Putting a GC mini-disc into anything that is not a GameCube will do absolutely nothing. The disc refuses to load. It would be neat to have an audio track warning, similar to many PS1, Saturn, or Dreamcast discs (the audio track as well as a PC-readable track actually were mandatory parts of the DC's GD-ROM spec and some discs had some pretty neat extras or funny sound). The XBox DVDs have a brief, uniform "this disc is an XBox game, go buy an XBox" message when placed in a DVD player.
Oh, and FYI, putting an 80mm audio CD-R in a GameCube also does nothing. The GC refuses to read it.
...no, no, I won't. Millions after me will, though.
I see this as a good thing. Open source will definitely help give some countries a good advantage into getting on a competitive tech level with the rest of the world. Of course, if enough non-America nations wind up embracing Linux as their sort of official operating system, we could have a situation like the English units/metric units thing... but maybe I'm looking too far ahead. Or maybe I'm just being stupid.
Even better-- pay in Canadian currency. That way it really is smaller. "I paid you 299 dollars and ninety-nine cents, just like we agreed upon. The fact is, you never specified the American dollar or the Canadian dollar, so I just used the unit more convenient for me."
Hear hear. A micropayment search service (ie $5 US gets you 500 searches) would be perfect as long as it provided some tangible benefit over the non-pay service. Obviously you don't want to restrict anything that's free now, because that would be evil; probably removing ads and sponsored results-- or even better, suppressing any of those annoying "ads by Google" boxes you see everywhere (this could be done by use of the Toolbar).
Xbox ads are always MTV music videos with James Earl Jones at the end.
Is that James Earl Jones? Doesn't sound like him. Some other well-known actor, of course, whose name escapes me. Maybe Laurence Fishburne, perhaps, but I'm fairly certain it's not Jones.
I can't help but think that if you could actually convince three other people to play this with you that it would be fun for roughly 20 to 30 minutes tops.
Which, of course, is why it's being packaged in with the other games and not released as a stand-alone product. Myself, I'm not that interested in it-- it's one of those cool ideas that probably really isn't worth $50, but deserves to be played anyway.
Y'know, I passed over this story four times before finally reading it, and the name "Digital Eclipse" didn't click for me until just now.
DE did the port of Phantasy Star Collection for the GBA. I wasn't terribly impressed upon encountering the save-game glitch for the first time. I gave up after the fiftieth time.
I certainly hope Phantasy Star 4 gets debugged, at least, before it's released.
I foresee a minor problem with this. As of right now the most players that a multi-player GBA game can support is 4, through the use of three link cables (or one, if you sprung for the 4-port one). The blurb mentions being able to have five players simultaneously. This raises the question: Will the wireless capability be compatible with pre-existing link games? Will future link games allow the use of wired cables if two wireless adapters are not present? Is it possible to mix wired and wireless play?
It seems like a good idea, but it would be nice to know all the facts before chucking my link cable in the garbage.
Nobody wants store credit, in my experience as an EB Games clerk for over a year. If they paid cash for a game that they burned, then they want cash back....They never got it, but they wanted it.
Your points are valid except for one minor quibble.
It's generally agreed that Final Fantasy, Mario, Castlevania, Mega Man, Zelda, Metroid, Metal Gear, and Sonic the Hedgehog games are good, even when they're not great.
Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Army Men, and other series have slid consistently down the toilet since their supposedly brilliant debuts.
There's a difference between maintaining a good series and milking a semi-decent idea.
Because, short of tunneling, the Xbox has no online capability without Live. I know, there are ways around it, of course, but if EA tried a stunt like that-- if any Xbox developer tried to get around the Live monopoly-- they'd find their license revoked and the power of a fully armed and operational Legion of Lawyers breathing down their neck. Rather than lose out on a very lucrative moneymaker (i.e. sports games on the Xbox selling better than many other games), EA has wisely decided that they're going to simply not use Live in their Xbox games.
Wise, but not smart. Does EA not realize how many kazillions of dollars they could gain from selling banner ads to be displayed in the game lobbies? You don't have to make them big, or have them obstruct the gameplay in any way, but if they're there someone will notice them. The fact that the Xbox has a hard drive to store and cache ads helps, too. Like I said, wise (to avoid losing more money than necessary), but not smart.
