Re:Battery life not the deciding factor at the mom
on
PSP Opened up and Exposed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
A caveat: I'm a Nintendo loyalist.
Remember that the Dreamcast had a good head start over the PS2 (I bought mine on release day and have a bright-orange T-shirt to prove it), and ultimately it was for naught.
But then again, Nintendo has had a long history of supremacy in the portable arena. Their dethroning from the console top-spot isn't as telling as you might think -- the SNES and Genesis had a long-fought, bitter rivalry.
I know who I'm cheering for, but admit that the victory is up in the air. Could it be we might actually have TWO concurrently profitable portable systems? Is this possible?
Graphics? 3D, probably. The DS seems to have better support for 2D graphics than 3D -- it seems that its 3D hardware can only display on one screen at a time, though the developer gets to pick the screen.
Games? That's up in the air. There's far more I'm excited about on the DS than the PSP.
But I've already said this multiple times so why don't I shut up already.
Ditto. I was just thinking yesterday, when is Unity finally going to come out? Here's hoping his work into it will find fruit in some other project (that'll also be available for a system I won't mind owning).
Dude, I think you're taking this a bit too seriously. I really wasn't aware my post got to +5, and in any case I've learned to stop worrying so much about Slashdot post scores. (Though if Slashdot were actually as biased as people say it is, there's no way in hell Halo 2 would be getting so much love from these halls.) Anyway, I wasn't trying to bash you. C'mon, let's be friends.
You said cigarette lighter, but you also mentioned AC. Of course you can recharge them, but if you have to recharge them too often the whole point of a portable system is lost. You said "where I live" I guess, but you didn't specify that you meant Canadian dollars - U.S. money is used in more places than the United States.
they really cant do nothing against the fact that the nintendo 64 did worst than the PSX even with its "0" loading times, which was my point.
And my point was that, even if the loading times can be overcome, they will still negatively affect the experience. A game with no loading time is better than an identical game with long loading times. Obviously, overcoming this is exactly what the PS1 did over the N64. But it was still a factor, and it may not play out that way this time.
And just FYI final fantasy VII DOES NOT have "loading times" each random battle, (unless your disc was really scratched) the "loading" screen was only shown when you moved from one map to another.
The loading screen doesn't always match up with those times when the game is waiting for disk access to complete. When you enter a battle in FF VII, the view shifts to a 3D scene, dramatic music starts up, the camera flies around a bit, your characters appear, the monsters appear, and.... battle begins. In my memory, you can't skip any of that, because it's being used to mask all that data being drawn in from the disk, but unlike Metroid Prime's masking, you don't get to keep playing while it happens. That's what threw me off of FF VII. In earlier FF games, you got into a battle, and before you could say SCREE-SCREEEL, poof, you're there, select your first move. That's why I was disappointed by FF VII, when I first played it. These days I'm more disappointed by Final Fantasy in general, and most other RPGs besides, but that's an entirely different, degree-in-English related, story.
Oh, and I wasn't trying to make fun of you with the Tekken comment, I was just trying to make a joke. Maybe I need to go back to snicker school, I don't know.
You are being pretty disengenous to say we can't see who PSP games are directed at "because it ain't out yet". Various big games for it are widely known and have been for some time: Metal Gear, Dynasty Warriors, Final Fantasy, Tenchu, Twisted Metal, Wipeout...
These things are true, but I was referring more to what IS out than what is COMING out (which is what the parent post stated). So I don't think I was being disingenuous. The DS is out now, and the PSP has yet to appear. That was the point.
Probably Canada, since those are the Canadian prices. You'll note the price ratios are basically the same as they are in the US, making the parent poster's argument just as sound (GBA SP half the price of a DS) even with American prices. Calm down...
(Reading old post.) Hey, I was calm! I noted the price differences and asked him where he got his information. He didn't mention the PSP's price in his comment, and he said nothing about Canada himself. Anyway, no matter.
I am not a fan of the series myself, but you would have to be pretty ignorant about videogaming trends to think Tekken is no longer a big deal to millions of people.
Whatever man. All kinds of things are a big deal to millions of people. I was just trying to express, humorously, in a couple of sentences, that I don't think the series is as important as it once was. I wasn't trying to cut the previous poster down, or make any rhetorical points with it. The PSP has enough other popular series to make up for it.
