The company that pushes the boundaries of "How many times will you buy the same item?" For those of you who already have the e-Reader versions of some of these games, Nintendo will undoubtedly come up with some incentive to entice you, such as lost levels, alternate graphics modes, and promotional materials. And then, again in six months when they release the Classical Collection discs for the Gamecube (just a vague rumor I've heard batted around with no real merit).
I'm still reeling from the fact that cheap removable storage went from 720kb to 1.44mb to 650mb in less than 5 years.
It's almost enough to make me paranoid... I imagine a world where CD-ROM technology wasn't developed until the year 2000. A world where software was small, efficient, and possibly more productive.
Of course, in the radio series, it's entirely possible that the entire scrabble scene with the cavemen takes place in the artificial electronic universe in the Hitchhiker's offices.
Consider: Arthur and Ford are trapped on prehistoric Earth. Zaphod finds himself at the Hitchhiker's offices, which proceed to get bombed by Frogstar Fighters, and Zaphod gets hauled off to the Frogstar to be plugged into the Total Perspective Vortex, supposedly lethal to all sentient life. He survives, but it is later revealed that he only did so by being inside the artificial universe at the Hitchhiker's offices, which isn't dismantled until much later in the series.
Before the artificial universe is deactivated, Zaphod picks up Ford and Arthur from prehistoric Earth. They are quite definitely inside the artificial universe when it is deactivated, too. So, either Zaphod jumped out of the fake universe to get Ford and Arthur, and then back in to find Zarniwoop, or the whole business with the Gulgafrinchams happened in the artificial universe, in which case it could have been one of the minor differences between the fake and real universes.
I have a saying for articles like this: "Know where you are on the bell curve." The corollary is, of course, "Know where everyone else is, too."
If PCRPG fanatics comprised just one percent of the US population, that would still be more than 2 million people. I suspect it's probably less than that, but not by much.
I saw the whole Breakey concept shown off at Origins last year. The response was pretty much unanimous: This is a game?
I watched them demonstrate the things for about 15 minutes. Each time they enticed someone to try it out, it was the same. Insert keys, twist, something breaks. The demonstrater looks as the confused customer with a self-contented look on his face. The customer almost always replies (whether he won or not), "What am I missing? That's not fun."
To it's credit, there really is a little more to it than just that, or at least, there supposedly will be. The creators promise that you'll be able to use your key online to compete for prizes. No specific date stated: Last July it was "any day now," and it still is to this day. Expect to see it happen sometime after the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
"DISCover(R) technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 5,721, 951: a "home entertainment system for playing software designed for play in home computers." No one can manufacture a game console that plays PC games without infringing on this patent."
It gets more contrived than that. What constitutes the legal definition of "Personal Computer" or "Personal Computing Device"? How does the X-Box not already fit that definition?
"This may be the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun."
... Of the halfway decent (or better) advertising games.
Cool Spot (7-Up), Pepsiman (Pepsi, a-doy), and the recent Darkened Skye (Skittles) spring to mind.
Sure, they weren't revolutionary, or genre defining, but they were better than average, and certainly better than a purely ad-based game is expected to be.
A) Isn't this a really old dupe? Or am I just remembering the future again?
B) Advertisements in video games are little different from advertisements in movies. Either way, you've paid for entertainment which has superflous elements.
On a personal note, I dislike product placement a lot, but no more than I dislike gratuitous sex or violence.
But then again, I only account for less than 10% of the bell curve.
A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from November 18-December 14 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that the percentage of music file downloaders had fallen to 14% (about 18 million users) from 29% (about 35 million)...
Over the next 6 months, expect the RIAA to officially request the names of each and every person who participated in the poll, so that they too can be sued/threatened.
Personally, I have no problem with the RIAA tactics working on the general public. However, it doesn't mean that the tactics they're employing are the best (or even somewhere among the better) possible tactics for the situation.
Just because something is effective doesn't mean it's good.
