Definitely.... Gamers almost never use the phone while playing. Compare this to people driving cars, shopping, watching movies in the theater, or catching the newest reality TV show. This communications void, combined with the ineffectiveness of internet advertising, results in many gamers out of the loop when it comes to pop culture media. BSA researchers compared estimated demand of the final episode of the second season of "The Bachelor" to the actual number of viewers calculated by Neilsen, and determined that 54 million gamers watched it on PVR recorders, thus skipping all advertising contained in the program. The effect gamers are having on the national economy is devastating.
'They can then host files that are authorized for distribution through this network and will receive "Peer Points" that can be redeemed for prizes every time someone uploads a file.'
One of those banned Shadowbane players already has 768,323,000,000 Peer Points, and plans to redeem them for a Harrier jet.
Sharing revenue has a good side and bad side. Yeah, it'll increase their bit of advertising market share, but on the other hand, per ad revenues will go down when they sell "package" advertisement deals... Say, buy a TV spot, and boom, you get a free radio spot that the competitor didn't offer.
Well, on one hand, a limited increase in media consolodation (like we have) may actually do some good. When conglomerate A can expand and share resources between Newspaper A and Radiostation B, the AP and various other information services (remember the Voter News Service? ugh...) become far less significant and necessary... heck, competition among local information may actually improve.
The new rules may actually withstand scruitiny from the courts.... Translated loosely: This probably isn't that big of a deal. There are still plenty of markets that have inadequate newspaper, radio, and TV markets, partially because of old rules that have now been replaced. Sounds like radio regulations were tightened....
Maybe it's not a vague uneasiness. Probably just a "no biggie" in reaction to piles of FCC junk that have always been vague and hard to interpret.:)
We can finally get Hal... er.. that is, Carson Daily to bring a digitized... er, again, I mean a personalized local Top 20 program to Temple, TX! Howard Stern will start pushing Textile Fabrication Vermont Teddy Bears to the local Wilsonart guys! It's a great day to be an American!
I'm sorry.... but if there was little or no mouse support for Doom 3, it would fall right in line with the first two Doom games. The only exception would be if Carmack himself deemed Doom Legacy or jDoom as the only decent modern Doom engines.
...she's not even all that good looking anymore, especially in that TV show she's still on. Saggy, pouter face, miserable with life, blah..... the see-through-ish shirts aren't helping anymore:)
Let's just say I'm glad I wasn't looking to upgrade my video card this season. Nvidia's promise to deliver this spring looks like a tactic to detract Christmas Radeon sales.....
"NVIDIA would love to move away from these costly Sun boxes altogether and transition to a much more affordable x86-linux platform, but the problem is finding a 64-bit x86 solution. NVIDIA is currently evaluating Intel's Itanium for use in their farm but as far as their needs go, AMD's Opteron would be a gift from God. NVIDIA is eagerly awaiting the launch of Opteron so that their dreams may be fulfilled with an affordable x86 solution that offers 64-bit memory addressability; until then, they'll have to stick with these million-dollar sun systems."
Honestly, I don't think that Microsoft is dealying any of that stuff.... AMD has tons of corporate customers who would gladly take the 64-bits and Linux in order to get away from stuff like Sun farms.
Half of me wants to say that AMD and Nvidia must be insane for not keeping their timetables in better order, and the other half of me is glad that they are not releasing (or are releasing only on a minor scale) incomplete or inferior products. All of me is frustrated at the irony of these situations. I recall reading a tour of Nvidia's headquarters, which included a ton of expensive Sun hardware going to work at the design phase of the Nvidia's GPUs. The guys giving the tour said that they couldn't wait until AMD released their new 64 bit chips so they could replace those farms with Linux-powered machines on AMD hardware. Now with AMD pushing back the Athlon 64 to September, that delays Nvidia's ability to make and design chips on the hardware and software they really want to use.
I don't think anybody who played this game hasn't hit the Sears Tower or tried to fly between the twin towers. I first did it back when I was 5 years old, around 1984.
And I see a ton of criticism about what this game does "wrong", especially when compared to other games. So, this post is a little bit different....
First of all, I've only played the multiplayer game, and I would not be surprised if it far outpaced any parts of the single player campaign. There's a ton of people complaining about the lack of story, but I really see no need for one. It's not as if the games of Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess needed them. The focus is square on strategy, not extras.
As far as using "real" countries and events, this game succeeds in using a Holywood style of presentation. Yes, the Chinese talk with an accrent and the GLA (Terrorists) have carbombers that say "I love a crowd", but the USA are far more gung-ho than their real counterparts. It's blatantly over-the-top... Heck, to make money after normal supplies are depleted or destroyed, the Chinese rely on hackers to steal a little bit of money from the internet. The GLA salvage destroyed bits of enemy units to upgrade their own.
