This is sort of weird. As a long time Opera user I never had a problem accidentally leaving the page. My browser always remembered what I'd typed and going forward again to the form page would have all my content as I'd left it.
IMO the problem isn't the backspace key, it's unfriendly browsers.
The spellcheck is great, but the dictionary seems to be very old. It doesn't recognize words like URL, internet, or slashdot. At least it recognizes OPERA, though I'm sure that's only 'cause the other uses predate the browser. =)
It seems that some of your issues are limited to your specific installation. I've been using 9, switching to 10 only with the release of Beta 1, and I don't have most/any of the problems you describe:
Slashdot works fine, and has for a while, though it certainly suffered when they started working on this.js-heavy relaunch a few months back. Loads fine, scrolls fine, responds quickly. It's far better with 10 than with 9. Opera works fine with gmail and g-maps as well, at least for the recent past. Interestingly, google recently broke their regular search page with the live-search thingy: I can no longer edit the terms in a results page and hit ENTER, I have to TAB-ENTER or use the mouse. The same bug exists in 10.
As a fix, you might try a clean install (losing your precious profile data, sadly) or try it on another machine, as your OS may have something installed that causes trouble (like, say, microsoft products, heh)
I covered a lot of the Zeebo issues on my own site a while ago. From my site:
"They further claim that hundreds of millions of games have been downloaded wirelessly without one ever being pirated. At first I thought they were joking, as a search on any warez site will turn up hundreds of mobile phone downloads cracked and ready to play, but then I read between the lines: Out of all the wireless games out there, one of them still hasn't been pirated! I wonder which one it is... "
"But hey, at least it has VGA graphics, right? 640x480 video, and since it's VGA we know it'll be non-interlaced (ie: progressive). Too bad it only has composite-video outputs, which can't actually support VGA resolutions."
""Additional enhancements may include [...] new services." Phew, I was worried about the future. But no, the future's awesome: "By 2012, the worldwide video game market is projected to become a $68 billion industry." Yup, from $9.5b in 2007 to $70b in 2012. Only Zeebo allows you to capture a market that will increase in value seven-fold in five years. "
There are so many things wrong with their plan that I can't believe it's anything but a scam run by liars or idiots.
It's funny, but a friend was telling me not half an hour ago how he picked up this game today, and he just hates it. It's impossible to die: "if you miss a jump, your magic friend saves you and brings you back to the previous piece of ground you were on. And if you're in combat and you lose, your magic friend pulls you out of harm's way"
That's not FUN. Why try hard if you never fail? Stupid design is stupid.
Actually, as AVee mentionedyou can do this easily: F12 Site Preferences Scripting tab un-tick Enable Javascript
"It's not where Firefox put it, and I can't install the plugins I know and love... Forget this 'trying new things' crap. Now to post ignorantly on slashdot!"
I wrote this book, and I have to agree with most parts of this review. There's a good story behind it, but here's the short version:
Rotovision approached me about writing it based on some stuff they liked on my website. It was originally intended to be part of a 3-book series discussing game and character art. I don't know for sure what the other two were to be about, but they were canceled and only this one was given a green light.
Then the US publisher, Focal Press, wanted it to be about mobiles in what I can only assume was an attempt to be more trendy and hip. This compromised the book rather seriously, as from a design point of view there are no real graphics challenges when developing for a mobile over, say, a GameBoy or SNES.
The book was rushed. I was given four months to do it all, and for the first three I didn't hear a single word from the editor about the content. None of the promised guidance was forthcoming, and after a month of no contact I believed they had dropped the idea so I stopped working on it.
Suddenly, a month before the due date, they popped back up asking for the 50% complete text and 100% of the images. Say what? So I wrote 20,000 words in a week, enslaved some writer friends to help out, and started cropping out sprite images like a man posessed.
It worked too, I got it done and wrote some amazing stuff. Unfortunately the publisher decided time was too tight to actually use it, so several articles that were to be cut 'cause they sucked made it in, several good ones that were to replace them never did, images that were delivered for specific articles were ignored, random images were thrown in all over the place, and they didn't seem to bother labelling any images in the last quarter of the book.
