Don't confuse Fundamentalists with Evangelicals, which is a broader term. I'm under the belief that fundamentalism is decreasing in the US just as it has been for the past several decades.
I grew up in a "fundie" family and spent my entire life going to Church events, and the numbers really aren't going up, except in underdeveloped countries.
I would also like to complain about the ignorant generalizations that keep getting modded up here. Even people who do not accept evolution are not necessarily "backwards and stupid." I've never known intelligence to automatically include accepting anything that other intelligent people accept. I suppose I probably shouldn't go into the whole acceptance and faith issue.
You can't really go by "history" because each generation and market seems to be different than another. It's true that Sony overtook Nintendo in the home console market but that had less to do with Sony being a big company than Nintendo's foul up with the N64.
The GBA has a large 30 million unit lead, backwards compatability, and a name that works well in that market. Sony's PSP is the biggest threat yet but I find it too ambitious, much like previous handhelds that got crushed by the Gameboy. One reason the Gameboy line has been so successful is because they have been small, affordable, durable, and they don't eat batteries.
Well Sony didn't really take over the industry as much because of what they did right as much as what Nintendo did wrong. They were able to capitalize on Nintendo's blunder of choosing carts over cd and creating a system focused around 1st and 2nd party titles.
Nintendo is much more dominant in the handheld market than it was in the console market before the PSX and N64. Sony, like the rest of us, has no doubt seen handhelds from Lynx to Gamegear to Game.com to Wonderswan all get beaten down by the GB.
You can't just judge the graphics abilities based on one or two levels of a game. You have to play through it to really see what the system is capable.
I can see plenty of polygons in FFX, especially in battle and also keep in mind that there are ways to hide it using textures. I also notice that FFX rarely runs at 60FPS (if ever), which is directly tied to how many polygons are rendered in one second.
In any case, like I said, RogueLeader at points displays many more polygons than you actually see. A game that adjusts its LOD properly throughout the game will not get much benefit from having textures numbering in the millions. I'd say with these newer systems that it is texturing that makes the real difference and that's where the GC surpasses the PS2. Like I said, you wont see anything that looks as good as RogueLeader or StarFoxAdventures.
The developer of RogueLeader claims that they can get over 20 million polygons per second in a game which is something that no PS2 is known to do, definately not FFX as JaknDaxter was the only game in the 10+ range at that time. The PS2 will never actually see 70 million polys/sec in an actual game and right now it's having trouble pushing the 20million in-game that was claimed, especially without sacrificing in the texture department.
StarFox does have some detailed characters, as does RogueLeader which runs over 13 million polygons per second, many more than you actually see on screen. I know of many games that have good model detail. Even then, I don't see how FFX can be so impressive when its best graphics aren't even in battles.
The Xbox doesn't have VU's but that certainly doesn't mean it is a less powerful console. Yes, the PS2 CPU can put out more FLOPS than either the XBox or GC CPUs but you'll notice better looking graphics on both of those systems because their games are far less dependent on their CPU's, having the ability to create many effects with their graphics chips. The GC also has a more efficient memory design and the overall design is much more developer friendly as well as having the clockspeed advantage, which makes up a small bit for it's lack of 128-bit registers.
If you don't think SFA looks that good then play through RogueLeader, you will see plenty of detail. In any case both games look better than FFX reguardless of polygons.
I disagree. FFX does not push nearly as many polygons as a game like StarWarsRogueLeader, few PS2 games do. I promise that a game like StarFoxAdventures or RogueLeader could not be done in the same form on the PS2. I know of a couple PS2 games that do push out as many polys as RogueLeader but those games had to sacrifice many of the texture effects that make such games look so great. PS2 games often have only basic lighting and effects. It may be true that the PS2 can actually create more polygons, once developers get through all the quirks in the architecture, but it will always have to sacrifice those effects which mostly have to be programmed in software. You also have to consider that when you get to the 10+million polygon/second range, most of those polys cannot be seen and with the proper LOD routines, being able to show 10million more won't make much of a difference at standard TV resolution.
