These people are a real pain... and its very difficult to prove that they did it on purpose.
Not necessarily. It may be difficult or impossible for the player to prove that the bastard who sent a train to kill low-level characters did that act on purpose, but the GM (who should have access to the server logs) would know almost immediately. If the accused has, within the last few minutes, defeated many of that type of monster almost exclusively, then the odds are good that the accused purposefully caused the victim's death. Otherwise, the accused did not (or, naturally, check the relative levels of the accused versus the monster trained).
Besides, this isn't really what we were talking about. This is a dirty form of PK, true, but the issue at hand is PVP combat-- specifically, direct combat between player characters.
Note: anyone who does the train thing on purpose deserves swift, instant death.
All right, let's take one look at a popular MMOG these days, Final Fantasy XI. (And lest I be accused of working for Square-Enix, just because I always trot this one out in every MMO story means only that I really like the game; look at it the same way some yutz posts a pro-Linux sermon to every Windows discussion and save your mod points.) FFXI's competition, at the moment, is strictly limited to the Conquest system. No direct player competition exists, yet; it was never part of the game design. Players must cooperate in order to "compete" in the later levels (beating monsters, the basis of conquest, becomes nigh on impossible alone past level 10 or so). Player Versus Player is only being implemented here well over two years after the game's release.
I will agree with you conditionally-- most MMOS do not make allowances for new players, instead expecting players to learn from the high-level 'masters'. Ultima Online is a key offender; anyone strong enough to teach you is, most likely, not going to because you have nothing to offer them. But in terms strictly of the PVP hierarchy, I do not recall a game at all in recent memory in which PVP was not 'opt-in'; meaning that new players, in general, are not going to be hunted by the big bad bastards.
It is my opinion that part of the monthly fee I pay for an online game is a payment for policing of the online world in which I participate. As long as I play by the rules and pay my money, my $13 a month or whatever not only keeps my character alive, it also guarantees that cheaters and joykilling bastards are quickly and efficiently removed as permanently as is possible (it is of course infeasible to expect that there will be no problems, but the taxes should at least be doing some good). So what is illegal in the game, whether or not you can do it, is illegal. Period. No exceptions, no excuses, no "it was legal yesterday!!" baloney.
Wandering through the Buffalo, NY Walden Galleria mall, I found a kiosk that was displaying one of these knockoff systems. It had about 50 games included on it, but I didn't stop to ask about the legality of it-- I can only assume it's not entirely on the level. Next time I'm in there I'll try to snap a picture.
I find it really weird that nobody's mentioned dot hack yet in this thread. It's probably the closest thing in actuality to what the blurb suggests (in true/. fashion, I did not read the article). Part four (the big finale) just came out a week or so ago in the U.S., and the reviews for it were decidedly less enthusiastic than those for the first in the set. Why? Because (and this is just my own speculation here) at $50 a pop, people expected four different, unique games and instead got the same game four times in a row-- with little to none of the fine-tuning that occurs between sequels.
This is how I would have done it. Release the main game for a console with a HD (at this point XB, but I really hope the HD catches on in the next generation-- it's more useful than console developers currently realize) at the basic price point of $50. Then, release the expansions for $5 online or $15 in the store (if you want to include extra goodies in the package, go for it, but it'll raise the price point). In short, this is exactly what PC developers have done and done successfully for close to twenty years now. The paradigm can and should work on current consoles-- in fact, it does; three words: Final Fantasy XI.
As for pikmin.. it deserves a sequel.. and zelda... name a BAD zelda... it's not possible.
I'll name three: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker. I desperately wanted to like the 3D Zelda games, but they didn't have the charm or hooks that drew me in to the original series (or even the Gameboy ones, which I personally thought were the best). I know a lot of people think that the previous three have been the be-all, end-all of video gaming, but I just don't see what the thrill is.
Ocarina of Time was WAY too slow-paced and the battle system was so blasted awkward. When I heard that MM and WW featured the same system, as well as were "more of the same", I passed. I did get a chance to play each of them, of course, and they lived down to my expectations.
Oh, and this isn't a troll. I'll give you that the Mario games have been consistently great; I'm really looking forward to whatever Miyamoto chooses to do with Mario "128", because it's sure to be offbeat enough to capture everybody's attention. I just feel that they need to try someting different with the Zelda games, because I know I'm not the only one who despised the three 3D iterations.
