The Conference Board, a respected US business pressure group, estimated this downward adjustment shaves 1.5% off the consumer price index every year and therefore reduces its inflation rate by that amount. But the inflation rate is deducted from the nominal gross domestic product numbers to give the real increase in GDP.
If the inflation rate is understated by 1.5% compared with how other countries measure the same data, it follows that America's growth rate is claimed to be 1.5% higher than it is in reality. So its lead over the eurozone in the past four years, 10% growth against 4%, is almost entirely a statistical fiction.
This, if you accept it, provides the clue to the great conundrum of the so-called American recovery since 2000. Despite a huge expansion of its public sector, where 1.1 million jobs were created, employment is still only at the levels of 2000.
In previous post-war recoveries where there has been such a purported growth surge, there have been millions of new jobs. But in this case, America's job creation record is one of the worst in the developed world and worse - no doubt to most readers' astonishment - than that of the eurozone.
--- How America fakes its figures, Evening Standard (London), Feb 3, 2005
Yes, everything is fine, full steam ahead, what icebergs?
"Euroland's underlying economic performance is better than many commentators portray. Over the past decade, GDP per head has risen virtually at the same rate in euroland as the United States; euroland productivity growth (output per hour) and the rise in the employment rates were slightly faster than in the United States; and to maintain the same growth in GDP per head, U.S. workers have had to work much longer hours than their euroland counterparts."
-- Kevin Daly, Goldman Sachs, January 2004
Re:Ingrained Behaviour
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Most Americans don't really believe in capitalism anyway. I'll give you an example. I'm tired of my current job, and I've saved up enough to buy a Lincoln Towncar. "Ok," I think, "I'll quit my job, and I'll charge people for rides to various places in my brand new Lincoln Towncar. I'll keep my current beater for personal driving."
Eeeerk! "I'm sorry, " says average American, "You can't do that. In fact, we've passed laws against it."
"But why," I ask, "I have a perfect driving record!"
"Well, " says the average American, "It isn't safe, you'll need a special license. You'll also have to pay super high taxes, to the point where it won't be economically feasable for you to do this as a business. Oh, and we can't have just any car being used to ferry people from here to there, you'll need a Taxi medallion. We limit those, and even if you could get one (and you can't) it'll cost you."
"How do I know you speak for all Americans? " says I.
"Well, after all, this is a democracy, we wouldn't have passed all those laws if we wanted any old person to be able to run their own cab company."
"I think you just passed all those laws to protect the income of the cab companies," says I.
"Well, prove it! If you can prove it, maybe you'll be able to change enough people's minds to get the law changed. I wouldn't count on it though, the established cab companies have quite a large lobbying budget."
"Yay, capitalism, " I say, weakly.
"Yes, yay capitalism, now get back to work," says the average American.
Re:Is this the root of EA's problems?
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EA is not the same company it was when it started. EA got big back when it had different management and it was treating it's programmers like rockstars. I can tell you who Dan Bunten and Paul Reiche III are. Heck, their pictures were on the box covers. I can't tell you who the current anonymous drones grimly pushing out mostly mediocre titles on their permanent deathmarches are.
After it got big, it stayed big for a while, and then at some point things changed. That would be in the 90's when Madden started. One of the things EA would do is buy good game studios and kill them. They also have a few exclusive licenses that sell games regardless of quality (they are the only ones who can make NFL football for example). Oh, they are 100% garbage currently, I won't make the mistake of saying they are but they produce a huge number of bad games.
Anyway, since I can't share the various magazine articles, books and other media I've read on the rise of EA, I'll reccomend the Wikipedia article: Electronic Arts.
Modern EA games mostly suck. I hardly buy any even when I want them based on previews. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent should have been a slam dunk!
This isn't the GoldenEye you so fondly remember; as you play through Rogue Agent, you get the impression that nobody on the development team actually cared about this project. If EA's next James Bond title is a third person title like Everything or Nothing, they may be able to get the series back on track, but with GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, all they've done is tarnish a once respectable brand.
-- GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
Another, I supect, will be the new "Tiberium" game that's coming out. I'll bet dollars to donuts that it will be an unfun, buggy mess. Looking forward to EA games is akin to watching science fiction or fantasy genre series on the Fox network, an exercise in masochism.
