he lost his girlfriend, but then gets out of the final jam by breaking the fourth wall and promising not to report the game designer's bug if he gets saved. Afterwards, he realized he chould've and should've asked for the girl to be brought back as well.
Admitedly, that's darker than some endings, but I don't think it's all that deep. (I guess I forgot the post-credits return to the bar for whisky) And it definately doesn't make up for the poor writing and bad delivery that led up to it...so sophmorically self-aware, doing that "hah ha, I know this is a game, so you're going to tell me what to do, right?" but not being very funny about it. It reminded me of the play I wrote and got produced in middle school..
Over all it was a cool game, with its matrix, aliens, and saving private ryan homages, and nice details like if you keep having to redo that swim through the tube w/ the blades, eventually the tube gets full of floating bloody squirrel chunks...but the writing, even within the goofy scenarios, could have been a lot better. (Along with the voice talent...every voice but Berri and the Great Mighty Poo was the same damn guy, and you could tell he was running out of ideas for voices. )
Coolest "non-gamer" online game: isketch, which is basically Pictionary in an online/chatroom setting. It picks a sketcher, gives 'em a word, and then awards points based on who gets it first. I love games that are creative as well as addictive.
Could they make that space elevator on top of that? That would be useful, just don't get out on the floor expecting "ladies' lingerie" when its actually "hard, lung popping vacuum and solar radiation".
There's a theory that says all the interesting people at Nintendo are now working on the GBA, and that the GC is relegated to poor little brother status. Which sucks. IMO.
No, you're thinking of the third game, which is an odd Zelda-clone plus collect-a-thon Rare made for the GameCube.
I don't understand people who knock Star Fox 64 vs the original; I thought Star Fox 64 was great and gorgeous and it's why I bought the N64 when I did...it grabbed me in a way Mario 64 didn't.
Lots of great stuff, especially the "Independence Day / ID4" homage....man, that was cool, not 'til GameCube's Rogue Leader would I again get the feeling of swarms of enemy fighter craft to battle.
Plus, Miyamoto himself said "I really wanted to make realistic aiing and shooting--sort of a floating feeling. But it was difficult to get it to work on the Super NES. I wanted to improve that in the N64 game." (Of course, re: Slippy's voice in SNES vs N64, he says "I told them to cut the croaking (laughs). It was too childlike" so I guess even the God of Nintendo makes some mistakes...) The controller was very important in this game, and I find it very difficult to go back to the SNES original because of the control. (Quotes are from an interview at the back of the Star Fox 64 Nintendo Player's Guide)
It was a great short story of a game, when people were expecting more of a novel to launch the system...still, it was a lot of fun, the graphics were very cool and distinctive, and the control scheme really made great use of the new features of the controller.
I do like how they made sure to have many "MAAAA-RIO" samples, so you could keep pressing the button and it wasn't so blatantly going to the same clip all the time. That plus the way his humming/whistling would be so much shakier when he got hurt...
PDAs are all about the UI. Once certain other standards are met (i.e. not losing data, synching ok) then everything else is secondary.
Palm realized this, and built a very friendly UI from the ground up. Microsoft tried to capitalize on its desktop monopoly and scaledown its desktop interface, which was a disaster. I think Microsoft finally started doing a bit better by copying Palm......not sure how the Opensource options are doing, I'm not sure I've ever even seen one in the wild, come to think of it.
Yeah, never got into Mario Kart Battlemodes, just in it for the racing.
Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 had some very good battle modes; kart deathmatch in an ice palace, hovercraft deathmatch around a swamp, kart collecting bananas in a castle, airplane egg collection. And as far as I could tell, there was a decent amount of skill involved...well, at least I tended to pretty consistently win;-)
If it's "virtually" impossible, how does that differ from "really" impossible?
Virtually Impossible: impossible for most intents and purposes. Namely, the cost would be prohitively expensive.
Really Impossible: just can't be done.
Clearly this isn't "really" impossible, since they could just stuff an xbox in there.
Do you get annoyed by the phrase "very unique"? (I find it a fine phrase; NOTHING in the world is absolutely unique (since it fits in some category or other) or EVERYTHING in the world is unique (since no two things are exactly the same) so we might as well talk about relative degrees of uniqueness.)
