Let's just pray that George Lucas doesn't petition the filmmakers to let him give Christopher Reeve some CGI legs. Hey if they could remove Gary Senise's legs in Forest Gump...
Thanks for the acknowledgement. As you can see from some of the other comments, you weren't the only one who misread the stats. And you're right: the stats are pretty interesting. I would have never imagined that 5% of gamers are over 55!
I, too, agree with everything you've said. I had a friend who would take it upon himself to install Linux on someone's home machine if that person promised to give Linux a try (and see why it is "better" than Windows). Now this was back in the mid-90s and a good install really required a Linux expert to get everything set up correctly (I know it's better nowdays). So my buddy had a standing arrangement: if it took him more than 3 hours to do, you'd have to buy him dinner. But he was happy to do it because he'd seen one too many Linux desktops that had been configured by a moron so that lots of stuff wouldn't work correctly. "This is why people think Linux is junk!" he would scream. "The problem's not with Linux, it's with whoever did a crappy job installing it!" So he felt that if someone was willing to give Linux a try, they should compare Windows against a properly configured Linux desktop. Something that was set up so that an application wouldn't spew lots of missing library or font errors and refuse to run when you typed the command.
I know full well that most Linux people love to tinker with the settings of their machines. But Joe User does not want to have to tinker with settings. He wants the thing to be properly set up out of the box.
GMD
No, get YOUR facts straight
on
High Score
·
· Score: 2
I seriously do not know why someone moderated you as Informative. Take a closer look at those stats you quoted. The percentages add up to 100%. That's because it is showing the percentage of gamers in that age group. Not the percentage of people in that age group who are gamers. And even so, 22.8% + 15.4% + 5.6% = 43.8% which is less than 50%.
Before you start insulting someone in public, do a sanity check to make sure you don't say something obviously wrong.
The history of video games is sorely underreported and under appreciated. Already many electronic games are disappearing as hardware and platforms become unavailable. The Abandonware scene is alive and well, but quietly our gaming history is disappearing. I encourage all Slashdot readers to read up on your gaming history and try to preserve a great and thriving culture.
You don't need to worry about losing videogame history. It is simply becoming a part of our contemporary value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience.
What gaming needs is the equivalent of a bowling alley. Someplace to go be online, play games, hang out, drink beer, meet girls.
I dunno about that one, dude. Have you actually seen the chicks that hang out at bowling alleys? Many of them are shaped like bowling balls themselves! And talking to these chicks is your plan for not feeling like a "loser" anymore? I don't know about you, man.
All in gest, peteshaw....:)
GMD
Is this a book review or an editorial?
on
High Score
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Christ Katz, can't you ever have a SMALL point? Can't you ever just say "This is a pretty good book about video games, I recommend it."?
No, with you it has to be "Video games have had more effect on the evolution of mankind than oxygen. This book is so good, that if you hold it and make a wish, it will come true. Columbine."
Yeah, that was pretty much my feeling upon reading the review (although I was stunned that there wasn't a 9/11 reference anywhere).
Honestly, videogames have not made that much of an impact on world (or even American) culture. They sure as hell do not "embody a value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience". The majority of people over the age of 30 do not currently play videogames and only vaguely remember the games they played as kids. Look, I'm not making any value statements here (i.e., videogames are only for kids). I'm just stating the way it is. To be some sort of cultural phenomenon, there has to be a broad cross-section of the population (across several demographic lines) that is heavily influenced by it. Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon. Tomb Raider is not.
And I'd like to point out that it's really not necessary to try to put this book in some sort of global scope. Just tell us whether it's a good book or not. A book reviewer doesn't need to try to convince us of how the human race has been shaped and defined by videogames. The first couple of paragraphs of the "review" don't even discuss the book.
He divided the brain activity of participants into four categories -- naming the activity normal, visual, half-videogame, and videogame.