Re:Ingrained Behaviour
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Encouraging Chinese production and foreign purchases. Thus your money is going into Chinese pockets instead of European pockets. Which is good for the Chinese at the moment, and very, very bad for the EU countries currently experiencing a recession.
Oh, when I say the ad campaign (Sorry, I'm never sure how to write ad, so I used the sort of spelling I'd use for an acronym. I wasn't intending to "shout.") is "Insufficiently sexist" I mean that the creators of the ad didn't take into account the fact that people are OK with all manner of mayhem against healthy, adult males but we, as a society, still expect a certain amount of chivalry towards woman. Of course, for all I know, the woman in the picture is a monster akin to some of the women you see in film noir (think Frank Miller's A Dame to Kill For if you are familiar with the particular Sin City comic, too bad it isn't a movie, yet...). It doesn't matter, it still isn't considered acceptable. However, the people who are upset about the ad are the ones being sexist, not the people who made the ad. The people who made the ad are being somewhat egalitarian.
I'm not judging the morals of games here (except that I think that Hitman falls specifically withing the bounds of what I consider a morally acceptable game. ). In the real world, of course, a surgical strike would be more moral since avoiding collateral damage is generally considered better than indiscriminate maiming and killing... but it is a little silly to worry about that with animated cartoon characters...
You are absolutely right about Doom of course, which gets a very bad rep despite the fact that it pits its protagonist against the forces of Hell. I mean, the main character in Doom is about as righteous as you can get.
Jonathan Brewster: Tonight, we are taking care of Mortimer. And just for him we'll have something special. I plan on using the Melbourne method.
Dr. Einstein: Not the Melbourne Method!! Please!! Chonny--no--not dat. Two hours! And ven it was all over, vat? Da fellow in London vas chust as dead as da fellow in Melbourne.
Yeah, well, the guy in Hitman is more like Don Corleone. In the game I played, he was living the life of a pauper in a Catholic monastary until the bad guys kidnap his friend, a priest. It's a "just when I though I was out, they pull me back in." kind of moment... (see desc) Besides, he's a member of some fictional crime organization (think S.P.E.C.T.R.E), rather than one of the 5 families or other Mafia's that exist in the real world.
Oh, and as to the type of killing, more like that movie Layer Cake (yes, I know its by Sony... too bad about the kitten). Very cold blooded and to the point. Or the scene in, Godfather II(?), where Corleone, in the old days, kills that one mob boss while the fireworks go off...
In the new issue of PC Gamer, they have the second AD in this series "Classically Executed" showing a chellist (a male chellist) sitting in a concert hall, the main indication that he's dead is the rope burn around his neck. You can view the image here "Classically Executed". (Oh, and another one with a male victim, Coldly Executed.) The whole gallery is here, Hitman Gallery.
In the Hitman games, you play a stealthy killer. Now, so far, I've only played part two (it's the one that is out for Gamecube). The point of the game is that you have a target, you get to the target a sneakily as possible, kill him/her and then sneak out again as sneakily as possible. In part two, you even have the option of knocking people out with cloroform if you need them out of the way and they aren't your target. In other words, unlike a lot of action games, where your goal is to rack up kills, you purpose is just to take out one target without anyone knowing you did it. (I found the second level of part two to be very tough, any pointers?) You get scored on this, the more sneakily efficient you are, the better you do. (In other words, heading in with guns blazing is a way to get a bad score.)
Anyway, the AD isn't intended to be sexist, indeed I think the argument against the AD that I'm seeing is that it should have been sexist.
I.e. if it was a male character, dead in some museum in front of some spectacular work of art and they used "Beautifully Executed," there would have been no controversy for this effective AD campaign. So, the problem is, the AD campaign was insufficiently sexist, not that it was too sexist. Or do people think anyone would have raised such controversy about the other two ADs?
* Great media player capabilities: Though it won't play DRMed content, it plays standard Divx and MP3s with free software from the Web. (The video player software that came with it was some annoying proprietary thing. The MP3 player was fine, but the free media player I got plays OGGs too.) Battery life can be a problem with long movies, but not for episodes of The Venture Brothers, well if only there were some way to get episodes of that show in DiVX format, I mean. (Oh, The Simpsons, The Tick, GitS: SAC, Paranoia AgentFuturama whatever turns you on... live action TV too, an hour is no problem.)
