Reading all about these wonderful "new" Mac features makes me a lot more excited about computers than reading about how many Ghz the next Intel chip will have, or anything at all concerning those blasted Cell thingies. Back then, mass-market computer mags sounded like tech sites, and it was swell.
The other legacy of the Intellivision controller: it makes it very difficult to play many of its games on the Intellivision Lives compilation, which could have been really cool except for that problem.
I agree with you and the parent on everything, but you (and almost everyone else, too ) forgot to mention the N64 controller's greatest flaw:
White dust. Anyone who's had an N64 controller in really heavy use, especially for games like Mario Party, knows that it's only a matter of time before the analog stick becomes loose and the pit filled with this white residue. The longer the controller is used at that point, the looser the stick becomes.
Considering that N64 carts are almost indestructable and thus their games will probably be playable a century from now when most PS1 games are deteriated beyond readability, it's really saddening that N64 controllers have this kind of limited life expectancy.
The game has about 20 levels, though they take place in three different zones.
But considering that I've played the last level probably around 30 times by now, and all the others at least ten, and keep doing it, I have to say yes, it's worth it. I myself paid the price of the game plus half the price of a used PS2 for it, so I paid $85 for it. Less than $200, but it should be said that I don't regret it.
Why is it worth it? Not because of how much "content" it contains, but because it's a game that has a truly engaging play mechanic, and is just fun to play. That counts for a huge amount, and the game could have just one level but that would make up for it, especially since it's strangely fun to replay old areas.
Don't get me wrong - it isn't my wish and I won't be cheering, either.
I figured that -- I was merely joking, sorry.
It's also worth pointing out that lower GBA game prices are subsidized partly by the volume which they sell and by the fact that companies are able to make a LOT of money selling older games.
There are fewer remakes, as a proportion of total games sold, among the GBA library than it is popularly represented as being, and it's been some time now since the last Super Mario Advance title was released.
Plus, while the level data, concepts and basic graphic themes may be the same, it's certain they had to code a new engine for the Super Mario Advance games from scratch, so it's not so much of a slam dunk concerning profit, especially since new art assets were created for two of the four games. Also, I imagine they had some amount of difficulty porting Yoshi's Island -- the graphics from the original SNES game were provided by a SuperFX chip, which is rather different from the GBA hardware.
If Sony can somehow get the price of the PSP down to a somewhat more reasonable price (in terms of competition - I actually think the $300 price tag IS reasonable for its capabilities, if not for its current game selection), they could get the install base they need to lower prices as well.
I think what Sony was going after, with the PSP, was not just the GBA, but also the iPod, which has quite the premium price tag. But the iPod is a portable system that does a small number of things really well.
I wonder if anyone has current U.S. sales for the DS and PSP? I haven't heard anything about how the systems compared with each other in sales in the 'States for some time now. (In Japan, they're both selling well, but the DS has a substantial, and widening, lead.)
My cousin, it turns out, bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her eleven-year-old son.
When I heard that, it was all I could do to avoid doing a double-take. Mind you, she wasn't very concerned that he was interested in Dungeons & Dragons, which I had attributed to being rather cool of her (this is a region in which, to most folk, D&D all but equals Forces Of Ultimate Darkness).
I don't know if she knows what the game's about or anything, or that it's filled with profanity, or contains situations very inappropriate for children -- you see, I don't think exposure to games like this warp kids' minds, but I am a bit concerned with the impression that what is depicted within is somehow normal, or even right, and kids *are* suceptable to that, especially when, on the schoolyard, they encounter other kids who'll try to emulate the behaviour patterns seen in games and movies in an effort to see "cool."
What could I do against that kind of thing? Only thing I could: I brought over Katamari Damacy, and nearly flipped when I saw his jaw drop open when he saw the last level would take the humble ball from 1 meter all the way to 300m, and beyond. When he saw that the very island on which the level began would become part of the ball by the end....
