Gen in Street Fighter Alpha 2 (and 3) had 2 unique fighting styles that were switchable at any time.
But Zelda/Sheik are two different characters that switch places. I know, that sounds like me proclaiming "But this goes to eleven," but it's true. Not only are their moves entirely different, but they have different movement characteristics, which matters quite a lot in Smash's movement-heavy gameplay.
To some extent here, it feels like I'm having to defend Super Smash Bros. Melee against the entire elaborate pagent of fighting games. But the reason that I personally like Smash better than those isn't because of the ways that it's like them, but the ways that it's different. And it is, really, very different. It's possible to argue, with some justice, that Smash Bros, isn't a fighting game at all. It is in that it's a game-that-has-a-fight-in-it, but it largely discards the debt to Street Fighter (and earlier games - don't write me on this) that fighting games have had to deal with since the genre's origins.
Nethack might be a bit of a challenge, since the DS only has 4mb of memory.
I doubt that, my 386 "laptop" with its 3MB RAM can run Nethack (on DOS, obviously).
But your 386 laptop has a hard drive. During a game of Nethack, all the levels you're not on at the moment are saved to disk as level files. (These level files also form the basis of Nethack's "bones levels.") The DS equivlant of a hard drive is copious flash memory, but I don't know how useful it is as temporary storage. Even if it's possible, Nethack's creating and deleting level files would probably do a lot to lessen the lifespan of a flash bank.
There may indeed be a way to get Nethack to run on a DS -- the game runs on Amigas and Atari STs after all. But it would probably require cutting back on a few features, or some very cagey programming. It may be a better idea to start from scratch. (Turns out, there is at least one homebrew GBA Roguelike project already out there, although the details don't leap to mind at the moment.)
Nethack would be great. Angband, less so. I'll have a look, thanks.
After checking....
It seems to be Angband, alas. I can imagine Angband having smaller save files than Nethack, since Angband levels vanish into the ether when you leave them, while Nethack's whole dungeon is persistent within a single game. Nethack might be a bit of a challenge, since the DS only has 4mb of memory.
I've heard the sales guys say some outlandish shit to move PSPs and Xboxes, though. The only thing I've heard them say about the DS is "Please come buy one. We have way too many."
That's either partisan bravado (which is seriously out of place in a retail establishment that's trying to make money off of both sides) or an indication of how badly the DS sells in dedicated game stores. Remember that the places that did sell out of PSPs back at the launch were mostly game shops. Fortunately for the DS, mass-market, department store locations are still very important to the future of any game machine.
Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system.
There are other fighting games that are sort of like that as well (PowerStone and its sequel, which is a weird system but certainly no weirder than Smash's), which I had forgotten about. I don't know if they're more or less different or deeper than Smash's, I admit that's something that I'd have to think about.
Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage.
The Virtua Fighter series has always been set in rings, so you could win by K.O., Ring Out, or having more health left when time ran out. Beginning with VF3 some walls were introduced, and VF4 added breakable walls to the mix.
But the ONLY way to win a (standard) Smash game is by scoring Ring Outs, scoring damage is merely a means to that end, and that's a lot (but not all) of what's interesting about it. And even VF's movement system can't hold up to Smash in this department -- Smash is essentially a full 2D platforming game that happens to have a fight taking place within it.
Virtua Fighter 4 has multi-directional dodges, reversals, and throw escapes that can be stacked in almost arbitrary combinations.
This is a tricky call to make one way or the other, because Smash's dodges are also part of the game's heavy emphasis on manuevability. Part of what makes it so different from traditional fighting games is that characters are so small compared to the size of the arena. Here, hmm, I'll say that Smash is different, maybe better, maybe not.
SSBM has VF4: Evolution beat (only 16 characters), but Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has 56 characters, and each player controls a team of 3. So SSBM is certainly respectable in this category, but not the king of the hill.