* Great gaming capabilities: I mean it has a touch screen and an analogue stick... but unfortunately not so much commercial software. Stuntcar Extreme which came with it, is great for showing off it's 3D graphics, rumble feature, and smooth controls using the analogue stick and buttons. For a game that uses the touch screen, the Warfare Inc. demo is kind of fun, and it comes with a version of Solitaire. Homebrew has been sort of hit or miss for me. I like Beats of Rage, but most of the other stuff I tried to install required a memory wipe.
* All the note taking, life organizing, alarm clock type features you would want. Oh, and I downloaded a Tone Dialer for it that works but you have to get the speaker of the Zodiac really close to the reciever.
Annoyingly, the Tapwave Zodiac failed marketwise, I'm not sure why. I'm guessing they had too much debt and needed to hit it big right away. Or perhaps it was simply to beautiful for this world.
Anyway, buy a Tapwave Zodiac! It will make your life better! Chicks dig them... well, ok not all... maybe not even most, but I'm sure some do. Besides it's cheaper than a porsche!
You might be trolling, since I'm surprised anyone could really misinterpret what I wrote that badly. In case you aren't, or in case anyone else is fooled, I'll put one reply.
I'm was complaining about this:
The Dreamcast Gun is a light gun that was made specifically for the Sega Dreamcast. However, it was released only in Europe and Asia, where it is the official light gun for use. It works on American consoles, as all Dreamcast peripherals are reigion-free. American gamers could either import this controller at inflated prices, or choose from two third-party controllers released for the system. However, the Dreamcast Gun was purposely disabled for use with American games. This was an intentional move on Sega's part, who were worried about bad press after the Columbine massacre. Instead, Mad Catz released an officially licensed light gun in America, which does work with Sega's US gun games. The official European and Asian Sega Dreamcast Gun does work with Virtua Cop 2 on the Sega Smash Pack (which was only released in the United States). It also works with all freeware Dreamcast lightgun games.
-- Dreamcast light guns
I wrote SEGA and objected to it, which had exactly zero effect on their decision. I'm not making it up, post-Columbine politics were very nasty for light gun games in particular. My version of House of the Dead II is a Japanese import.
I can remember watching a commercial, I think it was for Boys Town, in which one of the "troubled youth" was playing a light gun game on a PC... (though he was holding the light gun way too close to the monitor.)
I like lightgun games, I think they are fun. I bought a Sega Menacer for my Sega Genesis purely in the hope that my favorite arcade game at the time, SNKs Beast Busters would come out for it.
So, let me make this clear, I am pro-light gun and pro-Second Amendment.
Red Steel isn't supposed be on rails, of course, making the whole argument moot... but, I have to say, what is wrong with lightgun games?
The reason, the sole reason, why light gun games are not more popular is because of something called Columbine. Columbine painted a big red bullseye on the arcade light gun shooters that were becoming very popular at the time, and made a distortion in the market because no one wanted "Action News 26 looks at what your children are playing!" with their light gun games in the video segments. It had nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with former Lt. Colonel Grossman and the fact that the more realistic you make the shooting, the more actually useful it becomes in training to use a real gun (which wouldn't be a problem if this country really believe in the 2nd Amendment).
This is why SEGA refused to release their Light Gun controler for their hit game House of the Dead on Dreamcast... and why House of the Dead 4 is such an obvious choice for the Revolution that it is almost certain not to come out for it...
In fact, the biggest problem with the Revolution isn't that light gun games aren't "badass," but that they are a little too "badass." FPS games played with a joystick or a keyboard and a mouse mute criticism (though they don't extinguish it, unfortunately) because the video isn't nearly as exiting as showing a kid blowing away pixelated zombies with something that resembles a gun.
I've had a lot of fun playing lightgun rail shooters in the past, I think if you want to insult them youy don't call them Duck Hunt insult them by calling them the state of the art, House of the Dead or another recent lightgun shooter. Using Duck Hunt as an insult was the choice, of course, because Duck Hunt was cute and humorous... obviously. Ooh, I hope for Ready, Aim, Tomatoes in the downloadable content... or even better Ready, Aim, Tomatoes... Revolution!. There would also be nothing wrong with a humourous Duck Hunt... Revolution! update... obviously, this article is just appealing to the teenage thug audience who think that only "teh gays" play cute or cartoony games....