As for it being the 90's again, I really wanted to know, because if it is, then there is time for KLAX.
That, and saves, makes sense. I just think its unlikely that Sony will intentionally give out a means of allowing people to run arbitrary code on their system, especially if they're selling it at a loss. If we're able to run software off of a memory stick, you can bet it'll be crippled by some kind of shameless digital rights management.
Your reply makes some valid points, but has Nintendo fan boy written all over it.
Whatever. It's true that I think Nintendo is the, shall we say, least evil of the current manufacturers. Isn't it possible to honestly think that Nintendo knows what they're doing? Names like "fanboy" are best applied to people who get, shall we say, way too into Inuyasha. I just happen to like Nintendo's games, but I don't write fan fiction. And there are some games for other systems that I like, and I recognize that Nintendo has made mistakes. So no, I dispute the fanboy status.
Considering that Feel the Magic has recognition for when you touch onscreen women in "special places," I'd wonder about how universal it is. I think we haven't seen enough of the DS' software library to be able to tell if it's for teh kiddez, there's nothing in the system's design that implies that to me. Although PictoChat is perhaps concievably more interesting to kids, for the whole meeting-at-recess dynamic.
I'm worried about it too. I still have the barely-useable wreckage to an old HPC around somewhere. Portables, especially those that'll get handed around at recess, need to be able to last.
The pictured PSP reminds me, if anything, of a wider Lynx. Ah, my Lynx... unwieldly, but still kind of cool. Oh, to play Todd's Adventures in Slime World again...
The system which has more and better games wins, period. I dont mind load times if I can play Final Fantasy, GTA, tekken, devil may cry or Metroid in a console.(unless they are annoying and in the middle of the game like in hl2)
Metroid games, even the 3D ones, have very good loading times, so it doesn't quite fit in with the other examples given.
Loading times, it must be said, matter a great deal to me -- I consider FF VII unplayable to this day because of that damn wait before all those random battles. I'm still amazed I persevered through Chrono Cross. It is very possible for an excellent game to be crippled by bad load times. Although these games did very well despite the disk access, I don't think it can be questioned that they would have been even better without all those annoying, inescapable pauses in the action.
It is possibly possible that PSP developers will use tricks to mask loading times. This is what the Gamecube does with Metroid Prime, the doors between areas hide the load time. That would be good, if they could do something like that, but it's not possible in all cases.
Third. The battery is a problem YES but so it was anti aliasing for the ps2 and it still beat every other console it was against (which had better tech) Also they were eventually able to fix the problem trough programming.
Smoothing edges is much less serious of a problem for a portable than battery life....according to what Ive read you can make the battery last up to 4 times by simply lowering your brightness and using an extra light source (which is what I've done for years with my gba)
And a lot of people agree that the GBA's pre-SP popularity came despite that unlit screen rather than because of it. I barely play my original GBA anymore because of it. If you have to turn the light down to get decent battery life then something is broken.
Anyway, are you aware the PSP runs on rechargeable batteries and AC ? all you need to do is to hook it to the car lighter, problem solved.
But a portable system is made, above all, to be PORTABLE. The PSP's system specs look like an underpowered PS2, and many of the same games are coming out for it. If you're going to be tethered to an outlet to play the thing, then it makes a lot more sense to get a PS2 instead, especially since it's cheaper, there's hundreds of games, and you can play it on a TV.
Simply stated the PSP is a console targetted at teens and young adults and weither you want to admit it or not, the DS is targeted at kids and teens. (how many "M" or even "T" titles does each console have now?)
DS: A mixture. Feel the Magic isn't for kids, and I don't think Urbz is either. PSP: Zero, in either category. Because it ain't out yet.
The GBA was popular across the board, and there's no reason to believe the DS will not be either -- after all, it comes with a pack-in demo that offers multiplayer deathmatch, which is rather surprising of Nintendo.
My local shop is importing PSPs and they are getting sold out for xmas already.
A sold-out importer is an entirely different thing than out of stock at Wal-Mart.
Where I live the DS is making parents look at the GBA sp. Is a lot cheaper and is a nice Portable which is what little timmy wrote in his xmas list anyway. (the DS is at $200 and the GBA is $90)
No, the DS is $150, and I think the GBA SP is cheaper by now as well. Where are you getting your information?