It's not my fault! I've got a few copies of the book I can't even bring myself to read 'cause it was such a mess at the end.
I take full responsibility for many errors, and for the quality of the text. I totally screwed up by dropping the project for months at a time, but I really don't think I'd be the only person to make the assumption when the editor doesn't reply to your emails for six weeks.
I've re-written a few of the articles to have better image labels, added a few things I missed, and posted them online. For your reading enjoy, here they are:
It's the high-speed rotation and length of the cable that keeps it upright and taut. If you don't anchor the bottom of the elevator the entire thing will go flinging off into space. Fun for a while, but eventually someone will get upset about it.
There's a compelling reason to have large, noisy shows that the public can easily get access to, that people seem to ignore while whining about how E3 ain't what it used to be. Tens of thousands of your best, most affluent customers all coming to your showroom, and checking out the goods.
The Tokyo Game Show is open to the public for two out of three days, and it attracts smackloads of people, and the game companies know it's good advertising. E3 tried to have it both ways: big, colourful, sexy, but with the goodies kept to itself and its cronies.
As long as there's a quiet show somewhere where the industry types can hobnob, the big noisy and more public show will still fill a need.
Sharp released the V-604SH phone in Japan earlier this year, which had a 640x480 screen in it. I don't know how Samsung qualifies their screen as a world first, but it would seem that their big claim is that it's 3-inches, where the Sharp screen is considerably smaller.
Atari didn't even make Pole Position, Namco did.
on
Hope Fading at Atari
·
· Score: 1
Imagine my surprise when I came out of my childhood years only to find my idol Atari didn't even make half the games I loved. I had to shift my adoration to Namco.
The Atari name surely is cursed. It causes management to get stupid(er), I really can't say I'm surprised at this news.
They did, at least, release Unreal Tournament 2003 + 2004, which are all-time faves of mine. Before and since? Nothing even got on my radar.
I know an artist who's had a work stolen by 1up, and know of another group who've had at least two of their works appear on 1up's site. It takes several emails, and sometimes a bombardment of emails, before they'll take the work down (they refuse to offer credit, they'd rather remove it).
I'm not at all surprised to see they lift text as well as images.
Surprisingly, Mitsubishi the pen company is completely unrelated to the car company, despite having the same logo. They both claim to have devised the logo at the same time and they have an agreement not to cross into each other's turf.
The pen company's small but successful, the other company's not small and is a little bit more successful.
ATRAC isn't a failure, Sony's adherence to DRM and a locked-down ATRAC is a failure. Not that the MD is any kind of failure in Japan...
ATRAC is a great compression format, if Sony had released it to the public instead of locking it down with SDMS and licensing there's a very real chance it would have been bigger than MP3. The sound quality is fantastic, newer model MD players are indistinguishable from their CD sources to most people. I love ATRAC, and I'm picky about this sort of thing.
That said there's no reason not ton include ATRAC in their systems. Tried and true tech with great results.
Either you, your oggs, or your unit was defective. Mine plays all the oggs I can throw at it. This player is seriously cool, the joys of having every CD I own in the palm of my hand, in DRM-free formats of my choice, is amazing to me even now, seven months after I bought the system.
Yeah, it locks up now and then, maybe once or twice a month, but it's otherwise perfectly reliable, fast, and has great sound quality.
"And "Jumping the Shark?" Please. A JTS point is a point of no return, which in this business is clearly impossible."
Of course there's nothing I can do to write this article in the future, so I had to write it now, based on what has come before. Obviously there's plenty of room for Nintendo to improve, and if any game company has the resources and potential to regain my favour (as if they care) it's Nintendo. The game industry is a dynamic thing, but this article is static. In my humble opinion they have jumped the shark, with the most recent Mario if not the other three I lumped into that category, but saying they've done so doesn't preclude the chance that they'll jump back.
Personally I thought the drop-shadows elevated the sprites from the flat page a bit like cardboard cutouts, and IMO it made the whole page a little more dynamic. It was necessary too in some cases to ensure the white parts weren't lost in the background.
I know it's a bit of a contentious issue, some people are quite vehemently against it, but... Choices had to be made.
Glad you liked the rest of it.