I have a question... is the guy who wrote this article a drooling moron? (Warning, caustic sarcasm to follow...)
When NES gained popularity, gamepads doomed joysticks. When joysticks died, games designed with the joystick in mind died with them. Think for a moment what you could do with a joystick - move side to side, up and down, and press the button. Think about what you couldn't do: jump effectively and freely in all directions, crouch with the same freedom and ease, aim and shoot, change weapons, and manipulate angles. It is true that joysticks could do some of these things, but it wasn't easy. Two of the most famous early games - Pac-Man and Space Invaders - prove the point. Pac-Man (we were addicted to this one too) does not even leverage a button. It is an up-down-left-right game. Space Invaders has no up-down. It has side-to-side and makes use of the joystick's button as a firing weapon.
As consoles and controllers evolved and became more complex, games evolved with them. If Pac-Man or Space Invaders made use of these new controllers, and you could crouch in Pac-Man or move in stealth, or zoom with satellite radar in Space Invaders, these games would cease to be Pac-Man and Space Invaders. They'd become Splinter Cell and Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon. This is a less-than-perfect analogy, but we think you get the idea.
Gamepads doomed joysticks? Because of course one of the first things that happened in the move to 32 bits wasn't a huge revival in joysticks in the N64 controller, the Playstations dual shock and Sega analog joystick. Oh, wait a minute, it was....
Lord of the Rings (LotR), the movies, fi nished with The Return of the King. What now? EA will no doubt make as much of the brand as it can. And we don't doubt the LotR brand can sell. (Games with lesser brands have.) But we wonder how successful upcoming games can be without theatrical releases to accompany them. We have looked at moviebased games, and we have found
that movie-based game sales have the strongest correlation with theatrical box offi ce receipts.
Do I really need to comment on the above? Probably EA will screw up the LOTR license... but the biggest problem Lord of the Rings has is that most of the reckognizable stuff in it is non-copyrightable folklore monsters. Which is why everyone and his brother can come up with their own Lord of the Rings themed game without paying any royalties to the Tolkien estate. So, LotR Online has to compete with World of Warcraft, for example... but it is still a great backstory for a game. (No, of course, World of Warcraft owes nothing to Lord of the Rings much like Warcraft owes nothing to Warhammer Fantasy Battle... which itself owes nothing to Tolkien. Tolkien is a Titan, a God... he's shaped computer gaming, roleplaying gaming, and fantasy fictions as no one else has... but his books aren't a good "franchise" without movies coming out based on them, right?)
The basements of game enthusiasts are littered with bygone consoles: Atari 2600, Colecovision, Dreamcast, GameCube...err...wait.
What a comedian? I laughed and laughed at this comment...
Yes, after reading that I though, "It's a good thing that that guy isn't here in my cubicle right now... or I'd probably have ripped his very throat out with my own teeth."
Seriously, though, I stopped buying Sony products over this attitude, back in the days of the Playstation 1. This is why we've had how many failed Castlevania games, but people still rave about Symphony of the Night.
Also... I guess the success of the Gameboy and DS really prove his point here. I always wonder if there isn't a hidden agenda here since the constant push for heavier and heavier polygonal graphics really hinder independents and help the big studios.. Also when he says "the market has spoken," he fails to account for the fact that no popular "2D" fighters have ever successfully transitioned into "3D." Not one of the major "3D" fighting game series started out as a "2D" series. Truthfully, how many really successful "3D" fighting series are there? Soul Calibur and Tekken. As far as I know not even the much vaunted Virtua Fighter has been all that successful in raw numbers... and I tend to consider wrestling games another beast entirely.
I wish they would sell Neo Geo's, think how cheap they'd be now...
I haven't heard anything on Neo Geo games coming to the Revolution's Virtual Console either... think how much fun Beast Busters would be on that! Of course, my brother is hoping for Midway's Carnevil instead... philistine!
You mean like Cynthia McKinney, who punched a security officer (who politely tried to stop her from walking through a security checkpoint without identification) because he was a white male? She's pretty racist, mysoginistic, violent, and a crazy-go-nuts.
Brilliant! I stand awed in the presence of your inciteful analysis...
Yes, I am making fun of you. Although, to be fair, I'm probably making fun of your teachers and parents really...
