It was really only a failure in the US console market. VO did better as an arcade game, and remained popular in Japan up until VO: Force and Marz killed any attempts at new games.
Twin Sticks weren't hard to find in Japan--in fact, the surplus of sticks produced for the Saturn only dried up a few years ago, which is why you see a lot of modders using them on the XBLA version of VOOT.
Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram is being released tomorrow on XBLA, complete with network multiplayer, and based on the last arcade version(5.66).
Unfortunately, there's been no official word on a 360 Twin Stick controller outside of some hints on the Japanese dev blogs(the feeling is that they're trying to make them cost-effective).
Once you found another elevator on the engineering level after getting off the first medical level, you could happily poke around several levels, and there were never any real boss fights. In fact, one of the bugs fixed in the CD version was that you could go up to the flight deck's maintenance tunnels and find a slaughtered resistance group(with SHODAN confusingly taunting you along the way); once you destroyed the mining laser, you suddenly received an email from the group's leader!
I can't determine whether this post needs the "-1, Missing the forest for the trees" moderation, or the "-69, What do you mean it's not normally blank down there?"
You jest, but Harry Harrison's "Speed of the Cheetah, Roar of the Lion" took a tongue-in-cheek look at that very same idea(minus the "re-revving" robots).
I'm in the same boat. I have a single 2K disc from long ago, and my ancient system(Sempron 1700, 768M, and a GeForce4 Ti)'s been trundling along just fine, thank you. However, thanks to incidents like this this , 2000 apparently won't cut it any more, even for low-budget games with no extra hardware requirements. Games based on Microsoft's touted XNA won't even work, again due to "we don't see a point in allowing 2k", even though the same versions of.NET work just fine in 2k.
Actually, this reminds me of a short-story(can't remember if it was Gibson or Sterling) about drug-company employees using VR gear to test molecule interactions: the protagonist enjoyed the simulation so much that she refused to take a promotion(and played dumb on aptitude tests) so that she could keep "playing the game".
I'd been reading it off and on as a lab monitor in the dorm computer rooms. I remember a story going up saying "hey, you're going to need registration shortly" and figured I might as well get an account. Not that I've done a whole lot with it, of course, and it's mostly a shining example to column length truncation.
> if I'd known I'd be stuck with that same smartassed handle a decade and a million other accounts later, I probably would've put more thought into it. The same goes for me, albeit something a bit shorter. I blame my excessive exposure to anime newsgroups at the time, where people were busy inventing long and elaborate names relating to their favorite show and clubbing newcomers to death with them.
Did you even read the first link? This option is meant for people who really do have a monitor they can turn. All of the games on that list including Ikaruga, were vertical arcade shmups, and their definition of "fullscreen" is a vertical monitor. Much like not getting a true widescreen on a SDTV, you aren't getting a true "fullscreen" on a vertical shmup without a vertical monitor.
If you're saying that there should have been an option to have the controls remapped so that "up" on the pad points to the top of the monitor regardless of the game orientation, that's only been done on one game that I know of(the Saturn port of Layer Section).
For being a "big shmup fan", I'm mildly surprised you haven't heard of "TATE" mode. Here's a list for every major console.
It was probably a mistake on their part to call it "fullscreen", but people do use this feature. A lot of crappy US ports(like "Mobile Light Force 2") will omit it, probably out of fear for "idiot-protection" lawsuits.
I also had an undergrad class on this. Or, at least that's what the class description said. I really thought it was going to be handy in the same manner you specified.
Until the first day of class, when we found that the class was being taught by one of the moldering-in-tenure professors. Who adored SML, and spent most of the day at his terminal, implementing parts of the standard C library in SMLNJ. Who, instead of covering anything like what the class description said(or assigning us a textbook like the one in the link), repeatedly handed us assignments to recreate various elements of Lisp using SML. Most of us were too scared to pipe up that we didn't have any grasp of Lisp(not to mention SML) besides the historical entries. Didn't matter to him anyways--asking him for help during office-hours would get you a random half-hour lecture on logic sets and proofs, with a few thoughts about his recent vacation thrown in.
It was almost three-quarters of the semester before we finally got together a petition to throw his ass out and get a competent replacement. Unfortunately, at that point all we had time left for was some basics of Java and garbage-collection. The grades the original prof had handed out still counted, so nobody ended up with anything better than a C or so at the end.:(
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, you can. Any big chunk of text can be shoved into a QR code, depending on the generator.
Any Android phone can also turn a contact into a QR-encoded VCard with the free Barcode Scanner app.
It was really only a failure in the US console market. VO did better as an arcade game, and remained popular in Japan up until VO: Force and Marz killed any attempts at new games.
Twin Sticks weren't hard to find in Japan--in fact, the surplus of sticks produced for the Saturn only dried up a few years ago, which is why you see a lot of modders using them on the XBLA version of VOOT.
Don't think that the characters themselves haven't noticed.