He probably should have made more groups such as violent videogames, strategy videogames, etc. No where in the article did I see any reference to analyzing the genre of videogame on the subject's brainwaves. It would be interesting to see how/if the brainwave patterns changed when playing Duke Nukem IV: Death To Everyone, WWF Smackdown Vol. 7: The Women, and Pikachu's Happy Hopscotch. If there was no difference, then perhaps the results really don't mean shit.
And the article never did say what was the "visual" group.
If you check out www.imdb.com for the Matrix sequal you'll see that Agent Smith is now Agent Smith 2.0
An upgrade, hmmm? Let's hope it's not as diabolical as Microsoft's recent Media Player 7.1 security fix. Maybe the 2.x series of agents will realize the only way to defeat a vastly superior Neo is for all of them to attack him simultaneously rather than following the time-honored martial arts movie tradition of politely waiting their turn. Now that would make for a cool (and novel) fight scene!
I'm not sure a Pikachu in and of itself is particularly nerdy. NOW if you hacked an Aibo so the only noises it made were random variations on "Pikachu", give it a custom yellow paintjob and rigged it to give an electric shock anytime it got pissed off (or you forced it into battle with the neighborhood rotwiller), that would be a pretty cool nerd pet! Hell, you could make a website about it and submit it to slashdot for all of us to marvel at! Can't get more nerdy than that!
I second this, even though you appear to want an "exotic" pet.
Rene, I agree with your "read" of the poster's intent, and I'm pleased you added the always prudent "appear" to your statement since it's not clear what the poster wants/needs in a pet. I thought your post was great. Hopefully that will cause the poster to think twice about the pros and cons of exotic pets.
My first thought when I read the poster's topic was what exactly does s/he mean by "Something tells me I can do better than simply a dog or a cat." What does better mean? Apparently an animal that fits in with the poster's nerdish personality/lifestyle, but that doesn't tell us much. I'm a little concerned that the poster's intent may be to get an animal that s/he can show off to his/her friends as an example of what a counter-culture, eccentric-genius, think-outside-the-box kind of guy s/he is. The comment about ferrets looking "fun" troubles me. Perhaps it's because I've seen way too many hippies who think that owning one of these is a great way to advertise your non-mainstreamness. Again, I don't know poster batobin so all we can do is guess what his/her criteria for a pet is.
I sincerely hope that batobin knows what is important to them in a pet even if s/he chose not to let us in on the secret. And for the record, I believe that cats make great nerd pets. If you're concerned about them fooling with your computer equipment, just put that stuff in a offlimits-to-Kitty-room.
GMD
Re:instead of mod'ing your mouse ...
on
Cryogenic Mouse Mod
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· Score: 5, Funny
get a real, living girlfriend. japanese anime (although cool) doesn't count
Yeah but the problem is that I don't meet any gorgeous green-haired female ninjas with 38DDs who can kill monsters effortlessly in my line of work...
1) The library wasn't burned by an angry mob, it was burned accidently, by Caeser's army, when some of their missiles (launched from boats) went astray.
Very interesting. I hadn't heard that before but a quick web search led me to this page where the authors agree with you. I had only heard the mob-burning-library-after-killing-Hypatia story.
2) Most written documentation on the "great library" suggests it wasn't a library like LoC, but more like a collection of erotic art and poems.
This statement I find no evidence for in my web search. Most everything I find (such as this) seems to suggest it was the center of learning in the ancient world as I originally posted. It's possible that the scholarly works were in the minority in the library. However it should be noted that this link does describe Alexandrian literature as erotic.
It would have been nice if you had posted some links but I thank you for the clarifications in any case.
I know you are asking for the oldest documented math problem, but do remember that the Great Library of Alexandria was burned down by an angry mob. That library housed most of the world's knowledge up until that point. So documentation of any super-old problem was probably destroyed in the fire.