..is figure out a series of intricate puzzles, each more complex than the last. For example, one of my secret questions is:
"One by One and Two by Two, He Tossed Them, Human Hearts to Chew!"
I know why I chose it... it's because Tim Curry, playing the voice of Captain Hook said it in that old Peter Pan cartoon show they had on Fox.... but even I do not know the correct answer to this question. (It isn't Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Alucard(1), Alexander Anderson(2), Percy Bysse Shelley, Tim Curry or 'V' for Vendetta(3) in case you were wondering.)
(1) and (2) Hellsing Codenames are Peter Pan and Captain Hook, respectively.
(3) The Poem name is "The Masque of Anarchy," which would fit, "I do not have a name, but you can call me 'V'" to a T (in the comic, anyway).
It matters, in Japanese animation, because for many shows (and this was especially true of older anime) you would get the most bizarre dub jobs imaginable. Dialogue is dumbed down. Sections that are meant to be quiet would have dialogue added. You would get truly strange interpretations of the characters and their accents.
Now, there are some extremely good dubs out there. They don't all suck. However, there is enough dubbed anime that sucks purely because of a botched up dub job to make people like me suspicious of dubbed anime. (Fortunately, with DVDs, I normally get both. In the days of tape, though, you had to make a choice.)
Oh, and there are some cases where you'll just disagree with the localization, but won't necessarily think of it as wrong. For example, Tatewaki Kuno, in Ranma 1/2 (which has a very good dub) is constantly quoting Shakespeare in the dub as opposed to the classical Japanese poetry he spouts in the Japanese version. I understand why they did it, it makes sense (Kuno, a bore and a thug, likes to appear very cultured and well educated)... but I still prefer the subtitled version with the quotes from Japanese poetry.
I agree, and I'd also say of the two DS Metroid games, I like it the best. (Sadly, my stubby, malformed fingers can't comfortably do the contortions required by Metroid Prime: Hunters.)
Also, it comes with the Rumble Pack, and you can't really go wrong by buying it. I play it all the time... it may well be my favorite game for the DS. (In fact, I like it so much I just recently ordered The Pinball of the Dead for Gameboy Advance.) Of course, I've always loved real pinball, and bought two pinball sims for my Genesis (Dragons Fury and Dinoland).
It seems now-adays that the only ratings that are being given out are ether M or E...
Yes, a very disturbing trend, visible in Kingdom Hearts II:
Besides typical English localization, the English version of Kingdom Hearts II differs from the original Japanese version.
* The Hydra has its green blood from the Japanese version changed into black and purple smoke in the English version.
* Xigbar's telescopic sight view has been edited from the Japanese version to replace its crosshair with three circles and remove the black shading around the sides that implied a telescopic sight.
* The guns of pirates found in the Pirates of the Carribean world in the Japanese version have been altered into crossbows. (Because, I guess, we want our kids shooting each other with crossbows rather than guns.)
* Scenes in the Pirates of the Carribean world have been edited to remove some of the violence.
* Undead pirates do not react adversely to Fire magic as they would in the Japanese version.
According to GameSpot, who spoke to Sega regarding this topic, the Streets of Rage games will definitely not be in the US version of Sonic Gems Collection. Ready for the reason? Chances are it's going to piss you off.
It's because Sega would have had to change the game's ESRB rating from an "E" to a "T" to accommodate the inclusion of the somewhat violent titles, and Sega opted to go for the "E" rating instead.
-- News - Sonic Gems Collection US = no Streets of Rage
Meanwhile, I recently gave The Typing of the Dead to a 10 year old (my girlfriends daughter), based on the following reasoning:
1. All the violence in Typing of the Dead is ridiculous and not serious. I mean the characters are walking around with keyboards, Dreamcasts, and giant Coppertop batteries on their backs. The voice acting is the kind of thing that in a movie would be MST3K fodder. I consider this to be an "over-protective soccer mom" 'M' and not a realistic 'M.'
2. It will be useful for this girl turn learn how to type when she is writing term papers, typing computer code, or writing her first novel. I'd like her to get started as early as possible. I learned to type playing Infocom games (I gave her those, too... but I worry they just can't hold the kids' attention these days, sadly.)
Slashdot Mirror
Eeeerk! "I'm sorry, " says average American, "You can't do that. In fact, we've passed laws against it."
"But why," I ask, "I have a perfect driving record!"