It is a great multiplayer game... The various factions seem to me to be much more distinct than other RTS games, yet still balanced. Playing locally with friends (at a gaming center with 5 copies), we've had tons of fun with this thing, especially on the unique team-game dynamic. When USA and GLA team up, you've got the biggest anthrax-spreading superweapon on one side, and radar on the other side. Hard to beat, but I send my Chineese overlord tanks anyway while occupying the city with a ton of tank hunter troops and hackers.
Anyway, I love this game, and I'm seeing far more negative criticism of this game than it deserves, and there's no clear reason why, at least from where I sit. This is one of the few games lately that's been worth my money..... even if it is going to EA:/....
Re:assembly programming NES style
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like the Famicom Disk System minus world... it was around 3 levels long, and screwed up.:)
You may want to check out the other games in the series released in Japan.... Of them, I own Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, Nekketsu Street Basket, Nekketsu Ice Hockey, and the SNES (SF) version of Super Dodge Ball.... I was hooked enough to figure out how to rewire my NES to support Japanese 4 player games;)....
That was completely untrue and NOT informative.
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The vast majority of NES systems need little work to get past the problems you are talking about, and for what it's worth, those problems show up on every cart-based system.
First of all, the easiest and most successful thing to do would be to replace the cartridge connector. These are all pretty cheap on eBay, right around $10, just search for "NES 72".
Secondly, the blinking red light problem is a result of the NES not finding the on-game security chip. Really annoying when the game title screen pops up just for a second over and over again. There's an easy workaround: Disable the NES security chip. Basicly, you'll break pin 4 of the CIC chip, and that's it. http://nintendope.iodized.net/thisoldnes/lock.txt
About that Tanuki suit...
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Basicly, the there's a Japanese story about a Tanuki (bah, racoon) outsmarting a Fox in a transformation contest. Essentially, it start in many cases with the Fox transforming into a statue, stealing riceballs offered up to the statue by the Tanuki. After revealing himself, it was time for the Fox to see if he could find a transformed Tanuki. Overconfident, he came across a king's caravan, and called out for it to stop and the Tanuki to reveal himself. However, the Tanuki had not even transformed, and merely watched as the Fox was assailed by the king's army.
It goes something like that, at least.:)
Re:assembly programming NES style
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm still doing this, sorta.... More like, I'm disassembling the ROMs, finding the bits of code I want to alter, turning them into Game Genie codes (limiting me to only three bytes of changes, bah), and coming up with some decent results at this unfinished page: http://www.rahga.com/nesgg/
My intrests lie elsewhere, with the real NES. :)
on
NES PC
·
· Score: 1
As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.
First of all, "Spot" was quite a nice version of Attaxx for the NES. If you are talking about the other 7-up games, though, I'm with ya!:)
On Excitebike, though... we got hosed. I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a battery feature save, because the Famicom Disk System version is almost completely different. "Vs. Excitebike" (the name is only an homage to Vs. unisystem, I'm not talking about an arcade rom) featured a 2 player mode and the ability to save up to, if I recall, 10 tracks, each one with thier own spot on the disk.
And there's the auction I won it in. I'm not sure where it ranks with some of those, but this is "rarest" games in the article, not "most valuable"... This one is a mix... one of the most valuable famicom games, one of the rarest official famicom games, and definitely one of the best. It had a production run that was cut short by the death of the 8 bit systems and possibly money trouble at technos. Cost me a bit over $100 (cart only) to get it in, and even more to ship, but it was definitely worth it.
As far as value goes, in the Famicom department, it is beat out by the gold Punch-Out cart, a few RPGs, Metal Slader Glory, handful of others.
As far as some of those "rare" non-Nintendo-authorized games... my opinion is that all of them sucked, and I don't care how rare they are, I wouldn't want to play or own them.
BTW, the Nekketsu games are the same line that "River City Ransom" and "Super Dodge Ball" came from. This was the last NES Nekketsu game.
It is a nice try for backing up the "Stomps" claim.... a claim that could be (mostly) wiped out with a little bit of overclocking on the 128MB variant.
Still, like I've said, it's not worth the money in my case to spend that much more money on a 4200.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is it anti-social?"
Definitely.... Gamers almost never use the phone while playing. Compare this to people driving cars, shopping, watching movies in the theater, or catching the newest reality TV show. This communications void, combined with the ineffectiveness of internet advertising, results in many gamers out of the loop when it comes to pop culture media. BSA researchers compared estimated demand of the final episode of the second season of "The Bachelor" to the actual number of viewers calculated by Neilsen, and determined that 54 million gamers watched it on PVR recorders, thus skipping all advertising contained in the program. The effect gamers are having on the national economy is devastating.