In any case, the GC can make games that look better (and are arguably more realistic when you consider things like lighting and bumpmapping) and that's what graphics are all about. Honestly, I do not know of any game on PS2 that can match up to the two games I've mentioned, especially not FFX. FFX may have detailed character models but the backgrounds and effects don't match up and I've noticed the detail is significantly lowered in battle. I would be surprised if FFX showed more than 8 million per sec and keep in mind that Resident Evil for GC has even more detail in its characters, though that does have prerendered backgrounds. RE4, however, looks extremely impressive and is all real-time. Yes, there are many games on GC with low-poly environments but the same can be said for PS2. It's best to judge on the best looking games and RogueLeader not only has between 4 and 8 texture layers at any one point but pushes an insane amount of polygons. Play the Cloud City level and you will see what I mean.
So yes, I am saying the GC has better hardware, though obviously the PS2 has the game advantage.
>>>>American ingenuity did not create the Playstation 2 or the Gamecube...
Well, with the Gamecube it kind of did. The CPU was designed by IBM and the Graphics/Sound chip was created by an American company (ArtX) before they were bought out by ATI. I'm not sure but the creators of it's "1T-SRAM" (MoSys) may be an American company as well.
The rest of the system design was probably headed up in Japan but I should point out that the Nintendo 64 was designed by their American branch.
I wouldnt say that. The GC has really delivered this year with games like Soccer Slam, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Monkey Ball 2, Animal Crossing and Star Fox Adventures with more on the way. So far this year, the Xbox has had mostly disappointments and multiplatform titles.
What you fail to notice is that its mainly being done by 1 American. Not the whole country. And the European representatives here arent exactly "diplomatic."
Believe it or not, Americans do not spend their time thinking about how they are better than everyone else and putting down people in other nations. If anything, Americans tend to view things only within their own borders until the time comes to expand. I wouldn't call this a good trait, though, but personally I've found that Europeans are more aggressive towards Americans than vice-versa. It seems that Europeans are always the first to bash the US. Maybe that's only the sense I get from websites like this but polls dont seem to indicate too much dislike for Europeans within the US.
Atari went bankrupt and what was left, including their "intellectual properties" was bought by Hasbro Interactive. Hasbro Interactive was then acquired by Infogrames, the large French game publisher.
Infogrames also acquired GT Interactive years ago. I wonder if they were hoping to publish id's and 3Drealms newest games.
Believe it or not, Nintendo is that big. They make more than twice as much in revenues in the game industry as anyone else and they have a lot of valuable intellectual properties.
The NES's connectors would eventually wore out. However, despite that and the wear on the N64 joysticks, Nintendo does make durable products. Of all the different controller I've bought for the NES, SNES and N64, only the Nintendo brand controllers still work. This is the same case with other gamers I know.
A couple months after getting my PSX, the wire got a short. That's not what I call durable.
You clearly have no idea what "extreme right" means. That term implies someone living in a booby-trapped compound talking about how the government is out to get him.
Liking capitalism is an "extreme right" idea? We live in a capitalist society.
If he were in certain European countries, then he may be considered "extreme" but not in this country.
Wasn't the "atheists" comment made by his father and not GW?
Hate to break it to you, but the US isn't the only one guilty of this. The UK, Japan and others also send their obsolete systems to Asia and the pacific.
That doesn't mean you're not right. Europe and others are starting to dislike the US more and more but not just because we are "selfish" and "arrogant" shits. It's partly because they are blind, self-righteous, prideful shits who worry more about what the US is doing more than themselves.
According to an article (Firingsquad, I think) about the history of nVidia, the Saturn used quadratic or curved surfaces as opposed to the polygons that are now standard. It's said that made the Saturn tougher to develop for than the PSX. Some said they were ahead of their time but quadratic surfaces were apparently killed off by Direct3D.
This is all, I remind you, based on an article I read about nVidia. I don't know all that much about the technologies.
I think what some people fail to understand is that the Triforce is an arcade board and that's not where Sega had their troubles. With arcade machines, people buy the hardware and game in one package. It's just a different market.
The Genesis graphics were even more limited with only 64 onscreen colors from a 512 color pallette. Compare that to the 256/32768 of the SNES and the SNES's advantages are apparent.