I'm not referring to raw number of characters here (there are also a few Smash characters who are similar to each other, like Mario/Dr Mario, Fox/Falco, Pikachu/Pichu, Marth/Roy, Falcon/Ganondorf, etc), but to the ways in which they are differentiated from each other. While Smash characters have fewer moves per character than some other fighting games (although not as few as it seems at first), they're differentiated in other ways. No other fighting game has anything like the Ice Climbers (two characters at once) or Zelda/Sheik (two characters with opposite styles, switchable at any time - and no, Tag-style games don't count).
The movesets in Virtua Fighter are so expansive that three or four different players could have relatively deep, yet completely different playstyles for the same character with very little move overlap. Could you say the same of SSBM...?
Ah, but that is only one definition of deep, one that naturally favors Virtua Fighter because that's the kind of game VF is. Smash intentionally has fewer moves (though, again, not as few as it seems at first), but since moving around large areas is more a part of the game, there's more room for aerial attacks, escaping, deathsaving, and surprisingly many other tactics, tactics that never come up in more traditional fighters.
And because there are dozens of traditional fighters, but only two Smash Bros. games so far, Smash strategy isn't as played-out as in traditional fighters. Which isn't a measure intrinsic to the game, but still matters for practical purposes.
With 15 unique characters whose move lists are all as long as your arm, I'd say that's at least as amazing as SSBM's accomplishment.
I'm unsure, again because it's harder to definitively balance something like Smash than VF. Smash also has items dropping in, extremely strange levels (like forced-scroll areas), huge and tiny versions of characters, characters with moves that are all but instant kills, suicide throws, spikes (as in volleyball), three- and four-player matches
I've also noticed that game stores seem more anxious to push the PSP. I attribute this to:
1. PSP has a higher "geek factor," and if you're willing working in a game store I'm sure your blood test would come out positive for geek.
2. PSPs probably have higher profit margins (for the stores) than the DS, both in games and software. And since there are movies, they could get money selling those too.
Video on PSP could be a killer application for the hardware for techies, but it could fall flat for the masses, who'd wonder why they have to get the show onto their computer, run it through a conversion program, then save it on the card in order to watch it on their PSP.
It's more complicated than just shoving a tape in the VCR and hitting 'Record,' and there are portable DVD players now (I'm reasonably sure) that'll play videos recorded to DVD-R, which is at only a slightly higher technical level to encoding it and putting it on a memory stick.
Hey, NDS numbers aren't perfect either, they don't survey all retailers. Someone, somewhere, posted software sales for a week in early July, PSP games outnumbered DS games on the list like two-to-one, but the top game was a DS title, Kirby Canvas Curse. None of the games was selling particularly well.
Also note that relying on software sales is a bad move for the DS, since it's capable of running GBA software.
Personally, I'm much, much more interested in the DS for all things other than homebrew -- and even then, if they can get arbitrary code easily running on a DS I think it'll be much more interesting to develop for than a PSP, because the graphics hardware is so straightforward. The 2D graphics chips are both essentially what's in the GBA, and there's a substantial GBA development scene. (And I already have a fair amount of user-discovered GBA technical information printed and bound....)
With Netflix, it takes a really good movie or worthwhile TV box set (Curb, anyone?) to get me to purchase a DVD as it is, and those are actually useful.
Aaaah, I think you may have hit on another problem with UMD movies. You can't generally rent them in video stores. And selling them to customers, in a world that now contains NetFlix and TiVo, seems almost... early 90s.
It's a hacker's dream machine, if your version isn't a recent update. I'd consider getting it if I could get homebrew code running on it -- dude, there's a PSP version of Nethack!!
Before someone mentions Killer Instinct, that was more Rare's baby. (Though I admit I said "Nintendo and HAL Labs," which confuses the issue somewhat.)
Those games are deep, sure. And the things shown in this article don't make Super Smash Bros. Melee deep.
But it is astoundingly deep, and it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention, if just because:
1. It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane. Smash Bros. provides a lot more territory to make use of, and vertical attacks play a much larger role in the game.
2. Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage. You can even be at maximum damage (999%) and survive an attack. Thus, the direction in which you throw your opinion is as important as the amount of damage you do. Similarly, you can lose with very little damage. Knocking a player out of an area is an inherently deeper play mechanic than getting an arbitrary number high/low enough.
3. Smash has a shield/dodge system that can allow a player to absolutely rule if mastered, but can be played entirely without it. (For my money, SoulCalibur's Guard Impacts are slightly cooler, but it's still neat.)
4. Sheer variety of characters. Smash has one "character" that's actually two that play completely differently from each other, Zelda/Sheik, who can be switched between using a special move. There's also a character (Ice Climbers) who's actually two guys you play at the same time, and the "trailing" climber can die independently of the main one. Kirby has a special move that can become completely different depending on who he's fighting against (26 options). Yoshi doesn't have a triple jump, Kirby and Jigglypuff have many jumps. Peach has a move that gives her an item to throw, and can also float in midair and attack from that position. Fox is ultra-fast, but actually falls faster than other characters. Mario/Dr. Mario has a move that reverses an opponent's direction, which is evil to do to someone trying to recover from a fall. And Jigglypuff, of course, has Rest, which screws you over if it misses, but can instantly kill multiple opponents if it hits.
Of course there other fighting games that have some (though not this much) variety, and variety alone doesn't make a game deep. But the thing about Smash Bros. Melee is that it's still balanced despite it all. That takes an amazing amount of play testing, and genius game designers. That's what makes them great.
Hell I know players who swear by the *original*, N64 Smash Bros. And these games came from Nintendo and HAL Labs, neither of which had made a fighting game before. Very cool.
The United States doesn't have anything like Japan's Media Create, which has a free source of hardware and software sales figures for game consoles. Seems the closest we have is NPD numbers, which you must pay to use, and which have strict controls over how they may be used without being charged.
But from what I've heard from people with access to the numbers (which is not me), at the moment, that PSP sales are a bit better than DS sales. This may change, however, when the increasingly impressive DS library currently out in Japan begins to be seen on U.S. shores.
I can't figure out what the purpose of UMD movies is, there's one PSP game I wouldn't mind playing (do I even have to state which it is?), but I wouldn't pick up even the best movie for the system.
But at least so far, it doesn't seem to be *hurting* PSP sales. I just don't think it's helping.
Oooooh... look at the spooky mass-media conglomerate forming over the horizon... it's gonna getcha!
Okay, seriously, while I'm as against the increasing tendency to gather media outlets into the hands of an ever-decreasing number of people as the next ranting lunatic, at the moment Google is perhaps the company to be worried least about doing this and abusing their role.
It seems very likely that the maintainers of the 2D Metroid series at Nintendo in Japan heard about all the speedruns, sequence breaks and low-item games from Super Metroid, because not only are many sequence breaks possible in Metroid: Zero Mission, but the game seems designed to make them possible. There are enough secret, hidden passages scattered around to enable most players to play the game in wildly differeny ways than the "official" route, although unless you know they're there, you'd probably never notice them until you got Power Bombs (which reveal special block types in the vicinity).
So, not only is it possible to finish the game in less than an hour, and with 15% of items or less, but there are special, secret ending screens for players who do so!
"We've been making games for two decades as a company and that's something people often forget. We're far more experienced at making games than Sony ever was"
And then partway through the movie, he just pitches the thesis and rants until the end.
That's because the movie is essentially exploratory in nature. Unlike many of his films, in this one he doesn't have all the answers, which in my opinion makes it his best work to date. As for the rant, I guess I have a different description for what he was doing -- I thought it only really got bad when going after Heston. And even then, when you sign up to be the public spokesperson for such an organization as the NRA, and thus lend your creditability to it, it does mean you open yourself up to attacks, perhaps justifiably. (I probably wouldn't have cornered the guy in his own home for it, however.)
Moore stages a big "K-Mart should stop selling ammo" media event. Um, why? I thought we were suggesting that media hysteria about violence was, well, hysteria. He had enough examples of media hysteria without creating his own.