By the way, a search on google for "oldest unsolved math problem" comes up with this page which states
PROOF OF THE INFINITUDE OF PERFECT NUMBERS (IPN). The IPN is either the
second oldest, or the oldest unsolved problem of mathematics (debatable
with the No Odd Perfect Number Problem), and this proof will easily
evince anyone why it is one of the two oldest unsolved math problems.
Although many telemarketers are colored, most of them are just like you and me. Please do not verbally abuse them - you won't hurt the industry, just somebody (not unlike myself) who is trying to make ends meet.
I'm not going to dignify that "colored" remark with a reply...
However, your insinuation that telemarketers are just good, honest folk trying to make a living is a bit bizarre. I worked briefly (very briefly -- I quit after two weeks) at a telemarketing firm selling pay channels (HBO, etc.). We got paid a reasonably hourly wage, given what we were doing. However, the real way to make money is through commissions. Telemarketers make money by selling people on their product. They are salespeople. I'm not claiming that they are filthy rich salespeople. But they are more like used car salesmen than they are like the average slashdot reader.
A guy I work with gets calls a few times a week (usually at odd hours, so he gets voicemail.) The calls usually are along the lines of "Hey this is -firstname- from -companyname-, the state says it is ok to dig. Thanks, seeya." When he does answer, the people don't seem to want to talk and tell him who they were expecting to get.
Hmmm. Very fishy. Maybe it's mafia hitmen who are following the advice of those public safety tips and making sure to avoid buried powerlines before they go digging any graves!
I'm still waiting for the inevitable news story that some guy is driving in their car, answers their cell phone which turns out to be a telemarketer solicitation and ends up crashing into a supermodel's car because he wasn't paying attention to the road.
We could wipe out these cartels overnight by legalizing and regulated the trade of cocaine and other recreational drugs - just like we do for alcohol.
There are many who would argue with you on that. Personally, I think legalizing some of these drugs would seriously hurt them (although I'd stop short of saying "wipe them out"). However, there's also another way of winning the war on drugs.
We could make this so-called war on drugs a real war. We go in to Columbia with some military force and start taking out the cartels. I'm not trolling -- I'm serious. I'm sure our satellites must be able to detect some large drug facilities. We'll just go in there and bomb them.
I can hear people screaming that we don't have the right to do that. We don't have "jurisdiction" to take out the cartels -- we're supposed to wait for the Columbian government to clean up that mess. But how would that be different than what we just did in Afganistan? There was an organization in that country that caused serious damage to the United States. We ordered the ruling government (the Taliban) to turn over the terrorists or we'd go in there and do it ourselves. They didn't so we did. So how would it be different for us to demand the Columbian government takes care of the drug cartels. And if they don't, we'd do it ourselves.
Either we should legalize these drugs or we should fight a full-scale war. This half-assed bullshit that we're doing now is just not going anywhere. Are we fighting a war on drugs or not?
So, this guy is from Chicago. You can't imagine the amount of press coverage it has gotten here.
I feel for you, pal. I don't live anywhere near Chicago and I've already heard way too fucking much about this.
Most mass media outlets are billing this as one of the major stories of the day. Why? Does anyone really give a shit? I mean really, really care? How many of us really care about ballooning? How many of us know anything about ballooning? Why is this a major news story?
I hear a lot of people complaning that this guy should have used his money to help needy causes rather than attempt this record. I understand this frustration and disgust. However, it is his money after all and he's entitled to spend it however he likes. The thing that galls me is that the media fawns over him like he's accomplished some monumental achievement on behalf of the human race. Yeah, yeah, it's a record. So what? I don't hate this millionare. I hate the media for hyping him up as some kind of hero or celebrity.
The super rich will always find ways to amuse themselves with their money. That's fine. So why the hell is this a news story?
On a related note - does anyone know of a good way to "capture" a flash animation to a more "standard" video file, e.g..mpg or something similar? It'd be nice to take some of these flash web-cartoons and make personal-use VCD's out of them so everyone wouldn't have to cluster around my little monitor so that I could show them...
