However, the good licensed games frequently pass under the radar of games news sites. Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak is one of the only license-based games I've ever run out to buy on release day. (The kids' storybooks came first, then a TV series and movie, so it had full potential to suck.) It's a great non-violent GBA game with heavy puzzle elements, an RPG-style story and super happy fun everywhere. (There is stuff resembling violence, but it's nicely balanced out by the scat jokes.)
Since the game really ought to appeal to people who enjoyed Harvest Moon, Pokemon or Animal Crossing, I expected sites like Gameforms to at least preview it . They'll cover Pokemon to death, but not Hamtaro. I managed to hook a couple of friends on it but the majority of people simply can't get over the fact that it's a licensed game. They're just that used to ending up with crap every time they try a game based on a movie.
Europe/Australia got the first one, subtitled in five languages. It's an amazing game but I have no idea how difficult it might be to mod a US console to play PAL games. (I know it can be done for the PSone.)
Mojib-Ribbon is interesting because it's actually tied to the writing of text, making for some interesting problems in translation. Other sites have actually shown screenshots of early Mojib demos but I think everyone forgot about them.:P
I hope we get this sequel in English. The first one was an extra-fun buy because it was the same price as an average music CD (A$30) as opposed to the A$80-$110 we'd pay for a new release. Try eBay or an Australian/European online games shop.
Blogs are a potential marketing goldmine, especially when you're looking at the mainstream-and-gullible market that AOL occupies. Working out what teenagers and young adults want before anyone else is a very frightening (and lucrative) realm, so I'm guessing ownership of thousands of blogs would somewhat help that cause.
The word and news bursts at www.daypop.com are a great example of how blogs can have data extracted from them.
I don't own any Windows machines any more, but I really do like MS peripherals. Their mice are nice, but I held back from buying a joypad since I just use one to play cheap and nasty emulators.
I bought a Sidewinder Pro (optical, though force feedback wasn't around yet) in 1996 and got a free copy of Mechwarrior 2 with it. At the time, the joystick was insanely expensive so a full version of a game was very welcome.
It was completely worth it, considering how much MW2 I played on it - and natively in Win95 to boot. (There were about two whole games that weren't DOS-only at the time.) It's still one of my fondest gaming memories, though the joystick is probably in a cupboard somewhere now...
For every person I know that was reading or has read a copy of the book last weekend, I know someone who downloaded the entire thing off fucking Kazaa and read it off the screen.
I work for one of those "piddly little companies", mate, and it's not very tiny. The companies that make Happy Meal toys are generally involved in marketing at all levels for multiple clients.
The marketing company is notified of the licence and organises the tie-in, designing the toy and clearing it with the licensor and the client. You'd be surprised how little money is set aside for actual production though.;)
It just infuriates me that Nintendo Australia has kept it on their release lists for well over a year, with no forthcoming information... if it's a no-go why can't they remove it from the list?
I know and accept the fact that the Australian games market really is a drop in the ocean, so no offense taken. I think I'll just wait for the Harvest Moon games to come out in October instead.
Obviously the Nintendo slant I've previously sensed on games.slashdot means absolutely nothing.
Piracy may "work" for the PS and PS2, but it didn't "work" for the Dreamcast. I think Sega giving up on hardware or the Wipeout series stopping development is drastic enough, don't you? As an owner of all three of the above consoles, I can't believe you're trying to kick the crap out of a console when it's already down.
I'm Australian. I've had a prepaid mobile for about five years now and the only spam I really get is from my provider when I haven't recharged my account, or from BlueSkyFrog who I've bought ringtones from in the past. Spam is far worse in my e-mail inbox and sail mailbox than it ever has been on my phone.
The only options for me with cable are either Optus or Telstra. And one thing not mentioned by other poster's are that if you want to get cable internet in an apartment, you general *cant* get telstra (their policy it appears is to not support apartment blocks), so you have to go with optus.
Isn't that the wrong way around? Telstra will install into apartments/flats but Optus won't... the same policy goes for their cable TV services too.
I went for iinet ADSL myself and I'm pretty happy with it. Excess download charges are the bane of my life (and credit card).
From their ISDN site: http://www.telstra.com.au/isdn/res.htm
I'm sick of the Internet tying up my phone line. I'm not getting my normal calls. Isn't there a better way?
ISDN Home effectively provides you with (2) digital channels (2x64Kbps) or the equivalent of (2) phone lines - including an extra phone number. So you can make and receive calls on one line while you're connected to the Internet with the other - and you don't have to worry about missing any urgent calls.