P.S. Tekken? Is it the 90's again and someone forgot to tell me?
Actually, the Games directory is probably there to keep content on the stick organized. A friend of mine has a memory stick Walkman, and when looked at on a computer it contains a "hi-fi" directory, even though the only way to get music onto the stick in a playable form is though Sony's awful special-purpose iTunes wannabe.
I'll say this about that Walkman. It certainly does make a passable USB hard drive of slightly less than the size of the memory stick inserted into it. As a music player, though, the DRM sucks.
I think its a terrible tragedy that Nintendo has the console with the pointing device - Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with a pointing device if it was shoved up their ass,
On the contrary, Nintendo is the company poised to do a pointing interface best. Because they have no ties to the computer gaming world, they're not as bound to the bland point-and-click paradigm.
Besides... Metroid: First Hunt has what amounts to mouselook. That's cool. Then there's the new WarioWare in which all the games are stylus based, the Yoshi game where you draw platforms for the characters to walk across, and games that use the stylus for analog control (which strikes me as a bit half-assed, but it is a cool idea).
meanwhile Sony would have bought out Blizzard already by now if they had a good console for Diablo and StarCraft (which have been shitty on consoles up until now due to the lack of pointing devices).
If Sony bought Blizzard it would probably be the beginning the end for them. In the long run, it's extremely difficult for an owned studio to remain fresh and creative, due to pressures from On High. Nintendo's among the least bad in this regard, but even they recently drove away the creator of Kirby.
I find it highly unlikely, in any case, that the PSP will have the better games, for the same reason that the PS2 doesn't, generally, have better games than the Gamecube. Sony's game strengths lie almost entire in Square (there are a good number who will buy Sony no matter what, so far as they have a lock on console Final Fantasy) and volume (release enough games from enough different people, and some of them are bound to be good).
I agree that Mario, as a sports mascot, is a bit overused. I think there is room for Mario in other types of games, but sports is starting to get a bit overdone.
But I liked Mario Sunshine, dammit -- once you've built up enough skillz, clearing void levels is a lot of fun.
The rumor is that there's going to be at least one more major Mario Gamecube game, and it's *supposed* to pioneer entirely new gameplay. No one outside Nintendo really knows what it's going to be like, but if it *is* truly different and engaging then Mario will be back on top in no time. Instead of "the decline of the video game mascot," this story would have been more accurately titled, "the decline of the primary games which star mascots."
But what, on earth, could the next Mario game be like? I have no clue.
You don't have to see the demo to know it'll suck. You just have to hear the name, which typically tips you off as to what audiences the developers are going for, to see. This is true in surprisingly many cases.
Nope, Zelda is by far the Nintendo franchise best suited to anime-cation. Of course, one could just argue all you'd need to do is film an hour and half of Wind Waker. (And the great thing about that sentence is, whether you liked or hated Wind Waker, it looks like I'm agreeing with you in both cases!)
But of all of Nintendo's franchises, The Legend of Zelda is the one that really has things to say. Yes, things other than "Have I bombed every mountain space on this screen, and tried to burn every tree?" Also yes, things that aren't "Let's cel-shade this bad boy." Even things other than "Did Link and Zelda do it after the credits in Zelda 2." (You dirty-minded fink.)
Okay, let me rephrase. The Legend of Zelda has the most room for actual storytelling. This could be big, if done right. Yeah, that's a big if. But we'll see.
Well the Xbox is kind of an underdog, but it's a bit ahead of the Gamecube in the US market. (But then you could point out that Gamecube is far ahead of Xbox in the Japanese market.) From my informal observations here, people usually chime in in support of Gamecube when given prompting (because of Monkey Ball, Metroid Prime and others), but the league of Halo players is probably much larger, to judge from the number of front-page stories on it.
Which isn't to discount Halo, I mean I'm not a fan of FPS games but it's not *bad*.
But there is typically not a lot of Sony-hate here, and there are a good number of people looking forward to the PSP in these parts, perhaps for good reason. So far, I'd say that DS love is slightly greater around here, but *just* slightly.
