Actually, I'm an atheist. I just don't lump all Catholics together, the same way you don't lump all Protestants together. When people act poorly, they usually do it for personal reasons; but if they are a person of some influence over others who look up to them and trust them, that doesn't prevent them from using whatever organization they belong to, secular or religious, as leverage.
"Most of the bad publicity for Christians comes from the Catholics. I as a Christian am very anti-Catholic."
Unlike the upstanding paragons Pat Roberts, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Fred Phelps, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, and Ted Haggard? Jim Jones? David Koresh? Or were you thinking of those really great guys John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell and Cotton Mather? How about Southern antebellum churches and their wholesale advocation of African slavery? And let's not forget that absolute bastion of solid Protestant virtue, the Ku Klux Klan. Sure, freed slaves and their descendants were their main focus, but they hated Catholics too.
No one's saying the Catholic church hasn't done some fucked up shit, but they aren't the only ones with issues.
Maybe the problem isn't with the Wii or with the hype surrounding it. Maybe the problem is that you're "fucking lazy." Enjoying the Wii means you have to get off your ass and move more than just your thumbs.
Certainly there aren't a lot of games out right now, and I have honestly been spending more time on my Gamecube than on my Wii. But to be fair, the system has only been out three months. Expecting an immediate flood of great games from a system most third-party developers probably assumed would fail isn't realistic.
But if you really don't like it, and you're too lazy to sell it, the least you could do is stop complaining about it. As far as I can see, the only problems here are your own.
Don't be too hard on the AC. After all, I heard that use of the Wii caused cancer in lab rats. (I don't have a link, but my word on a Slashdot forum ought to be good enough.) And to be fair, the reviews of Twilight Princess weren't all superlative. The worst one I read--at Gamespot--called it merely "great." Sheesh.
And as far as hardware/software glitches, I'd have to say BFD. I'm not aware of any industrial manufacturing process that produces 100% flawless materials. And, as the AC pointed out, the incidents of problems are far below those reported for the 360. I'd have to say that's...pretty good. Of course, I haven't seen any numbers for the PS3, but then again, I don't hate it (or the 360). So I haven't been trolling for any bad news, no matter how insignificant, to feed my resentment over an emotional involvement with a gaming console.
"dreadfully boring Red Steel gameplay"
It might not appeal to you, but what about Red Steel's gameplay is boring? The run-and-gun formula that so many shooters employ? It's tried and true, that's for sure, but it also sells. Think of games like Half-Life, Halo, Doom, etc. The thing about these games that separates good from bad typically isn't the control scheme, but whether or not the game catches your interest--e.g., a story. I, for one, don't feel qualified to judge that aspect of a game until I've played it. It's a little like basing your opinion of a movie off the commercial.
Certainly, though, it's rare for a company to come out with an entirely new kind of game; they just change something about previous games, usually bigger guns and prettier graphics. But I think Nintendo has something more than a gimmick with their new controller. If they can take a complicated game and make it easy to play by using motions and gestures already intuitive to us, that's a good thing. I'm all for ending the trend toward controllers with more buttons than I have fingers. When I want that, I'll go back to PC gaming. I can type a hell of a lot faster than I dance the Button Mash.
"it probably wasn't an enormous amoeba-like structure 200 light-years wide"
That was the first thing that came to mind. After all, it sucked up the USS Intrepid and its all-Vulcan crew.
I don't know how things are at his school, but when I was an undergraduate my SSN was also my student ID number. They used that whenever I checked a book out from the library and it was connected to my account, so if I had any library fines the registrar wouldn't release my official transcripts.
I also had a barcode tattooed on the back of my neck to facilitate payment of tuition and fees.
The most obvious example is former Alabama supreme court justice Roy Moore. He installed a monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama supreme court building, then refused to remove it even at the cost of his job. Also, several cities around the nation have Ten Commandments monuments on city property, legacies from an era when no one cared much about the separation between church and state. Now many of them are trying to get them removed so they won't have to put up anti-homosexual monuments from Kansas preacher Fred Phelps and his band of followers. Unfortunately, Christian groups are suing to keep the monuments, some so they can get their monuments to hate, others because they think the Ten Commandments are necessary for a fair and just government.
And as for Christianity having nothing to do with Jesus, I say that because although they do point to him as the focus of their faith, there are few Christian groups out there who follow the teachings of Jesus. Those who do are generally thought of as fringe groups, dedicated to pacifism, poverty and self-sacrifice. Christianity as a mainstream religion is based not on the Gospels, but on the writings of Paul of Tarsus. All the violence, bigotry, misogyny and intolerance so prevalent in Christianity over its entire history is a direct result of Paul. Jesus was a pacifist, willing to die for what he believed. How many Christians today are pacifists, and how many are willing to sacrifice their lives for the ideals of Jesus?