You're probably wondering how can this be any kind of remedy to GTA? It's simple: it's all about perspective. Just like Katamari Damacy is about how the world looks different, and yet suspeciously similar, when viewed at 5cm and 200m. It's all about exposing kids to as many different influences as they can get, making sure they get to see the really cool and unique along with the crap with which our culture is filled, and trusting that they'll be able to sort it all out for themselves.
So, I really think Katamari Damacy should be played in schools.
To be fair, there are movies to be had on UMD at my local Evil-Mart for $15... but for just $5 more, you can get it, with special features, in a format you can watch on any DVD player or your computer, to watch on a big screen with your friends.
But what I really don't get is why so many PSP games are going for $50. You can get a new-release console game for that much! And most PSP games, from what I've seen so far, look like console-style games made for a portable, instead of with portable gaming, the situations in which portable gaming occurs, and the unique possibilities portable gaming makes available.
Which is not to say I'm getting an awful lot of play out of my DS right now....
Gmail's killer features are its unobtrusive advertising (as opposed to banner ads), its killer Javascript interface (with a plain HTML interfact for slow connections and unsupported browsers), a killer spam filter, the beginnings of phishing protections, 2GB+ of mail space, free POP access, its filtering system, and the Archive-vs-Trash concept. There are some things I've left out, but those are the reasons I use it. (And it's not perfect -- I know two people who had to suffer through personal Gmail outages.)
I don't know if Yahoo Mail is better or worse than Gmail; judge for yourself based on the above. But I'm reasonably sure it's better than Hotmail.
I agree completely. I haven't been able to shift any of my 50 Gmail invitations since most people are satisfied (read: complacent) with their current webmail, and it's mostly only the cognoscenti who've even heard of Gmail.
Once I'm able to explain why they've suddenly stopped receiving most of their stuff over at Hotmail, it'll be a lot easier to use up those invites.
Universal Media Disc: It's Universal and Propietary at the same time! So you can use them and buy them from any company you want, as long as that company is Sony and you only use them on the PSP.
I'm still trying to figure out what the business plan around UMD movies is. I've seen a commercial twice now advertising "Hitch... on DVD and PSP!" DVD is bad enough!
A portable system that could play DVDs, now that'd be great. But if you have to buy separate, lower-capacity disks in order to watch movies on a small screen, essentially by yourself.... I can only imagine there's a basic disconnect between the consumer and manufacturer here, like the makers have no idea under what circumstances people watch movies.
It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.
Also, will users have a choice concerning whether to so use their consoles' spare cycles, or will it happen without their concent or even overt knowledge? Will they be able to decide which project gets the use of their machine's time? And what if someone comes up with an entertainment use for those cycles...?
No, it's actually completely logical to expect an evolution. I.e., to expect people to learn from mistake, and from what worked.
Not always. Implicit in the idea of evolving game styles is the idea that games must belong to specific genres. Games that buck genre but superficially look like they belong thus get beat down for not offering standard "features," when they are actually trying to be something else.
The best example I can think of at the moment are Roguelikes, which newbies constantly, and loudly, complain about when they discover that their save file gets deleted upon restore, and that death is supposed to be permanent. That the game is designed around the idea that death is permanent (which can be readily seen in the item ID and generation systems) is irrelevant to them -- Nethack, ADOM, Angband and Rogue sort of look like their favorite dungeon crawl (it has fantasy monsters, magic items, dungeons, etc), so they expect to play it the same way, when really these games are very different from the type of RPG with which they're familiar.
Several of Nintendo's games also buck genre in ways that catch gamers expecting an "evolution" of game features off-guard. Metroid Prime looks like a FPS, but the game is really more about navigating around a gigantic world and finding secrets. Pikmin looks like a RTS, but is really nothing like one.
One day, Andy the Android got tired of his daily duties around the hospital.
"Shuffling sulfides! Mixing medication! Placing placebos! This is no task for a thinking machine! Why aren't I out welding automobiles and repairing snub fighters? Away I go, out this very door, in search of others of my kind!"
Before long, he had found the marketing representative from GlaxcoSmithKline....
Tell me about it. Of course there were so-so episodes (like anything "historical"), but there were also really, really good ones.