"Well, " says the average American, "It isn't safe, you'll need a special license. You'll also have to pay super high taxes, to the point where it won't be economically feasable for you to do this as a business. Oh, and we can't have just any car being used to ferry people from here to there, you'll need a Taxi medallion. We limit those, and even if you could get one (and you can't) it'll cost you."
"How do I know you speak for all Americans? " says I.
"Well, after all, this is a democracy, we wouldn't have passed all those laws if we wanted any old person to be able to run their own cab company."
"I think you just passed all those laws to protect the income of the cab companies," says I.
"Well, prove it! If you can prove it, maybe you'll be able to change enough people's minds to get the law changed. I wouldn't count on it though, the established cab companies have quite a large lobbying budget."
"Yay, capitalism, " I say, weakly.
"Yes, yay capitalism, now get back to work," says the average American.
Real Life Example: Illegal Charters
After it got big, it stayed big for a while, and then at some point things changed. That would be in the 90's when Madden started. One of the things EA would do is buy good game studios and kill them. They also have a few exclusive licenses that sell games regardless of quality (they are the only ones who can make NFL football for example). Oh, they are 100% garbage currently, I won't make the mistake of saying they are but they produce a huge number of bad games.
Anyway, since I can't share the various magazine articles, books and other media I've read on the rise of EA, I'll reccomend the Wikipedia article: Electronic Arts.
Modern EA games mostly suck. I hardly buy any even when I want them based on previews. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent should have been a slam dunk!
Another, I supect, will be the new "Tiberium" game that's coming out. I'll bet dollars to donuts that it will be an unfun, buggy mess. Looking forward to EA games is akin to watching science fiction or fantasy genre series on the Fox network, an exercise in masochism.Replace AT&T with Philips
I'm not judging the morals of games here (except that I think that Hitman falls specifically withing the bounds of what I consider a morally acceptable game. ). In the real world, of course, a surgical strike would be more moral since avoiding collateral damage is generally considered better than indiscriminate maiming and killing... but it is a little silly to worry about that with animated cartoon characters...
You are absolutely right about Doom of course, which gets a very bad rep despite the fact that it pits its protagonist against the forces of Hell. I mean, the main character in Doom is about as righteous as you can get.
Consider Goldeneye though. Patrick McGoohan turned down 007 as a film character because he considered him a sadistic, womanizing monster. (He lost bags and bags of money for that...) 007 is mostly killing people. At one point doesn't he have to kill Onatopp?
That sounds kind of sadistic and creepy.However, a James Bond game won't ever generate this kind of controversy...
Yeah, well, the guy in Hitman is more like Don Corleone. In the game I played, he was living the life of a pauper in a Catholic monastary until the bad guys kidnap his friend, a priest. It's a "just when I though I was out, they pull me back in." kind of moment... (see desc) Besides, he's a member of some fictional crime organization (think S.P.E.C.T.R.E), rather than one of the 5 families or other Mafia's that exist in the real world.
Oh, and as to the type of killing, more like that movie Layer Cake (yes, I know its by Sony... too bad about the kitten). Very cold blooded and to the point. Or the scene in, Godfather II(?), where Corleone, in the old days, kills that one mob boss while the fireworks go off...
Thanks for the correction.
In the Hitman games, you play a stealthy killer. Now, so far, I've only played part two (it's the one that is out for Gamecube). The point of the game is that you have a target, you get to the target a sneakily as possible, kill him/her and then sneak out again as sneakily as possible. In part two, you even have the option of knocking people out with cloroform if you need them out of the way and they aren't your target. In other words, unlike a lot of action games, where your goal is to rack up kills, you purpose is just to take out one target without anyone knowing you did it. (I found the second level of part two to be very tough, any pointers?) You get scored on this, the more sneakily efficient you are, the better you do. (In other words, heading in with guns blazing is a way to get a bad score.)
Anyway, the AD isn't intended to be sexist, indeed I think the argument against the AD that I'm seeing is that it should have been sexist.
I.e. if it was a male character, dead in some museum in front of some spectacular work of art and they used "Beautifully Executed," there would have been no controversy for this effective AD campaign. So, the problem is, the AD campaign was insufficiently sexist, not that it was too sexist. Or do people think anyone would have raised such controversy about the other two ADs?