'They can then host files that are authorized for distribution through this network and will receive "Peer Points" that can be redeemed for prizes every time someone uploads a file.'
One of those banned Shadowbane players already has 768,323,000,000 Peer Points, and plans to redeem them for a Harrier jet.
Sharing revenue has a good side and bad side. Yeah, it'll increase their bit of advertising market share, but on the other hand, per ad revenues will go down when they sell "package" advertisement deals... Say, buy a TV spot, and boom, you get a free radio spot that the competitor didn't offer.
Well, on one hand, a limited increase in media consolodation (like we have) may actually do some good. When conglomerate A can expand and share resources between Newspaper A and Radiostation B, the AP and various other information services (remember the Voter News Service? ugh...) become far less significant and necessary... heck, competition among local information may actually improve.
:)
The new rules may actually withstand scruitiny from the courts.... Translated loosely: This probably isn't that big of a deal. There are still plenty of markets that have inadequate newspaper, radio, and TV markets, partially because of old rules that have now been replaced. Sounds like radio regulations were tightened....
Maybe it's not a vague uneasiness. Probably just a "no biggie" in reaction to piles of FCC junk that have always been vague and hard to interpret.
We can finally get Hal... er.. that is, Carson Daily to bring a digitized... er, again, I mean a personalized local Top 20 program to Temple, TX! Howard Stern will start pushing Textile Fabrication Vermont Teddy Bears to the local Wilsonart guys! It's a great day to be an American!
"Supposedly, there will be some pilot programs this fall, but it seems like there are a lot of obstacles to overcome..."
Such as P2P services X, Y, and Z that don't force our students to pay the piper.
Sorry, folks, but I caved in to my inner troll.
I'm sorry.... but if there was little or no mouse support for Doom 3, it would fall right in line with the first two Doom games. The only exception would be if Carmack himself deemed Doom Legacy or jDoom as the only decent modern Doom engines.
...she's not even all that good looking anymore, especially in that TV show she's still on. Saggy, pouter face, miserable with life, blah..... the see-through-ish shirts aren't helping anymore :)
Let's just say I'm glad I wasn't looking to upgrade my video card this season. Nvidia's promise to deliver this spring looks like a tactic to detract Christmas Radeon sales.....
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1711
"NVIDIA would love to move away from these costly Sun boxes altogether and transition to a much more affordable x86-linux platform, but the problem is finding a 64-bit x86 solution. NVIDIA is currently evaluating Intel's Itanium for use in their farm but as far as their needs go, AMD's Opteron would be a gift from God. NVIDIA is eagerly awaiting the launch of Opteron so that their dreams may be fulfilled with an affordable x86 solution that offers 64-bit memory addressability; until then, they'll have to stick with these million-dollar sun systems."
Honestly, I don't think that Microsoft is dealying any of that stuff.... AMD has tons of corporate customers who would gladly take the 64-bits and Linux in order to get away from stuff like Sun farms.
Half of me wants to say that AMD and Nvidia must be insane for not keeping their timetables in better order, and the other half of me is glad that they are not releasing (or are releasing only on a minor scale) incomplete or inferior products. All of me is frustrated at the irony of these situations. I recall reading a tour of Nvidia's headquarters, which included a ton of expensive Sun hardware going to work at the design phase of the Nvidia's GPUs. The guys giving the tour said that they couldn't wait until AMD released their new 64 bit chips so they could replace those farms with Linux-powered machines on AMD hardware. Now with AMD pushing back the Athlon 64 to September, that delays Nvidia's ability to make and design chips on the hardware and software they really want to use.
I don't think anybody who played this game hasn't hit the Sears Tower or tried to fly between the twin towers. I first did it back when I was 5 years old, around 1984.
And I see a ton of criticism about what this game does "wrong", especially when compared to other games. So, this post is a little bit different....
:/ ....
First of all, I've only played the multiplayer game, and I would not be surprised if it far outpaced any parts of the single player campaign. There's a ton of people complaining about the lack of story, but I really see no need for one. It's not as if the games of Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess needed them. The focus is square on strategy, not extras.
As far as using "real" countries and events, this game succeeds in using a Holywood style of presentation. Yes, the Chinese talk with an accrent and the GLA (Terrorists) have carbombers that say "I love a crowd", but the USA are far more gung-ho than their real counterparts. It's blatantly over-the-top... Heck, to make money after normal supplies are depleted or destroyed, the Chinese rely on hackers to steal a little bit of money from the internet. The GLA salvage destroyed bits of enemy units to upgrade their own.
