And there's only 5 hours left of April 1st here in New Zealand. It's quite irritating, as you're never quite sure what timezone a website is using, so you effectively end up with 2 solid days of bullshit news stories.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, inc. 1989
Like Raid Over Moscow?, where the most difficult part of the game was getting your ship out of the hanger. Great game though, I spent many an hour waiting for my Commodore 64 tape drive to load that bad boy.
Speaking of the C64, have you come across the game called Cubby Gristle? It's just plain weird. You play a fat guy who's goal is to eat as much food as possible with the end coming when you reach a metric ton in weight. All whilst avoiding angry grandmas, annoying kids and shopping trolleys. So far as I could tell from my play time when I was 10 years old, and more recently with an additional 14 years of gaming under my belt, the game is impossible to complete.
DVD region coding is not illegal, however, it is perfectly legal to buy/sell DVDs that are not Zone 4 (Austrailia and NZ), here in NZ, and players that are not regioned.
For example, when I bought my DVD player, one of the selling points the guy in the store made was it was deregioned (chipped locally), and could play any and all DVDs. And it does : )
One of the most popular DVD retailers here (Real Groovy), sells Zone 1 DVDs right next to the Zone 4 DVDs (though they are more expensive due to importing).
In fact, one chain of video rental outlets was actually threatened by a local distrobutor for selling Zone 1 DVDs in store (not renting, that would be illegal), before the local boys had released the zone 4 distro. It's all linked to our parrallel inporting laws, which allow for such things.
Odd that a former British colony has more freedom than the land of the free : )
Most of the writing in the trailer was Japanese (no surprise), but the title (CASSHERN) was in English. Is there any significance to this? Is this a common practice?
It's a common marketing ploy with Japanese products, marketed to Japanese people. As odd as it may sound, English writing and Roman characters are seen as exotic and unusual in Japan (or so it seems from what I've read regarding Japanese culture over the years).
Re:Those who can, do. Those who can't, buy.
on
Microsoft Eyeing AOL?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How about a single company controlling AIM, ICQ and MSN IM? I know there's competitors, such as Jabber, but all the same...
Unlike the Tapwave, this sounds more like a game playing first, PDA second kind of machine.
Just today, I was playing FF:TA at university, waiting for my lecture to start. I thought "it'd be cool if this thing had a todo list an alarm on it" - thus letting me know when it was a good time to save and get going.
Honestly, I used to have a PDA, but it was just a hassle to take everywhere for a few basic features. On the other hand, I usually take my GBA to Uni every day, and having the features I can almost get by without right there on my gaming platform, would be awesome - a little like the Neo Goe Pocket Colour, with it's alarm and calender.
Anyway, on a serious note, the one thing I think would be kinda cool would be if the top screen was one of Sharp's 3D LCDs.
Well, since the announcement of that technology, I've heard many speculate that Nintendo would be wrapping the next GameBoy around such screens.
It's only ~2 months until E3, though, so at least we won't have to wait long until we can all have a little more info with which we can start making random guesses about what the GBA2 is going to be like. I just hope people don't go into "auto-smack-nintendo" mode without actually using the DS first, like they did with Zelda:WW.
Oh come on. Rare were rich enough, but what counted was they had enough respect to get away with such things, but since Jet Force Gemini, or maybe Banjo Tooie, Rare have sucked.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Donkey Kong 64, Conker's BFD and ESPECIALLY Starfox Adventures (a game that actually made me angry when I played it) were all terrible games. Rare are a hollow shell of their former glory and I doubt very much they'll be producing anything of any note again. They are merely the studio Nintendo had lost confidence in, and Microsoft bought at outrageous price, for nothing more than bragging rights.
I am of British decent and having English parents, I too appreciate British comedy (although most of New Zealand, my home country, "gets" it too : ).
The problem here is that the main markets for games are North America, Japan and Europe, all with cultures that don't find the constant sarcasm of British humour ammusing as we Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and (I'm guessing here), Cannucks, do.
Niche games, as one drenched in Brit comedy would be, don't usually warrent the huge investments another racer, soccer game, Madden or FPS would, simply because they don't sell as well.
It's just a shame Rare decided to start sucking really badly, because their games had me in hysterics right the way through. I mean, having a slick robot salesman offer you a dodgy motor in Jet Force Gemini was just fantastic. Banjo Kazooie had similar moments in it.
The Western development studios, have slipped into a method of providing for the lowest common denominator, which the Python fan is not a member of.
But all is not lost for we British appreciators. EA have, after all, been making Cricket Games since the 16 bit era. And here's a site dedicated to cricket sims.
Wait, wait, how do you know Anakin needs a respirator? He's not going to turn into Darth Vader is he? But that would mean that Vader was Luke's... oh thank-you very much mr spoil the entire trilogy!