Sadly, you're asking much the same thing as "Why don't they bring back those little Troll dolls?" The opinion of the world community at large is that Pokemon was a fad, and it's had its time. Certainly, the game would attract some attention, but ultimately the returns in the U.S. and probably even Japan would more than likely not even warrant the game's creation. At best something like this will get previewed on tape in May and then put on the back-burner due to low interest, until it gets canned by E3 2005. I'd like to see it, myself, but I just hold very little faith that it will ever happen.
That's good to hear. I liked Malice's design, myself, and was looking forward to it for a while now. I think Play had it as a cover story some year and a half ago... Anyway, I'm curious as to if or when it'll get a U.S. release (call me cynical, but knowing what Eurogamer says doesn't help me much in Buffalo, New York).
Exactly. "I watch what they play and I decide what they play"? No, you didn't. If he did this law wouldn't be necessary. This whole goddamn discussion wouldn't be happening if parents hadn't abdicated their duties to television and pop media twenty years ago.
But once the pieces are set, SciFi takes extraordinary care to play fair by those exact rules. The moment this unwritten law is broken, we, the spectators/readers, instantaneously lose interest.
Try and remember how you reacted in Matrix: Revolutions when we found out Neo can make a quadgizillion sentinels explode in the real world with sheer thought alone.
Playing devil's advocate here, but who says that the writer has to delineate the rules to the reader/watcher/player? The characters were going by what they thought the rules were, and something came along to break the rules, thus keeping things interesting-- and forcing the reader/viewer/player to re-evaluate what the rules are.
Personally, games that change the rules on you-- like Metroid, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and some of the really old shooters-- are my favorite types simply because it's a challenge to figure out how to adapt to a new situation and scenario. Certainly you can do that in a game like chess or Uno-- but if there's a twist to the rules that doesn't come into play for a little bit, then you have to re-evaluate your entire strategy and gameplay.
Admittedly, you don't want all the rules changing at once-- there has to be some consistency-- but that's probably what sets a good game aside from a great one. If you think of it that way, then shaking things up every once in a while is a really good thing.
Haven't read the article yet myself, but the "safety" warnings on products-- regardless of where you actually get them-- are usually pretty funny to me, particularly because in order to actually become a warning, ostensibly someone must have tried the offending act at least once.
Anyway, I just wanted to chip in that on Sega Saturn and Dreamcast discs, there was usually a CD-audio track that had some warning to the effect of "take me out of the CD player, dumbass, and put me in the game machine". Sega's warnings were pretty standard, but a few third-party warnings were hilarious (Working Designs did a really good one for Magic Knight Rayearth) or downright creepy. Those kinds of warnings deserve mention, too.
In my mind there is an ever growing gap in TV. TV Shows like CSI, Without a trace, Law and Order, or all sorts of stuf fon the informational channels engages my brain. It's not so much mindless garbage, but usually has somehting to get my brain moving a tad.
I agree with you completely here. CSI is probably the only reason I still subscribe to cable (reception is crappy here... but I'll be moving soon anyway). The problem is, despite the popularity of these shows, they are damn expensive to make. CSI requires a significantly larger writing budget for fact-checkers and script consultants. Without a Trace, Law and Order, and Cold Case, a little less so, but to get a story that has enough basis behind it to really engage and hook viewers, you have to spend a little more.
Now imagine you're a TV exec. (I'm just Mr. Hypothetical of late, aren't I?) You have fifteen slots available to you for next season, and thirty shows that are in the running. Fifteen of them are really good but expensive, ten of them are sort-of OK with average costs, and the other five are total crap, but cheap. (This is unusually optimistic, of course, but it's for demonstrative purposes only. In a more cynical mood I'd probably reverse the numbers.) You could just put all fifteen of the good shows in the slots and be guaranteed total dominance of the airwaves, but it would be a tremendous up-front cost-- a cost that would have to be absorbed by advertisers; advertisers who are probably not going to have as much faith in these shows as you do. So, you cut it down to ten great shows and five so-so ones. You still have high costs, and advertisers are still leery, but you lose some of the ratings share. It works out OK, but there will still be some undeserving shows that get the axe next season due to artificially "poor ratings" (ie the advertisers didn't want to front the cash for season 2 because the great show they sponsored didn't pick up in popularity until January). So, to ensure that everybody's happy, you pick five great shows, five OK shows, and the five cheap garbage shows. This way you balance out the costs of the expensive shows with the throwaways, which probably won't last until November anyway. Advertising costs stay level, people buy ads, they get watched by the masses; everybody's happy. Well, except for the 15 people whose shows got canned before they were even aired.
