A mascot is not for staring in his own platformer. A mascot is for promotion.
For Nintendo their mascots were once only Donkey Kong and "The Plumber." Now Mario and DK share the duty with a small army of characters. Nintendo is a company of mascots. Saying Mario is Nintendo's mascot is like saying Kermit the Frog is Jim Henson's. You have to factor in the Pikachus and Elmos into the mix too.
Not only that the mascots purpose is to carry the banner for the company. If the game says Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Luigi, Pikmin, Link, Pikachu, or any other Nintendo mascot on the box, you know who made it and you have formed an opinion based on that.
It is true that while Nintendo use of mascots have grown, there doesn't seem to be a rival mascot anymore.
Back in the day, Sega and Nintendo were two of a kind. Both were powerhouse game developers that happened to make hardware. They both made great creations, and these characters would automatically be exclusive to their hardware.
Now you have companies like Sony and Microsoft who make hardware and hire developers to make games for them. For these companies, the hardware itself becomes the trademark. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, it is just a difference in philosophy.
There are still many many mascots, but most of the ones that don't belong to Nintendo can show up on any platform. So there isn't as much jawing and emphasis placed on Sonic vs Mario. Now you have the PS2 vs. GC vs. XBOX in the wars, and Rayman, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, and Mario can all play nice.
I think blogs are a part of journalism that has been lost recently, the adversary.
Too many "reputable" news sources only go to one source for a story. For instance when Tom Ridge raises the terror threat immediately after the Democratic Convention people report on his speech and that's it. They take him at his word, and fail to do any leg work on the information that led to his decision until after they say we are all in more danger.
What blogs are giving journalism is an adversary. More news people are having to defend what they say, and that will lead to journalists checking sources more thoroughly before going on the air with a story. It really doesn't matter if the blogs are accurate or not, as long as news companies feel they have to prove their stories, their journalism will be more accurate.
When I was young, we used to have an IBM PCjr. Our word processor was IBM Writing Assistant v1.01. Here are a complete list of instructions to boot it.
1) Put in disk. 2) Type "g" 3) Hit enter.
She asked me how to do this every time she used the program.
She cannot use email. I setup a gmail account for her, made it her homepage, and she still has trouble.
Slashdot? Nintentrolls? That's like saying the media is biased to the left.
This is an important story for the slashdot world. People here love video games, and they spend a LOT of time on them. A bug like this ruins much more than one game, it can ruin every game you play. Even people who could be described as "Nintentrolls" (I'm proud to be one of them) know that demo discs are not going to be tested to the same extent as an actual game.
So make sure people know, and save them grief. I say "Thank you Slashdot for news we can use!"
At the time XBOX Live celebrated its 1 millionth suscriber (July 2004) they had sold 15 million XBOXes. That means that only 7% of XBOXes were online assuming that all of the suscribers still were paying for their accounts.
Nintendo has supported online games right along, but it sees online gaming as a niche market that it could not hope to turn a profit on. So they give people like SEGA the tools to make a PSO if they feel the investment is worth it. Much like Sony did with the PS2 I might add.
When online gaming for consoles is profitable, you can be sure Nintendo will be there, and they will partner with companies to ensure a state of the art experience. Nintendo always partners with the best in the industry.
My graphire 3 pad came with mouse and pen for $85, and the pen was the only thing I was interested in. The mouse works well though, and though I didn't need it, it has been pretty helpful.
Don't give the ethnocentric jerks any fuel for their fire. We Blue Staters are awfully proud of our First Amendment. Even if you don't have a "First Amendment" where you live, you should support ours. As amendments go, it's one of the best.
For my part, I support your equivalent, and in absence of that, your formation of the equivalent.
MS may, and I stress may, make a profit from their Xbox division this financial quarter due to the Halo 2 release. This would be the first profitable quarter for the Xbox EVER. This includes software licensing and game sales.
Microsoft is dumping money they recieve from their Windows and Office monopolies. It was previously reported that 86% of the price you pay for Windows and 79% of the price you pay for Office is profit for MS. This is how they can keep the Xbox afloat. This is a business practice only a monopoly can pull off.