There is an old German legend of Till Ulspringer, the prototypical conman, who sold a cheeseshop owner a mousetrap which was 100% guaranteed to kill all mice. It was a large block of wood and a mallet.
I've seen a lot of people asking and answering questions regarding the brain and its function, and most of them tend to believe that the brain is a biological computer, and behaves according to a closed set of rules.
I take issue with this, both for metaphysical and logical reasons.
I start with the premise of free will. I will not attempt to demonstrate my free will to you, since that is, as far as I can tell, impossible, just as it is for you to demonstrate your free will to me. Nevertheless, we are (mostly) willing to accept free will as a reasonable posit.
Now consider: If one truly has free will, then one would be able to choose differently in identical situations, correct? Let's extend that to its idealized limit: Even if every particle in the universe were in the same location with the same velocity and charges (ie, even if you could completely replicate a situation in every way, right down to the chemical levels in your brain), if you have free will, you should be able to choose differently.
Now consider: The laws of physics are reliable. Two atoms of hydrogen plus one atom of oxygen never suddenly and unexpectedly combines to make peanut butter. Unless some unusual circumstance is affecting it, it combines to make water, and even if there is an unusual circumstance, once it's effect is known, it can be reliably predicted.
Your brain is made of matter. It is subject to the laws of physics. The electrical signals and chemical reactions in it behave in predictable ways. If your conciousness resides entirely within your brain, you cannot have free will. Therefore, if you have free will, part of your conciousness must come from something other than your brain, and must come from a nonphysical source.
Have you actually played Duke Nukem 3D? It wasn't 3D, it was barely 2D. They could have done virtually the same game in one of those old Tiger handhelds from back in the early 90's.
Not just could have, but did. Virtually every game on the Game.com (with the exception of the passable Resident Evil 2) was an adaptation of a Tiger standalone handheld with better graphics. The system might have done a shade better if they had released Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which was fully developed before it was canned) and Command & Conquer (ditto).
Of course, the system still had a rotten refresh rate, poor control response, and thoroughly undocumented technology (read: All in-house developed games). The only reason Sega let them put Sonic on there was because Tiger already had an agreement that allowed them to make Sonic handheld games. I'm surprised they weren't sued into oblivion over the rotten quality.
And it didn't help that the stores treated it as an inexpensive game-like toy rather than a handheld system. And then there was the battery life. And the weird effects of the AC adaptor. And the games that crashed. And the reflashable cartridges. And the poor distribution. And the commercials with the mad midget who insulted the target market.
In fact, it seems that every stupid part of gaming industry no-no's was okayed with the Game.com, and every good idea was squashed. Tax write off?
This is actually an area in which I have a reasonable amount of experience.
For card games:
You have two options for getting a good looking deck made cheaply. You can buy a pack of 250 sheets of cardstock ($7.00 - $10.00 depending on where you go) and have that precision cut someplace like Kinko's or CopyMax (in OfficeMax). Standard playing cards are usually 2.5" x 3.5", although some are 2" x 3". At any rate, you should be able to get at least 10 cards from each sheet, possibly more, giving you about 2500+ cards.
Alternatively, you can go to your local print shop and have them precision cut some 12-point semi-glossy stock for you. It will look a lot nicer, and shuffle better, but it will cost you much more (I paid $20.00 for 300 cards).
Before you print, you should make sure your card graphics are going to print at the right size. I did things the hard way in Paintbrush, which generally prints at 96dpi, so each card had to be 240 x 336 (for 2.5 x 3.5). More powerful paint programs are capable of resolution scaling and size specification. YMMV.
Now you're ready to print. Arrange your card graphics in page layouts. I generally use 8 cards per page so that there's room between them. Print out a page on regular paper. This is going to be your carrier page.
Get some semi-adhesive sticky notes. Cut the sticky part off and tape it, sticky side up, in the middle of each card graphic on the carrier page. Stick a card on each sticky note so that it completely covers the previously printed area. Print the page again, making sure to have it oriented such that it prints the right way on the cards. Peel the cards off, stick blank ones on, print the next page of cards. Repeat.