Also woefully neglected on DVD: Freakazoid, Earthworm Jim, and The Animated The Tick (which will probably never see the light of day, it seems). Animaniacs could also use a highlights disk, weeding out all the Mindy, Buttons, Rita and Runt in favor of the Warners, PatB and Slappy. (Er, in their better cartoons.)
We played a lot of Goldeneye, but oddly quite a bit less of Perfect Dark.
I think one of the best things about Goldeneye, and this goes directly against dozens of other movie licenses, is the Bond universe. When you kill someone else and the music goes "Duh-dah, DUHHHN-DAAAAHN!"... that's priceless.
Since then, EA has proven (as if it needed proving) that a license alone is not nearly enough to make a great game. But the *right* license can make a great game into a classic... it's a shame that Goldeneye is the only game I can think of that get it right, 'xcept maybe two or three, our of entirely too many, Star Wars games, and one of *those* was an Atari arcade game.
Yes, and the point I make is that being human can be reflected by contemplating what it might mean NOT to be human - either by being inhuman, as in horror stories, or superhuman, as in comics, or nonhuman, as in sci-fi alien and technology stories.
I have hardly ever seen what it means to be not human done effectively. The best I can think of is the various beasties ol' Lovecraft came up with.
It is true that myth is a potent source of energy for all kinds of writing. But I am not sure if I buy that comics are *the* modern-day version of them.
Even your Batman is not strictly human, both because of his technology and because of his vast experience...
You forgot his stacks of cash. Technology is largely useless without money, and being wealthy frees up lots of time through which a dire obsession can flower, if flower be the word. The life of an extremely rich man is so different from that of a homeless person that they might as well be different species; they may have the same basic biological necessities, but beyond that things get different quick.
Teenage angst *can* be made into an acceptable story, if the writer has perspective. Spider-Man at his best wasn't super-powerful; in fact the defining moment of his career was a failure, that of failing to save Gwen Stacey. *That's* powerful, that has the ability to affect a thinking reader, and that's what makes Spidey, when most in-touch with his roots, human.
Superheroes and supervillains are about being "super" - which means more than human. And that is the bottom line to the literary genre.
1. One of the points to literature, in my view, is that the greater-than sign doesn't apply to human beings.
2. Ultimately great writing is about what it means to be human, inescapably so. This is not because of who the characters are, but because of who the reader is.
Bruce Wayne is a normal guy that everybody can relate to. He has no special powers to rely on; only the technology that his wealth affords him.
Riddle on this a bit: Not to intentionally drag issues of class struggle into the whole thing, but it *is* a fact that Bruce Wayne's extreme maxi-mega-wealth is almost as unreachable, to the average Joe-crimefighter-wannabe, as actual super powers are. He didn't earn it; he was born into riches. Extremely deep pockets is about the closest thing to an actual super power, more than great martial arts ability, more than inventing skill, more than being a supertaster, that exists in this world.
Further: what's the difference between a young Bruce Wayne growing up to become: a crime fighter, the world's greatest detective, and an ultimately good guy, and a young Bruce Wayne growing up to become: yet another idle playboy with way too much money (with all the society-warping power that provides), maybe not explictly bad, but not over concerned with other people?
Often it takes something seriously bad to happen to a person to break him out of his limited perspective and into a large view of the world. Which isn't to say that it is right that those things happen, nor that it always works that way. But often it's unavoidable, and often it does.
Slashdot Mirror
We keep whining about the evil megacorps squashing everyone with patents while the real danger comes from these small entities.
No, it's both. There are many more little guys, but each of the big guys have the financial muscle to do great damage on their own.
And, the ratio of little guys who do this over those who don't is much, much smaller than that of corporations.
Reading this article... wow.
Reading all about these wonderful "new" Mac features makes me a lot more excited about computers than reading about how many Ghz the next Intel chip will have, or anything at all concerning those blasted Cell thingies. Back then, mass-market computer mags sounded like tech sites, and it was swell.
Well, for me at least.
I could never get used to the Max. The NES Advantage, however... was awesome. It was an arcade-style, ball-top joystick!
Happy, happy, so happy.