It isn't a strictly scientific view, but I think we can safely assume that someone named Jesus did live and die in Judea 2000 years ago. While we don't have any physical evidence, the circumstantial evidence is pretty good. The earliest Christian writings we have are from Paul of Tarsus, penned around A.D. 50. And while Paul never actually met Jesus, his writings, as well as that of the Gospel of Mark (circ. A.D. 70), were still recent enough after the crucifixion (circ. A.D. 30 or so) for there to still be people alive who had either known Jesus or been around when he died. His assault on the temple moneychangers, trial and execution was pretty heady stuff, kind of like O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson. If People Magazine had been around in ancient Judea, we'd probably have some good pictures as well as an exclusive interview with Peter on why he denied his lord three times.:)
That said, like you, I am not a Christian, largely because Christianity makes no sense and has nothing to do with Jesus. Christians these days go apoplectic over forcing the Ten Commandments into public spaces and institutionalizing bigotry, yet seem to care little for the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. They're the first to justify violence for whatever end despite Jesus exhorting them to "turn the other cheek" and promising "the meek shall inherit the Earth."
That seems like a pretty irresponsible conclusion from a widely respected news organization. Has the BBC recently uncovered evidence of Tony Blair's PlayStation 2?
Planet GameCube has a bit about how they're re-releasing a mess of old NES games for the Game Boy Advance, as well as producing a new GBA/SP with a color scheme with the old color scheme. It sucks from my point of view, since I spent a lot of time in used game stores and pawn shops this Christmas looking for an old NES for my wife. She loves Super Mario and Dr. Mario.
This is a total myth. I know plenty of people who regard Nintendo consoles as being for kids, and they are in their late 20's or 30's.
You may as well try and argue that most adults sit down and watch cartoons all the time.
So your anecdotal evidence determines mythology? I can counter that with my own anecdotes. I'm 33, love my GameCube, and personally know far more people my age who prefer Nintendo's games over PS2 or XBox. And we do watch a lot of cartoons, too. I also really like to play with Legos. Thus are your arguments refuted with your own "logic."
The fact of the matter is that the only people concerned with how mature they look are the immature. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably some punk kid who also keeps track of how many beers he drinks at a time like underage drinking is some kind of contest. I know plenty of guys like that.
I'm sorry if I conveyed an actual hope; I was really just joking about how so many people who post to this website seem to have it out for Nintendo. It seems odd that even when the news is good for Nintendo, some people want to spin it into prophecies of doom. I'm not sure what the impetus for that attitude is and I don't suppose it matters; I just find it funny. Take it easy; they're just games, after all.
Actually, you can get some of the better games for cheap now.
Amazon is listing Metroid Prime at $29.99. I think Super Mario Sunshine and a few others have dropped in price as well.
Sony and Microsoft announced today that they're leaving the gaming business, thus ceding the entire market to Nintendo and its GameCube console. Slashdotters around the world wonder, "Is this the end of Nintendo?"
Not that I'm trying to be smarmy or anything....
I was totally looking forward to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on my GameCube, especially considering how well movie franchises translate to good games, as well as Atari's sterling reputation as a top-notch game developer. Who can forget Basketball or Outlaw on the 2600? And although I've never played Driver 1 or 2, the title alone is enough to send me into aploptic fits of anticipation. I guess I'll have to play it on my PS2, as long as it makes it to that console.
Nintendo probably doesn't have much to worry about either. Xbox is outselling GameCube in the US and Europe, but worldwide, Nintendo is still selling more consoles, especially if you consider the Game Boy Advance in that equation. And while their sales have fallen off from their peak, Nintendo's core gamers are a lot like Apple Macintosh fans. They play Nintendo games because they feel that they're the best, most polished games available. Unless Nintendo does something colossally stupid (as opposed to just marginally stupid), they probably won't lose that fan base.
If you've played Neverwinter Nights, you've played KOTOR. The main difference is the Star Wars universe. I love Star Wars games, but playing KOTOR at my friend's house just didn't impress me enough to buy an X-Box. For all the hype surrounding the X-Box, I just couldn't get past the fact that the graphics aren't as slick as everyone seems to claim and the controller is nearly impossible to handle (the thing is freakin' huge!).
I do wish there were an as-involved RPG as KOTOR for GameCube, though. But my wife would probably throw the Nintendo in the trash if there were. She could barely stand Metroid Prime.:)
Jules Verne didn't invent the submarine. He wrote 20,000 Leagues in 1870, several years after the Confederate States of America successfully launched the CSS Hunley in the U.S. Civil War. I don't know if the Hunley was the first submarine, but it was certainly prior to Verne's book. Incidentally, it was the first submarine to ever sink an enemy ship in wartime.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'm an atheist. I just don't lump all Catholics together, the same way you don't lump all Protestants together. When people act poorly, they usually do it for personal reasons; but if they are a person of some influence over others who look up to them and trust them, that doesn't prevent them from using whatever organization they belong to, secular or religious, as leverage.
