Good to know I'm not the only one who went "@!$@, I still haven't beat the last boss in Tactics Ogre..."
And the best part is, since I work nights now, I can play 'em at work. The GBA games, at least.
Well, then, here's my list: Breath of Fire III, Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4, Suikoden II, Wild ARMs (2nd trip through before Alter Code: F comes out next year), Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, Advance Wars 2, Pokemon Sapphire, Phantasy Star Collection, and Neverwinter Nights.
Should there be warnings on the box that say "Limited server time. The online server will not be up forever. We will never give the server code to 3rd parties."?
EA's sports titles already say this-- "online servers not guaranteed after the next version of the game comes out" or something like that. Actually, nowadays not too many people even really care how long a game is being run-- there'll always be something bigger or better later on, to make you forget about how much fun the older games actually were.
Not that I really agree with that, but hey. Business. What're you gonna do?
Sin & Punishment would be a good addition, but personally I'd rather see a bunch of underappreciated N64 games lumped together on a disc. Stuff like Mischief Makers... uh... and really just Mischief Makers.
I had the distinct misfortune of seeing "Super Mario Bros." on cable the other day, for lack of any other good thing on, and that got me thinking. Sure, the acting in many games today is bad... but at least it was never that bad.
I'm glad he's looking for spiritual content in video games. This way when he dies, St. Peter won't be waiting for him at the gates, but Pac-Man.
Seriously, has our culture (as a world, mind you) fallen so far that we are now unable to separate reality from fantasy for the hours spent playing a video game-- for even a moment? Lots of great literature would be lost if it were judged on its political-religious correctness factor; specifically the Greek and Roman myths. The rest of the world should not be punished for a few people's inability to exercise suspension of disbelief.
Personally, as an ex-Catholic, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a game where the character worships different or many gods. After all, all I'm doing is pushing a button. I'm not actually praying. What's the big deal?
In my experience, no one will ever press the button marked "click here if you don't know what that means" until they call tech support and are told the correct button to press, which they will ignore. People do not take well to being called stupid-- they will freely admit it themselves, usually as a defense mechanism when they fail to follow simple directions ("I thought you said 'press delete', not 'don't press delete'-- I'm no good with these things")-- but if a button is labeled "click here if you don't know what you're doing" it will never, ever be pressed.
Well, to be honest, my plate's a little full for the fall (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, RPG Maker 2, not to mention everything else I've bought and failed to finish) but this might be good enough to check out after Christmas, when the price goes down. For a game that's been in hiding until now, though, it's probably a bit risky to have a September release date. Unless they've been working on it since Vice City came out, that is.
When you take a franchise known for space combat and dogfighting, and turn it into an adventure/platform/collect-the-shiny-unpronounceab le-thing-quest-- throwing in maybe a handful of extremely short space flight segments that offer no challenge whatsoever-- there're really only two ways it can turn out. Groundbreaking and innovative, or utter crap. Rare was not groundbreaking or innovative with Star Fox Adventures.
You mentioned the other reason I hate the game-- it's a copy of Zelda with a Star Fox skin thrown on. And I'm probably one of the seven people out there who hated the 3-D Zelda games.
But you're certainly right. SFA is nowhere near as bad as Daikatana.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure I trust Rare as a developer anymore... After the travesty that was Star Fox Adventures, I'm seriously considering just plain passing over any of their GBA releases without a second glance. They had their time in the sun, and now it's time for them to move on.
That said, a GBA port of Killer Instinct probably would tempt me.
Shouldn't broadband providers be sending emails to their clients with a link in them?
This was explained to me this morning in a meeting. We can't do much more than say "You have a virus, run a google to get the fix" because if we tell the user exactly how to fix the problem and install the patch (which I would do), and the customer does the exact opposite of what you tell them to do, or even just makes one mistake (which always happens), the resulting loss of data/hosing of the machine is our fault, even though it really isn't.
We put a message on the phone before callers get put on hold, saying pretty much "your computer is infected, patch or die". This did not stop people from waiting 10 minutes to ask a tech why their computer was broken. More than that, at any given moment between 9a-12p there were well over 150 callers on hold.
Moral of the story: Never underestimate the ability of stupid people to sue your for their own damn mistakes.