Nintendo could have given the DS better graphics, but they chose not to. This is not because they hate their customers as some people have suggested.
They had to make some choices. There were some constraints.
One was battery life. The Nintendo DS's 6-10 hour battery life is at full load. Sony has admitted that the PSP's 4-6 hour quoted battery life is at a certain brightness, using headphones, without using wireless, and playing games that are not that graphically taxing. Tokyo Game Show people were reporting 2 hour actual battery life.
Another was media. Optical media is less durable, and it takes more power to run, so they chose cartridges. 128 MB per cartridge will likely increase over the life of the system as it did with the GB and GBA, but you need a certain amount of space for the code for the better graphics.
There is the screen resolution itself. At.24 x.24mm for each pixel and a 3" screen, better graphics would not necessarily look better anyway.
Then of course there is the cost--the cost to the company and the cost to the customer. Sony may be selling the PSP at $190 in Japan (without any memory card I might add), But it is costing them a lot more to make. Nintendo expects to make a profit immediately.
Other challengers have fallen to the Gameboy, because they were too power hungry, too costly, and simply too ambitious for the technology of the day.
The DS blows me away with what it gives me for the cost, battery life, and innovation. I knew going into EB this morning that the graphics would not be better than I had ever seen. It is the package that impresses.
A choice paragraph: Not to be outdone, Sony has erected PSP displays in train stations throughout Tokyo, mirroring the company's campaign for its PSX combination game console and DVD recorder last year. Each PSP is displayed behind a clear plastic case. Uniformed guards prevent passersby from touching the devices.
I bought my GameCube in the fall of 2002, and the first game I owned for it was Metroid Prime. I got about 7 hours into it, the game froze, and a buzzing sound filled the speakers.
I thought, "Holy shit! My GameCube is broken!"
Why? Because I thought that was more possible than a Nintendo game having a bug of that magnitude.
My GameCube wasn't broken. Metroid Prime did have a bug, a rather rare one, that overflowed a buffer (I believe) when changing areas. the overflow was rare enough that most gamers never experienced it. I was one of the lucky ones that had it happen twice.
My point is not that consoles can have bugs too. My point is that with the good console game companies this sort of thing is so rare, you can think your hardware died when it happens.
I assume that PC games will have fatal bugs when they are released, and I also assume that if the game is not popular, these bugs may never be fixed. That is why I don't buy PC games until they have been out a year. How can you get excited about a launch when there is a decent chance you will not be able to play the game?
By the way, Nintendo fixed that bug and offered a replacement to anyone who wanted it. The Metroid Prime discs today do not have the problem.
In almost every job these days employers look at employment as a gift they give their workers, and they expect their workers to treat them as benefactors.
Until there is a decent job market or workers unionize employers can afford to fire or force out those that refuse to be treated this way.
And this is happening to $8/hr jobs. I couldn't imagine what it would be like in an industry as competitive as video games.
Re:This is interesting...
on
Internet Hunting
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, an animal still dies, but the difference between hunting for food and buying it at the store is the difference between lethal injection as a criminal punishment and letting someone torture a man to death as his criminal punishment.
I was looking around for stuff to mod, but this I have to reply to.
The life of some of the animals you eventually buy in the stores is horiffic. I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't think farming animals is inherently wrong, but we have pigs living their entire lives in cages they can't even turn around in.
I'd rather have the animals have five years of freedom and a painful death any day over five years of hell and a peaceful death.
The dish is a mirror. It's purpose is to collect EMR over a large area, and focus it into a single point. It is a basic reflective telescope for radio waves.
Slashdot Mirror
I always think of Fraggles and their corresponding rocks.
A mascot is not for staring in his own platformer. A mascot is for promotion.
For Nintendo their mascots were once only Donkey Kong and "The Plumber." Now Mario and DK share the duty with a small army of characters. Nintendo is a company of mascots. Saying Mario is Nintendo's mascot is like saying Kermit the Frog is Jim Henson's. You have to factor in the Pikachus and Elmos into the mix too.
Not only that the mascots purpose is to carry the banner for the company. If the game says Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Luigi, Pikmin, Link, Pikachu, or any other Nintendo mascot on the box, you know who made it and you have formed an opinion based on that.