"Most of the bad publicity for Christians comes from the Catholics. I as a Christian am very anti-Catholic."
Unlike the upstanding paragons Pat Roberts, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Fred Phelps, Jimmy Swaggart, Robert Tilton, and Ted Haggard? Jim Jones? David Koresh? Or were you thinking of those really great guys John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell and Cotton Mather? How about Southern antebellum churches and their wholesale advocation of African slavery? And let's not forget that absolute bastion of solid Protestant virtue, the Ku Klux Klan. Sure, freed slaves and their descendants were their main focus, but they hated Catholics too.
No one's saying the Catholic church hasn't done some fucked up shit, but they aren't the only ones with issues.
Maybe the problem isn't with the Wii or with the hype surrounding it. Maybe the problem is that you're "fucking lazy." Enjoying the Wii means you have to get off your ass and move more than just your thumbs.
Certainly there aren't a lot of games out right now, and I have honestly been spending more time on my Gamecube than on my Wii. But to be fair, the system has only been out three months. Expecting an immediate flood of great games from a system most third-party developers probably assumed would fail isn't realistic.
But if you really don't like it, and you're too lazy to sell it, the least you could do is stop complaining about it. As far as I can see, the only problems here are your own.
Don't be too hard on the AC. After all, I heard that use of the Wii caused cancer in lab rats. (I don't have a link, but my word on a Slashdot forum ought to be good enough.) And to be fair, the reviews of Twilight Princess weren't all superlative. The worst one I read--at Gamespot--called it merely "great." Sheesh.
And as far as hardware/software glitches, I'd have to say BFD. I'm not aware of any industrial manufacturing process that produces 100% flawless materials. And, as the AC pointed out, the incidents of problems are far below those reported for the 360. I'd have to say that's...pretty good. Of course, I haven't seen any numbers for the PS3, but then again, I don't hate it (or the 360). So I haven't been trolling for any bad news, no matter how insignificant, to feed my resentment over an emotional involvement with a gaming console.
"dreadfully boring Red Steel gameplay" It might not appeal to you, but what about Red Steel's gameplay is boring? The run-and-gun formula that so many shooters employ? It's tried and true, that's for sure, but it also sells. Think of games like Half-Life, Halo, Doom, etc. The thing about these games that separates good from bad typically isn't the control scheme, but whether or not the game catches your interest--e.g., a story. I, for one, don't feel qualified to judge that aspect of a game until I've played it. It's a little like basing your opinion of a movie off the commercial. Certainly, though, it's rare for a company to come out with an entirely new kind of game; they just change something about previous games, usually bigger guns and prettier graphics. But I think Nintendo has something more than a gimmick with their new controller. If they can take a complicated game and make it easy to play by using motions and gestures already intuitive to us, that's a good thing. I'm all for ending the trend toward controllers with more buttons than I have fingers. When I want that, I'll go back to PC gaming. I can type a hell of a lot faster than I dance the Button Mash.
Have the police tried LOAD"*",8,1?
"it probably wasn't an enormous amoeba-like structure 200 light-years wide" That was the first thing that came to mind. After all, it sucked up the USS Intrepid and its all-Vulcan crew.
I don't know how things are at his school, but when I was an undergraduate my SSN was also my student ID number. They used that whenever I checked a book out from the library and it was connected to my account, so if I had any library fines the registrar wouldn't release my official transcripts. I also had a barcode tattooed on the back of my neck to facilitate payment of tuition and fees.
The most obvious example is former Alabama supreme court justice Roy Moore. He installed a monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama supreme court building, then refused to remove it even at the cost of his job. Also, several cities around the nation have Ten Commandments monuments on city property, legacies from an era when no one cared much about the separation between church and state. Now many of them are trying to get them removed so they won't have to put up anti-homosexual monuments from Kansas preacher Fred Phelps and his band of followers. Unfortunately, Christian groups are suing to keep the monuments, some so they can get their monuments to hate, others because they think the Ten Commandments are necessary for a fair and just government. And as for Christianity having nothing to do with Jesus, I say that because although they do point to him as the focus of their faith, there are few Christian groups out there who follow the teachings of Jesus. Those who do are generally thought of as fringe groups, dedicated to pacifism, poverty and self-sacrifice. Christianity as a mainstream religion is based not on the Gospels, but on the writings of Paul of Tarsus. All the violence, bigotry, misogyny and intolerance so prevalent in Christianity over its entire history is a direct result of Paul. Jesus was a pacifist, willing to die for what he believed. How many Christians today are pacifists, and how many are willing to sacrifice their lives for the ideals of Jesus?