You'll probably want to get a corner-rounder punch from your local crafts/scrapbooking store. Do not get the one offered at Wal-Mart for $3.00. It will wear out after about 200 punches. Expect to have a sore thumb by the end of all this.
Pawns: Bearwood sells pre-painted pawns in a wide variety of colors, as well as a wide assortment of cubes, disks, and other potentially game-related items, all at a reasonable price. Note: Only the pawns come pre-painted.
Boards: I was lucky enough to find 8.5" x 11" thick cardboard sheets at the worst job I've ever had. They were being used in a shipping warehouse as padding material for heavy books. I absconded with several dozen, but I haven't seen them elsewhere.
If, however, you are wanting to make your board out of modular pieces, such as hexagonal or square tiles, your best bet is to find a game which already uses the same size and shape tile, and then print out, cut, and spray-mount your own graphics onto those tiles.
For hexagonal tiles, a copy of The Settlers of Catan gives you 38 3-inch diameter tiles for about $20.00 - $38.00 (depends where you buy it). Some places have been liquidating an old Fantasy Flight game called Thunder's Edge for $10.00, and it contains 30-50 Catan-sized tiles(I don't recall the exact count). Lastly, Fantasy Flight sells a game called Maelstrom for $20.00. It contains 150 hexes, but they are smaller than those previously mentioned. Check this pdf to see just how big they are.
For square tiles, a copy of Carcassonne has 84 1.75-inch tiles if it contains the River Expansion (72 if it doesn't), at a cost of about $20.00. Larger tiles may be available in other games, but I lack knowledge of them.
For circular tiles in a variety of sizes, nothing beats a good big set of Diskwars or Range Wars, going cheap at most of the places that sold it. Check
The Black Couldron game (by Sierra On-Line, before there was really such a thing as being "on-line") had an interesting innovation over the traditional type-in-commands interface used in games such as Space Quest and King's Quest: It had a "smurf" button.
Okay, really, it was a "do" button. You would push it anywhere your character might be able to do something productive or useful, and sometimes he would do something productive or useful. Usually he just swung his sword. But the phrasing in the manual led my friends and me to call it the "smurf" button, after the most versatile word in the language of the littlefolk.
Since this is neither remotely new (these models have already been available for the past two years), nor (as has already been pointed out) origami, why is it here being advertised as such?
Or, you could create a handheld system with a control system which could handle everything from NES to N64, load it with the right processors or some reliable emulators, a 30-40gb hard drive filled with all the ROMs, and then you can have a system which handles every pre-GameCube Nintendo system. Of course, it would be about the size of a brick...
Honestly, I'm surprised such a thing hasn't already been created in the black-market back alleys of Hong Kong, what with all the clone systems out there.
A demon comes along and turns all of your sisters into possesed caricatures of their former (egocentric) selves. Meanwhile, you have to battle bikini-clad women with impossibly large breasts. So big are these breasts, that these women spin them around and fly with them, as though they were helicopter blades. To defeat them, you need to grab part of their bikini and snap it.
And, amazingly enough, it was sold here in the States.
I can't wait until we develop the technology to make transversable wormholes to parallel universes. Then we could explore a world where Sega never made Crazy Taxi, and see if Fox made Road Rage. If not, then it's derivative. If they did, it's original.
Of course, this would create the unusual circumstance of copying ideas which never happened in this universe, but did happen in others. Offworld imports like this could revolutionize profits for lawyers. Imagine Sega of America:Earth2677B suing Sega Northern Dominion of c'Kall:Earth2626Z.
In all seriousness though, the best way to resolve issues like this one is to take a sample set of gamers who are aware of Crazy Taxi, have them play Road Rage, and see how many of them immediately say, "Oh, it's Crazy Taxi with Simpsons!"
Honestly, if it's not a copy, why is it that at E3 2000 (where the game was first shown off), many Fox reps were describing it at "Crazy Taxi with Simpsons!"