Huh, I played Mario Kart 64 before going back to Mario Kart, and I definately find it limiting w/ only 2 players...
On the other hand SNES Tetris Attack gets as much play as N64 Pokemon Puzzle League...I jsut wish they'd come out with that dang puzzle compilation for the US market!
It's not a "home console" but GameBoy is hardcore backwards compatability...even surviving the screen and cartridge shapes changing.
By some measures, the 2 most dominant dynasties in gaming both featured backwards compatability, Game Boy and PlayStation. Coincidence? Perhaps.
It's funny how expectations are shaped...I've always been "surprised" when I hear about backwards compatability for consoles, but my non-techie relatives are surprised when it's not, since they don't realize what an engineering challenge it can be.
Ah, more canonically associated with the bank teller's line... I have seen 'em at BK, but I think I've seen some BK's without one, or at least with one that only has one pass...
Yeah, if memory serves (and the Year 2000ish status quo has held) Google is probably your best bet. It's not just WML, which is this bear of a superstrict language, but there's that annoying 1492-byte limit of WAP itself.
I thought about doing something similar w/ my homebrew webmail, but given that WAP connection costs a bit and I have a network connection at home and at work, it didn't seem worth the bother...
I once thought about making an IGN review / WAP gateway, so I can check into games that I'm holding at the used game store...
Heheh, no, I think this was before I started to imbibe, etc. It was an "attention deficit" kinda thing, not an "attention swimming in fun substances" kind of thing.
Real physics for every damn thing. People that don't walk a scripted motion captured "walk" animation, but because of the the way their muscles and mass are working together. Rag doll physics is just the begining.
Well, I was amazed to find out games have passed a weak firm of my own personal Turing test...over at a party, some football game was on TV, the onscreen overlay talked about waiting for a call from the refs.
It took me 10-15 minutes 'til I realized it was still waiting for the refs, no commercials. Then I looked more closely and saw it was a video game. And I'm a pretty avid gamer, but out of the corner of my eye, the camera angles used (switching to various players standing around) were 'real' enough and the player models detailed enough that I didn't doubt it was a real broadcast.
This trend will continue...I've yet to see a game w/ as real humans, as say, the Final Fantasy movie, and even that wasn't quite photorealistic...
Again, the barrier to entry is larger, but that's because programming for a GUI is fundamentally harder.
I disagree. I watched newbies have a much harder time learning C at my school than pick up VB3 in the class I designed and taught.
Now here's what I think is closer to the truth: it's because programming for MODERN GAMES is fundamentally harder. (And it a bit more esoteric) I think making little games is what drove a lot of kids to mess around, combined with languages you didn't have to download...in fact often you loaded the "real games" THROUGH the language.
There are some options, though you quickly get into some weird points. Javascript is accesible, and it's cool that a kid could make up something and it's automatically webable, but it lacks graphic and sound primitives and only so-so real time input support (keyboard/mouse is a little esoteric)
Java vs C#--man what kid is going to give a damn about your little opinion, or the fact runtimes are into the system? Do I have a.Net compiler coming with my system? Not as far as I can tell.
There is some hope, like if a parent wanted to encourage a kid: DarkBasic has a lot of neat 3D stuff, I need to look into what's happening with Processing, a cool want-to-be-newbie friendly Java framework, a while back there was Klik+Create or whatever, etc. But I think the fact that these aren't coming with the PCs we buy is a tremendous disappointment.
I did some tooling around with VB3, in fact, designed and taught a class in it...but A. I don't see any way of making a form in my PC w/ Office B. Office only sometimes comes bundled...old school BASIC was much closer to universal
I hear such good things about it, and didn't myst get its start in that direction?
I always lament the way consumer PCs no longer come bundled with any easy to use programming language ala BASIC...kids who grew up in the 80s were truly privelged, before that computers were too expensive, afterwards they're closer and closer to being black boxes, programming wise... (on the other hand, we didn't have the web or easy Net access, but still)
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More specifically (SPOILERS)
he lost his girlfriend, but then gets out of the final jam by breaking the fourth wall and promising not to report the game designer's bug if he gets saved. Afterwards, he realized he chould've and should've asked for the girl to be brought back as well.