I guess I just chafe when I see someone dragging out the tired old "slashbot" line. Of COURSE Slashdotters have these opinions, doesn't the tagline of the site contain the words "News for NERDS?" Why would someone expect love for Microsoft to gush forth from here?
Using the word "slashbot" is simply a means of dismissing opinions that seem to be widely held here, just *possibly* for a good reason, by trying to stick a fairly stupid label on it.
The PSP is still in 'trendy hype-machine' mode, and not at mass-profit levels yet - those sales can wait more than PS2s can.
Then they need to get on the ball here -- Nintendo won't be so easy to beat this time. Many people have been taken by surprise by the extraordinary preorders for the DS, even Nintendo loyalist sites, who you'd suppose would be all rah-rah over anything the big 'N' does but have been in Charlie Brown mode for a while now, were caught off-guard.
If Sony's trying to limit supply to drive demand then they're going to have problems in the portable space this time, as the DS is also over-ordered, but after a rational level of supply. It's too early to judge yet of course, but I consider this troubling news for Sony.
remember it's cool and hip to hate anything that is big and successful around here and sony has been the dominate console for a long time so now slashbots hate them and love nintendo if the fortunes switch then so will the borg mentality hate the man, establishment, success, whatever just hate something hate hate hate it's the slashbot way
You fool!
By your logic, Slashdot readers would be on the side of any and all underdogs, and they're not. Indeed, the Slashdot crowd almost wets themselves over Microsoft's Xbox console, and the PS2 is praised by association whenever Squareenix (gesundheit) delivers unto them another blasted Final Fantasy game.
You, sir, are an unappealing person with poor reasoning skills, speaking only in the universal language of sad irony, who can't even come up with a clever term of derision. "Hate hate hate it's the slashbot way" indeed.
The guy who turned Alice in Wonderland into a Quake-based action game is making a movie, based on the Wizard of Oz, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
In other news, Satan announced in a press release that Hell will be closing up shop for an indefinite period. "With McGee and Bruckheimer on the case and hundreds of millions of Hollywood funding dollars behind them, how can we compete?"
McGee said: "The hero of the story, a teenage boy named Arthur, is whisked away from Earth to an Oz in turmoil.
Has McGee even read the Oz books, or just seen the movie?
Like Neo in 'The Matrix' films, the boy makes a hero's journey and comes to grips with his powers," he said.
Way to go McGee, describe your movie by comparing it to the other movie that you hope it'll be like. Also, make that movie something that has as little to do with your subject matter as possible.
"What Jerry Bruckheimer was able to do with 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was simply brilliant, and since 'Oz' is similar in tone to that film franchise, I'd like to follow that model.
(smacking McGee upside the head) Dude! Get this in your damn fool level building head! Pirates of the Caribbean was cool for one, and ONLY one, reason -- JOHNNY DEPP. Bruckheimer is not, in any sense of the word, brilliant. This is the guy who produced National Treasure, a movie with a primary character named Benjaman Franklin Gates. (How I wish to god that wasn't true.) Also, he produced Gone in Sixty Seconds, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Kangaroo Jack. KANGAROO JACK, McGee!
I understand you're trying to talk the guy up so he'll use your script, but please try to refrain from uttering too many more gross inanities.
I don't know if there will be a GCC toolchain, I have absolutely no information in that regard.
But the fact that there's a GCC toolchain for GBA might be considered instructive. Also, the DS runs GBA software, and such software may be able to take advantage of some of the DS' extra features, so maybe you could take that route?
Because you could possibly use your DS' touch screen to sketch, then save the drawings on your PC. Maybe someone could even hack together a full tablet driver for it.
Slashdot Mirror
A caveat: I'm a Nintendo loyalist.
Remember that the Dreamcast had a good head start over the PS2 (I bought mine on release day and have a bright-orange T-shirt to prove it), and ultimately it was for naught.
But then again, Nintendo has had a long history of supremacy in the portable arena. Their dethroning from the console top-spot isn't as telling as you might think -- the SNES and Genesis had a long-fought, bitter rivalry.
I know who I'm cheering for, but admit that the victory is up in the air. Could it be we might actually have TWO concurrently profitable portable systems? Is this possible?
Graphics? 3D, probably. The DS seems to have better support for 2D graphics than 3D -- it seems that its 3D hardware can only display on one screen at a time, though the developer gets to pick the screen.