The other legacy of the Intellivision controller: it makes it very difficult to play many of its games on the Intellivision Lives compilation, which could have been really cool except for that problem.
I agree with you and the parent on everything, but you (and almost everyone else, too ) forgot to mention the N64 controller's greatest flaw:
White dust. Anyone who's had an N64 controller in really heavy use, especially for games like Mario Party, knows that it's only a matter of time before the analog stick becomes loose and the pit filled with this white residue. The longer the controller is used at that point, the looser the stick becomes.
Considering that N64 carts are almost indestructable and thus their games will probably be playable a century from now when most PS1 games are deteriated beyond readability, it's really saddening that N64 controllers have this kind of limited life expectancy.
The game has about 20 levels, though they take place in three different zones.
But considering that I've played the last level probably around 30 times by now, and all the others at least ten, and keep doing it, I have to say yes, it's worth it. I myself paid the price of the game plus half the price of a used PS2 for it, so I paid $85 for it. Less than $200, but it should be said that I don't regret it.
Why is it worth it? Not because of how much "content" it contains, but because it's a game that has a truly engaging play mechanic, and is just fun to play. That counts for a huge amount, and the game could have just one level but that would make up for it, especially since it's strangely fun to replay old areas.
I thought the same. Then I played it. I hope I don't sound too much like a fanboy when I say the game is *worth it*.
Plus, you can get a used PS2 with a controller, a memory card, and KD for about $60 less than the price you gave. KD itself is only $20 new.
Don't get me wrong - it isn't my wish and I won't be cheering, either.
I figured that -- I was merely joking, sorry.
It's also worth pointing out that lower GBA game prices are subsidized partly by the volume which they sell and by the fact that companies are able to make a LOT of money selling older games.
There are fewer remakes, as a proportion of total games sold, among the GBA library than it is popularly represented as being, and it's been some time now since the last Super Mario Advance title was released.
Plus, while the level data, concepts and basic graphic themes may be the same, it's certain they had to code a new engine for the Super Mario Advance games from scratch, so it's not so much of a slam dunk concerning profit, especially since new art assets were created for two of the four games. Also, I imagine they had some amount of difficulty porting Yoshi's Island -- the graphics from the original SNES game were provided by a SuperFX chip, which is rather different from the GBA hardware.
If Sony can somehow get the price of the PSP down to a somewhat more reasonable price (in terms of competition - I actually think the $300 price tag IS reasonable for its capabilities, if not for its current game selection), they could get the install base they need to lower prices as well.
I think what Sony was going after, with the PSP, was not just the GBA, but also the iPod, which has quite the premium price tag. But the iPod is a portable system that does a small number of things really well.
I wonder if anyone has current U.S. sales for the DS and PSP? I haven't heard anything about how the systems compared with each other in sales in the 'States for some time now. (In Japan, they're both selling well, but the DS has a substantial, and widening, lead.)
Actually, I think it's more surprising that games for HOME consoles haven't gotten a price increase in the past many years.
You'll be getting your wish the next generation. Not that I'll be cheering -- all three console manufacturers are planningon $60 games.
Anyway, GBA and DS games still tend to be around $30.
My cousin, it turns out, bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for her eleven-year-old son.
When I heard that, it was all I could do to avoid doing a double-take. Mind you, she wasn't very concerned that he was interested in Dungeons & Dragons, which I had attributed to being rather cool of her (this is a region in which, to most folk, D&D all but equals Forces Of Ultimate Darkness).
I don't know if she knows what the game's about or anything, or that it's filled with profanity, or contains situations very inappropriate for children -- you see, I don't think exposure to games like this warp kids' minds, but I am a bit concerned with the impression that what is depicted within is somehow normal, or even right, and kids *are* suceptable to that, especially when, on the schoolyard, they encounter other kids who'll try to emulate the behaviour patterns seen in games and movies in an effort to see "cool."
What could I do against that kind of thing? Only thing I could: I brought over Katamari Damacy, and nearly flipped when I saw his jaw drop open when he saw the last level would take the humble ball from 1 meter all the way to 300m, and beyond. When he saw that the very island on which the level began would become part of the ball by the end....
