I recently stumbled across a review (http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Final%20Fantasy%20VII.htm) of Final Fantasy VII for a Stanford History of Computer Game Design class. This review claims that Aeris' death is the first time in RPG history that the death of a main playable character is an "essential and critical element of the plot." Completely untrue. It was done at least once before, in Sega's 1994 RPG, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium.
Oy. It was done much earlier than that, in Phantasy Star II. Oh who will morn for poor, forgotten Nei? Or Tellah (FF II/IV), for that matter? Or the Flying Men from Mother?
Ah, but I do remember them, they just didn't spring to mind at that moment. They had clocks because they were part of Nintendo's Game & Watch series, even though they were a little too unwieldly to wear on your wrist.
Apparently those Game and Watch things were really popular for Nintendo, considering that G&W homages keep popping up in such places as Smash Bros. Melee and WarioWare, and there are six Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance compilations of those old games.
It sounds to me that movie playback is a big selling point of the PSP, but if you have to buy all new stuff to watch on it, it becomes a lot less compelling.
And that, by the way, may have been the secret reason Nintendo released all those video-on-your-GBA carts: by showing that a plain Gameboy Advance can show full-motion video (though admittedly choppy, low-res versions), it undercuts Sony's advantage in that area. It makes the choice, not between DS-without-video and PSP-with, but portable-proprietary-smallscreen-video or DVD-on-your-TV. Yeah, technically the formats differ very greatly in length and quality, but the average customer won't see that.
In any case, raw specs are never a reason to buy a game system, portable or console. PS2 is the weakest console out there in raw horsepower, but it's wiping the floor with GC and X-Box. The only really compelling item on the PSP's list, to me, is screen size.
I agree that the two screens are unnecessary to keep separate if just used for display purposes, just make one big screen and save on production costs and allow a much larger viewport.
However, the real reason they were split is probably to do with the touch sensitive bottom screen. Too expensive to make them both sensitive, or make one big sensitive screen.
One nifty thing about the split screen is that it gives the DS a similar aspect to the old Nintendo dual-screen arcade games, like the original Punch-out!! and Playchoice 10. I wonder if that's where they got the idea?
Here's how I look at it. Despite the system's short life, relatively speaking, I have had no reason to regret getting my Dreamcast. I can't tell you the hours I've spent just with Crazy Taxi, let along the other games for it. (Typing of the Dead itself is worth getting a Dreamcast and a keyboard for.)
Even if the DS falls flat on its face, which I rather think it won't, Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario 64 DS, PacPix and WarioWare DS by themselves would make the system worth it. Add in Pictochat, which is built-in to each system, and it's simply too cool to pass up, for me at least.
Hold off on the trade-ins, unless you don't play multiplayer, don't have an eReader, and don't use your GBA with a Gamecube......okay, all this is pretty likely, but still. Remember, the system doesn't have a GBA link port.
I actually like the larger size a lot, for one reason: the touch-screen. A smaller screen would make it difficult to draw and use things like Pictochat.
Hopefully it'll be big enough that I can sketch on it....
As for crack in the R&D department, Nintendo has a much better track record for left-field successes than failures, of which the Gameboy is the overreaching example.
Don't forget both Resident Evils and House of the Dead! Unlike the other respondent, I find the first RE movie to be horrid enough that I momentarilly break character and begin using words like "horrid."
Bu think: if we didn't exist, there'd be no one around to decide if species were invasive or not. If the Burrowing Snagret encroaches upon the territory of the Spotty Bulborb through artificial means it's bad, but over tens of thousands of years it may have happened anyway. (Then again, it may not have, or it may have been very difficult if they had an ocean to cross.)
Species have invaded the ranges of others many, many times during the history of life on Earth. What humans are guilty of isn't allowing this to happen, but accelerating the process by many orders of magnitude.
Which is ultimately a pedantic and pointless comment for me to make, when I think about it. Oh well, at least I got to make gratitutous Pikmin references.
I think you may be a little hard on the Fable and the Halo, but in essence you're correct. My favorite X-Box games were ToeJam & Earl III and Serious Sam, and they're old.
But then the games I've played the most of the past two months have been Pikmin 2 and WarioWare. It's obvious where my own loyalties lie.
Windows is easy to learn, to "get by with" as you say, but not "easy to use."