It's not because the "public" still likes mass-produced junkvision. It's because crap TV is cheap to produce and the networks have to put SOMETHING new in those timeslots each fall. I'd love to see more CSI-like shows on TV, but until good writing becomes cheaper it's just not going to happen.
Ever since the NES days, consoles have really gotten the low end of the spectrum in regards to extra goodies. Since the boxes all had to be a uniform size, according to Nintendo's strict rules, the packaging didn't offer much room for more than the game, the manual, some advertising, and maybe a small poster if you were lucky. There were some exceptions-- Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, if I recall, had larger-size manuals than their predecessors; and Startropics' infamous water-sensitive letter was another notable exception.
Later on, during the SNES days however, it started to become obvious that the manuals had to be improved and the extra goodies were considered optional. Square didn't listen, of course, and every Square game back then came with the thick manual and at least one poster (I think I still have the two that came with FFIII, and the ones from Chrono Trigger as well).
The Playstation is what killed the idea of extra goodies. Packaging was reduced from an impressive paperback-sized box to a mere CD jewel case, with manuals becoming more and more thin and space at a total premium. Sure, some games (like the aforementioned Lunar) came in bigger boxes with more impressive presentations, but for the most part the smaller packaging(brought on by cost concerns, it was cheaper to use a standard jewel case than having x,000 custom boxes made) killed the idea of goodies once and for all for consoles.
I have both games sitting proudly on my media rack. Of course, none of the goodies are on display-- stuff tends to get lost around me-- but the full inventory is as follows:
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete Demo Disc Hardbound manual Cloth map "Making Of" movie disc Soundtrack Audio CD
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete Ghaleon Punching Puppet Hardbound manual "Making Of" movie disc Soundtrack Audio CD Goldtone replica of Lucia's pendant Cardboard character standees Paper map Spiffy "Omake Box" to hold most of this stuff
Both games went for $60 US, and were generally well-received. No console game that I know of has provided so much non-essential stuff, before or since.
I had the most fun with this when I lived in Erie. The machine wasn't always there-- but it was the last time I was in town (about a week before Christmas). It's by Konami, and I don't remember the exact name of it, unfortunately. I think something like "MoCap Boxing" or something similar. Anyway, there's also a similar game called "Police 911"-- it combines the duck-and-cover style of play with a Virtua Cop shooting element. Come to think of it... that could easily be done on the PS2 now, with the Eyetoy and a Guncon. Anyway, yeah, thanks for reminding me of this game.
Speaking of Konami games, a lot of people have mentioned DDR, but Para Para Paradise and Dance Freaks offer full-body dance challenges. Unfortunately, those games haven't caught on so much in the US-- certainly not to the extent that DDR has-- but I imagine it would be a hell of a lot more efficient than screwing around with a broken controller.
Many of us are thinking back beyond what's currently popular and making the biggest headlines. I don't doubt you that a good game based on some of the lesser-known properties, like Silver Surfer, Thor, or Dr. Doom (who would make an interesting game "protagonist", if you think about it), would be well-received by fans both old and new. But here's how I see things.
My sister-- just two years younger than me, and I'm going on 25-- is big into comics of late. Marvel especially, and the "X-Men Evolution" series currently airing on Kids WB in particular. I picked up the hard-bound "Ultimate X-Men vol. 1" for her for Christmas, and she was thrilled. So was I-- complain all you want, but the series is damn good. As I was reading it, though, I took a look at the production notes, as they were. The writers and artists felt that having thirty years of backstory-- some of it contradictory, some of it ludicrous, and some of it just plain factually wrong-- was starting to wear down the appeal of the X-Men franchise. The ensemble was bringing in new fans, but these fans-- some of whom had never picked up a comic book in their entire lives-- were quickly turned off because they just plain didn't have a clue what was going on, what all the characters were referencing.