My Internet access is unreliable and slow, especially in the early evening. Can I do better?
YES! ISDN Home provides guaranteed 64Kbps digital speed - significantly faster than a standard analogue modem connection anytime of the day or night. Less waiting for you while you download large files or software updates. And it's great for playing interactive games!
From a magazine ad for Telstra broadband a while back (in summary, anyway):
I felt like I'd lost direction in my life, so I used my TELSTRA BROADBAND connection to surf to a university site and find an interior design course! Now it's my life! Tee hee hee!
From the final page of an hour-long survey I did when attempting to leave Telstra BigPond Home:
And along the same lines, it'd be really really nice if copy protection (and I'm sure there are a lot more than "nine" copy-protected CDs out there) would let me listen to my music in the way I wanted. I bought the new Placebo album last week and while it will play in either of my Macs, I can't get either of my games consoles to play it. I listen to CDs on my PS2 a lot while working on stuff, but it wouldn't even read on that or play past track 1 on my Dreamcast. Oh well, I can attempt to copy the CD (circumventing the copy protection) just to listen to it the way I want to. -_-
Really now, where do some of you get off saying that nobody handwrites anything any more? I can understand not writing in printed cursive like you learned in 1st grade, but "running writing" is still an important part of my life.
I work in a group of 9 artists and we turn out something like 500-1000 hand-drawn images per week between us. When we do a rough design sketch, nothing is quicker for us than handwriting the description under the image. It's somebody else's job to scan and type what we've written into our design database.
How the heck does "all school students" suddenly become "all tech workers"??
In some digital theory subject or another during my degree, we discussed how "life online" was interesting because it removed the proximity factor when forming relationships. Nearly everyone in my class saw online relationships of any sort (friendship, cybersex, everything in between) as being like some sort of tawdry party line.
This is bringing it back to that attitude - if I cared so much about meeting people online that I could meet in person, I'd go join some activity groups in my area or join an Austnet IRC channel with my city's name. I don't care where you're from if you're my friend online. I care what you are like, because that's the whole beauty of being able to find friends online. It's not a given that we will meet but it's a nice potential bonus.
Besides, when I had my gender, postcode and surname at one time on ICQ I had every damn horny Indian in Sydney trying to chat with me and/or get my photo. Just try to tell me that won't happen with this service.
Yes, there are quite a few girls who read slashdot... if you'd read the "girls in comp sci" thread quite a while back they were posting all the comments modded below 2.:P We're constantly reminded (and sorry) that there aren't that many geek girls in the public eye, then we're also reminded why there aren't that many. Ah well.
Anyway, on the Ren and Stimpy single "Happy Happy Joy Joy", there was an interview with the whole universe's favourite cat and dog made for radio - there were silences where the announcer could insert a pertinent question, then play back the answers. That is kind of what this interview feels like. Wheee, she can blog. She probably didn't even set up Movable Type herself! Argh! 14-year-old AOL kiddies with domain names probably know better!
(I really thought she was older when she was on the front of the Aimster site, but whatever floats your boat I guess.)
I found that some pirate goods producers can't even spell their own company name right. I really think that the FAQ owners should include a scan of the "Forever Anine" logo along with the other two.
I got said CD from someone who runs a supposedly upstanding anime merchandise company in Australia. All their CDs are from Son May, ALCA, Ever Anime and Ho Son... whatever. At least they finally stopped selling fansubs.
Dammit, anime threads here always inspire rage in me... I got to three comments and stopped reading. ^_^;
I used to work for an Australian non-profit. My not-even-taxable income with them was paid for with a government grant. This software offer from Microsoft does not fall into your lap, you have to apply for it. Granted, it's easier than applying for your average arts funding, but there is an application process and they're not randomly throwing software at you. We found that they are very tight with licenses (we applied for Office:Mac and two licenses; we got the software and one license). So they're not being quite as generous as they seem - for crissakes it's a piece of paper that the organisation can't even afford normally, so what's the loss?
Nonprofits vary in size; I'm sure a behemoth like Greenpeace can afford to hire a consultant (however cheap) to implement OSS or get a broadband connection, but I can't argue against being able to open.doc files from a local government organisation for free when there is no alternative program to use on Mac OS 9. Before you say "they should switch to Jaguar", they couldn't afford that either. (The only reason they could read any MS Office files up until now was because they received Word '97 for Mac when they last applied for a MS software donation.)
