few games.
What does he want? A butch dyke chewing on a cigar, wearing camo and a black tank top and with one combat boot-clad foot propped up on a dead Ridley's head?
That'd be pretty cool, actually. Well, maybe not the camo, since it'd be under her suit anyway.
Overall it was a pretty good game, some great minigames, and I really appreciated the chapter system allowing people to come back and get right to the cool stuff. I wasn't looking for intellectual so much as just decent in the acting and funnier in the writing. For a game that figured out how to pack SO much audio dialog into the game, it was kind of a waste...