Well, just because the world has rules doesn't mean they won't break what the AUDIENCE thinks the rules are. One of the possibilities of a virtual world is that the rules can be different. They can create unexpected rules, then bring them into play at just the right time and still keep the suprise factor.
I don't see how real-time rendering will really affect animation in straightfoward ways. Will they bother to make use of it when they're going to be having to plan out all the details anyways? I'd think they can plan scenes out with low-quality near-realtime rendering, then when they're happy, render in full detail.
When real-time rendering can be done on hardware that's not extremely expensive, that's when things can get interesting. Besides video games taking on incredible levels of realism, what about blending between games and animation with audience participation, when you can have a computer system capable of doing the rendering in the theatre, and they just download a "script" that's rendered on the fly? Probably not something that will be done much, may require too much work, but that seems a bigger difference to me.
If they're forced to give out "the secrets behind their product", it's their own fault. They knew ahead of time what the GPL requires, and they went ahead and used code covered under the GPL. Sure, it was Linksys that did this before Cisco bought them - but that doesn't release them from obligations, and if Cisco is unhappy with that, they should have put more diligence into understanding what they were buying.
If you put code licensed from a company into a router, and then find out afterwards that you are required in the license to pay them royalties from your use of it, you can't complain your way out of it. You're still required under the license to do so, and if you weren't aware of that, it was your fault for not looking hard enough.
It makes sense to assume that using GPLed software was cheaper than writing their own/using commercially licensed software. Why? Because if it wasn't, would they have used it? Besides, it doesn't matter if it's cheaper or not, they've already used it.
The fact is, if they made changes to code covered under the GPL, and they're distributing a product using that code, they are required by the license to give back the code changes. It doesn't matter how key it is to their product - until the courts say otherwise, the GPL is as legally binding as any purchased license. If that will ruin their product, that's THEIR fault for not considering that beforehand.
If you don't want to give out your code changes, don't use GPLed software. It is that simple.
Agreed - but then again, they're more just working on getting the technology down. And why use some fancy, stylish clothing when you're going to be cutting it up and inserting stuff and all that, just to show off the technology? Besides - would you really trust the sense of style of the type of people that would develop this technology?
I suspect once they actually get it working decently, then it'll start working it's way into clothing that is worth wearing. Maybe those $80 jeans some places sell will actually be likely to be worth the money when there's some technology in there. (This coming from someone who has a pair of $80 jeans because I just can't seem to help liking all the expensive clothes - of course, I like them before I find out they're so expensive and then have to decide whether or not to spend the money)
The puddlejumper jacket idea was interesting - though I'd like to see something fancier, with say ripples of light that expand outwards from wherever a drop of water lands on the jacket. That could be really cool... if you can turn it off, of course.
I admit it, I have ROMs on my PC. Plenty, and I'm working on increasing the number.
Some of them, I feel I am justified in having. I purchased the Williams Arcade Classics a while back, which had emulated versions of 6 of their games, and I'd rather have the ROMs and play them through MAME for various reasons. At some technical level, it's probably still wrong (only having "license" to the ones supplied or something like that), but I paid for the rights to play the games. I also plan on getting the Midway Arcade Treasures package for my 'Cube when it comes out. For $20, I get like 25 classic games. And I get to play them with the nice Cube controller, on a large TV, with great stereo sound. I already look forward to 4-player Gauntlet sessions on the cube. Having the game ROMs doesn't stop me from buying that package.
But I have plenty of others. Many are games there's no way to play other than hunting down the actual arcade machine, such as Pigskin 621 A.D., or Discs of Tron. Others have home versions that aren't the same. Some are just hard to get a hold of, such as various Japan-only games. Others, well - how do you classify prototype games?
Do I feel guilty for having all these ROMs? No, I don't. With older ones, I truly feel they should be public domain by now, and that the copyright terms don't adequately reflect the realities of the industry, and DISCOURAGE preserving these games for the public domain in the future. So consider having those an act of civil disobedience.