To this point, I haven't seen anything that says this couldn't take place in the BSG universe before the human/cylon war and the scattering of the tribes. It would explain a whole heckuvalot, like the female Starbuck (ancestor) and the reasoning behind the cylons.
Then again, I may have just not seen enough of the promo material.
Hooray! Their tactics are working in decreasing piracy. Now when an album doesn't sell, it's because it stinks, not because everyone's downloading it.
Honestly, even though they claim their tactics are working now, in a month, they'll be saying how lost profits due to piracy are sky high and increasing.
This is what happens when Don Quixote starts tilting at windmills, but actually has the firepower to take them out. No more windmills, no more monsters. Solution: Make new monsters.
So, this time next year, look for the RIAA blaming people humming songs for lost revenue.
Let me get this straight. Companies want to spy on our buying habits, profile us socially, statistically, and behaviorally, and generally come up with a good model of our tastes, likes and dislikes, but they're uncertain as to whether they want our opinions? What?
I find that head-to-head video gaming outside the realm of sports is extremely limited. Sure, there's multiplayer, but generally it's going to be lots of people rather than just two. Which is fine, if that's what you're going for, but it sounds like you're wanting something more personal.
There are a slew of really great non-electronic games available which work quite well with two players, and which don't favor a particular gender. For something nicely strategic, why not try The Settlers of Catan Card Game and its expansions? Or, for something a bit lighter, Carcassonne is quite good. Lastly, Hera & Zeus often gets reccommended for couples.
There are many others, and some lists have been compiled here and here.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, if you have to have it today instead of waiting a week for delivery, your local Radio Shack has them for the same price.
Just don't as the sales associate for help.
The company that pushes the boundaries of "How many times will you buy the same item?" For those of you who already have the e-Reader versions of some of these games, Nintendo will undoubtedly come up with some incentive to entice you, such as lost levels, alternate graphics modes, and promotional materials. And then, again in six months when they release the Classical Collection discs for the Gamecube (just a vague rumor I've heard batted around with no real merit).
I'm still reeling from the fact that cheap removable storage went from 720kb to 1.44mb to 650mb in less than 5 years.
It's almost enough to make me paranoid... I imagine a world where CD-ROM technology wasn't developed until the year 2000. A world where software was small, efficient, and possibly more productive.
Probably a fantasy. Probably.
Of course, in the radio series, it's entirely possible that the entire scrabble scene with the cavemen takes place in the artificial electronic universe in the Hitchhiker's offices.
Consider: Arthur and Ford are trapped on prehistoric Earth. Zaphod finds himself at the Hitchhiker's offices, which proceed to get bombed by Frogstar Fighters, and Zaphod gets hauled off to the Frogstar to be plugged into the Total Perspective Vortex, supposedly lethal to all sentient life. He survives, but it is later revealed that he only did so by being inside the artificial universe at the Hitchhiker's offices, which isn't dismantled until much later in the series.
Before the artificial universe is deactivated, Zaphod picks up Ford and Arthur from prehistoric Earth. They are quite definitely inside the artificial universe when it is deactivated, too. So, either Zaphod jumped out of the fake universe to get Ford and Arthur, and then back in to find Zarniwoop, or the whole business with the Gulgafrinchams happened in the artificial universe, in which case it could have been one of the minor differences between the fake and real universes.
Now that's offtopic!
I have a saying for articles like this: "Know where you are on the bell curve." The corollary is, of course, "Know where everyone else is, too."
If PCRPG fanatics comprised just one percent of the US population, that would still be more than 2 million people. I suspect it's probably less than that, but not by much.
I saw the whole Breakey concept shown off at Origins last year. The response was pretty much unanimous: This is a game?
I watched them demonstrate the things for about 15 minutes. Each time they enticed someone to try it out, it was the same. Insert keys, twist, something breaks. The demonstrater looks as the confused customer with a self-contented look on his face. The customer almost always replies (whether he won or not), "What am I missing? That's not fun."