If you haven't already been to vcdhelp.com that should be your first stop. There are detailed instructions on how to convert many file formats to VCD-compliant MPEG1. If that doesn't help, try a google search for some of your keywords ("flash convert VCD" or something like that). If all else fails, you can always use a screen-grabbing utility to record the flash animation on your screen and save it to a videofile. Then convert the videofile to VCD. That's kind of messy but should allow you to convert any video type to MPEG1.
Combat was the shit! there was something special about being able to play 27 different versions of the same game... all on one low capacity cartridge no less.
Those old videogames will always have a place in my heart because they were challenging and simple (not to be confused with "easy") at the same time. Today's modern games do not interest me at all. I work hard all day long and when I come home I don't want to read some kind of manual to learn how to play a game. And screw thinking! I just want to lean back in my easy chair and blow up some aliens or eat some power pills.
Combat is a prime example of the beauty of simplicity. Each of those games was pretty straightfoward. It's immediately obvious what you're supposed to do. And if you get bored with game #17 on the cartridge, just click over to another variation. Combat could keep you entertained for months. And it probably took almost no time to code up. I don't understand why today's games don't make an effort to return to maddeningly addictive, simple games (like Tetris). Wouldn't churning out games like this be more profitable then spending months rendering some photorealistic first-person dungeon shoot-em-up?
Reissues of arcade classics (centipede, tempest, asteroids) for my PC.
Screw the reissues. Just download MAME and you get to play the EXACT SAME game you remember as a child.
...but there was something they had which was like a four screen version of asteroids which looked cool has heck, years ago...
I always thought a very underrated Atari game was Warlords which was kind of a 4-person cut-throat version of Breakout. You had to defend your "castle" against a bouncing ball and use it to destroy the castles of your 3 opponents. Cool game.
Slashdot Mirror
The IMDB is reporting that Matt Damon will probably be in it and get to choose which superhero he wants to be.
GMD
Ouch! That's cold. Funny tho...
Let's just pray that George Lucas doesn't petition the filmmakers to let him give Christopher Reeve some CGI legs. Hey if they could remove Gary Senise's legs in Forest Gump...
GMD
Thanks for the acknowledgement. As you can see from some of the other comments, you weren't the only one who misread the stats. And you're right: the stats are pretty interesting. I would have never imagined that 5% of gamers are over 55!
No hard feelings...
GMD
I, too, agree with everything you've said. I had a friend who would take it upon himself to install Linux on someone's home machine if that person promised to give Linux a try (and see why it is "better" than Windows). Now this was back in the mid-90s and a good install really required a Linux expert to get everything set up correctly (I know it's better nowdays). So my buddy had a standing arrangement: if it took him more than 3 hours to do, you'd have to buy him dinner. But he was happy to do it because he'd seen one too many Linux desktops that had been configured by a moron so that lots of stuff wouldn't work correctly. "This is why people think Linux is junk!" he would scream. "The problem's not with Linux, it's with whoever did a crappy job installing it!" So he felt that if someone was willing to give Linux a try, they should compare Windows against a properly configured Linux desktop. Something that was set up so that an application wouldn't spew lots of missing library or font errors and refuse to run when you typed the command.
I know full well that most Linux people love to tinker with the settings of their machines. But Joe User does not want to have to tinker with settings. He wants the thing to be properly set up out of the box.
GMD
I seriously do not know why someone moderated you as Informative. Take a closer look at those stats you quoted. The percentages add up to 100%. That's because it is showing the percentage of gamers in that age group. Not the percentage of people in that age group who are gamers. And even so, 22.8% + 15.4% + 5.6% = 43.8% which is less than 50%.
Before you start insulting someone in public, do a sanity check to make sure you don't say something obviously wrong.
GMD
The history of video games is sorely underreported and under appreciated. Already many electronic games are disappearing as hardware and platforms become unavailable. The Abandonware scene is alive and well, but quietly our gaming history is disappearing. I encourage all Slashdot readers to read up on your gaming history and try to preserve a great and thriving culture.