Admitedly, that's darker than some endings, but I don't think it's all that deep. (I guess I forgot the post-credits return to the bar for whisky) And it definately doesn't make up for the poor writing and bad delivery that led up to it...so sophmorically self-aware, doing that "hah ha, I know this is a game, so you're going to tell me what to do, right?" but not being very funny about it. It reminded me of the play I wrote and got produced in middle school..
Over all it was a cool game, with its matrix, aliens, and saving private ryan homages, and nice details like if you keep having to redo that swim through the tube w/ the blades, eventually the tube gets full of floating bloody squirrel chunks...but the writing, even within the goofy scenarios, could have been a lot better. (Along with the voice talent...every voice but Berri and the Great Mighty Poo was the same damn guy, and you could tell he was running out of ideas for voices. )
Coolest "non-gamer" online game:
isketch, which is basically Pictionary in an online/chatroom setting. It picks a sketcher, gives 'em a word, and then awards points based on who gets it first. I love games that are creative as well as addictive.
Could they make that space elevator on top of that? That would be useful, just don't get out on the floor expecting "ladies' lingerie" when its actually "hard, lung popping vacuum and solar radiation".
Mario Sunshine was OK, but I didn't like that the island theme seemed to dominate over the general "Mario-ness"
There's a theory that says all the interesting people at Nintendo are now working on the GBA, and that the GC is relegated to poor little brother status. Which sucks. IMO.
No, you're thinking of the third game, which is an odd Zelda-clone plus collect-a-thon Rare made for the GameCube.
I don't understand people who knock Star Fox 64 vs the original; I thought Star Fox 64 was great and gorgeous and it's why I bought the N64 when I did...it grabbed me in a way Mario 64 didn't.
Lots of great stuff, especially the "Independence Day / ID4" homage....man, that was cool, not 'til GameCube's Rogue Leader would I again get the feeling of swarms of enemy fighter craft to battle.
Plus, Miyamoto himself said "I really wanted to make realistic aiing and shooting--sort of a floating feeling. But it was difficult to get it to work on the Super NES. I wanted to improve that in the N64 game." (Of course, re: Slippy's voice in SNES vs N64, he says "I told them to cut the croaking (laughs). It was too childlike" so I guess even the God of Nintendo makes some mistakes...) The controller was very important in this game, and I find it very difficult to go back to the SNES original because of the control.
(Quotes are from an interview at the back of the Star Fox 64 Nintendo Player's Guide)
It was a great short story of a game, when people were expecting more of a novel to launch the system...still, it was a lot of fun, the graphics were very cool and distinctive, and the control scheme really made great use of the new features of the controller.
I do like how they made sure to have many "MAAAA-RIO" samples, so you could keep pressing the button and it wasn't so blatantly going to the same clip all the time. That plus the way his humming/whistling would be so much shakier when he got hurt...
PDAs are all about the UI. Once certain other standards are met (i.e. not losing data, synching ok) then everything else is secondary.
...not sure how the Opensource options are doing, I'm not sure I've ever even seen one in the wild, come to think of it.
Palm realized this, and built a very friendly UI from the ground up. Microsoft tried to capitalize on its desktop monopoly and scaledown its desktop interface, which was a disaster. I think Microsoft finally started doing a bit better by copying Palm...
Yeah, never got into Mario Kart Battlemodes, just in it for the racing.
;-)
Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 had some very good battle modes; kart deathmatch in an ice palace, hovercraft deathmatch around a swamp, kart collecting bananas in a castle, airplane egg collection. And as far as I could tell, there was a decent amount of skill involved...well, at least I tended to pretty consistently win
If it's "virtually" impossible, how does that differ from "really" impossible?
Virtually Impossible: impossible for most intents and purposes. Namely, the cost would be prohitively expensive.
Really Impossible: just can't be done.
Clearly this isn't "really" impossible, since they could just stuff an xbox in there.
Do you get annoyed by the phrase "very unique"? (I find it a fine phrase; NOTHING in the world is absolutely unique (since it fits in some category or other) or EVERYTHING in the world is unique (since no two things are exactly the same) so we might as well talk about relative degrees of uniqueness.)
Huh, I played Mario Kart 64 before going back to Mario Kart, and I definately find it limiting w/ only 2 players...
On the other hand SNES Tetris Attack gets as much play as N64 Pokemon Puzzle League...I jsut wish they'd come out with that dang puzzle compilation for the US market!
