Well, Nimoy did rip off his Vulcan salute from some Jewish ceremony he spied on as a child. I remember seeing that on an interview with him. He said he was a child and he wasn't supposed to peek. Here it is from Wikipedia:
The Vulcan peace sign (the Vulcan salute), employed by Spock, is a modification of the sign used by Kohens, the Jewish priestly class. Actor Leonard Nimoy devised this gesture and the accompanying greeting ("Live long and prosper," "Peace and long life") based on his own Jewish heritage.
-- Spock
They actually did something like a dry run for the game during Season 3, Nikki and Paolo. (Well, if the game plays as I expect it to.) The two characters had their own arc, discovered their own mysteries, but interacted with the main cast throughout the season (and their focus episode). It had a satisfying conclusion (for me anyway) i hope the games ending will be as cool.
I still can't believe that Mr. LaShade turned out to be the Cobra.
How is it that the ultimate video game isn't on the list? Where else can you have Light Yagami write your opponent's names in the Death Note while Monkey D. Luffy pummels them senseless? (Well, besides Jump Super Stars.)Seriously..
I suppose it will have to wait until the current witch-hunt is over, the same sorts of things were said about Jazz, Comic Books and Dungeons and Dragons, it's typical witch-hunter boilerplate.
Honestly, it's obviously lost most of it's pull against First Person Shooters, which are more plentiful, and violent, than they've ever been. In fact, I say with confidence that if Manhunt 2 were a First Person Shooter, rather than a third person stealth game, it wouldn't have gotten an AO rating (Note: the only exception here is if it just got an AO because it's a Mature game called Manhunt, and it was switched to First Person after making the first one Third Person.) I mean a guy eats a corpse in the F.E.A.R. demo, and no one is getting upset about that, except panty waists like the above loser.
Politically, it's a fact that the games that are most attacked lately, GTA,Manhunt, and Rule of Rose are all Third Person Adventure type games. If people were swayed by the above garbage, it'd be stuff like Far Cry, F.E.A.R., Painkiller, Halo and Half-Life getting trashed.
Well, Resistance got bashed by the CoE, but that's just because the Bishop of Manchester is a reincarnation of Titus Oates and he figured he could grandstand because "his" cathedral was used without permission and that's mainly about selling lucrative film rights.
Imagine if no one ever needed to pay Manchester Cathedral because they could just create a digital simulation, horrors, the Bishop would lose lose out on bags and bags of money. It's sacreligious I tell you!
Of course, it's always possible that someone will figure out a way to make FPSs controversial again, but so far if you want to make a political witchhunt agains your game, it's third person all the way.
Well, I think it would be even more apt to say, "I wonder what would've happened if this game hadn't been called Manhunt 2... and had been released by Activision or Electronic Arts."
But what is to stop them from selling me a disk that happens to work with the Wii and then with me actually putting it in the wii and playing it?
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This is because you'd need to sign your disks without having legitimate signatures from Nintendo. You aren't allowed to circumvent an encryption system. It's not a problem with regular DVDs because all DVD players will play unencrypted DVDs, as far as I know. For a Nintendo, it's bypassing a content control system, which is illegal.
Oh, also, you'd have to do that for every game your company produced from then on, good luck getting Nintendo to agree to let you produce licensed software after you've produced one unlicensed game.
The original NES wasn't protected by the DMCA... because at the time there was no DMCA.
It's basically the Black Knight scene from Holy Grail in video game form.
Congress took it deadly serious, and humorlessly approached it. Which frankly you are doing in you post, as well.
Nobody who has played Mortal Kombat thinks it was about realism, it was about comedy. Because fighting games are basically intended to be two player, and the point of Mortal Kombat is that after you've beaten your mate at the game in the arcade, it's funny to rip out his on screen character's spine or crush his head, etc. It's not immersive in that you know that the guy standing next to you isn't really having his spine pulled out, just his onscreen puppet is. (Incidentally, The Simpsons TV show gets this.Mortal Kombat wasn't released until 1993, The Simpsons had fatalities in Super Slugfest in 1990.)
Because, for example, it has a decent 3D engine and graphics effects (which cost a huge amount of money to develop), physics engine, innovative use of controllers. High quality in budget, QA, R&D, etc... not talking about content which none of us have played.
AO games never have this kind of budget.
The rating system is absolutely not supposed to be an artistic judgement on a game. It exists to rate content and is supposed to be neutral on artistic merit. (I'm sure I can find a brutally violent film that also got critical acclaim to counter your Friday the 13th. I'll be lazy and pick Casualties of War.)
It isn't actually, because AO is used to put games beyond the pale of decent society and say "This is rubbish, or at least porn." But that's because the rating systems objectivity is just a convenient fiction used to keep a gamecode from being put in place. Essentially, there is a code in place with games as with movies, but the theory is that it's more liberal because it is enforced as a ratings system than it would be as a straight censor. This is being put to the test lately, games like GTA:SA and Manhunt2 have fallen outside the code, and show very clearly that there is a censor in place. Since these are not obscure niche titles like Rule of Rose, it's letting everyone know that there is a code, and damaging the fiction that the ratings board was created to sustain (namely that games are rated but not censored).