I read on a site last week that Microsoft have a profit margin of over 30%. Philanthropy is all about damn well giving back to the community and that's what they're doing with that software donation program - it's a step above watching them trying to buy governments.
I'm sure people here will disagree with my views, but public conceptions of what a nonprofit is and how it works are in my experience a little distorted.
Why did you decide to stick with text-based dialogue rather than using speech?
Aonuma: With conversation, using text has always been Zelda's style - it's always worked that way. And another reason for keeping it text-based is because, when anyone reads anything - a novel, text on a screen - they're able to give it their own kind of flavour, their own interpretation and voice.
Rather than influencing that by making the on-screen characters speak, I intentionally wanted players to read the text. I don't know if you've noticed, but Link never speaks - this is also intentional as I want the player to create their own idea of who Link is, rather than giving him a voice.
It rained today. (I'm in Australia.) The "Three phone" users on either side of my desk lost their reception for half the day. How useful!:)
I won't switch to 3G myself until I'm forced to - I have been a very happy prepaid mobile user for about five years now and I'd like to keep it that way. The cost of a new handset and contract are just too prohibitive right now.
Some guy tried faking the window in Australian banknotes with sticky tape a couple of years back. Needless to say, they spotted it immediately and he ran away. Not sure if they ever caught him...
I read enough tabloid-type stuff for articles like this to bounce off me, but the spelling sure did stink. I'm sure an unemployed Slashdotter would be glad to take up the proofreader's position... no, wait.
I work in a non-tech field and am also in a no-compete agreement. I can believe that someone would go through quite a lot of pain having to reject jobs purely because they'd signed a piece of paper - more so if the agreement is so general that their prospective/rejected employment would pose no threat to their former company's IP, trade secrets, etc. If you're prepared to play down how hard it can be to look for a job, you've probably never had to look.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed.
However, the good licensed games frequently pass under the radar of games news sites. Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak is one of the only license-based games I've ever run out to buy on release day. (The kids' storybooks came first, then a TV series and movie, so it had full potential to suck.) It's a great non-violent GBA game with heavy puzzle elements, an RPG-style story and super happy fun everywhere. (There is stuff resembling violence, but it's nicely balanced out by the scat jokes.)
Since the game really ought to appeal to people who enjoyed Harvest Moon, Pokemon or Animal Crossing, I expected sites like Gameforms to at least preview it . They'll cover Pokemon to death, but not Hamtaro. I managed to hook a couple of friends on it but the majority of people simply can't get over the fact that it's a licensed game. They're just that used to ending up with crap every time they try a game based on a movie.
Europe/Australia got the first one, subtitled in five languages. It's an amazing game but I have no idea how difficult it might be to mod a US console to play PAL games. (I know it can be done for the PSone.)
:P
Mojib-Ribbon is interesting because it's actually tied to the writing of text, making for some interesting problems in translation. Other sites have actually shown screenshots of early Mojib demos but I think everyone forgot about them.
I hope we get this sequel in English. The first one was an extra-fun buy because it was the same price as an average music CD (A$30) as opposed to the A$80-$110 we'd pay for a new release. Try eBay or an Australian/European online games shop.
Blogs are a potential marketing goldmine, especially when you're looking at the mainstream-and-gullible market that AOL occupies. Working out what teenagers and young adults want before anyone else is a very frightening (and lucrative) realm, so I'm guessing ownership of thousands of blogs would somewhat help that cause.
The word and news bursts at www.daypop.com are a great example of how blogs can have data extracted from them.
Vagrant Story.
Never have I been so easily convinced to stare at my character's arse for 50 hours (and yes, I am a girl).
I don't own any Windows machines any more, but I really do like MS peripherals. Their mice are nice, but I held back from buying a joypad since I just use one to play cheap and nasty emulators.
I bought a Sidewinder Pro (optical, though force feedback wasn't around yet) in 1996 and got a free copy of Mechwarrior 2 with it. At the time, the joystick was insanely expensive so a full version of a game was very welcome.
It was completely worth it, considering how much MW2 I played on it - and natively in Win95 to boot. (There were about two whole games that weren't DOS-only at the time.) It's still one of my fondest gaming memories, though the joystick is probably in a cupboard somewhere now...
You forgot the foot. I was looking for it as soon as I read the headline. :)
For every person I know that was reading or has read a copy of the book last weekend, I know someone who downloaded the entire thing off fucking Kazaa and read it off the screen.