WotC's d20 Modern offers something like that in the Urban Arcana sourcebook. Non-human elements co-mingle with ordinary humans, even if the humans delude themselves intot hinking otherwise. I've been busy tweaking that material for a campaign, but it's nearly impossible to find players around here (northern Pennsylvania).
Indeed. I work tech support for a major ISP (not AOL) and I've started recommending it. This stemming from the fact that, actually, I didn't even install it for the pop-up blocker.
Despite the obvious troll, there is a point nestled in there, and one which probably deserves a little attention (as well as a counterpoint). The above poster's comment asks whether or not this is a valid use of the technology when other methods of obtaining the shows exist-- as stated, gnutella, Kazaa, etc. The drawback comes when you consider the time factor. Rarely does a show get taped, digitized, and distributed within hours of its release-- there are, of course, exceptions, but not many. This makes things like, say, the 6 o'clock news a bit less timely when it comes three days later. The idea behind the brick (as far as I can tell without having read the article) is streaming, live video. (While "streaming" and "live" could potentially be used to describe tentacle rape porn, let's keep this academic discussion marginally professional, shall we?) Thus, a Japanese family in Versailles with relatives (say, a brother-in-law's family) in Sendai could keep track of the news, and/or hear about the Angels obliterating Tokyo, etc. without having to wait for someone to digitize it out of the goodness of their hearts. Incidentally, I give the whole project about 3 weeks before the MPAA, RIAA, and USDA all jump on it as "copyright infringement". Just another case of complacent corporations losing out because they didn't bother to develop the technology first.
That's fine, assuming that everybody either buys 2 games or zero games.
Personally I own three now and have previously purchased four others, making a total of seven games purchased. (For simplicity's sake we're assuming that the games were purchased new because, even if the game was purchased used, MS still gets their licensing cut from the original purchaser of the game-- the number of new units does not go up or down). At any given moment, I have made up for two other people who purchased zero games and one other person who has purchased only one game. The odds are semi-good that the average game player will not purchase only two games during a console's 5-7 year life span.
As a result, it balances out. The addition of increased potential for non-purchasing of games (I hesitate to say "piracy" when a legitimate use of the exploit exists) does not negate the potential for profit on the XBox, it merely lessens it.
Since it is a given that, regardless of how secure the encryption on something is, it WILL eventually be broken, the probability of the exploit coming out (one way or another) is 1. As a result, Microsoft's dilemma should not be "how do we sue these guys into the afterlife?" but "how do we convince more people to buy the games, as opposed to simply pirating them?".
If someone shouts at you for three hours that you're a pink tuna fish, do you respond?
SCO's claims are so utterly ridiculous that even someone with a passing familiarity of copyright law, GPL, and even the SCO debacle is able to dismiss the claims as stupid. Truth can be self-evident but nothing stands out as much as outright lunacy.
DVDs may be expensive, but keep in mind that regardless of how popular certain "mainstream" series may be, anime is still a niche market. The possibility for a return on investment for an anime series (let's say, X) is significantly lower than that for an American TV series (let's say, CSI-- and yes, I know, apples and oranges, but look at them as both DVDs, not an anime and a live-action drama). CSI season 1 boxed set-- 20 hour-long episodes, live action. Runs about $80-$120, location being a factor. X TV series-- no boxed set yet, but it's 27 half-hour long episodes of digital and cel animation. 8 discs, sold separately, running about $30 a disc means the whole series (which ran for one season on Japanese TV) plus DVD extras run you about $240. Three factors here: the CSI boxed set is going to sell a hell of a lot more copies than the X discs. Period. More people know about it and as a result more people can be reasonably expected to buy it. Second: the CSI boxed set has a limited number of extras; maybe a half-hour of interviews and director's commentary tracks. The average anime series has about 30 minutes worth of extras per disc-- maybe not 30 minutes of footage, but they're hidden or amusing enough to the anime fan to stretch for about 30 minutes. Last: Most anime series on DVD come as both subbed and dubbed. Dual-language tracks on American movies is very rare-- I think maybe three of the movies I own have second language options. The video game analogy is flawed similarly: more people play games than watch anime. And besides, a $50 game has to recoup development costs as well as marketing. If anime were marketed more aggressively it would be in the range of $50 per disc, too. I don't care much for piracy of any kind, but people will do it. That's not my point here. (How could I make that point with a burned set of Azumanga Daioh sitting in my media rack, at least until it's out here?) My point is that the economics of anime DVDs and the economics of American DVDs are two different things. (By the way, IANA economist; I barely passed it. This is just an educated guess, I don't have the final word, blah blah)
Sources within the company say that the bug is not the result of an unfortunate typo, but rather the outcome of an anti-spam filter which was intended to remove all obscene references to urine from email. The National Association of Urologists and Endocrinologists is up in arms.