That's not how it went with me. All of my skill came from my own research and experimentation. But then again, maybe I shouldn't hold myself to be a typical case in this.
All well and good, but you forgot the #1 reason I love my mouse: the scroll wheel. The single greatest innovation in input devices.
Um, how about the mouse? Or the keyboard for that matter? Or even the joystick? Scroll wheels work as a useful adjunct to one or all of these things, but you can't do much with *just* a scroll wheel.
Seeing a well-trained sales associate look stuff up on one of those systems in microseconds is quite a joy.
But how long did it take him to acquire that information? How many mistakes did he make on the way to that wonderous proficiency?
It should be profoundly embarrassing to us that we have largely regressed in the speed in which an experienced user can work.
Not quite so -- I can use word processors much faster now than most people, because I've learned about CTRL-Arrows for skipping around text much faster, Shift-Arrows for highlighting text, CTRL-C, X and V for Copy, Cut and Paste, CTRL-Z for undo, and Tab and Shift-Tab for moving between controls.
Most Windows programs use these keys, but because it's *possible* to get by using just the mouse and menus, most people do just that, so there are a lot fewer experienced, as in speedy, users. Most people learn just as much as they need to get by. I can't honestly blame them.
I'm working at a Domino's Pizza at the moment, and their ordering system is *awful*. It's still one of those character-mode systems where there are a dozen keys, some undocumented, that you have to know to use it. No one explained to me what all these keys do, or why, when the screen says to press Help to list toppings, I actually have to press Home, or that F10 goes to the main menu and F8 lists side orders.
If I was using a mouse (and a GUI - the two are almost inseparable), then there would probably be checkboxes for toppings and listboxes for sides. People who already know the system might be slowed down if they had to use a mouse... but then again, nothing's preventing the application's developers from implementing hotkeys for each control, in addition to the "standard" keyboard interface.
And from that toy sprung forth revolutions in photo, print and video graphics. The toy seems to have served many industries very well.
You can do lots of things with toys. My old Commodore 64 was referred to in high school, by a kid who had an Amiga, as a toy. On that toy, I wrote a couple of computer games that I'm *still* proud I thought up, as well as a sound effect generator I've gotten emulators specifically to be able to run.
Now they are mostly in their late twens wondering what to do with their existence for the rest of their time (one of them - living in his huge mansion alone said that he pretends to be into IT consulting on dinner parties, because saying that you basically do nothing is kind of embarrassing).
This guy should count his blessings.
If I didn't have to worry about where meals were coming from, I'd have a lot more time to......well, slum around Slashdot. Heh.
(Great, now I'm not only a video game, game design, short story and humor geek, I'm a political geek as well. This is not a good day for the ol' Charisma score.
Should we hold this against Bush? I mean, I would have mightily endevored to stay out of Vietnam myself. I am a little peeved, however, that it was daddy's influence that kept him out instead of a means that would have been available to me, were I of draftable age (or even born) then.
From one perspective, Kerry was honorable for going oversees and participating in that iffish little war. From another, let's call it the "Rincewind perspective," he was stupid for doing so.
I find myself thinking more and more like Rincewind as I get older. Where'd I put that luggage....
I'd vote for the guy who got three purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star, anytime, over the guy who took the rich boy coward's way out and won't admit there was anything even remotely improper about it.
Really? I'd vote for the guy who didn't freaking give tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans under the cover of helping the middle class, double freaking pull back environmental protections it took decades to establish, quadruple freaking send us to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and super-duper-dippity-dang-dog-freaking exhibit a childlike love for junk science that furthers his beliefs.
Yes, this means I'm voting for the same person as you. I just take the view that while it's nice that the guy you're voting for is honorable on the field of battle and all, under the present circumstances, that are dozens of other, more important, reasons to vote against Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
The first footnote from the article:
5 /Final%20Fantasy%20VII.htm) of Final Fantasy VII for a Stanford History of Computer Game Design class. This review claims that Aeris' death is the first time in RPG history that the death of a main playable character is an "essential and critical element of the plot." Completely untrue. It was done at least once before, in Sega's 1994 RPG, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium.
I recently stumbled across a review (http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts14
Oy. It was done much earlier than that, in Phantasy Star II. Oh who will morn for poor, forgotten Nei? Or Tellah (FF II/IV), for that matter? Or the Flying Men from Mother?