Wonder if the media will ever notice?
I work for one of those "piddly little companies", mate, and it's not very tiny. The companies that make Happy Meal toys are generally involved in marketing at all levels for multiple clients.
;)
The marketing company is notified of the licence and organises the tie-in, designing the toy and clearing it with the licensor and the client. You'd be surprised how little money is set aside for actual production though.
It just infuriates me that Nintendo Australia has kept it on their release lists for well over a year, with no forthcoming information... if it's a no-go why can't they remove it from the list?
;P)
I know and accept the fact that the Australian games market really is a drop in the ocean, so no offense taken. I think I'll just wait for the Harvest Moon games to come out in October instead.
(Oh, and I'm not a guy.
I just want to know when or if the bloody e-reader and Animal Crossing are coming out in Australia. This is why I bought a Gamecube! Aaargh!
Obviously the Nintendo slant I've previously sensed on games.slashdot means absolutely nothing.
Piracy may "work" for the PS and PS2, but it didn't "work" for the Dreamcast. I think Sega giving up on hardware or the Wipeout series stopping development is drastic enough, don't you? As an owner of all three of the above consoles, I can't believe you're trying to kick the crap out of a console when it's already down.
I'm Australian. I've had a prepaid mobile for about five years now and the only spam I really get is from my provider when I haven't recharged my account, or from BlueSkyFrog who I've bought ringtones from in the past. Spam is far worse in my e-mail inbox and sail mailbox than it ever has been on my phone.
The only options for me with cable are either Optus or Telstra. And one thing not mentioned by other poster's are that if you want to get cable internet in an apartment, you general *cant* get telstra (their policy it appears is to not support apartment blocks), so you have to go with optus.
Isn't that the wrong way around? Telstra will install into apartments/flats but Optus won't... the same policy goes for their cable TV services too.
I went for iinet ADSL myself and I'm pretty happy with it. Excess download charges are the bane of my life (and credit card).
From their ISDN site: http://www.telstra.com.au/isdn/res.htm
I'm sick of the Internet tying up my phone line. I'm not getting my normal calls. Isn't there a better way?
ISDN Home effectively provides you with (2) digital channels (2x64Kbps) or the equivalent of (2) phone lines - including an extra phone number. So you can make and receive calls on one line while you're connected to the Internet with the other - and you don't have to worry about missing any urgent calls.
My Internet access is unreliable and slow, especially in the early evening. Can I do better?
YES! ISDN Home provides guaranteed 64Kbps digital speed - significantly faster than a standard analogue modem connection anytime of the day or night. Less waiting for you while you download large files or software updates. And it's great for playing interactive games!
From a magazine ad for Telstra broadband a while back (in summary, anyway):
I felt like I'd lost direction in my life, so I used my TELSTRA BROADBAND connection to surf to a university site and find an interior design course! Now it's my life! Tee hee hee!
From the final page of an hour-long survey I did when attempting to leave Telstra BigPond Home:
Page Not Found
Fuckers. Hate hate hate.
Amen to that!
And along the same lines, it'd be really really nice if copy protection (and I'm sure there are a lot more than "nine" copy-protected CDs out there) would let me listen to my music in the way I wanted. I bought the new Placebo album last week and while it will play in either of my Macs, I can't get either of my games consoles to play it. I listen to CDs on my PS2 a lot while working on stuff, but it wouldn't even read on that or play past track 1 on my Dreamcast. Oh well, I can attempt to copy the CD (circumventing the copy protection) just to listen to it the way I want to. -_-
Well, you can play DOAX one-handed...
Really now, where do some of you get off saying that nobody handwrites anything any more? I can understand not writing in printed cursive like you learned in 1st grade, but "running writing" is still an important part of my life.
I work in a group of 9 artists and we turn out something like 500-1000 hand-drawn images per week between us. When we do a rough design sketch, nothing is quicker for us than handwriting the description under the image. It's somebody else's job to scan and type what we've written into our design database.
How the heck does "all school students" suddenly become "all tech workers"??
Back to drawin' plush dogs...
In some digital theory subject or another during my degree, we discussed how "life online" was interesting because it removed the proximity factor when forming relationships. Nearly everyone in my class saw online relationships of any sort (friendship, cybersex, everything in between) as being like some sort of tawdry party line.
