yeah, we got my roommate's gf playing tennis and bowling and she had a lot of fun. and she's never played a videogame in her life. she's actually quite anti-gaming (which is amazing because he's one of the biggest gamers I know).
so, excite truck is really THAT good?
I heard Rayman was great, too.
Trauma center (which my friend bought the last of *shakes fist*) is spectacular, although it's the exact same game as the DS...
now I have to drop another 90$ on games. thanks a lot, dude. =P
I never would have thought that k-mart would get ANY units.
Just like I wouldn't expect PC Richards to get any (which they didn't).
btw, I like your logical/physical terminology. I'll have to use that at some point. Everyone in line where I was was getting one. Even a pair of brothers who were getting one for themselves and one for their cousin.
I would expect that every person knows at least one person who wants a wii who failed to get one. I would also expect that just about anyone who waited on line with someone to get a wii knows someone who wants one who failed got get one.
Don't you think that's a dick move to NOT get one... even to resell it (not necessarily at a profit) to said person? hmmm.
I'm sure no one camped out for a week for the Wii (like so many did for the PS3), although many camped out for around 20+ hours.
I got up at 5am on sunday morning and my friend picked me up and we were going to go to bestbuy, but there were around 200 people in line outside, then we went to another bestbuy where there were at least 100 people in line. A nearby target had an enormous crowd outside, too.
We finally went to a slightly hidden Circuit city where there were 21 people waiting and we got in line. After talking to the guys there, we learned that the store had 16 units physically at the store and were expecting a *possible* shipment of 15 more at 7am, and we'd find out at that time. Since we really didn't know where else to go at that time, we decided to stick it out.
The couple of guys immediately in front of us were there for only about 20 minutes when we arrived (at about 5:30) and the guys in front of them got there at midnight. The group of guys at the head of the line were there since 8am the day before and had sleeping bags and a tent.
It's kinda funny because several people came and went in those early hours (the store was gonna open at 10) but since it wasn't a sure thing, no one really wanted to stick it out to find out if those extra 15 units were going to show up, so until about 9:30 (the truck had gotten a flat and hadn't shown up yet) there were only about 10 people behind us... it wasn't until about then that suddenly people were showing up left and right.
and AT 10, a couple of people showed up thinking they'd avoid the crowd and get there when they first open to pick their wii up. they were a little shocked that people were waiting outside. they didn't understand.
It really depends on what you're doing in line, though. My friend wanted to get in line this past monday at the 23rd street Bestbuy, here in manhattan. I had to work (as did he) or I would have. I've waited in line for worse, although not for 4 days.
Back in 1999 or whenever it was, I waited in line for 36 hours to get tickets to Episode 1... and let me tell you... it was fun, although it rained and and there was NO place to piss (cops were there and the guy in front of me in line got a ticket for pissing in the lot)... although the payoff was really... not worth it. at all.
I think the PS3 may have been worth it. especially if it turned out that I'd get comp'd for those systems.
And, if you're in school and don't have a job, that would have been a killer turnout for a week's worth of your time.
Say you get $2,500 each for the comped. normal PS3's. 3 x 4 x 24 = 288 hours. That's $8.68 dollars an hour. In NY city.
but it's not like you're working. I mean... they were probably sitting there with their DSs or PSPs or whatever and rocking out to tunes (or rapping... out to samples... based on their dress-style)
This is like getting paid for idle time. If someone was like "dude, I'll
besides, if they got the hypothetical 2500$ each for 2 systems, that's 5000$. $5000 / 288h = $17.36/hr. tax free (if they choose not to claim it). That's $1666.66 to each of them, plus they have a PS3 sitting in the livingroom. Hell, they could even re-invest that 5000$ into a really nice HDTV.
and getting paid 17$/hr to wait in line really is quite good....spike
It looks like the going rate is anywhere from $3000-$5000...
The first three gamers in line were comped their PS3s.
now, THAT would have made for a decent profit for a week's worth of waiting in line... imagine if the first 3 people lived together and sold off 2 of them. goddamn. think of what they'd fetch for the autographed system.
it's got a 20GB drive, but only about 14GB are available at the time of purchase
and if you've purchased a couple of xbox live arcade games and have a couple demos, you've almost used up your entire drive.
hopefully, they'll have the option of using an external drive for media storage... I've got a USB drive attached to it with all the stileproject wmvs (I've got about 9GB worth on there) and all my MP3s (about 250GB), so it'd be nice to use that. I've still got about 30GB free and I could always pick up a 400GB drive.
actually... the most unrealistic thing is the flashlight.