Well, for starters, we're not exactly talking about that lawyer guy who's got that beef against GTA:SA. Guns are actually used to kill people. Saying that they're also used to save people's lives is not actually true, since their lives would probably not be in danger if it weren't for the guns in the first place.
Moore's point was that the media presents a view of life in America which is not true; that's what makes it hysterical, and not factual, although the media is more-or-less presented as doing it unknowingly.
Moore, making a documentary, obviously believes what he's saying is true, so in that case it comes down to the usual US definition of hysteria, e.g., "I'm not, so it must be you." If you agree with him, then you won't think he's hysterical.
A little googling for criticism of BfC will find you numerous examples of intellectual dishonesty on Moore's part.
Reading up on this fact in the cartoon section makes me suspect that Moore did go a bit too far there. But on the other hand, it is not actually SAID that KKK people formed the NRA; the implication is entirely through visual inferrence.
But there's lots of problems (most, in fact) with the movie that I don't think hold up under scrutiny. Moore reponds to many of them himself in the "Wacko Attacko" sections of his website. Overall, the movie is substantially factual; otherwise it would not have survived studio fact-checking.
Here's a question for you: Is it better for Moore to get a few facts wrong but be largely correct on most of them and in premise, or for the movie not to have been made?
A lot of how you answer this question boils down to what you think Moore's motives are. If you think he's well-meaning, then you'd tend to give him a pass. If you think he's just an opportunist or that the incorrect bits are part of an organized campaign of deception, you'd probably say nay.
Hysteria? Well, that's a matter for debate, but from my watching his work, I do not get the impression that he's hysterical. Flippant, maybe, but one of the best ways to respond to a point of view is to make fun of it.
Fear? No, unless it's fear of being afraid all the damn time.
The National Rifle Association != Actual Guns. It is possible to be against one and not the other. The NRA would like you to believe that it is the be and end all of the Second Amendment. Bowling for Columbine, I think, disagrees with that claim.
Yeah, that's the thing about BfC, despite the posing of various groups and people, it's not really anti-gun at all.
If it's anti-anything, it's anti-NRA, a group that likes to identify itself as closely with guns as possible. And it's anti- U.S. media fueled culture of hysteria. (And at the end, it's anti-Charlton Heston. I won't defend that segment, but the rest of the movie overcomes it.)
Personally, I think the lesson to take away is that people are finally, slowly, but surely, beginning to wise up to the typical summer Hollywood big-budget gaping chest wound.
You *can* do violence and crassness well, of course. I just can't think of that many examples at the moment that don't have to do with South Park....
I'd be in total agreement with everything you say, if it weren't for the fact that Nintendo fans *do* seriously abuse the moderation system and are well known for doing so.
Hmmm.... there does seem to be a bit of Nintendo drum-beating here. Overall I'm on Nintendo's side in these things, but it does seem to be a little disproportionate to what's being said in the higher-rated comments. To be sure however, we'd have to set up an experiment with a control, which I suspect would be difficult in a case like this. It's hard to prove these kinds of biases.
I'd probably chalk it up to Nintendo fans being the type who'd obsessively read a Slashdot article like this. Nintendo's the one of the big three who's in the most trouble, and throughout their history they've had some beloved games, so more people have a fondness for them on Slashdot than, say, Microsoft. I'd tend to go with this explanation, that the ones who care enough to mod in a story like this are the ones who are fretting the most.
That said....
I think my original point, that talking to the moderators smacks of gaming the system, still holds. Plastic (a news commentary site with a Slashdot-like format) even has a special negative moderation, Modappeal, to use on people who do things like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Gen in Street Fighter Alpha 2 (and 3) had 2 unique fighting styles that were switchable at any time.
But Zelda/Sheik are two different characters that switch places. I know, that sounds like me proclaiming "But this goes to eleven," but it's true. Not only are their moves entirely different, but they have different movement characteristics, which matters quite a lot in Smash's movement-heavy gameplay.