* Great media player capabilities: Though it won't play DRMed content, it plays standard Divx and MP3s with free software from the Web. (The video player software that came with it was some annoying proprietary thing. The MP3 player was fine, but the free media player I got plays OGGs too.) Battery life can be a problem with long movies, but not for episodes of The Venture Brothers, well if only there were some way to get episodes of that show in DiVX format, I mean. (Oh, The Simpsons, The Tick, GitS: SAC , Paranoia Agent Futurama whatever turns you on... live action TV too, an hour is no problem.)
* Great gaming capabilities: I mean it has a touch screen and an analogue stick... but unfortunately not so much commercial software. Stuntcar Extreme which came with it, is great for showing off it's 3D graphics, rumble feature, and smooth controls using the analogue stick and buttons. For a game that uses the touch screen, the Warfare Inc. demo is kind of fun, and it comes with a version of Solitaire. Homebrew has been sort of hit or miss for me. I like Beats of Rage, but most of the other stuff I tried to install required a memory wipe.
* All the note taking, life organizing, alarm clock type features you would want. Oh, and I downloaded a Tone Dialer for it that works but you have to get the speaker of the Zodiac really close to the reciever.
Annoyingly, the Tapwave Zodiac failed marketwise, I'm not sure why. I'm guessing they had too much debt and needed to hit it big right away. Or perhaps it was simply to beautiful for this world.
Anyway, buy a Tapwave Zodiac! It will make your life better! Chicks dig them... well, ok not all... maybe not even most, but I'm sure some do. Besides it's cheaper than a porsche!
I'm was complaining about this:
I wrote SEGA and objected to it, which had exactly zero effect on their decision. I'm not making it up, post-Columbine politics were very nasty for light gun games in particular. My version of House of the Dead II is a Japanese import.I can remember watching a commercial, I think it was for Boys Town, in which one of the "troubled youth" was playing a light gun game on a PC... (though he was holding the light gun way too close to the monitor.)
I like lightgun games, I think they are fun. I bought a Sega Menacer for my Sega Genesis purely in the hope that my favorite arcade game at the time, SNKs Beast Busters would come out for it.
So, let me make this clear, I am pro-light gun and pro-Second Amendment.
The reason, the sole reason, why light gun games are not more popular is because of something called Columbine. Columbine painted a big red bullseye on the arcade light gun shooters that were becoming very popular at the time, and made a distortion in the market because no one wanted "Action News 26 looks at what your children are playing!" with their light gun games in the video segments. It had nothing to do with popularity and everything to do with former Lt. Colonel Grossman and the fact that the more realistic you make the shooting, the more actually useful it becomes in training to use a real gun (which wouldn't be a problem if this country really believe in the 2nd Amendment).
This is why SEGA refused to release their Light Gun controler for their hit game House of the Dead on Dreamcast... and why House of the Dead 4 is such an obvious choice for the Revolution that it is almost certain not to come out for it...
In fact, the biggest problem with the Revolution isn't that light gun games aren't "badass," but that they are a little too "badass." FPS games played with a joystick or a keyboard and a mouse mute criticism (though they don't extinguish it, unfortunately) because the video isn't nearly as exiting as showing a kid blowing away pixelated zombies with something that resembles a gun.
I've had a lot of fun playing lightgun rail shooters in the past, I think if you want to insult them youy don't call them Duck Hunt insult them by calling them the state of the art, House of the Dead or another recent lightgun shooter. Using Duck Hunt as an insult was the choice, of course, because Duck Hunt was cute and humorous... obviously. Ooh, I hope for Ready, Aim, Tomatoes in the downloadable content... or even better Ready, Aim, Tomatoes... Revolution!. There would also be nothing wrong with a humourous Duck Hunt... Revolution! update... obviously, this article is just appealing to the teenage thug audience who think that only "teh gays" play cute or cartoony games....
"All right, all right, you made your point."
-- Call of the Simpsons
I used to play Phantasy Star Online too... I wish I still could, if only I had a broadband adaptor. Three guesses what my username was....
I have a question... is the guy who wrote this article a drooling moron? (Warning, caustic sarcasm to follow...)