To it's credit, there really is a little more to it than just that, or at least, there supposedly will be. The creators promise that you'll be able to use your key online to compete for prizes. No specific date stated: Last July it was "any day now," and it still is to this day. Expect to see it happen sometime after the release of Duke Nukem Forever.
"DISCover(R) technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 5,721, 951: a "home entertainment system for playing software designed for play in home computers." No one can manufacture a game console that plays PC games without infringing on this patent."
It gets more contrived than that. What constitutes the legal definition of "Personal Computer" or "Personal Computing Device"? How does the X-Box not already fit that definition?
"This may be the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun."
... Of the halfway decent (or better) advertising games.
Cool Spot (7-Up), Pepsiman (Pepsi, a-doy), and the recent Darkened Skye (Skittles) spring to mind.
Sure, they weren't revolutionary, or genre defining, but they were better than average, and certainly better than a purely ad-based game is expected to be.
A) Isn't this a really old dupe? Or am I just remembering the future again?
B) Advertisements in video games are little different from advertisements in movies. Either way, you've paid for entertainment which has superflous elements.
On a personal note, I dislike product placement a lot, but no more than I dislike gratuitous sex or violence.
But then again, I only account for less than 10% of the bell curve.
A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from November 18-December 14 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that the percentage of music file downloaders had fallen to 14% (about 18 million users) from 29% (about 35 million)...
Over the next 6 months, expect the RIAA to officially request the names of each and every person who participated in the poll, so that they too can be sued/threatened.
Personally, I have no problem with the RIAA tactics working on the general public. However, it doesn't mean that the tactics they're employing are the best (or even somewhere among the better) possible tactics for the situation.
Just because something is effective doesn't mean it's good.
There is an old German legend of Till Ulspringer, the prototypical conman, who sold a cheeseshop owner a mousetrap which was 100% guaranteed to kill all mice. It was a large block of wood and a mallet.
I've seen a lot of people asking and answering questions regarding the brain and its function, and most of them tend to believe that the brain is a biological computer, and behaves according to a closed set of rules.
I take issue with this, both for metaphysical and logical reasons.
I start with the premise of free will. I will not attempt to demonstrate my free will to you, since that is, as far as I can tell, impossible, just as it is for you to demonstrate your free will to me. Nevertheless, we are (mostly) willing to accept free will as a reasonable posit.
Now consider: If one truly has free will, then one would be able to choose differently in identical situations, correct? Let's extend that to its idealized limit: Even if every particle in the universe were in the same location with the same velocity and charges (ie, even if you could completely replicate a situation in every way, right down to the chemical levels in your brain), if you have free will, you should be able to choose differently.
Now consider: The laws of physics are reliable. Two atoms of hydrogen plus one atom of oxygen never suddenly and unexpectedly combines to make peanut butter. Unless some unusual circumstance is affecting it, it combines to make water, and even if there is an unusual circumstance, once it's effect is known, it can be reliably predicted.
Your brain is made of matter. It is subject to the laws of physics. The electrical signals and chemical reactions in it behave in predictable ways. If your conciousness resides entirely within your brain, you cannot have free will. Therefore, if you have free will, part of your conciousness must come from something other than your brain, and must come from a nonphysical source.
I'll leave it to you to reason out that source.
5 Contact Juggling spheres, a little plush Beaker Muppet (Meep meep meep!), 6 discs of 80s music, and Monty Python's Live at City Center album.
And since everyone got the early Christmas gift of The Common Cold, everyone's stockings came filled with cough drops. Riiiiiicolaaaa!
Have you actually played Duke Nukem 3D? It wasn't 3D, it was barely 2D. They could have done virtually the same game in one of those old Tiger handhelds from back in the early 90's.
Not just could have, but did. Virtually every game on the Game.com (with the exception of the passable Resident Evil 2) was an adaptation of a Tiger standalone handheld with better graphics. The system might have done a shade better if they had released Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which was fully developed before it was canned) and Command & Conquer (ditto).