Games? That's up in the air. There's far more I'm excited about on the DS than the PSP.
But I've already said this multiple times so why don't I shut up already.
Ditto. I was just thinking yesterday, when is Unity finally going to come out? Here's hoping his work into it will find fruit in some other project (that'll also be available for a system I won't mind owning).
Ah well. Back to ZANAC.
"These were the emergency rations. Only to be used in a true emergency. They were for the last of the last resort!
All I want to know is, who took them."
"I wouldn't leave the box as evidence."
Mmm... maybe we could fry up some Welsh Corgi?
(Yeah, so it's an anime reference. But if you're going to refer to anime, refer to the best.)
"These were the emergency rations. Only to be used in a true emergency. They were for the last of the last resort!
All I want to know is, who took them."
"I wouldn't leave the box as evidence."
Mmm... maybe we could fry up some Welsi Corgi?
(Yeah, so it's an anime reference. But if you're going to refer to anime, refer to the best.)
Dude, I think you're taking this a bit too seriously. I really wasn't aware my post got to +5, and in any case I've learned to stop worrying so much about Slashdot post scores. (Though if Slashdot were actually as biased as people say it is, there's no way in hell Halo 2 would be getting so much love from these halls.) Anyway, I wasn't trying to bash you. C'mon, let's be friends.
You said cigarette lighter, but you also mentioned AC. Of course you can recharge them, but if you have to recharge them too often the whole point of a portable system is lost. You said "where I live" I guess, but you didn't specify that you meant Canadian dollars - U.S. money is used in more places than the United States.
they really cant do nothing against the fact that the nintendo 64 did worst than the PSX even with its "0" loading times, which was my point.
And my point was that, even if the loading times can be overcome, they will still negatively affect the experience. A game with no loading time is better than an identical game with long loading times. Obviously, overcoming this is exactly what the PS1 did over the N64. But it was still a factor, and it may not play out that way this time.
And just FYI final fantasy VII DOES NOT have "loading times" each random battle, (unless your disc was really scratched) the "loading" screen was only shown when you moved from one map to another.
The loading screen doesn't always match up with those times when the game is waiting for disk access to complete. When you enter a battle in FF VII, the view shifts to a 3D scene, dramatic music starts up, the camera flies around a bit, your characters appear, the monsters appear, and.... battle begins. In my memory, you can't skip any of that, because it's being used to mask all that data being drawn in from the disk, but unlike Metroid Prime's masking, you don't get to keep playing while it happens. That's what threw me off of FF VII. In earlier FF games, you got into a battle, and before you could say SCREE-SCREEEL, poof, you're there, select your first move. That's why I was disappointed by FF VII, when I first played it. These days I'm more disappointed by Final Fantasy in general, and most other RPGs besides, but that's an entirely different, degree-in-English related, story.
Oh, and I wasn't trying to make fun of you with the Tekken comment, I was just trying to make a joke. Maybe I need to go back to snicker school, I don't know.
You are being pretty disengenous to say we can't see who PSP games are directed at "because it ain't out yet". Various big games for it are widely known and have been for some time: Metal Gear, Dynasty Warriors, Final Fantasy, Tenchu, Twisted Metal, Wipeout...
These things are true, but I was referring more to what IS out than what is COMING out (which is what the parent post stated). So I don't think I was being disingenuous. The DS is out now, and the PSP has yet to appear. That was the point.
Probably Canada, since those are the Canadian prices. You'll note the price ratios are basically the same as they are in the US, making the parent poster's argument just as sound (GBA SP half the price of a DS) even with American prices. Calm down...
(Reading old post.) Hey, I was calm! I noted the price differences and asked him where he got his information. He didn't mention the PSP's price in his comment, and he said nothing about Canada himself. Anyway, no matter.
I am not a fan of the series myself, but you would have to be pretty ignorant about videogaming trends to think Tekken is no longer a big deal to millions of people.
Whatever man. All kinds of things are a big deal to millions of people. I was just trying to express, humorously, in a couple of sentences, that I don't think the series is as important as it once was. I wasn't trying to cut the previous poster down, or make any rhetorical points with it. The PSP has enough other popular series to make up for it.