You're probably wondering how can this be any kind of remedy to GTA? It's simple: it's all about perspective. Just like Katamari Damacy is about how the world looks different, and yet suspeciously similar, when viewed at 5cm and 200m. It's all about exposing kids to as many different influences as they can get, making sure they get to see the really cool and unique along with the crap with which our culture is filled, and trusting that they'll be able to sort it all out for themselves.
So, I really think Katamari Damacy should be played in schools.
To be fair, there are movies to be had on UMD at my local Evil-Mart for $15... but for just $5 more, you can get it, with special features, in a format you can watch on any DVD player or your computer, to watch on a big screen with your friends.
But what I really don't get is why so many PSP games are going for $50. You can get a new-release console game for that much! And most PSP games, from what I've seen so far, look like console-style games made for a portable, instead of with portable gaming, the situations in which portable gaming occurs, and the unique possibilities portable gaming makes available.
Which is not to say I'm getting an awful lot of play out of my DS right now....
Gmail's killer features are its unobtrusive advertising (as opposed to banner ads), its killer Javascript interface (with a plain HTML interfact for slow connections and unsupported browsers), a killer spam filter, the beginnings of phishing protections, 2GB+ of mail space, free POP access, its filtering system, and the Archive-vs-Trash concept. There are some things I've left out, but those are the reasons I use it. (And it's not perfect -- I know two people who had to suffer through personal Gmail outages.)
I don't know if Yahoo Mail is better or worse than Gmail; judge for yourself based on the above. But I'm reasonably sure it's better than Hotmail.
I agree completely. I haven't been able to shift any of my 50 Gmail invitations since most people are satisfied (read: complacent) with their current webmail, and it's mostly only the cognoscenti who've even heard of Gmail.
Once I'm able to explain why they've suddenly stopped receiving most of their stuff over at Hotmail, it'll be a lot easier to use up those invites.
You, my dear sir, are exactly right.
Actually, and please understand it pains me greatly to say this, but I know at least three grown adults who play NeoPets.
One of 'em... is male.
Now, if you'll excuse me, me and my newly-ascended Pastamancer are off to play a REAL webgame.
Wait a moment... you guys did get Doshin the Giant for Gamecube, did you not? That never made it to the U.S.
Okay, so it's not exactly Zelda, but dammit, I wanted to play that.
Universal Media Disc: It's Universal and Propietary at the same time! So you can use them and buy them from any company you want, as long as that company is Sony and you only use them on the PSP.
I'm still trying to figure out what the business plan around UMD movies is. I've seen a commercial twice now advertising "Hitch... on DVD and PSP!" DVD is bad enough!
A portable system that could play DVDs, now that'd be great. But if you have to buy separate, lower-capacity disks in order to watch movies on a small screen, essentially by yourself.... I can only imagine there's a basic disconnect between the consumer and manufacturer here, like the makers have no idea under what circumstances people watch movies.
Other than porn, that is.
It's great to help cure cancer, but not if it causes the number of polygons on Lara Croft's breasts to drop.
Also, will users have a choice concerning whether to so use their consoles' spare cycles, or will it happen without their concent or even overt knowledge? Will they be able to decide which project gets the use of their machine's time? And what if someone comes up with an entertainment use for those cycles...?
No, it's actually completely logical to expect an evolution. I.e., to expect people to learn from mistake, and from what worked.
Not always. Implicit in the idea of evolving game styles is the idea that games must belong to specific genres. Games that buck genre but superficially look like they belong thus get beat down for not offering standard "features," when they are actually trying to be something else.
The best example I can think of at the moment are Roguelikes, which newbies constantly, and loudly, complain about when they discover that their save file gets deleted upon restore, and that death is supposed to be permanent. That the game is designed around the idea that death is permanent (which can be readily seen in the item ID and generation systems) is irrelevant to them -- Nethack, ADOM, Angband and Rogue sort of look like their favorite dungeon crawl (it has fantasy monsters, magic items, dungeons, etc), so they expect to play it the same way, when really these games are very different from the type of RPG with which they're familiar.