Ah, but I do remember them, they just didn't spring to mind at that moment. They had clocks because they were part of Nintendo's Game & Watch series, even though they were a little too unwieldly to wear on your wrist.
Apparently those Game and Watch things were really popular for Nintendo, considering that G&W homages keep popping up in such places as Smash Bros. Melee and WarioWare, and there are six Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance compilations of those old games.
It sounds to me that movie playback is a big selling point of the PSP, but if you have to buy all new stuff to watch on it, it becomes a lot less compelling.
And that, by the way, may have been the secret reason Nintendo released all those video-on-your-GBA carts: by showing that a plain Gameboy Advance can show full-motion video (though admittedly choppy, low-res versions), it undercuts Sony's advantage in that area. It makes the choice, not between DS-without-video and PSP-with, but portable-proprietary-smallscreen-video or DVD-on-your-TV. Yeah, technically the formats differ very greatly in length and quality, but the average customer won't see that.
In any case, raw specs are never a reason to buy a game system, portable or console. PS2 is the weakest console out there in raw horsepower, but it's wiping the floor with GC and X-Box. The only really compelling item on the PSP's list, to me, is screen size.
I agree that the two screens are unnecessary to keep separate if just used for display purposes, just make one big screen and save on production costs and allow a much larger viewport.
However, the real reason they were split is probably to do with the touch sensitive bottom screen. Too expensive to make them both sensitive, or make one big sensitive screen.
One nifty thing about the split screen is that it gives the DS a similar aspect to the old Nintendo dual-screen arcade games, like the original Punch-out!! and Playchoice 10. I wonder if that's where they got the idea?
Here's how I look at it. Despite the system's short life, relatively speaking, I have had no reason to regret getting my Dreamcast. I can't tell you the hours I've spent just with Crazy Taxi, let along the other games for it. (Typing of the Dead itself is worth getting a Dreamcast and a keyboard for.)
Even if the DS falls flat on its face, which I rather think it won't, Metroid Prime Hunters, Mario 64 DS, PacPix and WarioWare DS by themselves would make the system worth it. Add in Pictochat, which is built-in to each system, and it's simply too cool to pass up, for me at least.
Hold off on the trade-ins, unless you don't play multiplayer, don't have an eReader, and don't use your GBA with a Gamecube... ...okay, all this is pretty likely, but still. Remember, the system doesn't have a GBA link port.
My god, they have a DS version of that Flash Zoo Keeper game!
(Though for the record, I liked Taito's arcade Zookeeper, a completely different game, *much* better.)
I actually like the larger size a lot, for one reason: the touch-screen. A smaller screen would make it difficult to draw and use things like Pictochat.
Hopefully it'll be big enough that I can sketch on it....
As for crack in the R&D department, Nintendo has a much better track record for left-field successes than failures, of which the Gameboy is the overreaching example.
My god, that is absolutely uncanny. It's like the old Dogz games but with realistic graphics and less soullessness.
Argh, amend that: Box-office success is NOT the be and end all of movie quality. D'oh.
So stop all the hate and learn the facts.
Box-office success is the be and end all of movie quality. That would be: opinions on the movie in thirty years.
Don't forget both Resident Evils and House of the Dead! Unlike the other respondent, I find the first RE movie to be horrid enough that I momentarilly break character and begin using words like "horrid."
Bu think: if we didn't exist, there'd be no one around to decide if species were invasive or not. If the Burrowing Snagret encroaches upon the territory of the Spotty Bulborb through artificial means it's bad, but over tens of thousands of years it may have happened anyway. (Then again, it may not have, or it may have been very difficult if they had an ocean to cross.)
Species have invaded the ranges of others many, many times during the history of life on Earth. What humans are guilty of isn't allowing this to happen, but accelerating the process by many orders of magnitude.
Which is ultimately a pedantic and pointless comment for me to make, when I think about it. Oh well, at least I got to make gratitutous Pikmin references.
I think you may be a little hard on the Fable and the Halo, but in essence you're correct. My favorite X-Box games were ToeJam & Earl III and Serious Sam, and they're old.
But then the games I've played the most of the past two months have been Pikmin 2 and WarioWare. It's obvious where my own loyalties lie.