Marvel had tried putting new life into its series before-- the "What-Ifs" are the only thing I can remember as being mentioned int he notes, but I'm sure someone will come to my memory's aid (ha ha). Those hadn't turned out as well as they'd expected. So the writers basically said, "dump it all, let's just start over."
And wouldn't you know it, but it works. The familiar stories are there-- X-Men versus the Sentinels, Magneto's big thing, the Savage Land-- they're just told in a different, new, and damn spiffy way. It might not sound like it would be a big seller-- but combined with the media blitz Marvel's been going through, the series has proven pretty successful.
So build on that.
Based on the success of the "Ultimate" series (an "Ultimate Spider-Man" is also out), it would be kind of logical to use that material to make a good adventure game or even an RPG. You just know that BioWare's been contacted at least once-- look what they did for Star Wars; don't you think they could handle something like KOTOR, but with the X-Men theme? You might not get the old, die-hard, "I'll never let go of 300 back issues worth of story" fans, but you will get newer, fresher blood. And you can stretch that out for a good three, four games as the story arcs evolve and progress.
Might be worth a look, from a gamer's standpoint, too. But then again, maybe that's just the wild ramblings of a young pup who never got to read X-Men until he was in college.
The Nyko AirFlo, despite being somewhat gimmicky, has a pretty good lock on being my favorite PC controller of late. It uses basic HID drivers, so no messing around with worrying about a driver disc. Only drawback is that it's somewhat tricky to set up in the emulators I use (ZSNES, UltraFCE, Gens); and trying to use it with my Nostromo Speedpad is a nightmare, generally I have to have only one or the other plugged in at a time. But a decent pad, physically identical to the PS2 version, with the exception of no force feedback (but I find that annoying anyway).
Yes, very cool. This probably has been discussed before, but another potential application might also be the study of sleep and dreams. Getting a more accurate picture of what goes on inside one's head during bedtime could help develop all sorts of insights into psychology and brain chemistry.
While I'm at it, "Live Free Or Die" is actually the state motto of New Hampshire. Not Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania's motto is "Virtue, Liberty and Independence".
About 350 years ago, a wealthy Brit was granted a lot of land on the American continent by the British monarchy. His name, William Penn. After the colonies revolted against the British crown, the colonies coagulated into states. Penn's state was big enough that it didn't need to coagulate into a larger territory, so it remained as it was: Penn State.
One of the legacies of Penn is a love of freedom, and this latest embrace of P2P by Penn State is another in a long string of "Live Free or Die" actions.
The story of Penn State is long and quite profound, but it's not quite pertinent to this discussion (except for the love of freedom stuff).
Great. Now for the Rest of the Story, told by someone who actually lives in "Penn State".
"Penn State", as the above (non-American) poster uses it, is actually the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Derived from founder William Penn, "Pennsylvania" is composed from "Penn" and "Sylvania", and generally means "Penn's Woods".) Pennsylvania is one of two commonwealths (not strictly states) in the U.S.; Massachusetts is the other. (The difference is largely semantic to someone not interested in political theory and the like.) Pennsylvania is the only of the original 13 Colonies that does not have a border on the Atlantic Ocean; it is bordered by New York to the north, Ohio to the west, New Jersey to the east, and West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware to the south. The only coastline Pennsylvania has is in the northwest region, on Lake Erie; the city of Erie (home to Gannon University) is an important port along the Great Lakes.
"Penn State" is the abbreviated nickname for Pennsylvania State University, a governmental-run university with its head campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the state capital); there are a grand total of 18 satellite campuses throughout Pennsylvania. Penn State is known for its football team, the Nittany Lions. For any more detailed information, check the link. (I went to Gannon, so I could tell you more about that school.)
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These people are a real pain... and its very difficult to prove that they did it on purpose.
Not necessarily. It may be difficult or impossible for the player to prove that the bastard who sent a train to kill low-level characters did that act on purpose, but the GM (who should have access to the server logs) would know almost immediately. If the accused has, within the last few minutes, defeated many of that type of monster almost exclusively, then the odds are good that the accused purposefully caused the victim's death. Otherwise, the accused did not (or, naturally, check the relative levels of the accused versus the monster trained).