Re:Enlarged sprites will always look pixelated
on
The Evolution of Mario
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes yes, if you put any kind of crap on the GBA's awful screen you can hide a multitude of sins.
Never mind the fact that their official product, the GameCube-attached GameBoy Player, offers the chance to play the game on the large screen of your choice, the fact remains though that even on the sad little GBA screen the Mario sprites animate well, but don't look as good as they could.
Having had the astonishing good fortune to be responsible for some previews in a print magazine Nintendo's unfortunate choice of pre-rendered sprites becomes even more disheartening. What looks bad on the GBA screen and worse on a proper monitor looks really dreadful on paper. Nintendo knew their game was good and they knew it would be reviewed and previewed and displayed in giant-size in magazines, but they did it anyway and I, for one, am disappointed.
For what it's worth, here's a review I wrote (Different than the print version) including a brief look at the sprites that encouraged thie larger analysis. Note that it includes pictures of the box or cartridge from both GB Donkey Kong games, which I own. "Stop playing the ROM" indeed.
Glad you're all checking out my little article. Thought I'd respond to some criticisms, some good comments, and some ridiculous whinging (I shant get into which is which...)
75th Trombone had some issues with basically everything... Let's start with the size: When comparing the appearance of an object I think enlarging it makes it easier to see. If you want it smaller, stand away from the computer. In fact, go for a walk. While you're out, think about the difference between aliasing and a black outline surrounding a sprite. As for your last paragraph, I ask you: What the hell?
zenintrude asks about the VB versions of Mario. This is a very good question, I never even thought of the VB as a 2D system, though in this respect they were more or less 2D sprites in a 3D world. My humblest apologies for the oversight.
Idealius writes "He writes it as though it's widely accepted, but from my perspective it's more 50/50. I wish he would throw a few "IMO"'s in there, but oh well." I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to that isn't as widely accepted as I suggest, care to clarify?
gkelman questions my selection of the definitive Marios. I am not, as zenintrude later mentions, talking about the games themselves but the appearance of the main protagonist, our buddy Mario. These AllStar Marios maintain the same character and appeal as the originals, but are remade without (IMESHO) negatively affecting their appearance.
And yes, to those who didn't read the whole article, I didn't include 3D Marios 'cause they're not sprites. I didn't include cameos or other appearances where Mario was not the main character, there are plenty of other webpages that already detail Mario's every appearance.
I thought it was interesting to see how Mario had changed and I put the page together to detail the progression. It's universally agreed that the most recent Mario is pretty f**king ugly, and anyone who disagrees seems only to be playing devil's advocate. (This is good logic, everyone agrees with me except people who don't 'cause they're broken somehow).
When you say: "The part that made my friend laugh was my brother's conclusion as to why such a console was not (at the time at least) distributed in the US, as still is common practice"... You are taking into account the fact that the 3DO was an American system, right? As far as I remember it came out first in the US, but since it sucked, who cares?
Something to keep in mind is the US video game market is far larger than the Japanese one; a lot of Japanese game companies treat the Japanese market as a kind of proving ground, and the games released in North America usually have a number of improvements and tweaks made to them. The game market in Japan is at once loaded wtih bizarre and amazing things that never get released in North America, and a wasteland of half-baked shit that shouldn't have been released anywhere.
As for the cellular phones... My phone cost me $0.00, and the only requirement is that I pay $4 / month for three months for a warranty plan. Which paid off when I fried the camera installing a speaker killswitch. =)
Phone prices in Western countries are absurd, it's no wonder these things aren't popular or as advanced.
Japanese phones have had the ability to receive broadcast TV (via the internal antenna, not a re-packaged pay-to-view version) in several phones for a while now. Have a look at this Vodafone NEC unit.
It's not about the extra abilities in my phone, it's the disabilities that are newsworthy. The TV phone linked above has ridiculous DRM - you can save video clips and screenshots, but not transfer them. The powers that be fear losing what control they've got that you can't transfer the images or video clips you make with your phone, not to your computer. They're locked on the phone. Java apps are locked to the phone, if you have to replace the phone you're f**ked, unless you can transfer them to the SD card - if the phone has a slot - and even then only if your new phone is the same manufacturer and the same phone number. The phones are locked to the carrier, there's absolutely no way no how to use a Vodafone on DoCoMo's network, end of story. You can play music files, but only ones encoded by the locked-down software app, so they're useless to any other music device.