To some extent here, it feels like I'm having to defend Super Smash Bros. Melee against the entire elaborate pagent of fighting games. But the reason that I personally like Smash better than those isn't because of the ways that it's like them, but the ways that it's different. And it is, really, very different. It's possible to argue, with some justice, that Smash Bros, isn't a fighting game at all. It is in that it's a game-that-has-a-fight-in-it, but it largely discards the debt to Street Fighter (and earlier games - don't write me on this) that fighting games have had to deal with since the genre's origins.
Nethack might be a bit of a challenge, since the DS only has 4mb of memory.
I doubt that, my 386 "laptop" with its 3MB RAM can run Nethack (on DOS, obviously).
But your 386 laptop has a hard drive. During a game of Nethack, all the levels you're not on at the moment are saved to disk as level files. (These level files also form the basis of Nethack's "bones levels.") The DS equivlant of a hard drive is copious flash memory, but I don't know how useful it is as temporary storage. Even if it's possible, Nethack's creating and deleting level files would probably do a lot to lessen the lifespan of a flash bank.
There may indeed be a way to get Nethack to run on a DS -- the game runs on Amigas and Atari STs after all. But it would probably require cutting back on a few features, or some very cagey programming. It may be a better idea to start from scratch. (Turns out, there is at least one homebrew GBA Roguelike project already out there, although the details don't leap to mind at the moment.)
Nethack would be great. Angband, less so. I'll have a look, thanks.
After checking....
It seems to be Angband, alas. I can imagine Angband having smaller save files than Nethack, since Angband levels vanish into the ether when you leave them, while Nethack's whole dungeon is persistent within a single game. Nethack might be a bit of a challenge, since the DS only has 4mb of memory.
I've heard the sales guys say some outlandish shit to move PSPs and Xboxes, though. The only thing I've heard them say about the DS is "Please come buy one. We have way too many."
That's either partisan bravado (which is seriously out of place in a retail establishment that's trying to make money off of both sides) or an indication of how badly the DS sells in dedicated game stores. Remember that the places that did sell out of PSPs back at the launch were mostly game shops. Fortunately for the DS, mass-market, department store locations are still very important to the future of any game machine.
Within the context of quasi-realistic fighting, Virtua Fighter 3 made full use of all three dimensions. Battle areas had lots of height variations and some obstacles, and relative positioning in 3-space affected many elements of the battle system.
There are other fighting games that are sort of like that as well (PowerStone and its sequel, which is a weird system but certainly no weirder than Smash's), which I had forgotten about. I don't know if they're more or less different or deeper than Smash's, I admit that's something that I'd have to think about.
Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage.
The Virtua Fighter series has always been set in rings, so you could win by K.O., Ring Out, or having more health left when time ran out. Beginning with VF3 some walls were introduced, and VF4 added breakable walls to the mix.
But the ONLY way to win a (standard) Smash game is by scoring Ring Outs, scoring damage is merely a means to that end, and that's a lot (but not all) of what's interesting about it. And even VF's movement system can't hold up to Smash in this department -- Smash is essentially a full 2D platforming game that happens to have a fight taking place within it.
Virtua Fighter 4 has multi-directional dodges, reversals, and throw escapes that can be stacked in almost arbitrary combinations.
This is a tricky call to make one way or the other, because Smash's dodges are also part of the game's heavy emphasis on manuevability. Part of what makes it so different from traditional fighting games is that characters are so small compared to the size of the arena. Here, hmm, I'll say that Smash is different, maybe better, maybe not.
SSBM has VF4: Evolution beat (only 16 characters), but Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has 56 characters, and each player controls a team of 3. So SSBM is certainly respectable in this category, but not the king of the hill.
I'm not referring to raw number of characters here (there are also a few Smash characters who are similar to each other, like Mario/Dr Mario, Fox/Falco, Pikachu/Pichu, Marth/Roy, Falcon/Ganondorf, etc), but to the ways in which they are differentiated from each other. While Smash characters have fewer moves per character than some other fighting games (although not as few as it seems at first), they're differentiated in other ways. No other fighting game has anything like the Ice Climbers (two characters at once) or Zelda/Sheik (two characters with opposite styles, switchable at any time - and no, Tag-style games don't count).