Ok, the NC-17 rating was never supposed to be for porn. What it's supposed to be for is movies that would normally not be able to get an R rating for content but were considered to have artistic merit.
The best way to explain this is the film Midnight Cowboy which got an X rating, won an Oscar anyway, and was later re-rated by the MPAA to be an R.
Ok, this was an embarrassment for the MPAA, especially considering nowadays no one thinks an X rating is going to be for a movie with much actual content. So the NC-17 rating was created to cover cases like this. If you've ever seen an NC-17 rated film, you've probably been disappointed if you were looking for porn. (I've seen a few, like Requiem for a Dream one of my girlfriends favorite movies.)
However, the distribution still treats NC-17 movies as things that it doesn't want to deal with, you won't see them in Blockbuster or many retail stores. The rating has failed to achieve broad distribution for controversial films, and films that are intended to be commercial will either be edited to be R or if the director has enough clout the MPAA will rate them R and turn a blind eye to content that would earn an unknown director an NC-17.
It's far simpler for video games. AO is the rating for porn games, period. There's no such thing as an NC-17 rating for video games, because they are currently considered to be entertainment only with no artistic value by the Establishment. Since no game will be considered art at the present time, there is no reason for an "art" rating. (Note: The views of the Establishment do not reflect the views of the author of this comment.) If your game gets an AO rating, it better fit into that niche (although... in movies porn is pretty huge for a niche, and makes a huge amount of money to show it). If it doesn't, you are basically screwed, you've probably spent to much on development to justify a niche game that will only sell on the Web (even the porn store guys that sell porn games will likely go, "you're kidding, right?" if you try to distribute it through them).
I have a feeling that won't happen with this game, but whether it does or not this is the last Manhunt game we will ever see. (Unless some sort of sales miracle happens, the series is essentially kaput.)
No, they would just censor it until they can get an M rating. If that option is unavailable (for example, because the ESRB is too afraid of the negative publicity to allow the game to ever be released no matter how "toned down" it is.) then they'll scrap it and probably use the non-art assets (engine, physics, etc...) to make a more "family friendly" game.
Sure Vista can be slow but then running vista on 512mb of ram is like running XP on 128mb's, something you shouldn't do.
Why is my operating system supposed to be using more RAM now than it was? It's an OS. It's not a game entertaining me by pushing more polygons, textures, etc. In fact, it's taking precious system memory away from games, and anything else that I want to do.
On my XP box, one of the first things I do is visit the Black Viper and figure out what processes I can disble so they aren't wasting memory. What I want is a lightweight OS, not an OS plus a software package with a bunch of stuff I neither need nor want. But that's what Microsoft sells, software bundles that you have to take if you want their OS. (Which I don't actually want, but I want the game software that runs on it. I don't need anything else that's Windows exclusive that I can think of... well, except Death Note and I can get that on DVD so there is an option. Even now Windows is still the most Free serious gaming platform, compared to the gimped, locked-down game consoles.)
Oh, I must bow to their monopoly in the long run, but I won't buy Vista until I'm forced to.
Slashdot Mirror
"He'll tell us what to do!"
I still can't believe that Mr. LaShade turned out to be the Cobra.
Because nobody ever uses a PC for pornography currently.
"This is not about money, it's about revenge!"
Nothing to Fear
Jeffrey Combs as the voice of the Scarecrow.
"During this period, CD-ROM had been pioneered by Sony. Nintendo saw this opportunity and, along with Sony, began development on a CD-ROM drive for the SNES. Drawing on their clever naming skills, the 'Super Disc' would play Nintendo cartridge games and compact discs. But what Nintendo overlooked was that Sony would be deemed the "sole worldwide licenser" of this CD technology, according to the contract."
L and Autism
It illustrates autistic character traits using the character of L from the manga Death Note.
Hero? I always thought the name was Mechanicles...
How is it that the ultimate video game isn't on the list? Where else can you have Light Yagami write your opponent's names in the Death Note while Monkey D. Luffy pummels them senseless? (Well, besides Jump Super Stars.)Seriously..
Why Captain America had to die!
Civil War in 30 seconds (for those who don't mind spoilers)
As for me, Make Mine... The Goon!
I don't feed trolls.
Video nasty
I wonder how long it will be before the above stupid theory goes the way of phrenology.
It's been thoroughly debunked, along with it's origins in that professional liar S. L. A. Marshall's works. Grossman-ism: Media Violence and Mad Social Science
I suppose it will have to wait until the current witch-hunt is over, the same sorts of things were said about Jazz, Comic Books and Dungeons and Dragons, it's typical witch-hunter boilerplate.
Honestly, it's obviously lost most of it's pull against First Person Shooters, which are more plentiful, and violent, than they've ever been. In fact, I say with confidence that if Manhunt 2 were a First Person Shooter, rather than a third person stealth game, it wouldn't have gotten an AO rating (Note: the only exception here is if it just got an AO because it's a Mature game called Manhunt, and it was switched to First Person after making the first one Third Person.) I mean a guy eats a corpse in the F.E.A.R. demo, and no one is getting upset about that, except panty waists like the above loser.