While the audience might be a bit older here in the states, most of the anime we get is targeted at middle school students in japan. [my emphases] I think you nailed it right there. Just because it's not available over here doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Would you show "Noir", "Excel Saga", or even "Cowboy Bebop" to a thirteen year old? Probably not. There are more series aimed at the younger generation, true, but there are still enough adult-oriented series to prevent categorically defining Japanese anime as "kids' stuff primarily watched by grownups".
If you implement any kind of verification or tracking system for e-mail, you instantly destroy 80% of the anonymity of the message. Someone skilled enough could trace "reminder of meeting on tues."'s verification back to the same source as "anonymous political manifesto"'s verification, and you would immediately know who to arrest. Granted, someone equally skilled could just as easily distort/disrupt the verification, but then the verification would be rendered useless and the spam problem would continue to get worse. If you ask me (which nobody ever does), the best way to get rid of unsolictited mass e-mail is to disallow multiple recipients from within SMTP and use a secure protocol or web bulletin-board (or something) for mass communication. Individual e-mails (one human to another) would be OK, but mass e-mail would be more controlled.
Slashdot Mirror
...but would still need access to a database in order to determine that that number is a particular subversive book that you should not be reading.
If the book is so subversive, implying underground distribution, would it even have a tag to begin with?
...items such as coke cans and underwar[sic] could simply be ping:ed on the net.
So if someone DDoS's your shorts, does that mean they've h4x0r3d j00r b0x0r5?
Good to know I'm not the only one who went "@!$@, I still haven't beat the last boss in Tactics Ogre..."
And the best part is, since I work nights now, I can play 'em at work. The GBA games, at least.
Well, then, here's my list:
Breath of Fire III, Mega Man 8, Mega Man X4, Suikoden II, Wild ARMs (2nd trip through before Alter Code: F comes out next year), Halo, Knights of the Old Republic, Advance Wars 2, Pokemon Sapphire, Phantasy Star Collection, and Neverwinter Nights.
Should there be warnings on the box that say "Limited server time. The online server will not be up forever. We will never give the server code to 3rd parties."?
EA's sports titles already say this-- "online servers not guaranteed after the next version of the game comes out" or something like that. Actually, nowadays not too many people even really care how long a game is being run-- there'll always be something bigger or better later on, to make you forget about how much fun the older games actually were.
Not that I really agree with that, but hey. Business. What're you gonna do?
Sin & Punishment would be a good addition, but personally I'd rather see a bunch of underappreciated N64 games lumped together on a disc. Stuff like Mischief Makers... uh... and really just Mischief Makers.
I had the distinct misfortune of seeing "Super Mario Bros." on cable the other day, for lack of any other good thing on, and that got me thinking. Sure, the acting in many games today is bad... but at least it was never that bad.
I'm glad he's looking for spiritual content in video games. This way when he dies, St. Peter won't be waiting for him at the gates, but Pac-Man.
Seriously, has our culture (as a world, mind you) fallen so far that we are now unable to separate reality from fantasy for the hours spent playing a video game-- for even a moment? Lots of great literature would be lost if it were judged on its political-religious correctness factor; specifically the Greek and Roman myths. The rest of the world should not be punished for a few people's inability to exercise suspension of disbelief.
Personally, as an ex-Catholic, I don't think there's anything wrong with playing a game where the character worships different or many gods. After all, all I'm doing is pushing a button. I'm not actually praying. What's the big deal?
In my experience, no one will ever press the button marked "click here if you don't know what that means" until they call tech support and are told the correct button to press, which they will ignore. People do not take well to being called stupid-- they will freely admit it themselves, usually as a defense mechanism when they fail to follow simple directions ("I thought you said 'press delete', not 'don't press delete'-- I'm no good with these things")-- but if a button is labeled "click here if you don't know what you're doing" it will never, ever be pressed.