Besides, this isn't really what we were talking about. This is a dirty form of PK, true, but the issue at hand is PVP combat-- specifically, direct combat between player characters.
Note: anyone who does the train thing on purpose deserves swift, instant death.
All right, let's take one look at a popular MMOG these days, Final Fantasy XI. (And lest I be accused of working for Square-Enix, just because I always trot this one out in every MMO story means only that I really like the game; look at it the same way some yutz posts a pro-Linux sermon to every Windows discussion and save your mod points.) FFXI's competition, at the moment, is strictly limited to the Conquest system. No direct player competition exists, yet; it was never part of the game design. Players must cooperate in order to "compete" in the later levels (beating monsters, the basis of conquest, becomes nigh on impossible alone past level 10 or so). Player Versus Player is only being implemented here well over two years after the game's release.
I will agree with you conditionally-- most MMOS do not make allowances for new players, instead expecting players to learn from the high-level 'masters'. Ultima Online is a key offender; anyone strong enough to teach you is, most likely, not going to because you have nothing to offer them. But in terms strictly of the PVP hierarchy, I do not recall a game at all in recent memory in which PVP was not 'opt-in'; meaning that new players, in general, are not going to be hunted by the big bad bastards.
It is my opinion that part of the monthly fee I pay for an online game is a payment for policing of the online world in which I participate. As long as I play by the rules and pay my money, my $13 a month or whatever not only keeps my character alive, it also guarantees that cheaters and joykilling bastards are quickly and efficiently removed as permanently as is possible (it is of course infeasible to expect that there will be no problems, but the taxes should at least be doing some good). So what is illegal in the game, whether or not you can do it, is illegal. Period. No exceptions, no excuses, no "it was legal yesterday!!" baloney.
All right, raise your hand if you think the next headline about this virtual world will be "'Pluto Kiss' Virus Destroys World".
(for mods who don't get the joke)
Wandering through the Buffalo, NY Walden Galleria mall, I found a kiosk that was displaying one of these knockoff systems. It had about 50 games included on it, but I didn't stop to ask about the legality of it-- I can only assume it's not entirely on the level. Next time I'm in there I'll try to snap a picture.
I find it really weird that nobody's mentioned dot hack yet in this thread. It's probably the closest thing in actuality to what the blurb suggests (in true /. fashion, I did not read the article). Part four (the big finale) just came out a week or so ago in the U.S., and the reviews for it were decidedly less enthusiastic than those for the first in the set. Why? Because (and this is just my own speculation here) at $50 a pop, people expected four different, unique games and instead got the same game four times in a row-- with little to none of the fine-tuning that occurs between sequels.
This is how I would have done it. Release the main game for a console with a HD (at this point XB, but I really hope the HD catches on in the next generation-- it's more useful than console developers currently realize) at the basic price point of $50. Then, release the expansions for $5 online or $15 in the store (if you want to include extra goodies in the package, go for it, but it'll raise the price point). In short, this is exactly what PC developers have done and done successfully for close to twenty years now. The paradigm can and should work on current consoles-- in fact, it does; three words: Final Fantasy XI.
As for pikmin.. it deserves a sequel.. and zelda... name a BAD zelda... it's not possible.
I'll name three: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker. I desperately wanted to like the 3D Zelda games, but they didn't have the charm or hooks that drew me in to the original series (or even the Gameboy ones, which I personally thought were the best). I know a lot of people think that the previous three have been the be-all, end-all of video gaming, but I just don't see what the thrill is.
Ocarina of Time was WAY too slow-paced and the battle system was so blasted awkward. When I heard that MM and WW featured the same system, as well as were "more of the same", I passed. I did get a chance to play each of them, of course, and they lived down to my expectations.
Oh, and this isn't a troll. I'll give you that the Mario games have been consistently great; I'm really looking forward to whatever Miyamoto chooses to do with Mario "128", because it's sure to be offbeat enough to capture everybody's attention. I just feel that they need to try someting different with the Zelda games, because I know I'm not the only one who despised the three 3D iterations.