Gamepads doomed joysticks? Because of course one of the first things that happened in the move to 32 bits wasn't a huge revival in joysticks in the N64 controller, the Playstations dual shock and Sega analog joystick. Oh, wait a minute, it was.... Do I really need to comment on the above? Probably EA will screw up the LOTR license... but the biggest problem Lord of the Rings has is that most of the reckognizable stuff in it is non-copyrightable folklore monsters. Which is why everyone and his brother can come up with their own Lord of the Rings themed game without paying any royalties to the Tolkien estate. So, LotR Online has to compete with World of Warcraft, for example... but it is still a great backstory for a game. (No, of course, World of Warcraft owes nothing to Lord of the Rings much like Warcraft owes nothing to Warhammer Fantasy Battle... which itself owes nothing to Tolkien. Tolkien is a Titan, a God... he's shaped computer gaming, roleplaying gaming, and fantasy fictions as no one else has... but his books aren't a good "franchise" without movies coming out based on them, right?) What a comedian? I laughed and laughed at this comment...Seriously, though, I stopped buying Sony products over this attitude, back in the days of the Playstation 1. This is why we've had how many failed Castlevania games, but people still rave about Symphony of the Night.
Also... I guess the success of the Gameboy and DS really prove his point here. I always wonder if there isn't a hidden agenda here since the constant push for heavier and heavier polygonal graphics really hinder independents and help the big studios.. Also when he says "the market has spoken," he fails to account for the fact that no popular "2D" fighters have ever successfully transitioned into "3D." Not one of the major "3D" fighting game series started out as a "2D" series. Truthfully, how many really successful "3D" fighting series are there? Soul Calibur and Tekken. As far as I know not even the much vaunted Virtua Fighter has been all that successful in raw numbers... and I tend to consider wrestling games another beast entirely.
I haven't heard anything on Neo Geo games coming to the Revolution's Virtual Console either... think how much fun Beast Busters would be on that! Of course, my brother is hoping for Midway's Carnevil instead... philistine!
Yes, I am making fun of you. Although, to be fair, I'm probably making fun of your teachers and parents really...
"One by One and Two by Two, He Tossed Them, Human Hearts to Chew!"
I know why I chose it... it's because Tim Curry, playing the voice of Captain Hook said it in that old Peter Pan cartoon show they had on Fox.... but even I do not know the correct answer to this question. (It isn't Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Alucard(1), Alexander Anderson(2), Percy Bysse Shelley, Tim Curry or 'V' for Vendetta(3) in case you were wondering.)
(1) and (2) Hellsing Codenames are Peter Pan and Captain Hook, respectively.
(3) The Poem name is "The Masque of Anarchy," which would fit, "I do not have a name, but you can call me 'V'" to a T (in the comic, anyway).
Now, there are some extremely good dubs out there. They don't all suck. However, there is enough dubbed anime that sucks purely because of a botched up dub job to make people like me suspicious of dubbed anime. (Fortunately, with DVDs, I normally get both. In the days of tape, though, you had to make a choice.)
Oh, and there are some cases where you'll just disagree with the localization, but won't necessarily think of it as wrong. For example, Tatewaki Kuno, in Ranma 1/2 (which has a very good dub) is constantly quoting Shakespeare in the dub as opposed to the classical Japanese poetry he spouts in the Japanese version. I understand why they did it, it makes sense (Kuno, a bore and a thug, likes to appear very cultured and well educated)... but I still prefer the subtitled version with the quotes from Japanese poetry.
Also, it comes with the Rumble Pack, and you can't really go wrong by buying it. I play it all the time... it may well be my favorite game for the DS. (In fact, I like it so much I just recently ordered The Pinball of the Dead for Gameboy Advance.) Of course, I've always loved real pinball, and bought two pinball sims for my Genesis (Dragons Fury and Dinoland).
Just waiting until the day I can afford my own Haunted House pinball machine (oh, and a house to put it in...)
1. All the violence in Typing of the Dead is ridiculous and not serious. I mean the characters are walking around with keyboards, Dreamcasts, and giant Coppertop batteries on their backs. The voice acting is the kind of thing that in a movie would be MST3K fodder. I consider this to be an "over-protective soccer mom" 'M' and not a realistic 'M.'
2. It will be useful for this girl turn learn how to type when she is writing term papers, typing computer code, or writing her first novel. I'd like her to get started as early as possible. I learned to type playing Infocom games (I gave her those, too... but I worry they just can't hold the kids' attention these days, sadly.)
The Venture Brothers
Is this it? (SNL Transcript)