Having these ROMs on my PC doesn't mean I won't buy the games at all - but it means I want some sort of value-added situation. So I have all the SF game ROMs - produce a SF compilation for my GameCube with all of them on one disk, for a decent amount of money, and I'll still purchase it. Just don't ask too much.
Is what I'm doing legal? No, I know that. I don't pretend it is.
From what I understand, those were not ROMs for the arcade games emulated, but were re-created versions of those games. I heard somewhere that they had a design document for the original Pac-Man that went into hundreds of pages, documenting the movements of the ghosts so as to recreate the game as close to the original as possible.
The thing is that they still can't recreate the original in all of it's quirks.
No, SHE was not intending to present false information. As I said in my previous message, which should have been clear, the mistake was completely intentional.
Life must suck when you automatically assume everyone has the worst of intentions for their actions then act like your assumption is proven fact.
It's a nuisance having all the notes different colours. They become less uniform. It's bad enough that they have different pictures on them. Can't they all be the same except for the value? Only the laziest of people and those stupid Canucks can't be bothered to read the number.
Let's just make the entire bill that same shade of green except for a little line of text on one side that tells the denomination, and requires a magnifying glass to read. Heck, make the text the written out denomination, no numbers here, and make it in latin.
What, you have a problem with that? Are you too damn lazy to haul out the magnifying glass and learn a few latin phrases so you can use money properly? Then it's your own fault when you pay with the wrong bills, damn losers...
You could just take that all the way and say that having different denominations and different money formats (coins vs bills) makes money handing machinery needlessly complicated. After all, having all the money be one simple denomiation in one simple format would make all the money handing machinery so much more simple, right?
There are enough benefits to having different size bills for different denominations that I'd say any complications to the machinery is not needless whatsoever.
(Good thing we issued the Sacajawea dollar - everybody's using that, right?)
How are we supposed to use the durn things when nobody ever gives us any to use? I like them, but the only place I know of where I get them is in the change from the stamp vending machines in the post office.
If all anyone ever gives you in change is $1 bills, then you really can't use the coins.
As I don't own Soul Calibur (any version), I didn't realize that only II was out for the GC. I guess the hype a while back wasn't for the first one, but for just the discussion that it was going to be out on the system.
But what's with the snotty "Don't be a liar in the future please." going on here?
Yep, the only things. Besides Super Smash Bros. Melee, Metroid Prime (2002 game of the year), Super Monkey Ball 1/2, Eternal Darkness, Soul Calibur I/II, F-Zero GX, Animal Crossing, Phantasy Star Online, Ikaruga, and Enter the Matrix. (OK, just kidding about that last one)
Let me just say this. I've never bothered picking up import games or for that matter figured out how to go about running them.
But if Nintendo doesn't get this released in the US, I just may have to go hunt an import copy down and figure out what I need to do to play it. I've really enjoyed the rhythm games I've played - I was a serious DDR addict for a while, still enjoy it though my legs STILL hurt from playing one day and going to the gym the next day, and I loved Drum Mania the one time I got to play it. Something playable at home would be great.
I suspect they'd be suprised at the level of acceptance the game would get here in the states.
Umm... ARCADE ROMs. Not those Atari 2600 things. You know, the things that ran in those large cabinets that people fed lots of money into? I'm sure there are people here at Slashdot that spent more than that amount on just one of the games in that list (such as Gauntlet).
Your other point still stands - it's easy to get Arcade roms out on the web. A little harder than when www.mame.dk was around, but still not that hard.
The website is offering ROMs for Arcade Games for sale, not home system games. And the only games available are some made by Atari (Atari Games, specifically, as they got the arcade rights when Atari was split in two).
River Raid and Beam Rider were games for home systems. Never at the arcade. Also, I know River Raid was made by Activision, and I'm not sure who made Beam Rider, but I know it wasn't Atari. So they'd have to start offering home system ROMs, and then get the rights from other companies to do so.
I believe that Microsoft's "Arcade Classics" sets are rewritten clones of the original games, with huge design and requirement documents to try and copy the original game. But they're still different.