...it [the list] omits games that are a bit too obscure to be of interest to an American audience, and/or very difficult to correctly translate... Personally, I'm interested to see what was left off. They put Pop'n Music 9 on the list; if *that* wasn't too obscure, then I wonder just what does qualify as too obscure (besides GetBackers and Joe whatever).
(On a completely unrelated note, natch, I believe GameFAQs listed Pop'n Music as actually having had a U.S. release for PS1 way, way back. Anyone know?)
Seriously. It doesn't help that other people are recommending games to me that actually turn out to be pretty good... Let's see, Tactics Advance, Advance Wars, KotOR, I still haven't finished Halo, I started a trip through Wild ARMs, I'm in the "I don't want to advance the plot anymore" phase of Pokemon Sapphire... and then there's CSI, Neverwinter Nights, Black & White, Diablo II, and Starcraft, many of which I haven't even touched in months...
On a related note, Hit & Run was good? Really?! I'll have to check that out.... eventually.
Being an excessive literalist myself, I always think that "extreme" indicates that something is at the far end of a spectrum.
For example, this new chip is at the far positive end of the price spectrum, and at the far negative end of the "will I really need this in the next three years" spectrum. It, being on the far ends of two spectrums, qualifies as EXXTREME.
(Nevermind that my first online nick had xtreme in it. I was 15, sue me.)
Yep, Card is doing work for a Brute Force-like game called Advent Rising. GameFAQs lists it as supposeldy being released early next year. I'd read that Card isn't doing plot scripting so much as dialogue writing or something along those lines, but I'm not sure now. In any event, the game sounds good on paper-- I hope it plays well.
Incidentally, one thing I've noticed is that people who play a lot of computer/console RPGs tend to read a hell of a lot faster than others. This could be part of the reason why.
Slashdot Mirror
Putting a GC mini-disc into anything that is not a GameCube will do absolutely nothing. The disc refuses to load. It would be neat to have an audio track warning, similar to many PS1, Saturn, or Dreamcast discs (the audio track as well as a PC-readable track actually were mandatory parts of the DC's GD-ROM spec and some discs had some pretty neat extras or funny sound). The XBox DVDs have a brief, uniform "this disc is an XBox game, go buy an XBox" message when placed in a DVD player.
Oh, and FYI, putting an 80mm audio CD-R in a GameCube also does nothing. The GC refuses to read it.
At least now I know I won't get funny looks for saying that I got my degree at Gannon University. Bachelor of Science in Global Domination, baby!
The smartest thing to do, of course, is to push the patch via Xbox Live. But then again, smart != easy, and smart != what actually happens.
...no, no, I won't. Millions after me will, though.
I see this as a good thing. Open source will definitely help give some countries a good advantage into getting on a competitive tech level with the rest of the world. Of course, if enough non-America nations wind up embracing Linux as their sort of official operating system, we could have a situation like the English units/metric units thing... but maybe I'm looking too far ahead. Or maybe I'm just being stupid.
Even better-- pay in Canadian currency. That way it really is smaller. "I paid you 299 dollars and ninety-nine cents, just like we agreed upon. The fact is, you never specified the American dollar or the Canadian dollar, so I just used the unit more convenient for me."
Hear hear. A micropayment search service (ie $5 US gets you 500 searches) would be perfect as long as it provided some tangible benefit over the non-pay service. Obviously you don't want to restrict anything that's free now, because that would be evil; probably removing ads and sponsored results-- or even better, suppressing any of those annoying "ads by Google" boxes you see everywhere (this could be done by use of the Toolbar).
I wonder how a prestigious Japanese studio like Gainax would handle a HHG2G movie?
Well, for one thing, the ending wouldn't make any se-- wait a minute...
Xbox ads are always MTV music videos with James Earl Jones at the end.
Is that James Earl Jones? Doesn't sound like him. Some other well-known actor, of course, whose name escapes me. Maybe Laurence Fishburne, perhaps, but I'm fairly certain it's not Jones.
I can't help but think that if you could actually convince three other people to play this with you that it would be fun for roughly 20 to 30 minutes tops.
Which, of course, is why it's being packaged in with the other games and not released as a stand-alone product. Myself, I'm not that interested in it-- it's one of those cool ideas that probably really isn't worth $50, but deserves to be played anyway.
Whoa.
Y'know, I passed over this story four times before finally reading it, and the name "Digital Eclipse" didn't click for me until just now.