As for it being the 90's again, I really wanted to know, because if it is, then there is time for KLAX.
That, and saves, makes sense. I just think its unlikely that Sony will intentionally give out a means of allowing people to run arbitrary code on their system, especially if they're selling it at a loss. If we're able to run software off of a memory stick, you can bet it'll be crippled by some kind of shameless digital rights management.
Your reply makes some valid points, but has Nintendo fan boy written all over it.
Whatever. It's true that I think Nintendo is the, shall we say, least evil of the current manufacturers. Isn't it possible to honestly think that Nintendo knows what they're doing? Names like "fanboy" are best applied to people who get, shall we say, way too into Inuyasha. I just happen to like Nintendo's games, but I don't write fan fiction. And there are some games for other systems that I like, and I recognize that Nintendo has made mistakes. So no, I dispute the fanboy status.
Considering that Feel the Magic has recognition for when you touch onscreen women in "special places," I'd wonder about how universal it is. I think we haven't seen enough of the DS' software library to be able to tell if it's for teh kiddez, there's nothing in the system's design that implies that to me. Although PictoChat is perhaps concievably more interesting to kids, for the whole meeting-at-recess dynamic.
I'm worried about it too. I still have the barely-useable wreckage to an old HPC around somewhere. Portables, especially those that'll get handed around at recess, need to be able to last.
The pictured PSP reminds me, if anything, of a wider Lynx. Ah, my Lynx... unwieldly, but still kind of cool. Oh, to play Todd's Adventures in Slime World again...
The system which has more and better games wins, period. I dont mind load times if I can play Final Fantasy, GTA, tekken, devil may cry or Metroid in a console.(unless they are annoying and in the middle of the game like in hl2)
...according to what Ive read you can make the battery last up to 4 times by simply lowering your brightness and using an extra light source (which is what I've done for years with my gba)
Metroid games, even the 3D ones, have very good loading times, so it doesn't quite fit in with the other examples given.
Loading times, it must be said, matter a great deal to me -- I consider FF VII unplayable to this day because of that damn wait before all those random battles. I'm still amazed I persevered through Chrono Cross. It is very possible for an excellent game to be crippled by bad load times. Although these games did very well despite the disk access, I don't think it can be questioned that they would have been even better without all those annoying, inescapable pauses in the action.
It is possibly possible that PSP developers will use tricks to mask loading times. This is what the Gamecube does with Metroid Prime, the doors between areas hide the load time. That would be good, if they could do something like that, but it's not possible in all cases.
Third. The battery is a problem YES but so it was anti aliasing for the ps2 and it still beat every other console it was against (which had better tech) Also they were eventually able to fix the problem trough programming.
Smoothing edges is much less serious of a problem for a portable than battery life.
And a lot of people agree that the GBA's pre-SP popularity came despite that unlit screen rather than because of it. I barely play my original GBA anymore because of it. If you have to turn the light down to get decent battery life then something is broken.
Anyway, are you aware the PSP runs on rechargeable batteries and AC ? all you need to do is to hook it to the car lighter, problem solved.
But a portable system is made, above all, to be PORTABLE. The PSP's system specs look like an underpowered PS2, and many of the same games are coming out for it. If you're going to be tethered to an outlet to play the thing, then it makes a lot more sense to get a PS2 instead, especially since it's cheaper, there's hundreds of games, and you can play it on a TV.
Simply stated the PSP is a console targetted at teens and young adults and weither you want to admit it or not, the DS is targeted at kids and teens. (how many "M" or even "T" titles does each console have now?)
DS: A mixture. Feel the Magic isn't for kids, and I don't think Urbz is either.
PSP: Zero, in either category. Because it ain't out yet.
The GBA was popular across the board, and there's no reason to believe the DS will not be either -- after all, it comes with a pack-in demo that offers multiplayer deathmatch, which is rather surprising of Nintendo.
My local shop is importing PSPs and they are getting sold out for xmas already.
A sold-out importer is an entirely different thing than out of stock at Wal-Mart.
Where I live the DS is making parents look at the GBA sp. Is a lot cheaper and is a nice Portable which is what little timmy wrote in his xmas list anyway. (the DS is at $200 and the GBA is $90)
No, the DS is $150, and I think the GBA SP is cheaper by now as well. Where are you getting your information?