Sadly, you're asking much the same thing as "Why don't they bring back those little Troll dolls?" The opinion of the world community at large is that Pokemon was a fad, and it's had its time. Certainly, the game would attract some attention, but ultimately the returns in the U.S. and probably even Japan would more than likely not even warrant the game's creation. At best something like this will get previewed on tape in May and then put on the back-burner due to low interest, until it gets canned by E3 2005. I'd like to see it, myself, but I just hold very little faith that it will ever happen.
That's good to hear. I liked Malice's design, myself, and was looking forward to it for a while now. I think Play had it as a cover story some year and a half ago... Anyway, I'm curious as to if or when it'll get a U.S. release (call me cynical, but knowing what Eurogamer says doesn't help me much in Buffalo, New York).
Exactly. "I watch what they play and I decide what they play"? No, you didn't. If he did this law wouldn't be necessary. This whole goddamn discussion wouldn't be happening if parents hadn't abdicated their duties to television and pop media twenty years ago.
But once the pieces are set, SciFi takes extraordinary care to play fair by those exact rules. The moment this unwritten law is broken, we, the spectators/readers, instantaneously lose interest.
Try and remember how you reacted in Matrix: Revolutions when we found out Neo can make a quadgizillion sentinels explode in the real world with sheer thought alone.
Playing devil's advocate here, but who says that the writer has to delineate the rules to the reader/watcher/player? The characters were going by what they thought the rules were, and something came along to break the rules, thus keeping things interesting-- and forcing the reader/viewer/player to re-evaluate what the rules are.
Personally, games that change the rules on you-- like Metroid, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and some of the really old shooters-- are my favorite types simply because it's a challenge to figure out how to adapt to a new situation and scenario. Certainly you can do that in a game like chess or Uno-- but if there's a twist to the rules that doesn't come into play for a little bit, then you have to re-evaluate your entire strategy and gameplay.
Admittedly, you don't want all the rules changing at once-- there has to be some consistency-- but that's probably what sets a good game aside from a great one. If you think of it that way, then shaking things up every once in a while is a really good thing.
Haven't read the article yet myself, but the "safety" warnings on products-- regardless of where you actually get them-- are usually pretty funny to me, particularly because in order to actually become a warning, ostensibly someone must have tried the offending act at least once.
Anyway, I just wanted to chip in that on Sega Saturn and Dreamcast discs, there was usually a CD-audio track that had some warning to the effect of "take me out of the CD player, dumbass, and put me in the game machine". Sega's warnings were pretty standard, but a few third-party warnings were hilarious (Working Designs did a really good one for Magic Knight Rayearth) or downright creepy. Those kinds of warnings deserve mention, too.
5. Execute users, not e-mail attachments.
In my mind there is an ever growing gap in TV. TV Shows like CSI, Without a trace, Law and Order, or all sorts of stuf fon the informational channels engages my brain. It's not so much mindless garbage, but usually has somehting to get my brain moving a tad.
I agree with you completely here. CSI is probably the only reason I still subscribe to cable (reception is crappy here... but I'll be moving soon anyway). The problem is, despite the popularity of these shows, they are damn expensive to make. CSI requires a significantly larger writing budget for fact-checkers and script consultants. Without a Trace, Law and Order, and Cold Case, a little less so, but to get a story that has enough basis behind it to really engage and hook viewers, you have to spend a little more.
Now imagine you're a TV exec. (I'm just Mr. Hypothetical of late, aren't I?) You have fifteen slots available to you for next season, and thirty shows that are in the running. Fifteen of them are really good but expensive, ten of them are sort-of OK with average costs, and the other five are total crap, but cheap. (This is unusually optimistic, of course, but it's for demonstrative purposes only. In a more cynical mood I'd probably reverse the numbers.) You could just put all fifteen of the good shows in the slots and be guaranteed total dominance of the airwaves, but it would be a tremendous up-front cost-- a cost that would have to be absorbed by advertisers; advertisers who are probably not going to have as much faith in these shows as you do. So, you cut it down to ten great shows and five so-so ones. You still have high costs, and advertisers are still leery, but you lose some of the ratings share. It works out OK, but there will still be some undeserving shows that get the axe next season due to artificially "poor ratings" (ie the advertisers didn't want to front the cash for season 2 because the great show they sponsored didn't pick up in popularity until January). So, to ensure that everybody's happy, you pick five great shows, five OK shows, and the five cheap garbage shows. This way you balance out the costs of the expensive shows with the throwaways, which probably won't last until November anyway. Advertising costs stay level, people buy ads, they get watched by the masses; everybody's happy. Well, except for the 15 people whose shows got canned before they were even aired.