I mean... c'mon... they've got a gun that can make your skin disappear and cloaking suits and goddamn crazy clones... yet the flashlight only lasts what? 30 seconds at a time before running out of juice?
why not put some LEDs in the thing? it'll get powered by the warmth of the player's hand!
or maybe it's one of those flashlights that needs to get shaken to get used? hmmmm....
For me, nearly every level from Quake1 is a masterpiece of level design. In regard to the singleplayer maps, they're near perfect for what they were designed... however some (namely end and E4M3) also make excellent multiplayer maps. The deathmatch levels are also spectacular.
Quake 3's Q3DM16 and Q3DM17 are 2 of the best maps in the game for 1 on 1 deathmatch.
Bark at the moon is the only track in guitar hero that I enjoy.
Myth had some great levels, too. although I don't recall the names of them. I miss that game.
The original Counterstrike levels are all amazing. Especially the Dust and Aztec ones.
the original Prince of persia had a vast majority of its levels very well designed as well.
as to poor design... FEAR (for 360, at least) and Condemned (360) had some of the most poorly designed and unrealistic levels I've ever played. They feel like they were designed for a game and couldn't possibly exist in real life.
I'm really curious if anyone has created any kind of guidelines for on-screen readable text.
I've been dabbling with creating a tv-based interface frontend and I've had a really hard time deciding what sizes to make things. I started development with the idea that I'd be running at a pretty high resolution (my 19" monitor), but then I realized that I wouldn't be sitting as close to the TV when it's set up (I'd like to be able to see what I'm doing even from across the room) and the TV won't be as sharp.
I've been having a really hard time trying to determine sizes without extensive trial and error.
It's a fact that the 360 works with a regular TV and it can be assumed (quite confidently) that the PS3 will, too.
Although, one problem that the 360 has is that many of the games are designed with HDTVs in mind. That leads to developers creating HUDs with text that is unreadably small on regular TVs. So far, I've noticed that problem in FEAR (the only unreadable text so far has been the name of the talking person in the upper left corner, which doesn't really matter), Dead Rising (the name of the weapon and some other misc. text, but it's not a HUGE deal... but that one gets annoying), and Madden. I primarily stick to playing Lumines, Geometry Wars and Fight Night, so I haven't seen every game in depth, but my roommate has complained about small type in other games.
There is an advantage with nintendo only supporting 480p which is basically that all developers are targeting the same resolution and things will be consistent.
although, I think the Wii will be far more fun on those huge TVs which are high-def and it would look beautiful if they supported the 1080 resolution.
anyway, I seriously doubt Nintendo would release the wii if it looked terrible. they do have some sense.
The same thing happened with City of Heroes when people started making The Hulk and Wolverine. I would imagine that the same would apply here.
well, not exactly. Marvel owned the trademarks to the likenesses of those characters in the City of Heroes game. CoH was competing with a similar franchise, so it was construed as a trademark violation.
this mortal kombat thing not only lets you create a likeness of a real person, but also is probably protected by the same laws that protect parody.
An excellent read, and it seems that it would strike your fancy.
it's about a 6-fingered man who needs to constantly change his identity and is eventually interrogated about what happened by a therapist who is trying to lock him up in a mental institution because he thinks he tried to commit suicide. The whole time, he's calculating his movements to faux discomfort during the discussion of certain subjects and he tries to steer the conversation the way he wants.
I guess it's obvious that I don't watch sports much.
i know NBC has sports (because I worked on the art for Football Night in America; a cheap ripoff of Hockey Night in Cananda, at first glance), but I know there was some football game I watched where I was like "dude! THAT's a decent HUD!"
No, but it's nice to have. I didn't really realize what I was missing until I had HD.
The problem is that a lot of the XBOX360 games are being designed with HD in mind. This observation of mine is especially apparent in most of the newer 360 titles (Dead Rising is the first that comes to mind). The text in that game is completely unreadable on non-HD displays. I've played the game on several non-HD TVs and have always had the problem, so it's not a matter of mine just being fuzzy.
In fact, I wonder if any playtesters of these games played them in non-HD. Even games like Madden have unreadable scores. You'd think they'd model their HUD off NBC's or whatever.
the problem with manufacturing so many units so soon is the possibility of problems turning up. Like the 360's overheating or sony's batteries exploding. Although Nintendo has a very good track record for QA, what's to say that some new problem won't crop up? Are they that confident?