Windows is easy to learn, to "get by with" as you say, but not "easy to use."
That's not how it went with me. All of my skill came from my own research and experimentation. But then again, maybe I shouldn't hold myself to be a typical case in this.
All well and good, but you forgot the #1 reason I love my mouse: the scroll wheel. The single greatest innovation in input devices.
Um, how about the mouse? Or the keyboard for that matter? Or even the joystick? Scroll wheels work as a useful adjunct to one or all of these things, but you can't do much with *just* a scroll wheel.
Seeing a well-trained sales associate look stuff up on one of those systems in microseconds is quite a joy.
But how long did it take him to acquire that information? How many mistakes did he make on the way to that wonderous proficiency?
It should be profoundly embarrassing to us that we have largely regressed in the speed in which an experienced user can work.
Not quite so -- I can use word processors much faster now than most people, because I've learned about CTRL-Arrows for skipping around text much faster, Shift-Arrows for highlighting text, CTRL-C, X and V for Copy, Cut and Paste, CTRL-Z for undo, and Tab and Shift-Tab for moving between controls.
Most Windows programs use these keys, but because it's *possible* to get by using just the mouse and menus, most people do just that, so there are a lot fewer experienced, as in speedy, users. Most people learn just as much as they need to get by. I can't honestly blame them.
What mice have given us is discoverability.
I'm working at a Domino's Pizza at the moment, and their ordering system is *awful*. It's still one of those character-mode systems where there are a dozen keys, some undocumented, that you have to know to use it. No one explained to me what all these keys do, or why, when the screen says to press Help to list toppings, I actually have to press Home, or that F10 goes to the main menu and F8 lists side orders.
If I was using a mouse (and a GUI - the two are almost inseparable), then there would probably be checkboxes for toppings and listboxes for sides. People who already know the system might be slowed down if they had to use a mouse... but then again, nothing's preventing the application's developers from implementing hotkeys for each control, in addition to the "standard" keyboard interface.
And from that toy sprung forth revolutions in photo, print and video graphics. The toy seems to have served many industries very well.
You can do lots of things with toys. My old Commodore 64 was referred to in high school, by a kid who had an Amiga, as a toy. On that toy, I wrote a couple of computer games that I'm *still* proud I thought up, as well as a sound effect generator I've gotten emulators specifically to be able to run.
Now they are mostly in their late twens wondering what to do with their existence for the rest of their time (one of them - living in his huge mansion alone said that he pretends to be into IT consulting on dinner parties, because saying that you basically do nothing is kind of embarrassing).
...well, slum around Slashdot. Heh.
This guy should count his blessings.
If I didn't have to worry about where meals were coming from, I'd have a lot more time to...
Now that's funny. Tell me, how do they pronounce "Leonardo," "Donatello" and "Michelangelo?"
He's off to the White House, haw haw haw!
(Great, now I'm not only a video game, game design, short story and humor geek, I'm a political geek as well. This is not a good day for the ol' Charisma score.
Dammit, I'm a D&D geek too!)
Should we hold this against Bush? I mean, I would have mightily endevored to stay out of Vietnam myself. I am a little peeved, however, that it was daddy's influence that kept him out instead of a means that would have been available to me, were I of draftable age (or even born) then.
From one perspective, Kerry was honorable for going oversees and participating in that iffish little war. From another, let's call it the "Rincewind perspective," he was stupid for doing so.
I find myself thinking more and more like Rincewind as I get older. Where'd I put that luggage....
I'd vote for the guy who got three purple hearts, a silver star, and a bronze star, anytime, over the guy who took the rich boy coward's way out and won't admit there was anything even remotely improper about it.
Really? I'd vote for the guy who didn't freaking give tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans under the cover of helping the middle class, double freaking pull back environmental protections it took decades to establish, quadruple freaking send us to war in Iraq under false pretenses, and super-duper-dippity-dang-dog-freaking exhibit a childlike love for junk science that furthers his beliefs.
Yes, this means I'm voting for the same person as you. I just take the view that while it's nice that the guy you're voting for is honorable on the field of battle and all, under the present circumstances, that are dozens of other, more important, reasons to vote against Bush.
Even if you are incorrect in your word usage, "burgled" is simply more fun to say than "burglarized." Burgleburgleburgle! Robblerobblerobble!