Nintendo doesn't rely on one or two games and it's very short-sided for you to think that they do. They have many titles and while franchises are very important, the quality definately helps sell their games as well.
>>>(P.S. I am afraid that any one of the FF series is far better than anything Link has done thus far.)
I'm a big FF fan but that is ridiculous. FF7 is the only FF game that got nearly the acclaim of LOZ:OOT and even then it didn't stack up. To many OOT is still the greatest of all time. And some games in the FF series don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Zelda.
I don't think it would, if the case somehow makes it to court (it was a just a letter afterall). I imagine the big question is "does this violate the DMCA?" That is, unless, it somehow gets the the SC who could strike down the DMCA (yeah right).
Personally, I don't blame them too much. It does have legitimate use but it does promote piracy as well no matter how you look at it. I still think it should be legal but this isn't the worst abuse of the DMCA that I've seen.
It's been held up that but that law doesn't include data in static ROM cartridges. However, you certainly could make that case when it comes to copyprotected CD's.
If so, the GCN sold nearly as many units as Xbox and SSBM sold more copies than any Xbox game in 2001. Nintendo was the the number one publisher, just like the previous year which was at least in small part thanks to the Cube.
And people accuse Republicans of making everything black and white.
I know more Pub's who like the space program than I do Dems. In fact I often hear a lot of criticism of the space program come from liberals. It goes either way.
I've never witnessed this hatred for the space program that you speak of.
I believe the Nuclear propulsion they refer to are the Fusion and Anti-matter propulsion systems that are being researched. It's not just made up.
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Don't confuse Fundamentalists with Evangelicals, which is a broader term. I'm under the belief that fundamentalism is decreasing in the US just as it has been for the past several decades.
I grew up in a "fundie" family and spent my entire life going to Church events, and the numbers really aren't going up, except in underdeveloped countries.
I would also like to complain about the ignorant generalizations that keep getting modded up here. Even people who do not accept evolution are not necessarily "backwards and stupid." I've never known intelligence to automatically include accepting anything that other intelligent people accept. I suppose I probably shouldn't go into the whole acceptance and faith issue.
You can't really go by "history" because each generation and market seems to be different than another. It's true that Sony overtook Nintendo in the home console market but that had less to do with Sony being a big company than Nintendo's foul up with the N64.
The GBA has a large 30 million unit lead, backwards compatability, and a name that works well in that market. Sony's PSP is the biggest threat yet but I find it too ambitious, much like previous handhelds that got crushed by the Gameboy. One reason the Gameboy line has been so successful is because they have been small, affordable, durable, and they don't eat batteries.
Well Sony didn't really take over the industry as much because of what they did right as much as what Nintendo did wrong. They were able to capitalize on Nintendo's blunder of choosing carts over cd and creating a system focused around 1st and 2nd party titles.
Nintendo is much more dominant in the handheld market than it was in the console market before the PSX and N64. Sony, like the rest of us, has no doubt seen handhelds from Lynx to Gamegear to Game.com to Wonderswan all get beaten down by the GB.
You can't just judge the graphics abilities based on one or two levels of a game. You have to play through it to really see what the system is capable.
I can see plenty of polygons in FFX, especially in battle and also keep in mind that there are ways to hide it using textures. I also notice that FFX rarely runs at 60FPS (if ever), which is directly tied to how many polygons are rendered in one second.
In any case, like I said, RogueLeader at points displays many more polygons than you actually see. A game that adjusts its LOD properly throughout the game will not get much benefit from having textures numbering in the millions. I'd say with these newer systems that it is texturing that makes the real difference and that's where the GC surpasses the PS2. Like I said, you wont see anything that looks as good as RogueLeader or StarFoxAdventures.
The developer of RogueLeader claims that they can get over 20 million polygons per second in a game which is something that no PS2 is known to do, definately not FFX as JaknDaxter was the only game in the 10+ range at that time. The PS2 will never actually see 70 million polys/sec in an actual game and right now it's having trouble pushing the 20million in-game that was claimed, especially without sacrificing in the texture department.