It is true that while Nintendo use of mascots have grown, there doesn't seem to be a rival mascot anymore.
Back in the day, Sega and Nintendo were two of a kind. Both were powerhouse game developers that happened to make hardware. They both made great creations, and these characters would automatically be exclusive to their hardware.
Now you have companies like Sony and Microsoft who make hardware and hire developers to make games for them. For these companies, the hardware itself becomes the trademark. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, it is just a difference in philosophy.
There are still many many mascots, but most of the ones that don't belong to Nintendo can show up on any platform. So there isn't as much jawing and emphasis placed on Sonic vs Mario. Now you have the PS2 vs. GC vs. XBOX in the wars, and Rayman, Sonic, Mega Man, Pac-Man, and Mario can all play nice.
Mario 128 is in production. Miyamoto recently said it would be for the GC, but even with that there are reports to the contrary.
Nintendo is keeping a lid on "Mario 128" so no one else steals their ideas.
All we have is Jon Stewart over here. Any help is welcome, but I'd keep the good journalists for when you guys need them.
I think blogs are a part of journalism that has been lost recently, the adversary.
Too many "reputable" news sources only go to one source for a story. For instance when Tom Ridge raises the terror threat immediately after the Democratic Convention people report on his speech and that's it. They take him at his word, and fail to do any leg work on the information that led to his decision until after they say we are all in more danger.
What blogs are giving journalism is an adversary. More news people are having to defend what they say, and that will lead to journalists checking sources more thoroughly before going on the air with a story. It really doesn't matter if the blogs are accurate or not, as long as news companies feel they have to prove their stories, their journalism will be more accurate.
When I was young, we used to have an IBM PCjr. Our word processor was IBM Writing Assistant v1.01. Here are a complete list of instructions to boot it.
1) Put in disk.
2) Type "g"
3) Hit enter.
She asked me how to do this every time she used the program.
She cannot use email. I setup a gmail account for her, made it her homepage, and she still has trouble.
I am very envious of the Koreans now.
You have the Warp Pipe people working on something official sounding. DeMasked they call it. Something about logos on boxes, networking, and deer.
I don't know. Right now it is high on crazy pictures, but low on information.
Slashdot? Nintentrolls? That's like saying the media is biased to the left.
This is an important story for the slashdot world. People here love video games, and they spend a LOT of time on them. A bug like this ruins much more than one game, it can ruin every game you play. Even people who could be described as "Nintentrolls" (I'm proud to be one of them) know that demo discs are not going to be tested to the same extent as an actual game.
So make sure people know, and save them grief. I say "Thank you Slashdot for news we can use!"
At the time XBOX Live celebrated its 1 millionth suscriber (July 2004) they had sold 15 million XBOXes. That means that only 7% of XBOXes were online assuming that all of the suscribers still were paying for their accounts.
Nintendo has supported online games right along, but it sees online gaming as a niche market that it could not hope to turn a profit on. So they give people like SEGA the tools to make a PSO if they feel the investment is worth it. Much like Sony did with the PS2 I might add.
When online gaming for consoles is profitable, you can be sure Nintendo will be there, and they will partner with companies to ensure a state of the art experience. Nintendo always partners with the best in the industry.
My graphire 3 pad came with mouse and pen for $85, and the pen was the only thing I was interested in. The mouse works well though, and though I didn't need it, it has been pretty helpful.
Don't give the ethnocentric jerks any fuel for their fire. We Blue Staters are awfully proud of our First Amendment. Even if you don't have a "First Amendment" where you live, you should support ours. As amendments go, it's one of the best.
For my part, I support your equivalent, and in absence of that, your formation of the equivalent.
Seeing as how there are still people at my local mall selling pirated NES games, it may take them a while.
MS may, and I stress may, make a profit from their Xbox division this financial quarter due to the Halo 2 release. This would be the first profitable quarter for the Xbox EVER. This includes software licensing and game sales.
Microsoft is dumping money they recieve from their Windows and Office monopolies. It was previously reported that 86% of the price you pay for Windows and 79% of the price you pay for Office is profit for MS. This is how they can keep the Xbox afloat. This is a business practice only a monopoly can pull off.