The movesets in Virtua Fighter are so expansive that three or four different players could have relatively deep, yet completely different playstyles for the same character with very little move overlap. Could you say the same of SSBM...?
Ah, but that is only one definition of deep, one that naturally favors Virtua Fighter because that's the kind of game VF is. Smash intentionally has fewer moves (though, again, not as few as it seems at first), but since moving around large areas is more a part of the game, there's more room for aerial attacks, escaping, deathsaving, and surprisingly many other tactics, tactics that never come up in more traditional fighters.
And because there are dozens of traditional fighters, but only two Smash Bros. games so far, Smash strategy isn't as played-out as in traditional fighters. Which isn't a measure intrinsic to the game, but still matters for practical purposes.
With 15 unique characters whose move lists are all as long as your arm, I'd say that's at least as amazing as SSBM's accomplishment.
I'm unsure, again because it's harder to definitively balance something like Smash than VF. Smash also has items dropping in, extremely strange levels (like forced-scroll areas), huge and tiny versions of characters, characters with moves that are all but instant kills, suicide throws, spikes (as in volleyball), three- and four-player matches
I've also noticed that game stores seem more anxious to push the PSP. I attribute this to:
1. PSP has a higher "geek factor," and if you're willing working in a game store I'm sure your blood test would come out positive for geek.
2. PSPs probably have higher profit margins (for the stores) than the DS, both in games and software. And since there are movies, they could get money selling those too.
I'm looking forward greatly to Advance Wars DS too, and it could very well be an unexpected system seller after the GBA games.
Video on PSP could be a killer application for the hardware for techies, but it could fall flat for the masses, who'd wonder why they have to get the show onto their computer, run it through a conversion program, then save it on the card in order to watch it on their PSP.
It's more complicated than just shoving a tape in the VCR and hitting 'Record,' and there are portable DVD players now (I'm reasonably sure) that'll play videos recorded to DVD-R, which is at only a slightly higher technical level to encoding it and putting it on a memory stick.
Hey, NDS numbers aren't perfect either, they don't survey all retailers. Someone, somewhere, posted software sales for a week in early July, PSP games outnumbered DS games on the list like two-to-one, but the top game was a DS title, Kirby Canvas Curse. None of the games was selling particularly well.
Also note that relying on software sales is a bad move for the DS, since it's capable of running GBA software.
Personally, I'm much, much more interested in the DS for all things other than homebrew -- and even then, if they can get arbitrary code easily running on a DS I think it'll be much more interesting to develop for than a PSP, because the graphics hardware is so straightforward. The 2D graphics chips are both essentially what's in the GBA, and there's a substantial GBA development scene. (And I already have a fair amount of user-discovered GBA technical information printed and bound....)
With Netflix, it takes a really good movie or worthwhile TV box set (Curb, anyone?) to get me to purchase a DVD as it is, and those are actually useful.
Aaaah, I think you may have hit on another problem with UMD movies. You can't generally rent them in video stores. And selling them to customers, in a world that now contains NetFlix and TiVo, seems almost... early 90s.
It's a hacker's dream machine, if your version isn't a recent update. I'd consider getting it if I could get homebrew code running on it -- dude, there's a PSP version of Nethack!!
Before someone mentions Killer Instinct, that was more Rare's baby. (Though I admit I said "Nintendo and HAL Labs," which confuses the issue somewhat.)
Those games are deep, sure. And the things shown in this article don't make Super Smash Bros. Melee deep.
But it is astoundingly deep, and it can be argued that it's deeper than those games you mention, if just because:
1. It's not a straight, left-right fighting game. Of course there are 3D fighters like Tekken and SoulCalibur, but they're still essentially about a 2D plane. Smash Bros. provides a lot more territory to make use of, and vertical attacks play a much larger role in the game.