You don't need to worry about losing videogame history. It is simply becoming a part of our contemporary value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience.
GMD
What gaming needs is the equivalent of a bowling alley. Someplace to go be online, play games, hang out, drink beer, meet girls.
I dunno about that one, dude. Have you actually seen the chicks that hang out at bowling alleys? Many of them are shaped like bowling balls themselves! And talking to these chicks is your plan for not feeling like a "loser" anymore? I don't know about you, man.
All in gest, peteshaw .... :)
GMD
Christ Katz, can't you ever have a SMALL point? Can't you ever just say "This is a pretty good book about video games, I recommend it."?
No, with you it has to be "Video games have had more effect on the evolution of mankind than oxygen. This book is so good, that if you hold it and make a wish, it will come true. Columbine."
Yeah, that was pretty much my feeling upon reading the review (although I was stunned that there wasn't a 9/11 reference anywhere).
Honestly, videogames have not made that much of an impact on world (or even American) culture. They sure as hell do not "embody a value system, mind-boggling inspiration, common language and experience". The majority of people over the age of 30 do not currently play videogames and only vaguely remember the games they played as kids. Look, I'm not making any value statements here (i.e., videogames are only for kids). I'm just stating the way it is. To be some sort of cultural phenomenon, there has to be a broad cross-section of the population (across several demographic lines) that is heavily influenced by it. Star Wars is a cultural phenomenon. Tomb Raider is not.
And I'd like to point out that it's really not necessary to try to put this book in some sort of global scope. Just tell us whether it's a good book or not. A book reviewer doesn't need to try to convince us of how the human race has been shaped and defined by videogames. The first couple of paragraphs of the "review" don't even discuss the book.
GMD
A study compiled by the Yankelovich Partners surveyed...
Holy shit! You mean Wierd Al is doing music industry studies in addition to making music? Now that's diversification!
GMD
He divided the brain activity of participants into four categories -- naming the activity normal, visual, half-videogame, and videogame.
He probably should have made more groups such as violent videogames, strategy videogames, etc. No where in the article did I see any reference to analyzing the genre of videogame on the subject's brainwaves. It would be interesting to see how/if the brainwave patterns changed when playing Duke Nukem IV: Death To Everyone, WWF Smackdown Vol. 7: The Women, and Pikachu's Happy Hopscotch. If there was no difference, then perhaps the results really don't mean shit.
And the article never did say what was the "visual" group.
GMD
If you check out www.imdb.com for the Matrix sequal you'll see that Agent Smith is now Agent Smith 2.0
An upgrade, hmmm? Let's hope it's not as diabolical as Microsoft's recent Media Player 7.1 security fix. Maybe the 2.x series of agents will realize the only way to defeat a vastly superior Neo is for all of them to attack him simultaneously rather than following the time-honored martial arts movie tradition of politely waiting their turn. Now that would make for a cool (and novel) fight scene!
GMD
I'm not sure a Pikachu in and of itself is particularly nerdy. NOW if you hacked an Aibo so the only noises it made were random variations on "Pikachu", give it a custom yellow paintjob and rigged it to give an electric shock anytime it got pissed off (or you forced it into battle with the neighborhood rotwiller), that would be a pretty cool nerd pet! Hell, you could make a website about it and submit it to slashdot for all of us to marvel at! Can't get more nerdy than that!
GMD
I second this, even though you appear to want an "exotic" pet.
Rene, I agree with your "read" of the poster's intent, and I'm pleased you added the always prudent "appear" to your statement since it's not clear what the poster wants/needs in a pet. I thought your post was great. Hopefully that will cause the poster to think twice about the pros and cons of exotic pets.