It's not because the "public" still likes mass-produced junkvision. It's because crap TV is cheap to produce and the networks have to put SOMETHING new in those timeslots each fall. I'd love to see more CSI-like shows on TV, but until good writing becomes cheaper it's just not going to happen.
A game that has commercials and product placements is not, can not be, and will never be a quality game.
Say what you will but I seriously doubt that Nobunaga's Ambition goes better with Coke.
Ever since the NES days, consoles have really gotten the low end of the spectrum in regards to extra goodies. Since the boxes all had to be a uniform size, according to Nintendo's strict rules, the packaging didn't offer much room for more than the game, the manual, some advertising, and maybe a small poster if you were lucky. There were some exceptions-- Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, if I recall, had larger-size manuals than their predecessors; and Startropics' infamous water-sensitive letter was another notable exception.
Later on, during the SNES days however, it started to become obvious that the manuals had to be improved and the extra goodies were considered optional. Square didn't listen, of course, and every Square game back then came with the thick manual and at least one poster (I think I still have the two that came with FFIII, and the ones from Chrono Trigger as well).
The Playstation is what killed the idea of extra goodies. Packaging was reduced from an impressive paperback-sized box to a mere CD jewel case, with manuals becoming more and more thin and space at a total premium. Sure, some games (like the aforementioned Lunar) came in bigger boxes with more impressive presentations, but for the most part the smaller packaging(brought on by cost concerns, it was cheaper to use a standard jewel case than having x,000 custom boxes made) killed the idea of goodies once and for all for consoles.
I have both games sitting proudly on my media rack. Of course, none of the goodies are on display-- stuff tends to get lost around me-- but the full inventory is as follows:
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
Demo Disc
Hardbound manual
Cloth map
"Making Of" movie disc
Soundtrack Audio CD
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
Ghaleon Punching Puppet
Hardbound manual
"Making Of" movie disc
Soundtrack Audio CD
Goldtone replica of Lucia's pendant
Cardboard character standees
Paper map
Spiffy "Omake Box" to hold most of this stuff
Both games went for $60 US, and were generally well-received. No console game that I know of has provided so much non-essential stuff, before or since.
...will be trying this licensing shit in Russia.
EVERYBODY knows you don't invade Russia. It screwed Napoleon, it screwed Hitler, and it's going to screw McBride.
I had the most fun with this when I lived in Erie. The machine wasn't always there-- but it was the last time I was in town (about a week before Christmas). It's by Konami, and I don't remember the exact name of it, unfortunately. I think something like "MoCap Boxing" or something similar. Anyway, there's also a similar game called "Police 911"-- it combines the duck-and-cover style of play with a Virtua Cop shooting element. Come to think of it... that could easily be done on the PS2 now, with the Eyetoy and a Guncon. Anyway, yeah, thanks for reminding me of this game.
Speaking of Konami games, a lot of people have mentioned DDR, but Para Para Paradise and Dance Freaks offer full-body dance challenges. Unfortunately, those games haven't caught on so much in the US-- certainly not to the extent that DDR has-- but I imagine it would be a hell of a lot more efficient than screwing around with a broken controller.
Many of us are thinking back beyond what's currently popular and making the biggest headlines. I don't doubt you that a good game based on some of the lesser-known properties, like Silver Surfer, Thor, or Dr. Doom (who would make an interesting game "protagonist", if you think about it), would be well-received by fans both old and new. But here's how I see things.
My sister-- just two years younger than me, and I'm going on 25-- is big into comics of late. Marvel especially, and the "X-Men Evolution" series currently airing on Kids WB in particular. I picked up the hard-bound "Ultimate X-Men vol. 1" for her for Christmas, and she was thrilled. So was I-- complain all you want, but the series is damn good. As I was reading it, though, I took a look at the production notes, as they were. The writers and artists felt that having thirty years of backstory-- some of it contradictory, some of it ludicrous, and some of it just plain factually wrong-- was starting to wear down the appeal of the X-Men franchise. The ensemble was bringing in new fans, but these fans-- some of whom had never picked up a comic book in their entire lives-- were quickly turned off because they just plain didn't have a clue what was going on, what all the characters were referencing.