It isn't a strictly scientific view, but I think we can safely assume that someone named Jesus did live and die in Judea 2000 years ago. While we don't have any physical evidence, the circumstantial evidence is pretty good. The earliest Christian writings we have are from Paul of Tarsus, penned around A.D. 50. And while Paul never actually met Jesus, his writings, as well as that of the Gospel of Mark (circ. A.D. 70), were still recent enough after the crucifixion (circ. A.D. 30 or so) for there to still be people alive who had either known Jesus or been around when he died. His assault on the temple moneychangers, trial and execution was pretty heady stuff, kind of like O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson. If People Magazine had been around in ancient Judea, we'd probably have some good pictures as well as an exclusive interview with Peter on why he denied his lord three times. :)
That said, like you, I am not a Christian, largely because Christianity makes no sense and has nothing to do with Jesus. Christians these days go apoplectic over forcing the Ten Commandments into public spaces and institutionalizing bigotry, yet seem to care little for the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. They're the first to justify violence for whatever end despite Jesus exhorting them to "turn the other cheek" and promising "the meek shall inherit the Earth."
You know how to spell and know the difference between your and you're. Fess up. You're no programmer; you're an English major.
That seems like a pretty irresponsible conclusion from a widely respected news organization. Has the BBC recently uncovered evidence of Tony Blair's PlayStation 2?
Planet GameCube has a bit about how they're re-releasing a mess of old NES games for the Game Boy Advance, as well as producing a new GBA/SP with a color scheme with the old color scheme. It sucks from my point of view, since I spent a lot of time in used game stores and pawn shops this Christmas looking for an old NES for my wife. She loves Super Mario and Dr. Mario.
So your anecdotal evidence determines mythology? I can counter that with my own anecdotes. I'm 33, love my GameCube, and personally know far more people my age who prefer Nintendo's games over PS2 or XBox. And we do watch a lot of cartoons, too. I also really like to play with Legos. Thus are your arguments refuted with your own "logic."
The fact of the matter is that the only people concerned with how mature they look are the immature. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably some punk kid who also keeps track of how many beers he drinks at a time like underage drinking is some kind of contest. I know plenty of guys like that.
I'm sorry if I conveyed an actual hope; I was really just joking about how so many people who post to this website seem to have it out for Nintendo. It seems odd that even when the news is good for Nintendo, some people want to spin it into prophecies of doom. I'm not sure what the impetus for that attitude is and I don't suppose it matters; I just find it funny. Take it easy; they're just games, after all.
Actually, you can get some of the better games for cheap now. Amazon is listing Metroid Prime at $29.99. I think Super Mario Sunshine and a few others have dropped in price as well.
I read somewhere that Australia was getting a price drop too, but I can't remember where I saw it.
Sony and Microsoft announced today that they're leaving the gaming business, thus ceding the entire market to Nintendo and its GameCube console. Slashdotters around the world wonder, "Is this the end of Nintendo?" Not that I'm trying to be smarmy or anything....
I was totally looking forward to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on my GameCube, especially considering how well movie franchises translate to good games, as well as Atari's sterling reputation as a top-notch game developer. Who can forget Basketball or Outlaw on the 2600? And although I've never played Driver 1 or 2, the title alone is enough to send me into aploptic fits of anticipation. I guess I'll have to play it on my PS2, as long as it makes it to that console.
Nintendo probably doesn't have much to worry about either. Xbox is outselling GameCube in the US and Europe, but worldwide, Nintendo is still selling more consoles, especially if you consider the Game Boy Advance in that equation. And while their sales have fallen off from their peak, Nintendo's core gamers are a lot like Apple Macintosh fans. They play Nintendo games because they feel that they're the best, most polished games available. Unless Nintendo does something colossally stupid (as opposed to just marginally stupid), they probably won't lose that fan base.
Someone forgot their happy pills this morning.
If you've played Neverwinter Nights, you've played KOTOR. The main difference is the Star Wars universe. I love Star Wars games, but playing KOTOR at my friend's house just didn't impress me enough to buy an X-Box. For all the hype surrounding the X-Box, I just couldn't get past the fact that the graphics aren't as slick as everyone seems to claim and the controller is nearly impossible to handle (the thing is freakin' huge!). I do wish there were an as-involved RPG as KOTOR for GameCube, though. But my wife would probably throw the Nintendo in the trash if there were. She could barely stand Metroid Prime. :)
Jules Verne didn't invent the submarine. He wrote 20,000 Leagues in 1870, several years after the Confederate States of America successfully launched the CSS Hunley in the U.S. Civil War. I don't know if the Hunley was the first submarine, but it was certainly prior to Verne's book. Incidentally, it was the first submarine to ever sink an enemy ship in wartime.