I don't get why they didn't just write an emulator for the games, and go that route. Perhaps because they didn't want people to go through "insert coin" stuff and all that.
You can't copy the actual arcade behavior correctly without access to the source code, and I doubt it's available for a lot of those early games.
I am STILL kicking myself for selling my Vectrex and like a dozen games to a pawn shop for like $25. And everything worked, had all the overlays and instructions and such.
I wonder how much it would cost me to replace it today.
5000 years ago you could wander off to unoccupied land and start growing things. Or you could try your hand and hunting and gathering. You could live off the land.
Today, how do you do that? All the land is already owned - I have to have a job to earn money to buy land. Or I could just start gathering food off the land. So where do I gather from?
You can't escape from society now without first having participated in it enough to make the money to opt out. If you can't get into it in the first place, there still isn't any way to get by.
Everything's been owned
Just because your life is easy doesn't mean everyone's is. Ever known anyone trying to get by, working two minimum-wage jobs to try and pay the rent and feed the kids? I'm sure they find life so easy.
We know that there are large numbers of synthetic estrogen-like chemicals in the water supply. We haven't detected them causing any problem, but there have been indications, and a quite minor effect could lead to population collapse.
What do you mean caused no problems? There have already been documented studies showing that fish and amphibians in various areas have much higher than normal levels of hermaphroditism and skewed sex ratios among apparently healthy animals. That such chemicals are affecting ecosystems is already documented. It may not have caused major ecosystem damage, but it is clearly affecting things already.
Oh, and there's the fact that for one chemical, atrazine, it affects people too - one plant that creates the stuff in Louisiana has guys coming down with prostrate cancer at 9 times the average rate.
Note that atrazine causes hermaphroditism in frogs at a level one-thirtieth the EPA's "safe level". And drinking water across the country - especially in the midwest - regularly reaches near or above that level during times of the year. If it can affect frogs that clearly, how might it's estrogen-mimicing properties affect the mental development of babies in the womb (which are physically and mentally shaped by hormone levels), or on the physiology of growing children who are more sensitive? (the ever-earlier first periods of girls?)
So, you believe that as long as everyone has the opportunity to go for the jobs, you'd be fine if there were only jobs for half the population, forcing the rest to go without shelter, food, etc?
Everyone deserves a job because currently, in our society, that's really the only way to get by. Yes, there are some safety nets, but there is also a sizeable effort by people to eliminate those safety nets, claiming such nets allow people to leech off society without working. It'd be quicker and more straightforward to just go around and shoot people if that route's going to be taken.
It is most disingenuous to claim all is well if everyone has opportunities, when there are fewer opportunities available than people wanting to take advantage of them. Being one of the ones left out of the opportunities isn't like losing a game of musical chairs. The penalty could be your life.
This is relatively safe, since this was exactly how everything worked until PlayStation 2 introduced backwards compatibility in consoles. No other console has ever been backwards compatible*.
Yes, backwards compatibility in consoles is, what, 15 years old or so? Of course, there were a few scattered 2600 games that would not run on a 7800, but by and far, most would, and pretty much identically as they did on a 2600 itself.
Does it matter when the next systems are due out? The dates don't affect the games available for any system today - it's not like they'll stop existing when the next generation systems come out.
If you think the price of a system and games is worth paying, for the games that are available now (or very close to being available), then the release of future systems won't change that. Especially since new systems are always much more expensive and have a lot less gamewise to choose from.
I learned my lesson from a console purchase in the past. Don't buy based on promised of system ability or X library of games, because you might get burned. Buy based on having a selection of games available now that justifies the purchase to you. You can't get burned then - because if you get teh games, and no more appear, then you still have enough to keep you happy.
I have 10 Cube games - and if the gamecube up and disappeared from the stores today, along with all the games, I'd be disappointed, but I'd still have plenty to play for quite a while. (F-Zero GX is keeping me busy for now, and I still have two Zelda games to finish, along with Metroid Prime on hard, tons more to unlock in SSB:M, much to find on Animal Crossing, etc, etc.