Excuse me while I sulk in front of my Happy Days tapes which I've never got around to watching. At least Fonzie will always be cool.
Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea
on
Mars Rovers Update
·
· Score: 3, Funny
But the folks at NASA aren't stupid;
They're so incredibly smart, in fact, that they don't even need to convert metric measurements to the archaic system they insist on using.
To allow optimization for depth, a new kind of distribution is needed--a componentized distribution from which users may build platforms from the bottom up, including only the features and technologies their products require.
I don't know about the distro he's using, but my build of Gentoo only has the packages I want (plus their requirements).
The bottom up model is being used by distros other than Gentoo, too. He's not breaking any new ground or creating any unique ideas IMHO.
It's a marketing ploy. You're still going to require some energy to do the recompression of the helium, or creation of a vaccume.
All the same, it's still a cool idea. I want a small one to fly to work in (maybe add pedals for all the compression-> decompression stuff and you'll have a human powered plane;)
I too am in your situation, but I've made a rather interesting discovery.
If I set aside 20 minutes or so, get comfortable and just start playing, that 20 minutes quickly becomes 20 hours and I've thrown away buckets of time like back in the day.
It's not actually a matter of losing interest in gaming, but rather becoming distracted away from your favourite distraction (if that makes sense).
Take FFTA on the GBA for example. I don't feel like playing it right now, but if my GBA somehow turned it's self on and jumped into my hands, you can bet I'd be playing for at least 3 hours.
Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 5, Funny
True as that may be, people are getting fatter...
Say a group of zombies, or ninjas, or a killer virus that turned people into zombie ninjas, caused a good 5 billion people to die. Sure, these guys would have a booming business, but at 70Kg for each corpse, that's 350,000,000,000Kg (350 billion), which would require a millennium to replaces with space dust.
And besides, if you're ejecting all those kadavas into space, you're just asking the aforementioned virus to evolve, giving rise to a hideous race of mutant space zombie-ninjas.
let's face it, there's no good reason for them to make their game discs that small
One of the main problems Nintendo had with moving to an optical format was load times. An 8mm disc at high rpm has a much smaller load time than a standard DVD, due to the laser having to move a much shorter distances in order to access data.
Stoned Developer 2:"Dude! (takes another puff), you know what else is missing?"
Stoned Developer 1:"Whassat?"
Stoned Developer 2:"Fuckin', games, like, where you fire angry lightbulbs at hopped up rainbows while flying backwards through Atlanis on a hunk of cheese!"
Stoned Developer 1:"Dude!"
I'm a Kiwi, but this should satisfy your lust for Austrlsainism:
a> G'day blue, wha's th' goss?
b> All ya baches, barbies and crocs are belong to us, mate.
a> S'truth?
b> S'truth. It's bonza, mate. You have no chance to survive, make yer time.
a> Crickey dick!
Slashdot Mirror
And there's only 5 hours left of April 1st here in New Zealand. It's quite irritating, as you're never quite sure what timezone a website is using, so you effectively end up with 2 solid days of bullshit news stories.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if pac-man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, inc. 1989
Speaking of the C64, have you come across the game called Cubby Gristle? It's just plain weird. You play a fat guy who's goal is to eat as much food as possible with the end coming when you reach a metric ton in weight. All whilst avoiding angry grandmas, annoying kids and shopping trolleys. So far as I could tell from my play time when I was 10 years old, and more recently with an additional 14 years of gaming under my belt, the game is impossible to complete.
For example, when I bought my DVD player, one of the selling points the guy in the store made was it was deregioned (chipped locally), and could play any and all DVDs. And it does : )
One of the most popular DVD retailers here (Real Groovy), sells Zone 1 DVDs right next to the Zone 4 DVDs (though they are more expensive due to importing).
In fact, one chain of video rental outlets was actually threatened by a local distrobutor for selling Zone 1 DVDs in store (not renting, that would be illegal), before the local boys had released the zone 4 distro. It's all linked to our parrallel inporting laws, which allow for such things.
Odd that a former British colony has more freedom than the land of the free : )
It's a common marketing ploy with Japanese products, marketed to Japanese people. As odd as it may sound, English writing and Roman characters are seen as exotic and unusual in Japan (or so it seems from what I've read regarding Japanese culture over the years).
How about a single company controlling AIM, ICQ and MSN IM? I know there's competitors, such as Jabber, but all the same...
Just today, I was playing FF:TA at university, waiting for my lecture to start. I thought "it'd be cool if this thing had a todo list an alarm on it" - thus letting me know when it was a good time to save and get going.