That'd be a scary thing if there's some kind of fire hazard with the units and the big N has 6 million units in warehouses across the world.
yeah yeah yeah... well, I needed a drive and didn't have the $ for one. Plus, it was the first day I had it. My roommate offered to replace it if seagate didn't.
When I got my first iPod (the 5GB one like 5 years ago), I was opening it as I walked out of CompUSA, and being confused by the packaging, the unit slipped out of the box and hit the sidewalk, poping in half and coming apart... so I walked back in and showed them and they replaced it. I was quite happy.
I"ve RMA'd 2 seagate drives, ever (out of about 15 that I've purchased) and both times I got back new drives. shrinkwraped and everything.
The cause of one drive's death was a 5' fall to the floor. I had it on top of my G5 and my roommate was getting something from behind my desk and knocked it off. The computer didn't even see the drive after that. Seagate replaced it in about 3 days.
the other one just stopped spinning up after a couple of days. Seagate took longer with that one (this one happened about a week after I RMA'd the first one), but they did send me back a new drive.
I've had pretty good luck with drives in my life. I've only lost 8 drives, total, ever. 4 Maxtors (all 3+ years old), 1 IBM Deskstar, and one Western Digital (after 6 years of use).
i've still got drives from 1998 in active machines... although I'm toying with the idea of replacing them since newer drives apparently have new features and are a good deal faster.
Most people are not "artist" enough to appreciate that "innovative" brown...
I think I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the brown actually looks nice.
i mean, I'm not saying I'm getting one of those things. I've got my ipods... nor am I saying I'd get a brown ipod... but the brown has a classic feel to it. Like a leather upholstered stereo receiver. Man that would be cool.
I had no problem getting Vista installed in VPC, albeit, it took like 4 hours (dual 2.7ghz G5 w/ 2GB RAM). It also ran so slow, it was barely usable, and I couldn't get sound or networking working.
Slashdot Mirror
And my wife (!) wants to play tennis on it now.
yeah, we got my roommate's gf playing tennis and bowling and she had a lot of fun. and she's never played a videogame in her life. she's actually quite anti-gaming (which is amazing because he's one of the biggest gamers I know).
so, excite truck is really THAT good?
I heard Rayman was great, too.
Trauma center (which my friend bought the last of *shakes fist*) is spectacular, although it's the exact same game as the DS...
now I have to drop another 90$ on games. thanks a lot, dude. =P
I never would have thought that k-mart would get ANY units.
Just like I wouldn't expect PC Richards to get any (which they didn't).
btw, I like your logical/physical terminology. I'll have to use that at some point. Everyone in line where I was was getting one. Even a pair of brothers who were getting one for themselves and one for their cousin.
I would expect that every person knows at least one person who wants a wii who failed to get one. I would also expect that just about anyone who waited on line with someone to get a wii knows someone who wants one who failed got get one.
Don't you think that's a dick move to NOT get one... even to resell it (not necessarily at a profit) to said person? hmmm.
depends on how you define shortage.
I'm sure no one camped out for a week for the Wii (like so many did for the PS3), although many camped out for around 20+ hours.
I got up at 5am on sunday morning and my friend picked me up and we were going to go to bestbuy, but there were around 200 people in line outside, then we went to another bestbuy where there were at least 100 people in line. A nearby target had an enormous crowd outside, too.
We finally went to a slightly hidden Circuit city where there were 21 people waiting and we got in line. After talking to the guys there, we learned that the store had 16 units physically at the store and were expecting a *possible* shipment of 15 more at 7am, and we'd find out at that time. Since we really didn't know where else to go at that time, we decided to stick it out.
The couple of guys immediately in front of us were there for only about 20 minutes when we arrived (at about 5:30) and the guys in front of them got there at midnight. The group of guys at the head of the line were there since 8am the day before and had sleeping bags and a tent.
It's kinda funny because several people came and went in those early hours (the store was gonna open at 10) but since it wasn't a sure thing, no one really wanted to stick it out to find out if those extra 15 units were going to show up, so until about 9:30 (the truck had gotten a flat and hadn't shown up yet) there were only about 10 people behind us... it wasn't until about then that suddenly people were showing up left and right.
and AT 10, a couple of people showed up thinking they'd avoid the crowd and get there when they first open to pick their wii up. they were a little shocked that people were waiting outside. they didn't understand.
heh.
but I got one!! and it's AWESOME.
red steel sucks, though.
It really depends on what you're doing in line, though. My friend wanted to get in line this past monday at the 23rd street Bestbuy, here in manhattan. I had to work (as did he) or I would have. I've waited in line for worse, although not for 4 days.