Marvel had tried putting new life into its series before-- the "What-Ifs" are the only thing I can remember as being mentioned int he notes, but I'm sure someone will come to my memory's aid (ha ha). Those hadn't turned out as well as they'd expected. So the writers basically said, "dump it all, let's just start over."
And wouldn't you know it, but it works. The familiar stories are there-- X-Men versus the Sentinels, Magneto's big thing, the Savage Land-- they're just told in a different, new, and damn spiffy way. It might not sound like it would be a big seller-- but combined with the media blitz Marvel's been going through, the series has proven pretty successful.
So build on that.
Based on the success of the "Ultimate" series (an "Ultimate Spider-Man" is also out), it would be kind of logical to use that material to make a good adventure game or even an RPG. You just know that BioWare's been contacted at least once-- look what they did for Star Wars; don't you think they could handle something like KOTOR, but with the X-Men theme? You might not get the old, die-hard, "I'll never let go of 300 back issues worth of story" fans, but you will get newer, fresher blood. And you can stretch that out for a good three, four games as the story arcs evolve and progress.
Might be worth a look, from a gamer's standpoint, too. But then again, maybe that's just the wild ramblings of a young pup who never got to read X-Men until he was in college.
The Nyko AirFlo, despite being somewhat gimmicky, has a pretty good lock on being my favorite PC controller of late. It uses basic HID drivers, so no messing around with worrying about a driver disc. Only drawback is that it's somewhat tricky to set up in the emulators I use (ZSNES, UltraFCE, Gens); and trying to use it with my Nostromo Speedpad is a nightmare, generally I have to have only one or the other plugged in at a time. But a decent pad, physically identical to the PS2 version, with the exception of no force feedback (but I find that annoying anyway).
Yes, very cool. This probably has been discussed before, but another potential application might also be the study of sleep and dreams. Getting a more accurate picture of what goes on inside one's head during bedtime could help develop all sorts of insights into psychology and brain chemistry.
Thanks for the corrections. Like I said, I didn't go to PSU, but I knew a few guys who went to the Behrend campus.
Ah. I stand corrected. Sorry.
While I'm at it, "Live Free Or Die" is actually the state motto of New Hampshire. Not Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania's motto is "Virtue, Liberty and Independence".
About 350 years ago, a wealthy Brit was granted a lot of land on the American continent by the British monarchy. His name, William Penn. After the colonies revolted against the British crown, the colonies coagulated into states. Penn's state was big enough that it didn't need to coagulate into a larger territory, so it remained as it was: Penn State.
One of the legacies of Penn is a love of freedom, and this latest embrace of P2P by Penn State is another in a long string of "Live Free or Die" actions.
The story of Penn State is long and quite profound, but it's not quite pertinent to this discussion (except for the love of freedom stuff).
Great. Now for the Rest of the Story, told by someone who actually lives in "Penn State".
"Penn State", as the above (non-American) poster uses it, is actually the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Derived from founder William Penn, "Pennsylvania" is composed from "Penn" and "Sylvania", and generally means "Penn's Woods".) Pennsylvania is one of two commonwealths (not strictly states) in the U.S.; Massachusetts is the other. (The difference is largely semantic to someone not interested in political theory and the like.) Pennsylvania is the only of the original 13 Colonies that does not have a border on the Atlantic Ocean; it is bordered by New York to the north, Ohio to the west, New Jersey to the east, and West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware to the south. The only coastline Pennsylvania has is in the northwest region, on Lake Erie; the city of Erie (home to Gannon University) is an important port along the Great Lakes.
"Penn State" is the abbreviated nickname for Pennsylvania State University, a governmental-run university with its head campus in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (the state capital); there are a grand total of 18 satellite campuses throughout Pennsylvania. Penn State is known for its football team, the Nittany Lions. For any more detailed information, check the link. (I went to Gannon, so I could tell you more about that school.)