Well, to be honest, my plate's a little full for the fall (Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, RPG Maker 2, not to mention everything else I've bought and failed to finish) but this might be good enough to check out after Christmas, when the price goes down. For a game that's been in hiding until now, though, it's probably a bit risky to have a September release date. Unless they've been working on it since Vice City came out, that is.
I'm not sure if it's that simple-- is it just me, or is it unclear on whether or not a PS1 or PS2 memory card is needed?
Online play is also good. Thus, Tetris Worlds for XBox seems to fit the bill nicely, especially when you factor in the custom soundtrack feature.
God help me, did I just say I liked an XBox game on Slashdot? I'm going to be moderated into the seventh layer of hell for this...
When you take a franchise known for space combat and dogfighting, and turn it into an adventure/platform/collect-the-shiny-unpronounceab le-thing-quest-- throwing in maybe a handful of extremely short space flight segments that offer no challenge whatsoever-- there're really only two ways it can turn out. Groundbreaking and innovative, or utter crap. Rare was not groundbreaking or innovative with Star Fox Adventures.
You mentioned the other reason I hate the game-- it's a copy of Zelda with a Star Fox skin thrown on. And I'm probably one of the seven people out there who hated the 3-D Zelda games.
But you're certainly right. SFA is nowhere near as bad as Daikatana.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure I trust Rare as a developer anymore... After the travesty that was Star Fox Adventures, I'm seriously considering just plain passing over any of their GBA releases without a second glance. They had their time in the sun, and now it's time for them to move on.
That said, a GBA port of Killer Instinct probably would tempt me.
Shouldn't broadband providers be sending emails to their clients with a link in them?
This was explained to me this morning in a meeting. We can't do much more than say "You have a virus, run a google to get the fix" because if we tell the user exactly how to fix the problem and install the patch (which I would do), and the customer does the exact opposite of what you tell them to do, or even just makes one mistake (which always happens), the resulting loss of data/hosing of the machine is our fault, even though it really isn't.
We put a message on the phone before callers get put on hold, saying pretty much "your computer is infected, patch or die". This did not stop people from waiting 10 minutes to ask a tech why their computer was broken. More than that, at any given moment between 9a-12p there were well over 150 callers on hold.
Moral of the story: Never underestimate the ability of stupid people to sue your for their own damn mistakes.
WotC's d20 Modern offers something like that in the Urban Arcana sourcebook. Non-human elements co-mingle with ordinary humans, even if the humans delude themselves intot hinking otherwise. I've been busy tweaking that material for a campaign, but it's nearly impossible to find players around here (northern Pennsylvania).
Indeed. I work tech support for a major ISP (not AOL) and I've started recommending it. This stemming from the fact that, actually, I didn't even install it for the pop-up blocker.
Damn, here I was hoping there would be a chance of prosicuting in a country that still has the death penalty. Preferably something slow.
Have you watched British television lately?
Despite the obvious troll, there is a point nestled in there, and one which probably deserves a little attention (as well as a counterpoint). The above poster's comment asks whether or not this is a valid use of the technology when other methods of obtaining the shows exist-- as stated, gnutella, Kazaa, etc. The drawback comes when you consider the time factor. Rarely does a show get taped, digitized, and distributed within hours of its release-- there are, of course, exceptions, but not many. This makes things like, say, the 6 o'clock news a bit less timely when it comes three days later. The idea behind the brick (as far as I can tell without having read the article) is streaming, live video. (While "streaming" and "live" could potentially be used to describe tentacle rape porn, let's keep this academic discussion marginally professional, shall we?) Thus, a Japanese family in Versailles with relatives (say, a brother-in-law's family) in Sendai could keep track of the news, and/or hear about the Angels obliterating Tokyo, etc. without having to wait for someone to digitize it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Incidentally, I give the whole project about 3 weeks before the MPAA, RIAA, and USDA all jump on it as "copyright infringement". Just another case of complacent corporations losing out because they didn't bother to develop the technology first.
That's fine, assuming that everybody either buys 2 games or zero games.