Honestly, I used to have a PDA, but it was just a hassle to take everywhere for a few basic features. On the other hand, I usually take my GBA to Uni every day, and having the features I can almost get by without right there on my gaming platform, would be awesome - a little like the Neo Goe Pocket Colour, with it's alarm and calender.
Well, since the announcement of that technology, I've heard many speculate that Nintendo would be wrapping the next GameBoy around such screens.
It's only ~2 months until E3, though, so at least we won't have to wait long until we can all have a little more info with which we can start making random guesses about what the GBA2 is going to be like. I just hope people don't go into "auto-smack-nintendo" mode without actually using the DS first, like they did with Zelda:WW.
Going on that, and nothing much else, I sketched up a design: http://www.yorrike.com/graphics/nds-sketch.jpg.
If the spec sheet is to be believed, I've put too many buttons on my design. Please excuse that and my inability to draw.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Donkey Kong 64, Conker's BFD and ESPECIALLY Starfox Adventures (a game that actually made me angry when I played it) were all terrible games. Rare are a hollow shell of their former glory and I doubt very much they'll be producing anything of any note again. They are merely the studio Nintendo had lost confidence in, and Microsoft bought at outrageous price, for nothing more than bragging rights.
The problem here is that the main markets for games are North America, Japan and Europe, all with cultures that don't find the constant sarcasm of British humour ammusing as we Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and (I'm guessing here), Cannucks, do.
Niche games, as one drenched in Brit comedy would be, don't usually warrent the huge investments another racer, soccer game, Madden or FPS would, simply because they don't sell as well.
It's just a shame Rare decided to start sucking really badly, because their games had me in hysterics right the way through. I mean, having a slick robot salesman offer you a dodgy motor in Jet Force Gemini was just fantastic. Banjo Kazooie had similar moments in it.
The Western development studios, have slipped into a method of providing for the lowest common denominator, which the Python fan is not a member of.
But all is not lost for we British appreciators. EA have, after all, been making Cricket Games since the 16 bit era. And here's a site dedicated to cricket sims.
All the same, one failure does not make a "a reputation for releasing product that no-one buys".
Apart from the DS, name one Nintendo console that failed.
Excuse me while I sulk in front of my Happy Days tapes which I've never got around to watching. At least Fonzie will always be cool.
They're so incredibly smart, in fact, that they don't even need to convert metric measurements to the archaic system they insist on using.
Go NASA!
I don't know about the distro he's using, but my build of Gentoo only has the packages I want (plus their requirements).
The bottom up model is being used by distros other than Gentoo, too. He's not breaking any new ground or creating any unique ideas IMHO.
Or, perhaps, I should have read the whole article before letting my imagination get away on me.
All the same, it's still a cool idea. I want a small one to fly to work in (maybe add pedals for all the compression-> decompression stuff and you'll have a human powered plane ;)
Even better, play the game at 1/4 or 1/10 the speed, making it harder to make a mistake, then play it at normal speed for the judges to look over.
Kuni and dojo: SUPPLIES!
and
Rahul: Badgers? Badgers!? We don't need no stinking badgers!!
I better stop before going too crazy. It's been a while, I really need to watch that movie again.
If I set aside 20 minutes or so, get comfortable and just start playing, that 20 minutes quickly becomes 20 hours and I've thrown away buckets of time like back in the day.
It's not actually a matter of losing interest in gaming, but rather becoming distracted away from your favourite distraction (if that makes sense).
Take FFTA on the GBA for example. I don't feel like playing it right now, but if my GBA somehow turned it's self on and jumped into my hands, you can bet I'd be playing for at least 3 hours.
Say a group of zombies, or ninjas, or a killer virus that turned people into zombie ninjas, caused a good 5 billion people to die. Sure, these guys would have a booming business, but at 70Kg for each corpse, that's 350,000,000,000Kg (350 billion), which would require a millennium to replaces with space dust.
And besides, if you're ejecting all those kadavas into space, you're just asking the aforementioned virus to evolve, giving rise to a hideous race of mutant space zombie-ninjas.
Zombies need to eat too.
One of the main problems Nintendo had with moving to an optical format was load times. An 8mm disc at high rpm has a much smaller load time than a standard DVD, due to the laser having to move a much shorter distances in order to access data.
Stoned Developer 2 :"Dude! (takes another puff), you know what else is missing?" :"Whassat?" :"Fuckin', games, like, where you fire angry lightbulbs at hopped up rainbows while flying backwards through Atlanis on a hunk of cheese!" :"Dude!"
Stoned Developer 1
Stoned Developer 2
Stoned Developer 1
a> G'day blue, wha's th' goss?
b> All ya baches, barbies and crocs are belong to us, mate.
a> S'truth?
b> S'truth. It's bonza, mate. You have no chance to survive, make yer time.
a> Crickey dick!