I did the same thing... I played for a while, getting more and more frustrated, but slowly getting better and better at taking him out.
Finally, after an entire evening, I defeated him, and moved on.
It was only when bitching about him to a friend, about how tough he was, did my friend clue me in to the "trick" to beat him. I still had my save, so went back and tried it out - and found how easy it was done that way.
It also makes sense to use this for children, in a way. Considering your floor, if you keep it clean and don't have a dog stepping in their urine and feces and walking across it all the time, doesn't exactly have tons of dangerous germs on it. It still has plenty though - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I've seen a lot of studies done that suggest that children need their immune systems worked a bit more when they're younger to let them develop properly. That perhaps kids whose parents keep things too clean never have their immune systems worked properly, thus they can become hypersensitive, and cause issues with asthma and allergies.
The immune system evolved in an environment when it was constantly being used. If it doesn't get used, it probably goes overboard.
As a single data point, I remember reading an article talking about Crohn's Disease (inflammation and ulceration of the intestines and bowels) being treated by having patients drink a solution containing eggs of parasites that live in that area of the body. The immune system fights off the parasites, instead of being busy fighting the body. The parasites don't stay - they get killed, so the patients have to drink the solution every few weeks or so - but all the symptoms disappear.
Regardless, when I am a parent, the five-second rule will definitely stay, and if the kids play in the sand or dirt and get a little dirty, I'm not going to freak out - it's good for their body in the long run.
Hmm... have you played Eternal Darkness? I don't see it on your list, and I see you have the Resident Evil series. If not, you really should give it a try - play it in the dark for a real horror experience.
Of course, by now, I'm sure you've heard plenty of people recommending the game to you, and perhaps you rented/sold it... just making sure, it is a great game. I was so disappointed when it was over...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, just because the world has rules doesn't mean they won't break what the AUDIENCE thinks the rules are. One of the possibilities of a virtual world is that the rules can be different. They can create unexpected rules, then bring them into play at just the right time and still keep the suprise factor.
I don't see how real-time rendering will really affect animation in straightfoward ways. Will they bother to make use of it when they're going to be having to plan out all the details anyways? I'd think they can plan scenes out with low-quality near-realtime rendering, then when they're happy, render in full detail.
When real-time rendering can be done on hardware that's not extremely expensive, that's when things can get interesting. Besides video games taking on incredible levels of realism, what about blending between games and animation with audience participation, when you can have a computer system capable of doing the rendering in the theatre, and they just download a "script" that's rendered on the fly? Probably not something that will be done much, may require too much work, but that seems a bigger difference to me.
If they're forced to give out "the secrets behind their product", it's their own fault. They knew ahead of time what the GPL requires, and they went ahead and used code covered under the GPL. Sure, it was Linksys that did this before Cisco bought them - but that doesn't release them from obligations, and if Cisco is unhappy with that, they should have put more diligence into understanding what they were buying.
If you put code licensed from a company into a router, and then find out afterwards that you are required in the license to pay them royalties from your use of it, you can't complain your way out of it. You're still required under the license to do so, and if you weren't aware of that, it was your fault for not looking hard enough.
It makes sense to assume that using GPLed software was cheaper than writing their own/using commercially licensed software. Why? Because if it wasn't, would they have used it? Besides, it doesn't matter if it's cheaper or not, they've already used it.
The fact is, if they made changes to code covered under the GPL, and they're distributing a product using that code, they are required by the license to give back the code changes. It doesn't matter how key it is to their product - until the courts say otherwise, the GPL is as legally binding as any purchased license. If that will ruin their product, that's THEIR fault for not considering that beforehand.
If you don't want to give out your code changes, don't use GPLed software. It is that simple.
Agreed - but then again, they're more just working on getting the technology down. And why use some fancy, stylish clothing when you're going to be cutting it up and inserting stuff and all that, just to show off the technology? Besides - would you really trust the sense of style of the type of people that would develop this technology?