P.S. Tekken? Is it the 90's again and someone forgot to tell me?
Actually, the Games directory is probably there to keep content on the stick organized. A friend of mine has a memory stick Walkman, and when looked at on a computer it contains a "hi-fi" directory, even though the only way to get music onto the stick in a playable form is though Sony's awful special-purpose iTunes wannabe.
I'll say this about that Walkman. It certainly does make a passable USB hard drive of slightly less than the size of the memory stick inserted into it. As a music player, though, the DRM sucks.
I think its a terrible tragedy that Nintendo has the console with the pointing device - Nintendo wouldn't know what to do with a pointing device if it was shoved up their ass,
On the contrary, Nintendo is the company poised to do a pointing interface best. Because they have no ties to the computer gaming world, they're not as bound to the bland point-and-click paradigm.
Besides... Metroid: First Hunt has what amounts to mouselook. That's cool. Then there's the new WarioWare in which all the games are stylus based, the Yoshi game where you draw platforms for the characters to walk across, and games that use the stylus for analog control (which strikes me as a bit half-assed, but it is a cool idea).
meanwhile Sony would have bought out Blizzard already by now if they had a good console for Diablo and StarCraft (which have been shitty on consoles up until now due to the lack of pointing devices).
If Sony bought Blizzard it would probably be the beginning the end for them. In the long run, it's extremely difficult for an owned studio to remain fresh and creative, due to pressures from On High. Nintendo's among the least bad in this regard, but even they recently drove away the creator of Kirby.
I find it highly unlikely, in any case, that the PSP will have the better games, for the same reason that the PS2 doesn't, generally, have better games than the Gamecube. Sony's game strengths lie almost entire in Square (there are a good number who will buy Sony no matter what, so far as they have a lock on console Final Fantasy) and volume (release enough games from enough different people, and some of them are bound to be good).
I agree that Mario, as a sports mascot, is a bit overused. I think there is room for Mario in other types of games, but sports is starting to get a bit overdone.
But I liked Mario Sunshine, dammit -- once you've built up enough skillz, clearing void levels is a lot of fun.
The rumor is that there's going to be at least one more major Mario Gamecube game, and it's *supposed* to pioneer entirely new gameplay. No one outside Nintendo really knows what it's going to be like, but if it *is* truly different and engaging then Mario will be back on top in no time. Instead of "the decline of the video game mascot," this story would have been more accurately titled, "the decline of the primary games which star mascots."
But what, on earth, could the next Mario game be like? I have no clue.
You don't have to see the demo to know it'll suck. You just have to hear the name, which typically tips you off as to what audiences the developers are going for, to see. This is true in surprisingly many cases.
Heh, that was actually only present, if memory serves, in the arcade version, Vs. Excitebike. I don't think it was on NES Excitebike.
I thought it was a can, but I only saw the arcade game a handful of times.
Question: How much do I know about video games?
Answer: Obviously, entirely too much.
Metroid? Starfox? Kirby? Mario?
Nope, Zelda is by far the Nintendo franchise best suited to anime-cation. Of course, one could just argue all you'd need to do is film an hour and half of Wind Waker. (And the great thing about that sentence is, whether you liked or hated Wind Waker, it looks like I'm agreeing with you in both cases!)
But of all of Nintendo's franchises, The Legend of Zelda is the one that really has things to say. Yes, things other than "Have I bombed every mountain space on this screen, and tried to burn every tree?" Also yes, things that aren't "Let's cel-shade this bad boy." Even things other than "Did Link and Zelda do it after the credits in Zelda 2." (You dirty-minded fink.)
Okay, let me rephrase. The Legend of Zelda has the most room for actual storytelling. This could be big, if done right. Yeah, that's a big if. But we'll see.
That's not the theme to Excitebike. That's the theme to losing Excitebike. Which somehow makes you writing it out even funnier.
Is there anyone reading this, who's also played the game, who doesn't know EXACTLY what you're talking about?
Er.... d'oh!
Well the Xbox is kind of an underdog, but it's a bit ahead of the Gamecube in the US market. (But then you could point out that Gamecube is far ahead of Xbox in the Japanese market.) From my informal observations here, people usually chime in in support of Gamecube when given prompting (because of Monkey Ball, Metroid Prime and others), but the league of Halo players is probably much larger, to judge from the number of front-page stories on it.