On the bright side, mine has a 2megapixel camera that does pretty nice work, so it's mad handy when I don't want to lug around the real camera and see something neat.
Where was I... Oh yeah: More features are good, but please - make these features useful and not more restrictive than the alternatives, ok? Anyone listening?
It's a conversation very much akin to arguing about the angels on the head of a pin, since I've never used an Amiga and you've never used an X68. Talking to the less fervent of the amiga fans I know, who've used the X68 emulated and the amiga, they say there's definitely some differences between the two machines.
While it's true the Amiga GUI was amazing (and the screenshots I've seen of customized desktops make me weep) I think it can be agreed for the modern user of these machines the OS and GUI often takes a backseat to the rapid-fire and instant-joy use: Games.
Comparing screenshots of games that were released for both there's simply no comparison. I've tried as many games as I can find for the Amiga (emulated) and it's really, gamewise, an uprated MegaDrive. More colours, better sound, better animation, but the Amiga to X68k seems to be the ST to the Amiga.
I heartily recommend you try the emulator, EX68 and then load a few disk images. It's easy, and the X68k hardware was nicely unified so there's none of the incessant tweaking and fiddling to get software to run like you have to endure with the Amiga emus.
You've seen my gallery for the X68, I defy you to find me screenshots that look as good as the X68k best. Dig 'em up, send 'em my way. Let's see how it goes. =)
That said, the price of the X68k upon release kinda means that it SHOULD have kicked ass. USD $3762 in 1991 dollars, based on the exchange rates at the time.
Ah, finally found a screenshot of Amiga Final Fight: Amiga X68k
I've made the mainpage before, and my puny little home server coped with huge load without problems. All hail fiber to the home (yay Japan!) and Abyss webserver. =)
Slashdot Mirror
This is sort of weird. As a long time Opera user I never had a problem accidentally leaving the page. My browser always remembered what I'd typed and going forward again to the form page would have all my content as I'd left it.
IMO the problem isn't the backspace key, it's unfriendly browsers.
Finland's air force flew into the ash cloud, and released some photos of the damage. It ain't pretty.
My vote's on cash grab.
The spellcheck is great, but the dictionary seems to be very old. It doesn't recognize words like URL, internet, or slashdot. At least it recognizes OPERA, though I'm sure that's only 'cause the other uses predate the browser. =)
It seems that some of your issues are limited to your specific installation. I've been using 9, switching to 10 only with the release of Beta 1, and I don't have most/any of the problems you describe:
Slashdot works fine, and has for a while, though it certainly suffered when they started working on this .js-heavy relaunch a few months back. Loads fine, scrolls fine, responds quickly. It's far better with 10 than with 9. Opera works fine with gmail and g-maps as well, at least for the recent past. Interestingly, google recently broke their regular search page with the live-search thingy: I can no longer edit the terms in a results page and hit ENTER, I have to TAB-ENTER or use the mouse. The same bug exists in 10.
As a fix, you might try a clean install (losing your precious profile data, sadly) or try it on another machine, as your OS may have something installed that causes trouble (like, say, microsoft products, heh)
I covered a lot of the Zeebo issues on my own site a while ago. From my site:
"They further claim that hundreds of millions of games have been downloaded wirelessly without one ever being pirated. At first I thought they were joking, as a search on any warez site will turn up hundreds of mobile phone downloads cracked and ready to play, but then I read between the lines: Out of all the wireless games out there, one of them still hasn't been pirated! I wonder which one it is... "
"But hey, at least it has VGA graphics, right? 640x480 video, and since it's VGA we know it'll be non-interlaced (ie: progressive). Too bad it only has composite-video outputs, which can't actually support VGA resolutions."
""Additional enhancements may include [...] new services." Phew, I was worried about the future. But no, the future's awesome: "By 2012, the worldwide video game market is projected to become a $68 billion industry." Yup, from $9.5b in 2007 to $70b in 2012. Only Zeebo allows you to capture a market that will increase in value seven-fold in five years. "
There are so many things wrong with their plan that I can't believe it's anything but a scam run by liars or idiots.