I suspect once they actually get it working decently, then it'll start working it's way into clothing that is worth wearing. Maybe those $80 jeans some places sell will actually be likely to be worth the money when there's some technology in there. (This coming from someone who has a pair of $80 jeans because I just can't seem to help liking all the expensive clothes - of course, I like them before I find out they're so expensive and then have to decide whether or not to spend the money)
The puddlejumper jacket idea was interesting - though I'd like to see something fancier, with say ripples of light that expand outwards from wherever a drop of water lands on the jacket. That could be really cool... if you can turn it off, of course.
I admit it, I have ROMs on my PC. Plenty, and I'm working on increasing the number.
Some of them, I feel I am justified in having. I purchased the Williams Arcade Classics a while back, which had emulated versions of 6 of their games, and I'd rather have the ROMs and play them through MAME for various reasons. At some technical level, it's probably still wrong (only having "license" to the ones supplied or something like that), but I paid for the rights to play the games. I also plan on getting the Midway Arcade Treasures package for my 'Cube when it comes out. For $20, I get like 25 classic games. And I get to play them with the nice Cube controller, on a large TV, with great stereo sound. I already look forward to 4-player Gauntlet sessions on the cube. Having the game ROMs doesn't stop me from buying that package.
But I have plenty of others. Many are games there's no way to play other than hunting down the actual arcade machine, such as Pigskin 621 A.D., or Discs of Tron. Others have home versions that aren't the same. Some are just hard to get a hold of, such as various Japan-only games. Others, well - how do you classify prototype games?
Do I feel guilty for having all these ROMs? No, I don't. With older ones, I truly feel they should be public domain by now, and that the copyright terms don't adequately reflect the realities of the industry, and DISCOURAGE preserving these games for the public domain in the future. So consider having those an act of civil disobedience.
Having these ROMs on my PC doesn't mean I won't buy the games at all - but it means I want some sort of value-added situation. So I have all the SF game ROMs - produce a SF compilation for my GameCube with all of them on one disk, for a decent amount of money, and I'll still purchase it. Just don't ask too much.
Is what I'm doing legal? No, I know that. I don't pretend it is.
From what I understand, those were not ROMs for the arcade games emulated, but were re-created versions of those games. I heard somewhere that they had a design document for the original Pac-Man that went into hundreds of pages, documenting the movements of the ghosts so as to recreate the game as close to the original as possible.
The thing is that they still can't recreate the original in all of it's quirks.
No, SHE was not intending to present false information. As I said in my previous message, which should have been clear, the mistake was completely intentional.
Life must suck when you automatically assume everyone has the worst of intentions for their actions then act like your assumption is proven fact.
Soon they may have the girls carrying around credit-card scanners.
Why oh why did I just get some horrible mental imagery of where they'll be having people swipe those credit cards...
It's a nuisance having all the notes different colours. They become less uniform. It's bad enough that they have different pictures on them. Can't they all be the same except for the value? Only the laziest of people and those stupid Canucks can't be bothered to read the number.
Let's just make the entire bill that same shade of green except for a little line of text on one side that tells the denomination, and requires a magnifying glass to read. Heck, make the text the written out denomination, no numbers here, and make it in latin.
What, you have a problem with that? Are you too damn lazy to haul out the magnifying glass and learn a few latin phrases so you can use money properly? Then it's your own fault when you pay with the wrong bills, damn losers...
You could just take that all the way and say that having different denominations and different money formats (coins vs bills) makes money handing machinery needlessly complicated. After all, having all the money be one simple denomiation in one simple format would make all the money handing machinery so much more simple, right?
There are enough benefits to having different size bills for different denominations that I'd say any complications to the machinery is not needless whatsoever.
(Good thing we issued the Sacajawea dollar - everybody's using that, right?)
How are we supposed to use the durn things when nobody ever gives us any to use? I like them, but the only place I know of where I get them is in the change from the stamp vending machines in the post office.
If all anyone ever gives you in change is $1 bills, then you really can't use the coins.
Yep, you're right.