StarFox does have some detailed characters, as does RogueLeader which runs over 13 million polygons per second, many more than you actually see on screen. I know of many games that have good model detail. Even then, I don't see how FFX can be so impressive when its best graphics aren't even in battles.
The Xbox doesn't have VU's but that certainly doesn't mean it is a less powerful console. Yes, the PS2 CPU can put out more FLOPS than either the XBox or GC CPUs but you'll notice better looking graphics on both of those systems because their games are far less dependent on their CPU's, having the ability to create many effects with their graphics chips. The GC also has a more efficient memory design and the overall design is much more developer friendly as well as having the clockspeed advantage, which makes up a small bit for it's lack of 128-bit registers.
If you don't think SFA looks that good then play through RogueLeader, you will see plenty of detail. In any case both games look better than FFX reguardless of polygons.
I disagree. FFX does not push nearly as many polygons as a game like StarWarsRogueLeader, few PS2 games do. I promise that a game like StarFoxAdventures or RogueLeader could not be done in the same form on the PS2. I know of a couple PS2 games that do push out as many polys as RogueLeader but those games had to sacrifice many of the texture effects that make such games look so great. PS2 games often have only basic lighting and effects. It may be true that the PS2 can actually create more polygons, once developers get through all the quirks in the architecture, but it will always have to sacrifice those effects which mostly have to be programmed in software. You also have to consider that when you get to the 10+million polygon/second range, most of those polys cannot be seen and with the proper LOD routines, being able to show 10million more won't make much of a difference at standard TV resolution.
In any case, the GC can make games that look better (and are arguably more realistic when you consider things like lighting and bumpmapping) and that's what graphics are all about. Honestly, I do not know of any game on PS2 that can match up to the two games I've mentioned, especially not FFX. FFX may have detailed character models but the backgrounds and effects don't match up and I've noticed the detail is significantly lowered in battle. I would be surprised if FFX showed more than 8 million per sec and keep in mind that Resident Evil for GC has even more detail in its characters, though that does have prerendered backgrounds. RE4, however, looks extremely impressive and is all real-time. Yes, there are many games on GC with low-poly environments but the same can be said for PS2. It's best to judge on the best looking games and RogueLeader not only has between 4 and 8 texture layers at any one point but pushes an insane amount of polygons. Play the Cloud City level and you will see what I mean.
So yes, I am saying the GC has better hardware, though obviously the PS2 has the game advantage.
>>>>American ingenuity did not create the Playstation 2 or the Gamecube...
Well, with the Gamecube it kind of did. The CPU was designed by IBM and the Graphics/Sound chip was created by an American company (ArtX) before they were bought out by ATI. I'm not sure but the creators of it's "1T-SRAM" (MoSys) may be an American company as well.
The rest of the system design was probably headed up in Japan but I should point out that the Nintendo 64 was designed by their American branch.
I wouldnt say that. The GC has really delivered this year with games like Soccer Slam, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Monkey Ball 2, Animal Crossing and Star Fox Adventures with more on the way. So far this year, the Xbox has had mostly disappointments and multiplatform titles.
What you fail to notice is that its mainly being done by 1 American. Not the whole country. And the European representatives here arent exactly "diplomatic."
Believe it or not, Americans do not spend their time thinking about how they are better than everyone else and putting down people in other nations. If anything, Americans tend to view things only within their own borders until the time comes to expand. I wouldn't call this a good trait, though, but personally I've found that Europeans are more aggressive towards Americans than vice-versa. It seems that Europeans are always the first to bash the US. Maybe that's only the sense I get from websites like this but polls dont seem to indicate too much dislike for Europeans within the US.
Just to clarify a little more:
Atari went bankrupt and what was left, including their "intellectual properties" was bought by Hasbro Interactive. Hasbro Interactive was then acquired by Infogrames, the large French game publisher.
Infogrames also acquired GT Interactive years ago. I wonder if they were hoping to publish id's and 3Drealms newest games.
Believe it or not, Nintendo is that big. They make more than twice as much in revenues in the game industry as anyone else and they have a lot of valuable intellectual properties.