This is bringing it back to that attitude - if I cared so much about meeting people online that I could meet in person, I'd go join some activity groups in my area or join an Austnet IRC channel with my city's name. I don't care where you're from if you're my friend online. I care what you are like, because that's the whole beauty of being able to find friends online. It's not a given that we will meet but it's a nice potential bonus.
Besides, when I had my gender, postcode and surname at one time on ICQ I had every damn horny Indian in Sydney trying to chat with me and/or get my photo. Just try to tell me that won't happen with this service.
Yes, there are quite a few girls who read slashdot... if you'd read the "girls in comp sci" thread quite a while back they were posting all the comments modded below 2. :P We're constantly reminded (and sorry) that there aren't that many geek girls in the public eye, then we're also reminded why there aren't that many. Ah well.
Anyway, on the Ren and Stimpy single "Happy Happy Joy Joy", there was an interview with the whole universe's favourite cat and dog made for radio - there were silences where the announcer could insert a pertinent question, then play back the answers. That is kind of what this interview feels like. Wheee, she can blog. She probably didn't even set up Movable Type herself! Argh! 14-year-old AOL kiddies with domain names probably know better!
(I really thought she was older when she was on the front of the Aimster site, but whatever floats your boat I guess.)
I found that some pirate goods producers can't even spell their own company name right. I really think that the FAQ owners should include a scan of the "Forever Anine" logo along with the other two.
I got said CD from someone who runs a supposedly upstanding anime merchandise company in Australia. All their CDs are from Son May, ALCA, Ever Anime and Ho Son... whatever. At least they finally stopped selling fansubs.
Dammit, anime threads here always inspire rage in me... I got to three comments and stopped reading. ^_^;
I used to work for an Australian non-profit. My not-even-taxable income with them was paid for with a government grant. This software offer from Microsoft does not fall into your lap, you have to apply for it. Granted, it's easier than applying for your average arts funding, but there is an application process and they're not randomly throwing software at you. We found that they are very tight with licenses (we applied for Office:Mac and two licenses; we got the software and one license). So they're not being quite as generous as they seem - for crissakes it's a piece of paper that the organisation can't even afford normally, so what's the loss?
.doc files from a local government organisation for free when there is no alternative program to use on Mac OS 9. Before you say "they should switch to Jaguar", they couldn't afford that either. (The only reason they could read any MS Office files up until now was because they received Word '97 for Mac when they last applied for a MS software donation.)
Nonprofits vary in size; I'm sure a behemoth like Greenpeace can afford to hire a consultant (however cheap) to implement OSS or get a broadband connection, but I can't argue against being able to open
I read on a site last week that Microsoft have a profit margin of over 30%. Philanthropy is all about damn well giving back to the community and that's what they're doing with that software donation program - it's a step above watching them trying to buy governments.
I'm sure people here will disagree with my views, but public conceptions of what a nonprofit is and how it works are in my experience a little distorted.
Why did you decide to stick with text-based dialogue rather than using speech?
Aonuma: With conversation, using text has always been Zelda's style - it's always worked that way. And another reason for keeping it text-based is because, when anyone reads anything - a novel, text on a screen - they're able to give it their own kind of flavour, their own interpretation and voice.
Rather than influencing that by making the on-screen characters speak, I intentionally wanted players to read the text. I don't know if you've noticed, but Link never speaks - this is also intentional as I want the player to create their own idea of who Link is, rather than giving him a voice.
All I can say to the above is AMEN TO THAT.
It rained today. (I'm in Australia.) The "Three phone" users on either side of my desk lost their reception for half the day. How useful! :)
I won't switch to 3G myself until I'm forced to - I have been a very happy prepaid mobile user for about five years now and I'd like to keep it that way. The cost of a new handset and contract are just too prohibitive right now.
Some guy tried faking the window in Australian banknotes with sticky tape a couple of years back. Needless to say, they spotted it immediately and he ran away. Not sure if they ever caught him...
I read enough tabloid-type stuff for articles like this to bounce off me, but the spelling sure did stink. I'm sure an unemployed Slashdotter would be glad to take up the proofreader's position... no, wait.
I work in a non-tech field and am also in a no-compete agreement. I can believe that someone would go through quite a lot of pain having to reject jobs purely because they'd signed a piece of paper - more so if the agreement is so general that their prospective/rejected employment would pose no threat to their former company's IP, trade secrets, etc. If you're prepared to play down how hard it can be to look for a job, you've probably never had to look.