It's funny, but a friend was telling me not half an hour ago how he picked up this game today, and he just hates it. It's impossible to die: "if you miss a jump, your magic friend saves you and brings you back to the previous piece of ground you were on. And if you're in combat and you lose, your magic friend pulls you out of harm's way"
That's not FUN. Why try hard if you never fail? Stupid design is stupid.
Actually, as AVee mentionedyou can do this easily:
F12
Site Preferences
Scripting tab
un-tick Enable Javascript
"It's not where Firefox put it, and I can't install the plugins I know and love... Forget this 'trying new things' crap. Now to post ignorantly on slashdot!"
Temporary server problem. It has been resolved. My humblest apologies.
I wrote this book, and I have to agree with most parts of this review. There's a good story behind it, but here's the short version:
Rotovision approached me about writing it based on some stuff they liked on my website. It was originally intended to be part of a 3-book series discussing game and character art. I don't know for sure what the other two were to be about, but they were canceled and only this one was given a green light.
Then the US publisher, Focal Press, wanted it to be about mobiles in what I can only assume was an attempt to be more trendy and hip. This compromised the book rather seriously, as from a design point of view there are no real graphics challenges when developing for a mobile over, say, a GameBoy or SNES.
The book was rushed. I was given four months to do it all, and for the first three I didn't hear a single word from the editor about the content. None of the promised guidance was forthcoming, and after a month of no contact I believed they had dropped the idea so I stopped working on it.
Suddenly, a month before the due date, they popped back up asking for the 50% complete text and 100% of the images. Say what? So I wrote 20,000 words in a week, enslaved some writer friends to help out, and started cropping out sprite images like a man posessed.
It worked too, I got it done and wrote some amazing stuff. Unfortunately the publisher decided time was too tight to actually use it, so several articles that were to be cut 'cause they sucked made it in, several good ones that were to replace them never did, images that were delivered for specific articles were ignored, random images were thrown in all over the place, and they didn't seem to bother labelling any images in the last quarter of the book.
It's not my fault! I've got a few copies of the book I can't even bring myself to read 'cause it was such a mess at the end.
I take full responsibility for many errors, and for the quality of the text. I totally screwed up by dropping the project for months at a time, but I really don't think I'd be the only person to make the assumption when the editor doesn't reply to your emails for six weeks.
I've re-written a few of the articles to have better image labels, added a few things I missed, and posted them online. For your reading enjoy, here they are:
Sonic Sprite History
Mario Sprite History (This one's been on slashdot before)
Castlevania Sprite History
And here's a rather lengthy errata.
It's the high-speed rotation and length of the cable that keeps it upright and taut. If you don't anchor the bottom of the elevator the entire thing will go flinging off into space. Fun for a while, but eventually someone will get upset about it.
There's a compelling reason to have large, noisy shows that the public can easily get access to, that people seem to ignore while whining about how E3 ain't what it used to be. Tens of thousands of your best, most affluent customers all coming to your showroom, and checking out the goods.
The Tokyo Game Show is open to the public for two out of three days, and it attracts smackloads of people, and the game companies know it's good advertising. E3 tried to have it both ways: big, colourful, sexy, but with the goodies kept to itself and its cronies.
As long as there's a quiet show somewhere where the industry types can hobnob, the big noisy and more public show will still fill a need.
Sharp released the V-604SH phone in Japan earlier this year, which had a 640x480 screen in it. I don't know how Samsung qualifies their screen as a world first, but it would seem that their big claim is that it's 3-inches, where the Sharp screen is considerably smaller.
Sharp V-604SH
Imagine my surprise when I came out of my childhood years only to find my idol Atari didn't even make half the games I loved. I had to shift my adoration to Namco.
The Atari name surely is cursed. It causes management to get stupid(er), I really can't say I'm surprised at this news.
They did, at least, release Unreal Tournament 2003 + 2004, which are all-time faves of mine. Before and since? Nothing even got on my radar.