Personally I own three now and have previously purchased four others, making a total of seven games purchased. (For simplicity's sake we're assuming that the games were purchased new because, even if the game was purchased used, MS still gets their licensing cut from the original purchaser of the game-- the number of new units does not go up or down). At any given moment, I have made up for two other people who purchased zero games and one other person who has purchased only one game. The odds are semi-good that the average game player will not purchase only two games during a console's 5-7 year life span.
As a result, it balances out. The addition of increased potential for non-purchasing of games (I hesitate to say "piracy" when a legitimate use of the exploit exists) does not negate the potential for profit on the XBox, it merely lessens it.
Since it is a given that, regardless of how secure the encryption on something is, it WILL eventually be broken, the probability of the exploit coming out (one way or another) is 1. As a result, Microsoft's dilemma should not be "how do we sue these guys into the afterlife?" but "how do we convince more people to buy the games, as opposed to simply pirating them?".
If someone shouts at you for three hours that you're a pink tuna fish, do you respond?
SCO's claims are so utterly ridiculous that even someone with a passing familiarity of copyright law, GPL, and even the SCO debacle is able to dismiss the claims as stupid. Truth can be self-evident but nothing stands out as much as outright lunacy.
DVDs may be expensive, but keep in mind that regardless of how popular certain "mainstream" series may be, anime is still a niche market. The possibility for a return on investment for an anime series (let's say, X) is significantly lower than that for an American TV series (let's say, CSI-- and yes, I know, apples and oranges, but look at them as both DVDs, not an anime and a live-action drama).
CSI season 1 boxed set-- 20 hour-long episodes, live action. Runs about $80-$120, location being a factor.
X TV series-- no boxed set yet, but it's 27 half-hour long episodes of digital and cel animation. 8 discs, sold separately, running about $30 a disc means the whole series (which ran for one season on Japanese TV) plus DVD extras run you about $240.
Three factors here: the CSI boxed set is going to sell a hell of a lot more copies than the X discs. Period. More people know about it and as a result more people can be reasonably expected to buy it.
Second: the CSI boxed set has a limited number of extras; maybe a half-hour of interviews and director's commentary tracks. The average anime series has about 30 minutes worth of extras per disc-- maybe not 30 minutes of footage, but they're hidden or amusing enough to the anime fan to stretch for about 30 minutes.
Last: Most anime series on DVD come as both subbed and dubbed. Dual-language tracks on American movies is very rare-- I think maybe three of the movies I own have second language options.
The video game analogy is flawed similarly: more people play games than watch anime. And besides, a $50 game has to recoup development costs as well as marketing. If anime were marketed more aggressively it would be in the range of $50 per disc, too.
I don't care much for piracy of any kind, but people will do it. That's not my point here. (How could I make that point with a burned set of Azumanga Daioh sitting in my media rack, at least until it's out here?) My point is that the economics of anime DVDs and the economics of American DVDs are two different things.
(By the way, IANA economist; I barely passed it. This is just an educated guess, I don't have the final word, blah blah)
Uh, you do realize that Snood was a clone of Taito's Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-A-Move in the US)?
Sources within the company say that the bug is not the result of an unfortunate typo, but rather the outcome of an anti-spam filter which was intended to remove all obscene references to urine from email. The National Association of Urologists and Endocrinologists is up in arms.
While the audience might be a bit older here in the states, most of the anime we get is targeted at middle school students in japan. [my emphases]
I think you nailed it right there. Just because it's not available over here doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Would you show "Noir", "Excel Saga", or even "Cowboy Bebop" to a thirteen year old? Probably not. There are more series aimed at the younger generation, true, but there are still enough adult-oriented series to prevent categorically defining Japanese anime as "kids' stuff primarily watched by grownups".
If you implement any kind of verification or tracking system for e-mail, you instantly destroy 80% of the anonymity of the message. Someone skilled enough could trace "reminder of meeting on tues."'s verification back to the same source as "anonymous political manifesto"'s verification, and you would immediately know who to arrest. Granted, someone equally skilled could just as easily distort/disrupt the verification, but then the verification would be rendered useless and the spam problem would continue to get worse.
If you ask me (which nobody ever does), the best way to get rid of unsolictited mass e-mail is to disallow multiple recipients from within SMTP and use a secure protocol or web bulletin-board (or something) for mass communication. Individual e-mails (one human to another) would be OK, but mass e-mail would be more controlled.