It's not a "home console" but GameBoy is hardcore backwards compatability...even surviving the screen and cartridge shapes changing.
By some measures, the 2 most dominant dynasties in gaming both featured backwards compatability, Game Boy and PlayStation. Coincidence? Perhaps.
It's funny how expectations are shaped...I've always been "surprised" when I hear about backwards compatability for consoles, but my non-techie relatives are surprised when it's not, since they don't realize what an engineering challenge it can be.
Ah, more canonically associated with the bank teller's line... I have seen 'em at BK, but I think I've seen some BK's without one, or at least with one that only has one pass...
Good points.
Though right now, what interests me more than WAP is AOL Instant Messenger, 'cause that's the thing I can't get at work...
Yeah, if memory serves (and the Year 2000ish status quo has held) Google is probably your best bet. It's not just WML, which is this bear of a superstrict language, but there's that annoying 1492-byte limit of WAP itself.
Is that what all that crap about first player/second player is? But they're still trying to apply it to "normal" solitaire as well?
Yeesh.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of stuff?
I thought about doing something similar w/ my homebrew webmail, but given that WAP connection costs a bit and I have a network connection at home and at work, it didn't seem worth the bother...
I once thought about making an IGN review / WAP gateway, so I can check into games that I'm holding at the used game store...
Heheh, no, I think this was before I started to imbibe, etc. It was an "attention deficit" kinda thing, not an "attention swimming in fun substances" kind of thing.
Real physics for every damn thing. People that don't walk a scripted motion captured "walk" animation, but because of the the way their muscles and mass are working together. Rag doll physics is just the begining.
Well, I was amazed to find out games have passed a weak firm of my own personal Turing test...over at a party, some football game was on TV, the onscreen overlay talked about waiting for a call from the refs.
It took me 10-15 minutes 'til I realized it was still waiting for the refs, no commercials. Then I looked more closely and saw it was a video game. And I'm a pretty avid gamer, but out of the corner of my eye, the camera angles used (switching to various players standing around) were 'real' enough and the player models detailed enough that I didn't doubt it was a real broadcast.
This trend will continue...I've yet to see a game w/ as real humans, as say, the Final Fantasy movie, and even that wasn't quite photorealistic...
Again, the barrier to entry is larger, but that's because programming for a GUI is fundamentally harder.
.Net compiler coming with my system? Not as far as I can tell.
I disagree. I watched newbies have a much harder time learning C at my school than pick up VB3 in the class I designed and taught.
Now here's what I think is closer to the truth: it's because programming for MODERN GAMES is fundamentally harder. (And it a bit more esoteric) I think making little games is what drove a lot of kids to mess around, combined with languages you didn't have to download...in fact often you loaded the "real games" THROUGH the language.
There are some options, though you quickly get into some weird points. Javascript is accesible, and it's cool that a kid could make up something and it's automatically webable, but it lacks graphic and sound primitives and only so-so real time input support (keyboard/mouse is a little esoteric)
Java vs C#--man what kid is going to give a damn about your little opinion, or the fact runtimes are into the system? Do I have a
There is some hope, like if a parent wanted to encourage a kid: DarkBasic has a lot of neat 3D stuff, I need to look into what's happening with Processing, a cool want-to-be-newbie friendly Java framework, a while back there was Klik+Create or whatever, etc. But I think the fact that these aren't coming with the PCs we buy is a tremendous disappointment.
I did some tooling around with VB3, in fact, designed and taught a class in it...but
A. I don't see any way of making a form in my PC w/ Office
B. Office only sometimes comes bundled...old school BASIC was much closer to universal
My last two palmpilots (well, Palm IIIc, Sony Clie SJ22) make EXCELLENT flashlights. Very bright.
It's not quite on purpose, but still.
feh, I was hoping to see how good it looks splitscreen...a tougher challenge in many ways.
What is the status of HyperCard?
I hear such good things about it, and didn't myst get its start in that direction?
I always lament the way consumer PCs no longer come bundled with any easy to use programming language ala BASIC...kids who grew up in the 80s were truly privelged, before that computers were too expensive, afterwards they're closer and closer to being black boxes, programming wise... (on the other hand, we didn't have the web or easy Net access, but still)