I know an artist who's had a work stolen by 1up, and know of another group who've had at least two of their works appear on 1up's site. It takes several emails, and sometimes a bombardment of emails, before they'll take the work down (they refuse to offer credit, they'd rather remove it).
I'm not at all surprised to see they lift text as well as images.
Surprisingly, Mitsubishi the pen company is completely unrelated to the car company, despite having the same logo. They both claim to have devised the logo at the same time and they have an agreement not to cross into each other's turf.
The pen company's small but successful, the other company's not small and is a little bit more successful.
ATRAC isn't a failure, Sony's adherence to DRM and a locked-down ATRAC is a failure. Not that the MD is any kind of failure in Japan...
ATRAC is a great compression format, if Sony had released it to the public instead of locking it down with SDMS and licensing there's a very real chance it would have been bigger than MP3. The sound quality is fantastic, newer model MD players are indistinguishable from their CD sources to most people. I love ATRAC, and I'm picky about this sort of thing.
That said there's no reason not ton include ATRAC in their systems. Tried and true tech with great results.
Either you, your oggs, or your unit was defective. Mine plays all the oggs I can throw at it. This player is seriously cool, the joys of having every CD I own in the palm of my hand, in DRM-free formats of my choice, is amazing to me even now, seven months after I bought the system.
Yeah, it locks up now and then, maybe once or twice a month, but it's otherwise perfectly reliable, fast, and has great sound quality.
"And "Jumping the Shark?" Please. A JTS point is a point of no return, which in this business is clearly impossible."
Of course there's nothing I can do to write this article in the future, so I had to write it now, based on what has come before. Obviously there's plenty of room for Nintendo to improve, and if any game company has the resources and potential to regain my favour (as if they care) it's Nintendo. The game industry is a dynamic thing, but this article is static. In my humble opinion they have jumped the shark, with the most recent Mario if not the other three I lumped into that category, but saying they've done so doesn't preclude the chance that they'll jump back.
Personally I thought the drop-shadows elevated the sprites from the flat page a bit like cardboard cutouts, and IMO it made the whole page a little more dynamic. It was necessary too in some cases to ensure the white parts weren't lost in the background.
I know it's a bit of a contentious issue, some people are quite vehemently against it, but... Choices had to be made.
Glad you liked the rest of it.
Yes yes, if you put any kind of crap on the GBA's awful screen you can hide a multitude of sins.
Never mind the fact that their official product, the GameCube-attached GameBoy Player, offers the chance to play the game on the large screen of your choice, the fact remains though that even on the sad little GBA screen the Mario sprites animate well, but don't look as good as they could.
Having had the astonishing good fortune to be responsible for some previews in a print magazine Nintendo's unfortunate choice of pre-rendered sprites becomes even more disheartening. What looks bad on the GBA screen and worse on a proper monitor looks really dreadful on paper. Nintendo knew their game was good and they knew it would be reviewed and previewed and displayed in giant-size in magazines, but they did it anyway and I, for one, am disappointed.
For what it's worth, here's a review I wrote (Different than the print version) including a brief look at the sprites that encouraged thie larger analysis. Note that it includes pictures of the box or cartridge from both GB Donkey Kong games, which I own. "Stop playing the ROM" indeed.
Glad you're all checking out my little article. Thought I'd respond to some criticisms, some good comments, and some ridiculous whinging (I shant get into which is which...)
75th Trombone had some issues with basically everything... Let's start with the size: When comparing the appearance of an object I think enlarging it makes it easier to see. If you want it smaller, stand away from the computer. In fact, go for a walk. While you're out, think about the difference between aliasing and a black outline surrounding a sprite. As for your last paragraph, I ask you: What the hell?
zenintrude asks about the VB versions of Mario. This is a very good question, I never even thought of the VB as a 2D system, though in this respect they were more or less 2D sprites in a 3D world. My humblest apologies for the oversight.
Idealius writes "He writes it as though it's widely accepted, but from my perspective it's more 50/50. I wish he would throw a few "IMO"'s in there, but oh well." I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to that isn't as widely accepted as I suggest, care to clarify?
gkelman questions my selection of the definitive Marios. I am not, as zenintrude later mentions, talking about the games themselves but the appearance of the main protagonist, our buddy Mario. These AllStar Marios maintain the same character and appeal as the originals, but are remade without (IMESHO) negatively affecting their appearance.