DE did the port of Phantasy Star Collection for the GBA. I wasn't terribly impressed upon encountering the save-game glitch for the first time. I gave up after the fiftieth time.
I certainly hope Phantasy Star 4 gets debugged, at least, before it's released.
I foresee a minor problem with this. As of right now the most players that a multi-player GBA game can support is 4, through the use of three link cables (or one, if you sprung for the 4-port one). The blurb mentions being able to have five players simultaneously. This raises the question: Will the wireless capability be compatible with pre-existing link games? Will future link games allow the use of wired cables if two wireless adapters are not present? Is it possible to mix wired and wireless play?
It seems like a good idea, but it would be nice to know all the facts before chucking my link cable in the garbage.
Screw that. Lavos's scream made me wet my pants the first time I heard it.
Oh, and J-E-N-O-V-A (the music) still sends chills down my spine.
...by giving store credit instead of cash...
...They never got it, but they wanted it.
Nobody wants store credit, in my experience as an EB Games clerk for over a year. If they paid cash for a game that they burned, then they want cash back.
EB used to do this. They don't anymore because people would conveniently "lose" the receipt that read "THIS SALE IS FINAL".
Your points are valid except for one minor quibble.
It's generally agreed that Final Fantasy, Mario, Castlevania, Mega Man, Zelda, Metroid, Metal Gear, and Sonic the Hedgehog games are good, even when they're not great.
Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Army Men, and other series have slid consistently down the toilet since their supposedly brilliant debuts.
There's a difference between maintaining a good series and milking a semi-decent idea.
Because, short of tunneling, the Xbox has no online capability without Live. I know, there are ways around it, of course, but if EA tried a stunt like that-- if any Xbox developer tried to get around the Live monopoly-- they'd find their license revoked and the power of a fully armed and operational Legion of Lawyers breathing down their neck. Rather than lose out on a very lucrative moneymaker (i.e. sports games on the Xbox selling better than many other games), EA has wisely decided that they're going to simply not use Live in their Xbox games.
Wise, but not smart. Does EA not realize how many kazillions of dollars they could gain from selling banner ads to be displayed in the game lobbies? You don't have to make them big, or have them obstruct the gameplay in any way, but if they're there someone will notice them. The fact that the Xbox has a hard drive to store and cache ads helps, too. Like I said, wise (to avoid losing more money than necessary), but not smart.
...it [the list] omits games that are a bit too obscure to be of interest to an American audience, and/or very difficult to correctly translate...
Personally, I'm interested to see what was left off. They put Pop'n Music 9 on the list; if *that* wasn't too obscure, then I wonder just what does qualify as too obscure (besides GetBackers and Joe whatever).
(On a completely unrelated note, natch, I believe GameFAQs listed Pop'n Music as actually having had a U.S. release for PS1 way, way back. Anyone know?)
..."don't just tell us about the worm, patch the son of a bitch!"
Seriously. It doesn't help that other people are recommending games to me that actually turn out to be pretty good... Let's see, Tactics Advance, Advance Wars, KotOR, I still haven't finished Halo, I started a trip through Wild ARMs, I'm in the "I don't want to advance the plot anymore" phase of Pokemon Sapphire... and then there's CSI, Neverwinter Nights, Black & White, Diablo II, and Starcraft, many of which I haven't even touched in months...
On a related note, Hit & Run was good? Really?! I'll have to check that out.... eventually.
...after trying to harness the power of looney, wacky, zany, or crazy, they succeeded only in making use of nutty power.
On my friend's computer it seemed to stand for "Xcruciating Torment". He hated that thing.
Being an excessive literalist myself, I always think that "extreme" indicates that something is at the far end of a spectrum.
For example, this new chip is at the far positive end of the price spectrum, and at the far negative end of the "will I really need this in the next three years" spectrum. It, being on the far ends of two spectrums, qualifies as EXXTREME.
(Nevermind that my first online nick had xtreme in it. I was 15, sue me.)
Yep, Card is doing work for a Brute Force-like game called Advent Rising. GameFAQs lists it as supposeldy being released early next year. I'd read that Card isn't doing plot scripting so much as dialogue writing or something along those lines, but I'm not sure now. In any event, the game sounds good on paper-- I hope it plays well.
Seriously.
Incidentally, one thing I've noticed is that people who play a lot of computer/console RPGs tend to read a hell of a lot faster than others. This could be part of the reason why.