It is a great multiplayer game... The various factions seem to me to be much more distinct than other RTS games, yet still balanced. Playing locally with friends (at a gaming center with 5 copies), we've had tons of fun with this thing, especially on the unique team-game dynamic. When USA and GLA team up, you've got the biggest anthrax-spreading superweapon on one side, and radar on the other side. Hard to beat, but I send my Chineese overlord tanks anyway while occupying the city with a ton of tank hunter troops and hackers.
Anyway, I love this game, and I'm seeing far more negative criticism of this game than it deserves, and there's no clear reason why, at least from where I sit. This is one of the few games lately that's been worth my money..... even if it is going to EA
Sounds like the Famicom Disk System minus world... it was around 3 levels long, and screwed up. :)
Does "All Night Nippon Super Mario Brothers" count as SMB1 :) ?
You may want to check out the other games in the series released in Japan.... Of them, I own Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu, Nekketsu Street Basket, Nekketsu Ice Hockey, and the SNES (SF) version of Super Dodge Ball.... I was hooked enough to figure out how to rewire my NES to support Japanese 4 player games ;) ....
The vast majority of NES systems need little work to get past the problems you are talking about, and for what it's worth, those problems show up on every cart-based system.
First of all, the easiest and most successful thing to do would be to replace the cartridge connector. These are all pretty cheap on eBay, right around $10, just search for "NES 72".
Secondly, the blinking red light problem is a result of the NES not finding the on-game security chip. Really annoying when the game title screen pops up just for a second over and over again. There's an easy workaround: Disable the NES security chip. Basicly, you'll break pin 4 of the CIC chip, and that's it. http://nintendope.iodized.net/thisoldnes/lock.txt
Basicly, the there's a Japanese story about a Tanuki (bah, racoon) outsmarting a Fox in a transformation contest. Essentially, it start in many cases with the Fox transforming into a statue, stealing riceballs offered up to the statue by the Tanuki. After revealing himself, it was time for the Fox to see if he could find a transformed Tanuki. Overconfident, he came across a king's caravan, and called out for it to stop and the Tanuki to reveal himself. However, the Tanuki had not even transformed, and merely watched as the Fox was assailed by the king's army.
:)
It goes something like that, at least.
I'm still doing this, sorta.... More like, I'm disassembling the ROMs, finding the bits of code I want to alter, turning them into Game Genie codes (limiting me to only three bytes of changes, bah), and coming up with some decent results at this unfinished page: http://www.rahga.com/nesgg/
Take, for example, this Famicom Four Player tech doc, and an unfinished report on how to re-wire your Four Score, which leads to the ability to play Four Player Famicom Games or a four player game of Game-Genie Enhanced Super Dodge Ball
As far as this article, any monkey with a stick can figure out how to slap a PC together in any type of chassis they want, be it NES, fishbowl, beerkeg, whatever..... I'm not impressed.
....but wow. I thought Bowie dead. Deader than JFK, as some would say.
First of all, "Spot" was quite a nice version of Attaxx for the NES. If you are talking about the other 7-up games, though, I'm with ya! :)
On Excitebike, though... we got hosed. I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a battery feature save, because the Famicom Disk System version is almost completely different. "Vs. Excitebike" (the name is only an homage to Vs. unisystem, I'm not talking about an arcade rom) featured a 2 player mode and the ability to save up to, if I recall, 10 tracks, each one with thier own spot on the disk.
And there's the auction I won it in. I'm not sure where it ranks with some of those, but this is "rarest" games in the article, not "most valuable"... This one is a mix... one of the most valuable famicom games, one of the rarest official famicom games, and definitely one of the best. It had a production run that was cut short by the death of the 8 bit systems and possibly money trouble at technos. Cost me a bit over $100 (cart only) to get it in, and even more to ship, but it was definitely worth it.
;) ...
As far as value goes, in the Famicom department, it is beat out by the gold Punch-Out cart, a few RPGs, Metal Slader Glory, handful of others.
As far as some of those "rare" non-Nintendo-authorized games... my opinion is that all of them sucked, and I don't care how rare they are, I wouldn't want to play or own them.
BTW, the Nekketsu games are the same line that "River City Ransom" and "Super Dodge Ball" came from. This was the last NES Nekketsu game.
Here's a javascript thingy I made for the passwords in the game. Also, check my site for Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu info, and stuff you can use to rewire your Four Score to make it Famicom compatible
Amen to that.....
It is a nice try for backing up the "Stomps" claim.... a claim that could be (mostly) wiped out with a little bit of overclocking on the 128MB variant.
Still, like I've said, it's not worth the money in my case to spend that much more money on a 4200.