As I don't own Soul Calibur (any version), I didn't realize that only II was out for the GC. I guess the hype a while back wasn't for the first one, but for just the discussion that it was going to be out on the system.
But what's with the snotty "Don't be a liar in the future please." going on here?
Yep, the only things. Besides Super Smash Bros. Melee, Metroid Prime (2002 game of the year), Super Monkey Ball 1/2, Eternal Darkness, Soul Calibur I/II, F-Zero GX, Animal Crossing, Phantasy Star Online, Ikaruga, and Enter the Matrix. (OK, just kidding about that last one)
Let me just say this. I've never bothered picking up import games or for that matter figured out how to go about running them.
But if Nintendo doesn't get this released in the US, I just may have to go hunt an import copy down and figure out what I need to do to play it. I've really enjoyed the rhythm games I've played - I was a serious DDR addict for a while, still enjoy it though my legs STILL hurt from playing one day and going to the gym the next day, and I loved Drum Mania the one time I got to play it. Something playable at home would be great.
I suspect they'd be suprised at the level of acceptance the game would get here in the states.
60 Atari 2600 games for a sum price of about $320
Umm... ARCADE ROMs. Not those Atari 2600 things. You know, the things that ran in those large cabinets that people fed lots of money into? I'm sure there are people here at Slashdot that spent more than that amount on just one of the games in that list (such as Gauntlet).
Your other point still stands - it's easy to get Arcade roms out on the web. A little harder than when www.mame.dk was around, but still not that hard.
I don't think you get what's being offered here.
The website is offering ROMs for Arcade Games for sale, not home system games. And the only games available are some made by Atari (Atari Games, specifically, as they got the arcade rights when Atari was split in two).
River Raid and Beam Rider were games for home systems. Never at the arcade. Also, I know River Raid was made by Activision, and I'm not sure who made Beam Rider, but I know it wasn't Atari. So they'd have to start offering home system ROMs, and then get the rights from other companies to do so.
I believe that Microsoft's "Arcade Classics" sets are rewritten clones of the original games, with huge design and requirement documents to try and copy the original game. But they're still different.
I don't get why they didn't just write an emulator for the games, and go that route. Perhaps because they didn't want people to go through "insert coin" stuff and all that.
You can't copy the actual arcade behavior correctly without access to the source code, and I doubt it's available for a lot of those early games.
vectrex requires you to go to shows
I am STILL kicking myself for selling my Vectrex and like a dozen games to a pawn shop for like $25. And everything worked, had all the overlays and instructions and such.
I wonder how much it would cost me to replace it today.
5000 years ago you could wander off to unoccupied land and start growing things. Or you could try your hand and hunting and gathering. You could live off the land.
Today, how do you do that? All the land is already owned - I have to have a job to earn money to buy land. Or I could just start gathering food off the land. So where do I gather from?
You can't escape from society now without first having participated in it enough to make the money to opt out. If you can't get into it in the first place, there still isn't any way to get by.
Everything's been owned
Just because your life is easy doesn't mean everyone's is. Ever known anyone trying to get by, working two minimum-wage jobs to try and pay the rent and feed the kids? I'm sure they find life so easy.
We know that there are large numbers of synthetic estrogen-like chemicals in the water supply. We haven't detected them causing any problem, but there have been indications, and a quite minor effect could lead to population collapse.
What do you mean caused no problems? There have already been documented studies showing that fish and amphibians in various areas have much higher than normal levels of hermaphroditism and skewed sex ratios among apparently healthy animals. That such chemicals are affecting ecosystems is already documented. It may not have caused major ecosystem damage, but it is clearly affecting things already.
Oh, and there's the fact that for one chemical, atrazine, it affects people too - one plant that creates the stuff in Louisiana has guys coming down with prostrate cancer at 9 times the average rate.