2. Instead of depleting a health bar, Smash Bros' lose condition involves being knocked off the stage. You can even be at maximum damage (999%) and survive an attack. Thus, the direction in which you throw your opinion is as important as the amount of damage you do. Similarly, you can lose with very little damage. Knocking a player out of an area is an inherently deeper play mechanic than getting an arbitrary number high/low enough.
3. Smash has a shield/dodge system that can allow a player to absolutely rule if mastered, but can be played entirely without it. (For my money, SoulCalibur's Guard Impacts are slightly cooler, but it's still neat.)
4. Sheer variety of characters. Smash has one "character" that's actually two that play completely differently from each other, Zelda/Sheik, who can be switched between using a special move. There's also a character (Ice Climbers) who's actually two guys you play at the same time, and the "trailing" climber can die independently of the main one. Kirby has a special move that can become completely different depending on who he's fighting against (26 options). Yoshi doesn't have a triple jump, Kirby and Jigglypuff have many jumps. Peach has a move that gives her an item to throw, and can also float in midair and attack from that position. Fox is ultra-fast, but actually falls faster than other characters. Mario/Dr. Mario has a move that reverses an opponent's direction, which is evil to do to someone trying to recover from a fall. And Jigglypuff, of course, has Rest, which screws you over if it misses, but can instantly kill multiple opponents if it hits.
Of course there other fighting games that have some (though not this much) variety, and variety alone doesn't make a game deep. But the thing about Smash Bros. Melee is that it's still balanced despite it all. That takes an amazing amount of play testing, and genius game designers. That's what makes them great.
Hell I know players who swear by the *original*, N64 Smash Bros. And these games came from Nintendo and HAL Labs, neither of which had made a fighting game before. Very cool.
The United States doesn't have anything like Japan's Media Create, which has a free source of hardware and software sales figures for game consoles. Seems the closest we have is NPD numbers, which you must pay to use, and which have strict controls over how they may be used without being charged.
But from what I've heard from people with access to the numbers (which is not me), at the moment, that PSP sales are a bit better than DS sales. This may change, however, when the increasingly impressive DS library currently out in Japan begins to be seen on U.S. shores.
Only time will tell if that actually happens.
I can't figure out what the purpose of UMD movies is, there's one PSP game I wouldn't mind playing (do I even have to state which it is?), but I wouldn't pick up even the best movie for the system.
But at least so far, it doesn't seem to be *hurting* PSP sales. I just don't think it's helping.
Oooooh... look at the spooky mass-media conglomerate forming over the horizon... it's gonna getcha!
Okay, seriously, while I'm as against the increasing tendency to gather media outlets into the hands of an ever-decreasing number of people as the next ranting lunatic, at the moment Google is perhaps the company to be worried least about doing this and abusing their role.
At the moment.
Yeah, I got it (Hello) on my computer right now.
I don't know anyone else who uses it, but when I *do* finally make friends I'll be all set!
Interesting factoid....
It seems very likely that the maintainers of the 2D Metroid series at Nintendo in Japan heard about all the speedruns, sequence breaks and low-item games from Super Metroid, because not only are many sequence breaks possible in Metroid: Zero Mission, but the game seems designed to make them possible. There are enough secret, hidden passages scattered around to enable most players to play the game in wildly differeny ways than the "official" route, although unless you know they're there, you'd probably never notice them until you got Power Bombs (which reveal special block types in the vicinity).
So, not only is it possible to finish the game in less than an hour, and with 15% of items or less, but there are special, secret ending screens for players who do so!
"We've been making games for two decades as a company and that's something people often forget. We're far more experienced at making games than Sony ever was"
Wow. Does Solitaire even count?
And then partway through the movie, he just pitches the thesis and rants until the end.
That's because the movie is essentially exploratory in nature. Unlike many of his films, in this one he doesn't have all the answers, which in my opinion makes it his best work to date. As for the rant, I guess I have a different description for what he was doing -- I thought it only really got bad when going after Heston. And even then, when you sign up to be the public spokesperson for such an organization as the NRA, and thus lend your creditability to it, it does mean you open yourself up to attacks, perhaps justifiably. (I probably wouldn't have cornered the guy in his own home for it, however.)