Of course, the system still had a rotten refresh rate, poor control response, and thoroughly undocumented technology (read: All in-house developed games). The only reason Sega let them put Sonic on there was because Tiger already had an agreement that allowed them to make Sonic handheld games. I'm surprised they weren't sued into oblivion over the rotten quality.
And it didn't help that the stores treated it as an inexpensive game-like toy rather than a handheld system. And then there was the battery life. And the weird effects of the AC adaptor. And the games that crashed. And the reflashable cartridges. And the poor distribution. And the commercials with the mad midget who insulted the target market.
In fact, it seems that every stupid part of gaming industry no-no's was okayed with the Game.com, and every good idea was squashed. Tax write off?
I hit submit a wee bit too early, it seems.
Regarding Diskwars and Rangewars, I meant to say: "Check ebay, or the Boardgamegeek marketplace for the best deals."
This is actually an area in which I have a reasonable amount of experience.
For card games:
You have two options for getting a good looking deck made cheaply. You can buy a pack of 250 sheets of cardstock ($7.00 - $10.00 depending on where you go) and have that precision cut someplace like Kinko's or CopyMax (in OfficeMax). Standard playing cards are usually 2.5" x 3.5", although some are 2" x 3". At any rate, you should be able to get at least 10 cards from each sheet, possibly more, giving you about 2500+ cards.
Alternatively, you can go to your local print shop and have them precision cut some 12-point semi-glossy stock for you. It will look a lot nicer, and shuffle better, but it will cost you much more (I paid $20.00 for 300 cards).
Before you print, you should make sure your card graphics are going to print at the right size. I did things the hard way in Paintbrush, which generally prints at 96dpi, so each card had to be 240 x 336 (for 2.5 x 3.5). More powerful paint programs are capable of resolution scaling and size specification. YMMV.
Now you're ready to print. Arrange your card graphics in page layouts. I generally use 8 cards per page so that there's room between them. Print out a page on regular paper. This is going to be your carrier page.
Get some semi-adhesive sticky notes. Cut the sticky part off and tape it, sticky side up, in the middle of each card graphic on the carrier page. Stick a card on each sticky note so that it completely covers the previously printed area. Print the page again, making sure to have it oriented such that it prints the right way on the cards. Peel the cards off, stick blank ones on, print the next page of cards. Repeat.
You'll probably want to get a corner-rounder punch from your local crafts/scrapbooking store. Do not get the one offered at Wal-Mart for $3.00. It will wear out after about 200 punches. Expect to have a sore thumb by the end of all this.
Pawns: Bearwood sells pre-painted pawns in a wide variety of colors, as well as a wide assortment of cubes, disks, and other potentially game-related items, all at a reasonable price. Note: Only the pawns come pre-painted.
Boards: I was lucky enough to find 8.5" x 11" thick cardboard sheets at the worst job I've ever had. They were being used in a shipping warehouse as padding material for heavy books. I absconded with several dozen, but I haven't seen them elsewhere.
If, however, you are wanting to make your board out of modular pieces, such as hexagonal or square tiles, your best bet is to find a game which already uses the same size and shape tile, and then print out, cut, and spray-mount your own graphics onto those tiles.
For hexagonal tiles, a copy of The Settlers of Catan gives you 38 3-inch diameter tiles for about $20.00 - $38.00 (depends where you buy it). Some places have been liquidating an old Fantasy Flight game called Thunder's Edge for $10.00, and it contains 30-50 Catan-sized tiles(I don't recall the exact count). Lastly, Fantasy Flight sells a game called Maelstrom for $20.00. It contains 150 hexes, but they are smaller than those previously mentioned. Check this pdf to see just how big they are.
For square tiles, a copy of Carcassonne has 84 1.75-inch tiles if it contains the River Expansion (72 if it doesn't), at a cost of about $20.00. Larger tiles may be available in other games, but I lack knowledge of them.