You and every other geek. I'm still kicking myself for not dropping everything and attending the May launch, after two schedule push-backs so far.
How about hamburgers?
It's mentioned in the article comments, but Atomic Rocket is a good place to start, and almost as time-sucking as TV Tropes.
"If they want to buy a app-store-store, well, they're just being silly. "
As hard as..pulling this "thread", while you walk away?
And so, the wheel starts another turn.
The bunker's not so secret, but the robot suit and the hidden hangar for Air Force One..oh..er..damn.
Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram is being released tomorrow on XBLA, complete with network multiplayer, and based on the last arcade version(5.66).
Unfortunately, there's been no official word on a 360 Twin Stick controller outside of some hints on the Japanese dev blogs(the feeling is that they're trying to make them cost-effective).
Not that it's stopping us.
Maybe they'll use the robot version from season 1?
Does the bottle need to be returned at the end of the game, though? Or is that a bonus mission?
Once you found another elevator on the engineering level after getting off the first medical level, you could happily poke around several levels, and there were never any real boss fights. In fact, one of the bugs fixed in the CD version was that you could go up to the flight deck's maintenance tunnels and find a slaughtered resistance group(with SHODAN confusingly taunting you along the way); once you destroyed the mining laser, you suddenly received an email from the group's leader!
I can't determine whether this post needs the "-1, Missing the forest for the trees" moderation, or the "-69, What do you mean it's not normally blank down there?"
Only on HD or Series3 boxes, though.
(looking depressingly at the Series2 I just bought last year, and strongly thinking about building an HTPC this year)
You jest, but Harry Harrison's "Speed of the Cheetah, Roar of the Lion" took a tongue-in-cheek look at that very same idea(minus the "re-revving" robots).
I'm in the same boat. I have a single 2K disc from long ago, and my ancient system(Sempron 1700, 768M, and a GeForce4 Ti)'s been trundling along just fine, thank you. However, thanks to incidents like this this , 2000 apparently won't cut it any more, even for low-budget games with no extra hardware requirements. .NET work just fine in 2k.
Games based on Microsoft's touted XNA won't even work, again due to "we don't see a point in allowing 2k", even though the same versions of
Actually, this reminds me of a short-story(can't remember if it was Gibson or Sterling) about drug-company employees using VR gear to test molecule interactions: the protagonist enjoyed the simulation so much that she refused to take a promotion(and played dumb on aptitude tests) so that she could keep "playing the game".
PomPom Games doesn't seem to agree.
(As an aside, does anyone know where to find their patent information?)
I'd been reading it off and on as a lab monitor in the dorm computer rooms. I remember a story going up saying "hey, you're going to need registration shortly" and figured I might as well get an account. Not that I've done a whole lot with it, of course, and it's mostly a shining example to column length truncation.
> if I'd known I'd be stuck with that same smartassed handle a decade and a million other accounts later, I probably would've put more thought into it.
The same goes for me, albeit something a bit shorter. I blame my excessive exposure to anime newsgroups at the time, where people were busy inventing long and elaborate names relating to their favorite show and clubbing newcomers to death with them.
Did you even read the first link? This option is meant for people who really do have a monitor they can turn. All of the games on that list including Ikaruga, were vertical arcade shmups, and their definition of "fullscreen" is a vertical monitor. Much like not getting a true widescreen on a SDTV, you aren't getting a true "fullscreen" on a vertical shmup without a vertical monitor.
If you're saying that there should have been an option to have the controls remapped so that "up" on the pad points to the top of the monitor regardless of the game orientation, that's only been done on one game that I know of(the Saturn port of Layer Section).
For being a "big shmup fan", I'm mildly surprised you haven't heard of "TATE" mode. Here's a list for every major console.
It was probably a mistake on their part to call it "fullscreen", but people do use this feature. A lot of crappy US ports(like "Mobile Light Force 2") will omit it, probably out of fear for "idiot-protection" lawsuits.
I also had an undergrad class on this. Or, at least that's what the class description said. I really thought it was going to be handy in the same manner you specified.
:(
Until the first day of class, when we found that the class was being taught by one of the moldering-in-tenure professors. Who adored SML, and spent most of the day at his terminal, implementing parts of the standard C library in SMLNJ. Who, instead of covering anything like what the class description said(or assigning us a textbook like the one in the link), repeatedly handed us assignments to recreate various elements of Lisp using SML. Most of us were too scared to pipe up that we didn't have any grasp of Lisp(not to mention SML) besides the historical entries. Didn't matter to him anyways--asking him for help during office-hours would get you a random half-hour lecture on logic sets and proofs, with a few thoughts about his recent vacation thrown in.
It was almost three-quarters of the semester before we finally got together a petition to throw his ass out and get a competent replacement. Unfortunately, at that point all we had time left for was some basics of Java and garbage-collection. The grades the original prof had handed out still counted, so nobody ended up with anything better than a C or so at the end.