Note that atrazine causes hermaphroditism in frogs at a level one-thirtieth the EPA's "safe level". And drinking water across the country - especially in the midwest - regularly reaches near or above that level during times of the year. If it can affect frogs that clearly, how might it's estrogen-mimicing properties affect the mental development of babies in the womb (which are physically and mentally shaped by hormone levels), or on the physiology of growing children who are more sensitive? (the ever-earlier first periods of girls?)
So, you believe that as long as everyone has the opportunity to go for the jobs, you'd be fine if there were only jobs for half the population, forcing the rest to go without shelter, food, etc?
Everyone deserves a job because currently, in our society, that's really the only way to get by. Yes, there are some safety nets, but there is also a sizeable effort by people to eliminate those safety nets, claiming such nets allow people to leech off society without working. It'd be quicker and more straightforward to just go around and shoot people if that route's going to be taken.
It is most disingenuous to claim all is well if everyone has opportunities, when there are fewer opportunities available than people wanting to take advantage of them. Being one of the ones left out of the opportunities isn't like losing a game of musical chairs. The penalty could be your life.
This is relatively safe, since this was exactly how everything worked until PlayStation 2 introduced backwards compatibility in consoles. No other console has ever been backwards compatible*.
*cough* Atari 7800 *cough*
Yes, backwards compatibility in consoles is, what, 15 years old or so? Of course, there were a few scattered 2600 games that would not run on a 7800, but by and far, most would, and pretty much identically as they did on a 2600 itself.
Does it matter when the next systems are due out? The dates don't affect the games available for any system today - it's not like they'll stop existing when the next generation systems come out.
If you think the price of a system and games is worth paying, for the games that are available now (or very close to being available), then the release of future systems won't change that. Especially since new systems are always much more expensive and have a lot less gamewise to choose from.
I learned my lesson from a console purchase in the past. Don't buy based on promised of system ability or X library of games, because you might get burned. Buy based on having a selection of games available now that justifies the purchase to you. You can't get burned then - because if you get teh games, and no more appear, then you still have enough to keep you happy.
I have 10 Cube games - and if the gamecube up and disappeared from the stores today, along with all the games, I'd be disappointed, but I'd still have plenty to play for quite a while. (F-Zero GX is keeping me busy for now, and I still have two Zelda games to finish, along with Metroid Prime on hard, tons more to unlock in SSB:M, much to find on Animal Crossing, etc, etc.
I did the same thing... I played for a while, getting more and more frustrated, but slowly getting better and better at taking him out.
Finally, after an entire evening, I defeated him, and moved on.
It was only when bitching about him to a friend, about how tough he was, did my friend clue me in to the "trick" to beat him. I still had my save, so went back and tried it out - and found how easy it was done that way.
I still felt better about doing it the hard way.
It also makes sense to use this for children, in a way. Considering your floor, if you keep it clean and don't have a dog stepping in their urine and feces and walking across it all the time, doesn't exactly have tons of dangerous germs on it. It still has plenty though - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I've seen a lot of studies done that suggest that children need their immune systems worked a bit more when they're younger to let them develop properly. That perhaps kids whose parents keep things too clean never have their immune systems worked properly, thus they can become hypersensitive, and cause issues with asthma and allergies.
The immune system evolved in an environment when it was constantly being used. If it doesn't get used, it probably goes overboard.
As a single data point, I remember reading an article talking about Crohn's Disease (inflammation and ulceration of the intestines and bowels) being treated by having patients drink a solution containing eggs of parasites that live in that area of the body. The immune system fights off the parasites, instead of being busy fighting the body. The parasites don't stay - they get killed, so the patients have to drink the solution every few weeks or so - but all the symptoms disappear.
Regardless, when I am a parent, the five-second rule will definitely stay, and if the kids play in the sand or dirt and get a little dirty, I'm not going to freak out - it's good for their body in the long run.
Hmm... have you played Eternal Darkness? I don't see it on your list, and I see you have the Resident Evil series. If not, you really should give it a try - play it in the dark for a real horror experience.
Of course, by now, I'm sure you've heard plenty of people recommending the game to you, and perhaps you rented/sold it... just making sure, it is a great game. I was so disappointed when it was over...