For circular tiles in a variety of sizes, nothing beats a good big set of Diskwars or Range Wars, going cheap at most of the places that sold it. Check
I still think that there wou
Ahh, the adventure game. I remember it well.
The Black Couldron game (by Sierra On-Line, before there was really such a thing as being "on-line") had an interesting innovation over the traditional type-in-commands interface used in games such as Space Quest and King's Quest: It had a "smurf" button.
Okay, really, it was a "do" button. You would push it anywhere your character might be able to do something productive or useful, and sometimes he would do something productive or useful. Usually he just swung his sword. But the phrasing in the manual led my friends and me to call it the "smurf" button, after the most versatile word in the language of the littlefolk.
Since this is neither remotely new (these models have already been available for the past two years), nor (as has already been pointed out) origami, why is it here being advertised as such?
Or, you could create a handheld system with a control system which could handle everything from NES to N64, load it with the right processors or some reliable emulators, a 30-40gb hard drive filled with all the ROMs, and then you can have a system which handles every pre-GameCube Nintendo system. Of course, it would be about the size of a brick...
Honestly, I'm surprised such a thing hasn't already been created in the black-market back alleys of Hong Kong, what with all the clone systems out there.
Stretch Panic, from Treasure, no less.
A demon comes along and turns all of your sisters into possesed caricatures of their former (egocentric) selves. Meanwhile, you have to battle bikini-clad women with impossibly large breasts. So big are these breasts, that these women spin them around and fly with them, as though they were helicopter blades. To defeat them, you need to grab part of their bikini and snap it.
And, amazingly enough, it was sold here in the States.
I can't wait until we develop the technology to make transversable wormholes to parallel universes. Then we could explore a world where Sega never made Crazy Taxi, and see if Fox made Road Rage. If not, then it's derivative. If they did, it's original.
Of course, this would create the unusual circumstance of copying ideas which never happened in this universe, but did happen in others. Offworld imports like this could revolutionize profits for lawyers. Imagine Sega of America:Earth2677B suing Sega Northern Dominion of c'Kall:Earth2626Z.
In all seriousness though, the best way to resolve issues like this one is to take a sample set of gamers who are aware of Crazy Taxi, have them play Road Rage, and see how many of them immediately say, "Oh, it's Crazy Taxi with Simpsons!"
Honestly, if it's not a copy, why is it that at E3 2000 (where the game was first shown off), many Fox reps were describing it at "Crazy Taxi with Simpsons!"
To this point, I haven't seen anything that says this couldn't take place in the BSG universe before the human/cylon war and the scattering of the tribes. It would explain a whole heckuvalot, like the female Starbuck (ancestor) and the reasoning behind the cylons.
Then again, I may have just not seen enough of the promo material.
Hooray! Their tactics are working in decreasing piracy. Now when an album doesn't sell, it's because it stinks, not because everyone's downloading it.
Honestly, even though they claim their tactics are working now, in a month, they'll be saying how lost profits due to piracy are sky high and increasing.
This is what happens when Don Quixote starts tilting at windmills, but actually has the firepower to take them out. No more windmills, no more monsters. Solution: Make new monsters.
So, this time next year, look for the RIAA blaming people humming songs for lost revenue.
Let me get this straight. Companies want to spy on our buying habits, profile us socially, statistically, and behaviorally, and generally come up with a good model of our tastes, likes and dislikes, but they're uncertain as to whether they want our opinions? What?
I find that head-to-head video gaming outside the realm of sports is extremely limited. Sure, there's multiplayer, but generally it's going to be lots of people rather than just two. Which is fine, if that's what you're going for, but it sounds like you're wanting something more personal.
There are a slew of really great non-electronic games available which work quite well with two players, and which don't favor a particular gender. For something nicely strategic, why not try The Settlers of Catan Card Game and its expansions? Or, for something a bit lighter, Carcassonne is quite good. Lastly, Hera & Zeus often gets reccommended for couples.
There are many others, and some lists have been compiled here and here.