My first thought when I read the poster's topic was what exactly does s/he mean by "Something tells me I can do better than simply a dog or a cat." What does better mean? Apparently an animal that fits in with the poster's nerdish personality/lifestyle, but that doesn't tell us much. I'm a little concerned that the poster's intent may be to get an animal that s/he can show off to his/her friends as an example of what a counter-culture, eccentric-genius, think-outside-the-box kind of guy s/he is. The comment about ferrets looking "fun" troubles me. Perhaps it's because I've seen way too many hippies who think that owning one of these is a great way to advertise your non-mainstreamness. Again, I don't know poster batobin so all we can do is guess what his/her criteria for a pet is.
I sincerely hope that batobin knows what is important to them in a pet even if s/he chose not to let us in on the secret. And for the record, I believe that cats make great nerd pets. If you're concerned about them fooling with your computer equipment, just put that stuff in a offlimits-to-Kitty-room.
GMD
get a real, living girlfriend. japanese anime (although cool) doesn't count
Yeah but the problem is that I don't meet any gorgeous green-haired female ninjas with 38DDs who can kill monsters effortlessly in my line of work...
GMD
1) The library wasn't burned by an angry mob, it was burned accidently, by Caeser's army, when some of their missiles (launched from boats) went astray.
Very interesting. I hadn't heard that before but a quick web search led me to this page where the authors agree with you. I had only heard the mob-burning-library-after-killing-Hypatia story.
2) Most written documentation on the "great library" suggests it wasn't a library like LoC, but more like a collection of erotic art and poems.
This statement I find no evidence for in my web search. Most everything I find (such as this) seems to suggest it was the center of learning in the ancient world as I originally posted. It's possible that the scholarly works were in the minority in the library. However it should be noted that this link does describe Alexandrian literature as erotic.
It would have been nice if you had posted some links but I thank you for the clarifications in any case.
GMD
I know you are asking for the oldest documented math problem, but do remember that the Great Library of Alexandria was burned down by an angry mob. That library housed most of the world's knowledge up until that point. So documentation of any super-old problem was probably destroyed in the fire.
By the way, a search on google for "oldest unsolved math problem" comes up with this page which states
PROOF OF THE INFINITUDE OF PERFECT NUMBERS (IPN). The IPN is either the second oldest, or the oldest unsolved problem of mathematics (debatable with the No Odd Perfect Number Problem), and this proof will easily evince anyone why it is one of the two oldest unsolved math problems.
So I guess the IPN is a contender.
GMD
Although many telemarketers are colored, most of them are just like you and me. Please do not verbally abuse them - you won't hurt the industry, just somebody (not unlike myself) who is trying to make ends meet.
I'm not going to dignify that "colored" remark with a reply...
However, your insinuation that telemarketers are just good, honest folk trying to make a living is a bit bizarre. I worked briefly (very briefly -- I quit after two weeks) at a telemarketing firm selling pay channels (HBO, etc.). We got paid a reasonably hourly wage, given what we were doing. However, the real way to make money is through commissions. Telemarketers make money by selling people on their product. They are salespeople. I'm not claiming that they are filthy rich salespeople. But they are more like used car salesmen than they are like the average slashdot reader.
GMD
A guy I work with gets calls a few times a week (usually at odd hours, so he gets voicemail.) The calls usually are along the lines of "Hey this is -firstname- from -companyname-, the state says it is ok to dig. Thanks, seeya." When he does answer, the people don't seem to want to talk and tell him who they were expecting to get.
Hmmm. Very fishy. Maybe it's mafia hitmen who are following the advice of those public safety tips and making sure to avoid buried powerlines before they go digging any graves!
GMD
I'm still waiting for the inevitable news story that some guy is driving in their car, answers their cell phone which turns out to be a telemarketer solicitation and ends up crashing into a supermodel's car because he wasn't paying attention to the road.
GMD
We could wipe out these cartels overnight by legalizing and regulated the trade of cocaine and other recreational drugs - just like we do for alcohol.
There are many who would argue with you on that. Personally, I think legalizing some of these drugs would seriously hurt them (although I'd stop short of saying "wipe them out"). However, there's also another way of winning the war on drugs.