And yes, to those who didn't read the whole article, I didn't include 3D Marios 'cause they're not sprites. I didn't include cameos or other appearances where Mario was not the main character, there are plenty of other webpages that already detail Mario's every appearance.
I thought it was interesting to see how Mario had changed and I put the page together to detail the progression. It's universally agreed that the most recent Mario is pretty f**king ugly, and anyone who disagrees seems only to be playing devil's advocate. (This is good logic, everyone agrees with me except people who don't 'cause they're broken somehow).
When you say: "The part that made my friend laugh was my brother's conclusion as to why such a console was not (at the time at least) distributed in the US, as still is common practice" ... You are taking into account the fact that the 3DO was an American system, right? As far as I remember it came out first in the US, but since it sucked, who cares?
Something to keep in mind is the US video game market is far larger than the Japanese one; a lot of Japanese game companies treat the Japanese market as a kind of proving ground, and the games released in North America usually have a number of improvements and tweaks made to them. The game market in Japan is at once loaded wtih bizarre and amazing things that never get released in North America, and a wasteland of half-baked shit that shouldn't have been released anywhere.
As for the cellular phones... My phone cost me $0.00, and the only requirement is that I pay $4 / month for three months for a warranty plan. Which paid off when I fried the camera installing a speaker killswitch. =)
Phone prices in Western countries are absurd, it's no wonder these things aren't popular or as advanced.
Japanese phones have had the ability to receive broadcast TV (via the internal antenna, not a re-packaged pay-to-view version) in several phones for a while now. Have a look at this Vodafone NEC unit.
It's not about the extra abilities in my phone, it's the disabilities that are newsworthy. The TV phone linked above has ridiculous DRM - you can save video clips and screenshots, but not transfer them. The powers that be fear losing what control they've got that you can't transfer the images or video clips you make with your phone, not to your computer. They're locked on the phone. Java apps are locked to the phone, if you have to replace the phone you're f**ked, unless you can transfer them to the SD card - if the phone has a slot - and even then only if your new phone is the same manufacturer and the same phone number. The phones are locked to the carrier, there's absolutely no way no how to use a Vodafone on DoCoMo's network, end of story. You can play music files, but only ones encoded by the locked-down software app, so they're useless to any other music device.
On the bright side, mine has a 2megapixel camera that does pretty nice work, so it's mad handy when I don't want to lug around the real camera and see something neat.
Where was I... Oh yeah: More features are good, but please - make these features useful and not more restrictive than the alternatives, ok? Anyone listening?
nope...
It's a conversation very much akin to arguing about the angels on the head of a pin, since I've never used an Amiga and you've never used an X68. Talking to the less fervent of the amiga fans I know, who've used the X68 emulated and the amiga, they say there's definitely some differences between the two machines.
While it's true the Amiga GUI was amazing (and the screenshots I've seen of customized desktops make me weep) I think it can be agreed for the modern user of these machines the OS and GUI often takes a backseat to the rapid-fire and instant-joy use: Games.
Comparing screenshots of games that were released for both there's simply no comparison. I've tried as many games as I can find for the Amiga (emulated) and it's really, gamewise, an uprated MegaDrive. More colours, better sound, better animation, but the Amiga to X68k seems to be the ST to the Amiga.
I heartily recommend you try the emulator, EX68 and then load a few disk images. It's easy, and the X68k hardware was nicely unified so there's none of the incessant tweaking and fiddling to get software to run like you have to endure with the Amiga emus.
You've seen my gallery for the X68, I defy you to find me screenshots that look as good as the X68k best. Dig 'em up, send 'em my way. Let's see how it goes. =)
That said, the price of the X68k upon release kinda means that it SHOULD have kicked ass. USD $3762 in 1991 dollars, based on the exchange rates at the time.
Ah, finally found a screenshot of Amiga Final Fight:
Amiga
X68k
I've made the mainpage before, and my puny little home server coped with huge load without problems. All hail fiber to the home (yay Japan!) and Abyss webserver. =)