I think they already realize that. That's why they sue every one who mentions them in a negative manner.
The NES's connectors would eventually wore out. However, despite that and the wear on the N64 joysticks, Nintendo does make durable products. Of all the different controller I've bought for the NES, SNES and N64, only the Nintendo brand controllers still work. This is the same case with other gamers I know.
A couple months after getting my PSX, the wire got a short. That's not what I call durable.
Well, for it's time the SNES was better. Anyways, Sony just took the SNES pad and added to it.
Sony doesn't own Paramount. Viacom does.
I don't completely like what they are doing with the parks (Kings Island is my "home park" even if it is an hour away).
Flight of Fear (I assume that's the Area51 coaster you referred) is excellent especially now that it has lapbars instead of horsecollars.
You clearly have no idea what "extreme right" means. That term implies someone living in a booby-trapped compound talking about how the government is out to get him.
Liking capitalism is an "extreme right" idea? We live in a capitalist society.
If he were in certain European countries, then he may be considered "extreme" but not in this country.
Wasn't the "atheists" comment made by his father and not GW?
Hate to break it to you, but the US isn't the only one guilty of this. The UK, Japan and others also send their obsolete systems to Asia and the pacific.
That doesn't mean you're not right. Europe and others are starting to dislike the US more and more but not just because we are "selfish" and "arrogant" shits. It's partly because they are blind, self-righteous, prideful shits who worry more about what the US is doing more than themselves.
According to an article (Firingsquad, I think) about the history of nVidia, the Saturn used quadratic or curved surfaces as opposed to the polygons that are now standard. It's said that made the Saturn tougher to develop for than the PSX. Some said they were ahead of their time but quadratic surfaces were apparently killed off by Direct3D.
This is all, I remind you, based on an article I read about nVidia. I don't know all that much about the technologies.
I think what some people fail to understand is that the Triforce is an arcade board and that's not where Sega had their troubles. With arcade machines, people buy the hardware and game in one package. It's just a different market.
The Genesis graphics were even more limited with only 64 onscreen colors from a 512 color pallette. Compare that to the 256/32768 of the SNES and the SNES's advantages are apparent.
Nintendo doesn't rely on one or two games and it's very short-sided for you to think that they do. They have many titles and while franchises are very important, the quality definately helps sell their games as well.
>>>(P.S. I am afraid that any one of the FF series is far better than anything Link has done thus far.)
I'm a big FF fan but that is ridiculous. FF7 is the only FF game that got nearly the acclaim of LOZ:OOT and even then it didn't stack up. To many OOT is still the greatest of all time. And some games in the FF series don't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Zelda.
I don't think it would, if the case somehow makes it to court (it was a just a letter afterall). I imagine the big question is "does this violate the DMCA?" That is, unless, it somehow gets the the SC who could strike down the DMCA (yeah right).
Personally, I don't blame them too much. It does have legitimate use but it does promote piracy as well no matter how you look at it. I still think it should be legal but this isn't the worst abuse of the DMCA that I've seen.
It's been held up that but that law doesn't include data in static ROM cartridges. However, you certainly could make that case when it comes to copyprotected CD's.
>>>But why some people (eg. the americans) dont give him the credits is a whole other story.
American's do that for the same reason that everyone else believes that airplanes were invented by one of their own. There's nothing strange about it.
American's have contributed plenty in the past 100-150 years. They don't have to get antsy about the Wright bros. really.
There is too much confusion on this issue for me to argue, that's for sure.
Are you saying the Cube doesn't deserve mention?
If so, the GCN sold nearly as many units as Xbox and SSBM sold more copies than any Xbox game in 2001. Nintendo was the the number one publisher, just like the previous year which was at least in small part thanks to the Cube.
And people accuse Republicans of making everything black and white.
I know more Pub's who like the space program than I do Dems. In fact I often hear a lot of criticism of the space program come from liberals. It goes either way.
I've never witnessed this hatred for the space program that you speak of.
I believe the Nuclear propulsion they refer to are the Fusion and Anti-matter propulsion systems that are being researched. It's not just made up.