Which isn't to discount Halo, I mean I'm not a fan of FPS games but it's not *bad*.
But there is typically not a lot of Sony-hate here, and there are a good number of people looking forward to the PSP in these parts, perhaps for good reason. So far, I'd say that DS love is slightly greater around here, but *just* slightly.
I guess I just chafe when I see someone dragging out the tired old "slashbot" line. Of COURSE Slashdotters have these opinions, doesn't the tagline of the site contain the words "News for NERDS?" Why would someone expect love for Microsoft to gush forth from here?
Using the word "slashbot" is simply a means of dismissing opinions that seem to be widely held here, just *possibly* for a good reason, by trying to stick a fairly stupid label on it.
The PSP is still in 'trendy hype-machine' mode, and not at mass-profit levels yet - those sales can wait more than PS2s can.
Then they need to get on the ball here -- Nintendo won't be so easy to beat this time. Many people have been taken by surprise by the extraordinary preorders for the DS, even Nintendo loyalist sites, who you'd suppose would be all rah-rah over anything the big 'N' does but have been in Charlie Brown mode for a while now, were caught off-guard.
If Sony's trying to limit supply to drive demand then they're going to have problems in the portable space this time, as the DS is also over-ordered, but after a rational level of supply. It's too early to judge yet of course, but I consider this troubling news for Sony.
remember it's cool and hip to hate anything that is big and successful around here and sony has been the dominate console for a long time so now slashbots hate them and love nintendo if the fortunes switch then so will the borg mentality hate the man, establishment, success, whatever just hate something hate hate hate it's the slashbot way
You fool!
By your logic, Slashdot readers would be on the side of any and all underdogs, and they're not. Indeed, the Slashdot crowd almost wets themselves over Microsoft's Xbox console, and the PS2 is praised by association whenever Squareenix (gesundheit) delivers unto them another blasted Final Fantasy game.
You, sir, are an unappealing person with poor reasoning skills, speaking only in the universal language of sad irony, who can't even come up with a clever term of derision. "Hate hate hate it's the slashbot way" indeed.
(blink)
The guy who turned Alice in Wonderland into a Quake-based action game is making a movie, based on the Wizard of Oz, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
In other news, Satan announced in a press release that Hell will be closing up shop for an indefinite period. "With McGee and Bruckheimer on the case and hundreds of millions of Hollywood funding dollars behind them, how can we compete?"
McGee said: "The hero of the story, a teenage boy named Arthur, is whisked away from Earth to an Oz in turmoil.
Has McGee even read the Oz books, or just seen the movie?
Like Neo in 'The Matrix' films, the boy makes a hero's journey and comes to grips with his powers," he said.
Way to go McGee, describe your movie by comparing it to the other movie that you hope it'll be like. Also, make that movie something that has as little to do with your subject matter as possible.
"What Jerry Bruckheimer was able to do with 'Pirates of the Caribbean' was simply brilliant, and since 'Oz' is similar in tone to that film franchise, I'd like to follow that model.
(smacking McGee upside the head) Dude! Get this in your damn fool level building head! Pirates of the Caribbean was cool for one, and ONLY one, reason -- JOHNNY DEPP. Bruckheimer is not, in any sense of the word, brilliant. This is the guy who produced National Treasure, a movie with a primary character named Benjaman Franklin Gates. (How I wish to god that wasn't true.) Also, he produced Gone in Sixty Seconds, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and Kangaroo Jack. KANGAROO JACK, McGee!
I understand you're trying to talk the guy up so he'll use your script, but please try to refrain from uttering too many more gross inanities.
I don't know if there will be a GCC toolchain, I have absolutely no information in that regard.
But the fact that there's a GCC toolchain for GBA might be considered instructive. Also, the DS runs GBA software, and such software may be able to take advantage of some of the DS' extra features, so maybe you could take that route?
Please, please tell me you live in Statesboro, Georgia?
(fingers crossed)
Why decode DS packets?
Because you could possibly use your DS' touch screen to sketch, then save the drawings on your PC. Maybe someone could even hack together a full tablet driver for it.