Back in 1999 or whenever it was, I waited in line for 36 hours to get tickets to Episode 1... and let me tell you... it was fun, although it rained and and there was NO place to piss (cops were there and the guy in front of me in line got a ticket for pissing in the lot)... although the payoff was really... not worth it. at all.
I think the PS3 may have been worth it. especially if it turned out that I'd get comp'd for those systems.
And, if you're in school and don't have a job, that would have been a killer turnout for a week's worth of your time.
Say you get $2,500 each for the comped. normal PS3's. 3 x 4 x 24 = 288 hours. That's $8.68 dollars an hour. In NY city.
...spike
but it's not like you're working. I mean... they were probably sitting there with their DSs or PSPs or whatever and rocking out to tunes (or rapping... out to samples... based on their dress-style)
This is like getting paid for idle time. If someone was like "dude, I'll
besides, if they got the hypothetical 2500$ each for 2 systems, that's 5000$. $5000 / 288h = $17.36/hr. tax free (if they choose not to claim it). That's $1666.66 to each of them, plus they have a PS3 sitting in the livingroom. Hell, they could even re-invest that 5000$ into a really nice HDTV.
and getting paid 17$/hr to wait in line really is quite good.
ew, dude... why are you imagining THAT?
too bad they weren't sexy coeds... who had a make-out contest to decide which gets to play theirs first. oh yeah.
It looks like the going rate is anywhere from $3000-$5000...
The first three gamers in line were comped their PS3s.
now, THAT would have made for a decent profit for a week's worth of waiting in line... imagine if the first 3 people lived together and sold off 2 of them. goddamn. think of what they'd fetch for the autographed system.
The short story was good. it was the first "ebook" I bought... back in like... 2001 or 2002, I think.
well, I purchased a non-rights managed PDF. cost me like 2.50$ if I recall correctly.
Yeah, I've been saying that for at least the last year or so... It been time to buy stock in big blue for a while.
it's got a 20GB drive, but only about 14GB are available at the time of purchase
and if you've purchased a couple of xbox live arcade games and have a couple demos, you've almost used up your entire drive.
hopefully, they'll have the option of using an external drive for media storage... I've got a USB drive attached to it with all the stileproject wmvs (I've got about 9GB worth on there) and all my MP3s (about 250GB), so it'd be nice to use that. I've still got about 30GB free and I could always pick up a 400GB drive.
actually... the most unrealistic thing is the flashlight.
I mean... c'mon... they've got a gun that can make your skin disappear and cloaking suits and goddamn crazy clones... yet the flashlight only lasts what? 30 seconds at a time before running out of juice?
why not put some LEDs in the thing? it'll get powered by the warmth of the player's hand!
or maybe it's one of those flashlights that needs to get shaken to get used? hmmmm....
THPS2's School level is the BEST in my book. =)
For me, nearly every level from Quake1 is a masterpiece of level design. In regard to the singleplayer maps, they're near perfect for what they were designed... however some (namely end and E4M3) also make excellent multiplayer maps. The deathmatch levels are also spectacular.
Quake 3's Q3DM16 and Q3DM17 are 2 of the best maps in the game for 1 on 1 deathmatch.
Bark at the moon is the only track in guitar hero that I enjoy.
Myth had some great levels, too. although I don't recall the names of them. I miss that game.
The original Counterstrike levels are all amazing. Especially the Dust and Aztec ones.
the original Prince of persia had a vast majority of its levels very well designed as well.
as to poor design... FEAR (for 360, at least) and Condemned (360) had some of the most poorly designed and unrealistic levels I've ever played. They feel like they were designed for a game and couldn't possibly exist in real life.
I'm really curious if anyone has created any kind of guidelines for on-screen readable text.
I've been dabbling with creating a tv-based interface frontend and I've had a really hard time deciding what sizes to make things. I started development with the idea that I'd be running at a pretty high resolution (my 19" monitor), but then I realized that I wouldn't be sitting as close to the TV when it's set up (I'd like to be able to see what I'm doing even from across the room) and the TV won't be as sharp.
I've been having a really hard time trying to determine sizes without extensive trial and error.
It's a fact that the 360 works with a regular TV and it can be assumed (quite confidently) that the PS3 will, too.
Although, one problem that the 360 has is that many of the games are designed with HDTVs in mind. That leads to developers creating HUDs with text that is unreadably small on regular TVs. So far, I've noticed that problem in FEAR (the only unreadable text so far has been the name of the talking person in the upper left corner, which doesn't really matter), Dead Rising (the name of the weapon and some other misc. text, but it's not a HUGE deal... but that one gets annoying), and Madden. I primarily stick to playing Lumines, Geometry Wars and Fight Night, so I haven't seen every game in depth, but my roommate has complained about small type in other games.