Moore stages a big "K-Mart should stop selling ammo" media event. Um, why? I thought we were suggesting that media hysteria about violence was, well, hysteria. He had enough examples of media hysteria without creating his own.
Well, for starters, we're not exactly talking about that lawyer guy who's got that beef against GTA:SA. Guns are actually used to kill people. Saying that they're also used to save people's lives is not actually true, since their lives would probably not be in danger if it weren't for the guns in the first place.
Moore's point was that the media presents a view of life in America which is not true; that's what makes it hysterical, and not factual, although the media is more-or-less presented as doing it unknowingly.
Moore, making a documentary, obviously believes what he's saying is true, so in that case it comes down to the usual US definition
of hysteria, e.g., "I'm not, so it must be you." If you agree with him, then you won't think he's hysterical.
A little googling for criticism of BfC will find you numerous examples of intellectual dishonesty on Moore's part.
Reading up on this fact in the cartoon section makes me suspect that Moore did go a bit too far there. But on the other hand, it is not actually SAID that KKK people formed the NRA; the implication is entirely through visual inferrence.
But there's lots of problems (most, in fact) with the movie that I don't think hold up under scrutiny. Moore reponds to many of them himself in the "Wacko Attacko" sections of his website. Overall, the movie is substantially factual; otherwise it would not have survived studio fact-checking.
Here's a question for you:
Is it better for Moore to get a few facts wrong but be largely correct on most of them and in premise, or for the movie not to have been made?
A lot of how you answer this question boils down to what you think Moore's motives are. If you think he's well-meaning, then you'd tend to give him a pass. If you think he's just an opportunist or that the incorrect bits are part of an organized campaign of deception, you'd probably say nay.
Hysteria? Well, that's a matter for debate, but from my watching his work, I do not get the impression that he's hysterical. Flippant, maybe, but one of the best ways to respond to a point of view is to make fun of it.
Fear? No, unless it's fear of being afraid all the damn time.
The National Rifle Association != Actual Guns. It is possible to be against one and not the other. The NRA would like you to believe that it is the be and end all of the Second Amendment. Bowling for Columbine, I think, disagrees with that claim.
Yeah, that's the thing about BfC, despite the posing of various groups and people, it's not really anti-gun at all.
If it's anti-anything, it's anti-NRA, a group that likes to identify itself as closely with guns as possible. And it's anti- U.S. media fueled culture of hysteria. (And at the end, it's anti-Charlton Heston. I won't defend that segment, but the rest of the movie overcomes it.)
Personally, I think the lesson to take away is that people are finally, slowly, but surely, beginning to wise up to the typical summer Hollywood big-budget gaping chest wound.
You *can* do violence and crassness well, of course. I just can't think of that many examples at the moment that don't have to do with South Park....
I'd be in total agreement with everything you say, if it weren't for the fact that Nintendo fans *do* seriously abuse the moderation system and are well known for doing so.
Hmmm.... there does seem to be a bit of Nintendo drum-beating here. Overall I'm on Nintendo's side in these things, but it does seem to be a little disproportionate to what's being said in the higher-rated comments. To be sure however, we'd have to set up an experiment with a control, which I suspect would be difficult in a case like this. It's hard to prove these kinds of biases.
I'd probably chalk it up to Nintendo fans being the type who'd obsessively read a Slashdot article like this. Nintendo's the one of the big three who's in the most trouble, and throughout their history they've had some beloved games, so more people have a fondness for them on Slashdot than, say, Microsoft. I'd tend to go with this explanation, that the ones who care enough to mod in a story like this are the ones who are fretting the most.
That said....
I think my original point, that talking to the moderators smacks of gaming the system, still holds. Plastic (a news commentary site with a Slashdot-like format) even has a special negative moderation, Modappeal, to use on people who do things like this.