Nintendo could have given the DS better graphics, but they chose not to. This is not because they hate their customers as some people have suggested.
.24 x .24mm for each pixel and a 3" screen, better graphics would not necessarily look better anyway.
They had to make some choices. There were some constraints.
One was battery life. The Nintendo DS's 6-10 hour battery life is at full load. Sony has admitted that the PSP's 4-6 hour quoted battery life is at a certain brightness, using headphones, without using wireless, and playing games that are not that graphically taxing. Tokyo Game Show people were reporting 2 hour actual battery life.
Another was media. Optical media is less durable, and it takes more power to run, so they chose cartridges. 128 MB per cartridge will likely increase over the life of the system as it did with the GB and GBA, but you need a certain amount of space for the code for the better graphics.
There is the screen resolution itself. At
Then of course there is the cost--the cost to the company and the cost to the customer. Sony may be selling the PSP at $190 in Japan (without any memory card I might add), But it is costing them a lot more to make. Nintendo expects to make a profit immediately.
Other challengers have fallen to the Gameboy, because they were too power hungry, too costly, and simply too ambitious for the technology of the day.
The DS blows me away with what it gives me for the cost, battery life, and innovation. I knew going into EB this morning that the graphics would not be better than I had ever seen. It is the package that impresses.
Back when it was released Nintendo offered to replace it. I don't know if they still do, but contact their customer service people.
Here is an article from Bloomberg about the DS launch.
A choice paragraph:
Not to be outdone, Sony has erected PSP displays in train stations throughout Tokyo, mirroring the company's campaign for its PSX combination game console and DVD recorder last year. Each PSP is displayed behind a clear plastic case. Uniformed guards prevent passersby from touching the devices.
Touching is BAD!
(bet they don't even work)
I bought my GameCube in the fall of 2002, and the first game I owned for it was Metroid Prime. I got about 7 hours into it, the game froze, and a buzzing sound filled the speakers.
I thought, "Holy shit! My GameCube is broken!"
Why? Because I thought that was more possible than a Nintendo game having a bug of that magnitude.
My GameCube wasn't broken. Metroid Prime did have a bug, a rather rare one, that overflowed a buffer (I believe) when changing areas. the overflow was rare enough that most gamers never experienced it. I was one of the lucky ones that had it happen twice.
My point is not that consoles can have bugs too. My point is that with the good console game companies this sort of thing is so rare, you can think your hardware died when it happens.
I assume that PC games will have fatal bugs when they are released, and I also assume that if the game is not popular, these bugs may never be fixed. That is why I don't buy PC games until they have been out a year. How can you get excited about a launch when there is a decent chance you will not be able to play the game?
By the way, Nintendo fixed that bug and offered a replacement to anyone who wanted it. The Metroid Prime discs today do not have the problem.
In almost every job these days employers look at employment as a gift they give their workers, and they expect their workers to treat them as benefactors.
Until there is a decent job market or workers unionize employers can afford to fire or force out those that refuse to be treated this way.
And this is happening to $8/hr jobs. I couldn't imagine what it would be like in an industry as competitive as video games.
Yes, an animal still dies, but the difference between hunting for food and buying it at the store is the difference between lethal injection as a criminal punishment and letting someone torture a man to death as his criminal punishment.
I was looking around for stuff to mod, but this I have to reply to.
The life of some of the animals you eventually buy in the stores is horiffic. I'm not a vegetarian, and I don't think farming animals is inherently wrong, but we have pigs living their entire lives in cages they can't even turn around in.
I'd rather have the animals have five years of freedom and a painful death any day over five years of hell and a peaceful death.
Tom Hanks will do it.
He did Cast Away.
The dish is a mirror. It's purpose is to collect EMR over a large area, and focus it into a single point. It is a basic reflective telescope for radio waves.
A dish is a telescope. Ever see a picture of Aricebo?
Check it! Just a big version of what you got on your house.
Lying about someone and smearing their image is libel in Canada? We call that "Politics" here in the states.
Not only is that a good picture, you have a good handle as well.
They forgot this lesser-known version.