Politically, it's a fact that the games that are most attacked lately, GTA, Manhunt, and Rule of Rose are all Third Person Adventure type games. If people were swayed by the above garbage, it'd be stuff like Far Cry, F.E.A.R., Painkiller, Halo and Half-Life getting trashed.
Well, Resistance got bashed by the CoE, but that's just because the Bishop of Manchester is a reincarnation of Titus Oates and he figured he could grandstand because "his" cathedral was used without permission and that's mainly about selling lucrative film rights.
Imagine if no one ever needed to pay Manchester Cathedral because they could just create a digital simulation, horrors, the Bishop would lose lose out on bags and bags of money. It's sacreligious I tell you!
Of course, it's always possible that someone will figure out a way to make FPSs controversial again, but so far if you want to make a political witchhunt agains your game, it's third person all the way.
Probably an 'M' rating.
Oh, also, you'd have to do that for every game your company produced from then on, good luck getting Nintendo to agree to let you produce licensed software after you've produced one unlicensed game.
The original NES wasn't protected by the DMCA... because at the time there was no DMCA.
It's basically the Black Knight scene from Holy Grail in video game form.
Congress took it deadly serious, and humorlessly approached it. Which frankly you are doing in you post, as well.
Nobody who has played Mortal Kombat thinks it was about realism, it was about comedy. Because fighting games are basically intended to be two player, and the point of Mortal Kombat is that after you've beaten your mate at the game in the arcade, it's funny to rip out his on screen character's spine or crush his head, etc. It's not immersive in that you know that the guy standing next to you isn't really having his spine pulled out, just his onscreen puppet is. (Incidentally, The Simpsons TV show gets this. Mortal Kombat wasn't released until 1993, The Simpsons had fatalities in Super Slugfest in 1990.)
AO games never have this kind of budget.
The rating system is absolutely not supposed to be an artistic judgement on a game. It exists to rate content and is supposed to be neutral on artistic merit. (I'm sure I can find a brutally violent film that also got critical acclaim to counter your Friday the 13th. I'll be lazy and pick Casualties of War .)
It isn't actually, because AO is used to put games beyond the pale of decent society and say "This is rubbish, or at least porn." But that's because the rating systems objectivity is just a convenient fiction used to keep a game code from being put in place. Essentially, there is a code in place with games as with movies, but the theory is that it's more liberal because it is enforced as a ratings system than it would be as a straight censor. This is being put to the test lately, games like GTA:SA and Manhunt2 have fallen outside the code, and show very clearly that there is a censor in place. Since these are not obscure niche titles like Rule of Rose, it's letting everyone know that there is a code, and damaging the fiction that the ratings board was created to sustain (namely that games are rated but not censored).
The best way to explain this is the film Midnight Cowboy which got an X rating, won an Oscar anyway, and was later re-rated by the MPAA to be an R.
Ok, this was an embarrassment for the MPAA, especially considering nowadays no one thinks an X rating is going to be for a movie with much actual content. So the NC-17 rating was created to cover cases like this. If you've ever seen an NC-17 rated film, you've probably been disappointed if you were looking for porn. (I've seen a few, like Requiem for a Dream one of my girlfriends favorite movies.)
However, the distribution still treats NC-17 movies as things that it doesn't want to deal with, you won't see them in Blockbuster or many retail stores. The rating has failed to achieve broad distribution for controversial films, and films that are intended to be commercial will either be edited to be R or if the director has enough clout the MPAA will rate them R and turn a blind eye to content that would earn an unknown director an NC-17.
It's far simpler for video games. AO is the rating for porn games, period. There's no such thing as an NC-17 rating for video games, because they are currently considered to be entertainment only with no artistic value by the Establishment. Since no game will be considered art at the present time, there is no reason for an "art" rating. (Note: The views of the Establishment do not reflect the views of the author of this comment.) If your game gets an AO rating, it better fit into that niche (although... in movies porn is pretty huge for a niche, and makes a huge amount of money to show it). If it doesn't, you are basically screwed, you've probably spent to much on development to justify a niche game that will only sell on the Web (even the porn store guys that sell porn games will likely go, "you're kidding, right?" if you try to distribute it through them).
I have a feeling that won't happen with this game, but whether it does or not this is the last Manhunt game we will ever see. (Unless some sort of sales miracle happens, the series is essentially kaput.)
The precedent for this would be Thrill Kill
Manhunt 2 may end up never being available in any form.
On my XP box, one of the first things I do is visit the Black Viper and figure out what processes I can disble so they aren't wasting memory. What I want is a lightweight OS, not an OS plus a software package with a bunch of stuff I neither need nor want. But that's what Microsoft sells, software bundles that you have to take if you want their OS. (Which I don't actually want, but I want the game software that runs on it. I don't need anything else that's Windows exclusive that I can think of... well, except Death Note and I can get that on DVD so there is an option. Even now Windows is still the most Free serious gaming platform, compared to the gimped, locked-down game consoles.)
Oh, I must bow to their monopoly in the long run, but I won't buy Vista until I'm forced to.
Too bad Frank Gorshin is dead, he could have reprised his role from the Diablo 2...