We could make this so-called war on drugs a real war. We go in to Columbia with some military force and start taking out the cartels. I'm not trolling -- I'm serious. I'm sure our satellites must be able to detect some large drug facilities. We'll just go in there and bomb them.
I can hear people screaming that we don't have the right to do that. We don't have "jurisdiction" to take out the cartels -- we're supposed to wait for the Columbian government to clean up that mess. But how would that be different than what we just did in Afganistan? There was an organization in that country that caused serious damage to the United States. We ordered the ruling government (the Taliban) to turn over the terrorists or we'd go in there and do it ourselves. They didn't so we did. So how would it be different for us to demand the Columbian government takes care of the drug cartels. And if they don't, we'd do it ourselves.
Either we should legalize these drugs or we should fight a full-scale war. This half-assed bullshit that we're doing now is just not going anywhere. Are we fighting a war on drugs or not?
GMD
2) If you don't have grey hairs, you can probably pass for a student with a little creative wardrobe work.
Here's some pointers on blending in:
GMD
So, this guy is from Chicago. You can't imagine the amount of press coverage it has gotten here.
I feel for you, pal. I don't live anywhere near Chicago and I've already heard way too fucking much about this.
Most mass media outlets are billing this as one of the major stories of the day. Why? Does anyone really give a shit? I mean really, really care? How many of us really care about ballooning? How many of us know anything about ballooning? Why is this a major news story?
I hear a lot of people complaning that this guy should have used his money to help needy causes rather than attempt this record. I understand this frustration and disgust. However, it is his money after all and he's entitled to spend it however he likes. The thing that galls me is that the media fawns over him like he's accomplished some monumental achievement on behalf of the human race. Yeah, yeah, it's a record. So what? I don't hate this millionare. I hate the media for hyping him up as some kind of hero or celebrity.
The super rich will always find ways to amuse themselves with their money. That's fine. So why the hell is this a news story?
GMD
On a related note - does anyone know of a good way to "capture" a flash animation to a more "standard" video file, e.g. .mpg or something similar? It'd be nice to take some of these flash web-cartoons and make personal-use VCD's out of them so everyone wouldn't have to cluster around my little monitor so that I could show them...
If you haven't already been to vcdhelp.com that should be your first stop. There are detailed instructions on how to convert many file formats to VCD-compliant MPEG1. If that doesn't help, try a google search for some of your keywords ("flash convert VCD" or something like that). If all else fails, you can always use a screen-grabbing utility to record the flash animation on your screen and save it to a videofile. Then convert the videofile to VCD. That's kind of messy but should allow you to convert any video type to MPEG1.
Hope that helps!
GMD
Combat was the shit! there was something special about being able to play 27 different versions of the same game... all on one low capacity cartridge no less.
Those old videogames will always have a place in my heart because they were challenging and simple (not to be confused with "easy") at the same time. Today's modern games do not interest me at all. I work hard all day long and when I come home I don't want to read some kind of manual to learn how to play a game. And screw thinking! I just want to lean back in my easy chair and blow up some aliens or eat some power pills.
Combat is a prime example of the beauty of simplicity. Each of those games was pretty straightfoward. It's immediately obvious what you're supposed to do. And if you get bored with game #17 on the cartridge, just click over to another variation. Combat could keep you entertained for months. And it probably took almost no time to code up. I don't understand why today's games don't make an effort to return to maddeningly addictive, simple games (like Tetris). Wouldn't churning out games like this be more profitable then spending months rendering some photorealistic first-person dungeon shoot-em-up?
or am i just showing my age?...
GMD
Reissues of arcade classics (centipede, tempest, asteroids) for my PC.
Screw the reissues. Just download MAME and you get to play the EXACT SAME game you remember as a child.
I always thought a very underrated Atari game was Warlords which was kind of a 4-person cut-throat version of Breakout. You had to defend your "castle" against a bouncing ball and use it to destroy the castles of your 3 opponents. Cool game.
GMD