There is an advantage with nintendo only supporting 480p which is basically that all developers are targeting the same resolution and things will be consistent.
although, I think the Wii will be far more fun on those huge TVs which are high-def and it would look beautiful if they supported the 1080 resolution.
anyway, I seriously doubt Nintendo would release the wii if it looked terrible. they do have some sense.
The same thing happened with City of Heroes when people started making The Hulk and Wolverine. I would imagine that the same would apply here.
well, not exactly. Marvel owned the trademarks to the likenesses of those characters in the City of Heroes game. CoH was competing with a similar franchise, so it was construed as a trademark violation.
this mortal kombat thing not only lets you create a likeness of a real person, but also is probably protected by the same laws that protect parody.
May I recommend a good book to you?
The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger.
An excellent read, and it seems that it would strike your fancy.
it's about a 6-fingered man who needs to constantly change his identity and is eventually interrogated about what happened by a therapist who is trying to lock him up in a mental institution because he thinks he tried to commit suicide. The whole time, he's calculating his movements to faux discomfort during the discussion of certain subjects and he tries to steer the conversation the way he wants.
I guess it's obvious that I don't watch sports much.
i know NBC has sports (because I worked on the art for Football Night in America; a cheap ripoff of Hockey Night in Cananda, at first glance), but I know there was some football game I watched where I was like "dude! THAT's a decent HUD!"
oh well. I guess I gotta get an HDTV, now.
No, but it's nice to have. I didn't really realize what I was missing until I had HD.
The problem is that a lot of the XBOX360 games are being designed with HD in mind. This observation of mine is especially apparent in most of the newer 360 titles (Dead Rising is the first that comes to mind). The text in that game is completely unreadable on non-HD displays. I've played the game on several non-HD TVs and have always had the problem, so it's not a matter of mine just being fuzzy.
In fact, I wonder if any playtesters of these games played them in non-HD. Even games like Madden have unreadable scores. You'd think they'd model their HUD off NBC's or whatever.
the problem with manufacturing so many units so soon is the possibility of problems turning up. Like the 360's overheating or sony's batteries exploding. Although Nintendo has a very good track record for QA, what's to say that some new problem won't crop up? Are they that confident?
That'd be a scary thing if there's some kind of fire hazard with the units and the big N has 6 million units in warehouses across the world.
yeah yeah yeah... well, I needed a drive and didn't have the $ for one. Plus, it was the first day I had it. My roommate offered to replace it if seagate didn't.
When I got my first iPod (the 5GB one like 5 years ago), I was opening it as I walked out of CompUSA, and being confused by the packaging, the unit slipped out of the box and hit the sidewalk, poping in half and coming apart... so I walked back in and showed them and they replaced it. I was quite happy.
I"ve RMA'd 2 seagate drives, ever (out of about 15 that I've purchased) and both times I got back new drives. shrinkwraped and everything.
The cause of one drive's death was a 5' fall to the floor. I had it on top of my G5 and my roommate was getting something from behind my desk and knocked it off. The computer didn't even see the drive after that. Seagate replaced it in about 3 days.
the other one just stopped spinning up after a couple of days. Seagate took longer with that one (this one happened about a week after I RMA'd the first one), but they did send me back a new drive.
I've had pretty good luck with drives in my life. I've only lost 8 drives, total, ever. 4 Maxtors (all 3+ years old), 1 IBM Deskstar, and one Western Digital (after 6 years of use).
i've still got drives from 1998 in active machines... although I'm toying with the idea of replacing them since newer drives apparently have new features and are a good deal faster.
We only think of "turd" when it's brown and we know it's probably a piece of crap (i.e., the Zune).
c'mon, don't give it that much credit.
I think you're talking it up too much.
besides, turd is such a juvenile term. I prefer "poopie brown." you know, like the color of poopies.
Most people are not "artist" enough to appreciate that "innovative" brown...
I think I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the brown actually looks nice.
i mean, I'm not saying I'm getting one of those things. I've got my ipods... nor am I saying I'd get a brown ipod... but the brown has a classic feel to it. Like a leather upholstered stereo receiver. Man that would be cool.
I had no problem getting Vista installed in VPC, albeit, it took like 4 hours (dual 2.7ghz G5 w/ 2GB RAM). It also ran so slow, it was barely usable, and I couldn't get sound or networking working.