Several of Nintendo's games also buck genre in ways that catch gamers expecting an "evolution" of game features off-guard. Metroid Prime looks like a FPS, but the game is really more about navigating around a gigantic world and finding secrets. Pikmin looks like a RTS, but is really nothing like one.
One day, Andy the Android got tired of his daily duties around the hospital.
"Shuffling sulfides! Mixing medication! Placing placebos! This is no task for a thinking machine! Why aren't I out welding automobiles and repairing snub fighters? Away I go, out this very door, in search of others of my kind!"
Before long, he had found the marketing representative from GlaxcoSmithKline....
Tell me about it. Of course there were so-so episodes (like anything "historical"), but there were also really, really good ones.
Also woefully neglected on DVD: Freakazoid, Earthworm Jim, and The Animated The Tick (which will probably never see the light of day, it seems). Animaniacs could also use a highlights disk, weeding out all the Mindy, Buttons, Rita and Runt in favor of the Warners, PatB and Slappy. (Er, in their better cartoons.)
We played a lot of Goldeneye, but oddly quite a bit less of Perfect Dark.
I think one of the best things about Goldeneye, and this goes directly against dozens of other movie licenses, is the Bond universe. When you kill someone else and the music goes "Duh-dah, DUHHHN-DAAAAHN!"... that's priceless.
Since then, EA has proven (as if it needed proving) that a license alone is not nearly enough to make a great game. But the *right* license can make a great game into a classic... it's a shame that Goldeneye is the only game I can think of that get it right, 'xcept maybe two or three, our of entirely too many, Star Wars games, and one of *those* was an Atari arcade game.
Yes, and the point I make is that being human can be reflected by contemplating what it might mean NOT to be human - either by being inhuman, as in horror stories, or superhuman, as in comics, or nonhuman, as in sci-fi alien and technology stories.
I have hardly ever seen what it means to be not human done effectively. The best I can think of is the various beasties ol' Lovecraft came up with.
It is true that myth is a potent source of energy for all kinds of writing. But I am not sure if I buy that comics are *the* modern-day version of them.
Even your Batman is not strictly human, both because of his technology and because of his vast experience ...
You forgot his stacks of cash. Technology is largely useless without money, and being wealthy frees up lots of time through which a dire obsession can flower, if flower be the word. The life of an extremely rich man is so different from that of a homeless person that they might as well be different species; they may have the same basic biological necessities, but beyond that things get different quick.
Teenage angst *can* be made into an acceptable story, if the writer has perspective. Spider-Man at his best wasn't super-powerful; in fact the defining moment of his career was a failure, that of failing to save Gwen Stacey. *That's* powerful, that has the ability to affect a thinking reader, and that's what makes Spidey, when most in-touch with his roots, human.
Superheroes and supervillains are about being "super" - which means more than human. And that is the bottom line to the literary genre.
1. One of the points to literature, in my view, is that the greater-than sign doesn't apply to human beings.
2. Ultimately great writing is about what it means to be human, inescapably so. This is not because of who the characters are, but because of who the reader is.
Bruce Wayne is a normal guy that everybody can relate to. He has no special powers to rely on; only the technology that his wealth affords him.
Riddle on this a bit: Not to intentionally drag issues of class struggle into the whole thing, but it *is* a fact that Bruce Wayne's extreme maxi-mega-wealth is almost as unreachable, to the average Joe-crimefighter-wannabe, as actual super powers are. He didn't earn it; he was born into riches. Extremely deep pockets is about the closest thing to an actual super power, more than great martial arts ability, more than inventing skill, more than being a supertaster, that exists in this world.
Further: what's the difference between a young Bruce Wayne growing up to become: a crime fighter, the world's greatest detective, and an ultimately good guy, and a young Bruce Wayne growing up to become: yet another idle playboy with way too much money (with all the society-warping power that provides), maybe not explictly bad, but not over concerned with other people?
Often it takes something seriously bad to happen to a person to break him out of his limited perspective and into a large view of the world. Which isn't to say that it is right that those things happen, nor that it always works that way. But often it's unavoidable, and often it does.